TaranTheWanderer
Legend
Why isn’t Joining the villain a valid way to lose?
It is. Nobody said it wasn't. You're missing the point if you think I said you couldn't. If the stakes are joining the villain and the players agree, then those are the stakes. But if that is completely unreasonable, then it obviously won't fly with the players. Hence the reason for having OOC conversations about what is winning and what is losing.
While you were storming the the villain's lair, the OOC assumption is that death may be the result. No need to talk about what victory is. Victory is living and capturing the Boss. But, you defeated the minions and have tied up and are questioning him.
Let's say The players party is 70% sure he really is the villain and they are about to kill that NPC, I might tell them, that the NPC is going to try to convince you to let him live. We will do a test and if he wins he gets to live but if he fails you can do whatever.
Players say, "We want more. We were interrogating him."
DM "o,k fine. If you win, you'll also know 100% whether he is the villain you are looking for. But, if you lose, you'll actually see that you've been wrong and he'll tell you the truth. You might very well want to join him."
You can barter this way.
One player might be completely opposed to joining but be perfectly fine with letting him go. The whole group might say, "nah, screw this, we kill him." But that was going to happen anyways.
In any case, once you have buy-in, the players have made an OOC decision to abide by the decision of the contest and play their characters appropriately depending on the result.
Edit: obviously, it should have an interesting outcome. You wouldn't do this with every mook probably. But maybe that guy wasn't actually the villain and the players are now involved in a whole new story arc. Or maybe he was and now it has shifted the focus of the campaign. Or maybe he was the villain and they let him live and now he gets to come back and be a recurring villain.
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