Ever let players run the opposition?

[Raven Crowking]

Specifically, I am talking about situations where a character is slain and becomes undead, etc., and the remainder of the party has to "take him out" for his own good.

I let players do this whenever it makes sense, esp. when the PC will retain most or all of his original powers. My reasoning is that (1) the player presumably knows the PC better than I do, (2) how the character adapts to his new undeath is well modelled by this method - the PC attempts to do things as he normally would, or as the player understands the monster, and sometimes these things work exceptionally well, while sometimes they fail miserably, and (3) the expressions of the other players, when they know that one of their own is going to actually play that monster to its best potential, is well worth it.

For example, my son's 1st level Psionic Adept (RCFG class) was travelling with a group averaging 3rd level, when he was slain by a shadow. The PCs know that the (more powerful) shadow was guarding treasure, they know that the original shadow was slain, and they fled when the PC rose as a shadow.

The next session began with the PCs trying to figure out how to defeat the newly-risen shadow, and their trepidation despite their overwhelming character superiority was priceless. Even more worthwhile was the fun of my son discovering how his new powers interacted with his undead state -- RCFG Psionic Adepts rely on natural healing in ways that meant using his best known powers also reduced his effectiveness.

The character was also telepathically linked to two war dogs that he commanded to attack. Beyond the shadow of a doubt (pun intended) I would have forgotten that connection and the encounter would have been less satisfying.

Anyone else do things like this? How did it work for you?


RC

 

[Grymar]

Not as much with a turned-undead PC, but when a PC dies I'll often toss a monster character sheet at the player and have them play the monster.

Let me tell you, they are WAY more killer and brutal than I am as a DM. Give a player a chance to fight the other players and there is no mercy.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I've have had players run the possessed/undead PC and also had them run monsters when their PC is slain.

It has usually worked well. If I get the sense the player is pulling punches for their former teammates, I warn them that I can take over again if needed.

 

[weem]

I've never had a player play a monster before. I have thought about it, but I don't. Mine are the type that would not pull punches, which is fine, I just haven't done it.

In 4e, I have not had a player die for good yet, but if it happened I would simply have them control an NPC for the remainder of the game. There are a number of them in my campaign (detailed using Companion Character Sheets I made) so usually there is one nearby.

I ran a game where the PC's were involved in negotiations with an NPC and at various points I would move from that scene with a "Meanwhile, on his ship... your crew continues to try and escape" at which point they would take over the NPC's who represented some of their (kidnapped) crew members. After an encounter, or some puzzle, I switched back to their main characters to continue negotiations. So, they are used to playing NPC's from time to time in these kinds of ways - playing one for a bit if they died would be pretty natural.

 

[Raven Crowking]

What about dopplegangers?

 

[ggroy]

I did this quite frequently in previous editions of D&D, whenever a character was knocked unconscious for many rounds or dead, possessed, etc ... Quite a number of times when there were more than one player knocked out or dead, I had them all play several monsters.

Depending on the player, sometimes they played the monsters quite brutally than how I originally planned.

 

[Scribble]

I do quite often... I have enough to worry about behind the screen without having to now deal with a dominated character, or doppleganger...

And if a player is just sitting around waiting to be "re-entered" into the game, then I'll give him something to do while he waits.

I also hate running NPCs that stay with the party, so I generally give them to a player, with the caveat that I overrule when necessary.

 

[Henry]

Not exactly, but I have had turncoat games before -- my favorite was a Star Wars Saga game I ran.

In it, one of the players kept pushing the boundaries of Dark Side Force use -- to the point where he used force grip on sentients with wild abandon. I started offering him temporary force points that he could use solely to get back his force grip if he chose to use it, with it just going away if he tried to do anything else with it.

Eventually, he was approached in secret (away from table) by a Sith (actually the Emperor in disguise) and turned. I offered him great power if he turned, and for the fun once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he did. He waits for TWO WHOLE GAMES before the time is right to betray the party, which he did, backed up by 20 sith acolytes! I gave him 5 destiny points plus 1 per member of the party, figuring between the non-heroic acolytes and his new power, it would be a hard fought, memorable, but losing battle for the other players (this was right on the heels of Order 66 and the massacre of the Jedi).

Instead, they pulled it out of their behinds, managing to kill-shot him in 1 round with the help of an HK-47 style droid who sacrificed himself (and his chest-mounted thermal bomb) because the "meatbag did not pay him proper deference," and fighting one hell of a struggle. The turncoat PC player and the droid player joined up to run the sith acolytes, and used every trick they could think of to kill the rest of the party, and the end result was 20 dead sith, 2 PCs left conscious, and everyone else unconscious or dying, and the turncoat and droid nothing but a thermal detonator-smear on the duracrete, narrowly escaping the planet with Clone troopers inbound.

They talked about the end of the campaign for six months.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

My group used to love splitting off into small teams to pursue individual goals... especially the duergar fighter/assassin (this was a 1E game, mid-80s). In order to prevent player boredom, I would often let players whose PCs were off on their own missions run monsters/NPCs for the other group. There were occasions where I wouldn't, mainly when there were plot developments the absent PCs shouldn't know about.

All in all, though it was fun for everyone: it saved me a lot of die-rolling and the players didn't have to wait in the basement until there turn was up. And as someone upthread mentioned, the players are especially vicious when pitted against each other.

 

[grufflehead]

I've recently started playing a pbp on another site using the Wushu rules.

Wushu - Wushu Open Core Rules ( Saberpunk.net )

I got this (probably deranged) idea in my head that I might use the rules to run my own pbp, but rather than the 'Crouching Tiger' style game that we are playing, use it to do War of the Burning Sky. I went looking for some more material, and as well as the Wire-Fu rules, found something called BUDO: Hard Style Wushu on DriveThru. In that, any PC that is out of the game - dead, unconscious, kidnapped etc - can play in one of 3 modes: Ancestor (where they take on meta-game responsibilities), Devil (where they play either the bad guys or control the other challenges the PCs face) or Vassal (where they control the 'supporting cast', be it an NPC or a squad of goons helping the party).