Bait-n-switch or screwjob campaigns

[Neonchameleon]

I know of one time it's been done well. But the reason that time worked was that nothing in the bait and switch changed the nature of the characters the players had designed.

What it was pitched as was a modern day detective game centred round a PI's office. Where the bait and switch came in was that it was actually a modern day game of Call of Cthulu (using GURPS rules, so it wasn't obvious) with the PCs being centred round a detective's office. Except that not every cult was to do with the mythos. This left the PCs remaining as the PCs doing exactly what they would under the circumstance.

The worst one I've been subjected to was when the Storyteller actually re-wrote my PC's background with amnesia to make it that he had set off the chain of events we were running from - both in a way that was completely OOC from him and in a way that defied common sense (and my understanding of the relationship between the seelie and unseelie in Changeling, but that's another story). No. My PC is my PC. You might be able to put hooks there. But this is my area of the gameworld.

On the other hand I'm doing something similar to someone else. His character concept was that he was [low level boss] brought back as a Revenant with amnesia. Unfortunately [low level boss] has a very powerful patron who's meant to be the end boss of the AP. So PC believes that [good deity] brought him back but was actually brought back for reasons of his own by [BBEG].

 

[wingsandsword]

I was in a bait and switch campaign once.

The GM told us it was going to be a RIFTS campaign. We make a typical motley assortment of cyborgs, juicers, Atlanteans and a couple of plain humans.

The initial plot hook of the first session was that we were being hired to provide security for some special expedition. It turned out to be a mad scientist that had invented a time machine and wanted us to go with him to before the time of the rifts, to 1999 (when the campaign was run). Well, the scientist didn't survive the trip and it didn't just send us back in time, it sent us to an alternate timeline or parallel dimension. We arrived in the world of nightbane, and then the game we signed up for became another setting entirely.

 

[nnms]

I'm definitely opposed to this.

It's basically lying to people about what the game is about in order to sucker them into playing something else.

Maybe it'd be better just to present your actual idea and see who's interested?

"The agency you work for is about to be taken down. You thought you signed up for a life of running ops for a good cause. Now you don't know who's in charge or where the agency is headed. What will you do?"

 

[Mallus]

As a player I don't mind (at all).

Who knows what the campaign will be about before it starts? Who knows where it will go? That's the beauty of (most) role-playing games.

 

[S'mon]

It's bad practice. The bait & switch should be in the campaign premise - the backstory explained to the players up front. Flashbacks to the time of betrayal might be ok, but not bait & switch.

Compare:
"This is a hard science fiction game of near future space exploration. Your PC will be piloting the NASA deep space probe Ranger 3."

To:
"Your PC was pilot of Ranger 3, last of NASA's deep space probes. Frozen in a freak cryogenic accident, he awakens FIVE HUNDRED YEARS later. There will be alien princesses in space bikinis."

 

[Wednesday Boy]

While I can't remember any bait-and-switch campaigns that I've played in, I imagine that it would be very subjective. It depends on what the switch is, how well it's pulled off, and whether my character will continue to be enjoyable to play post-switch.

I get the feeling that it would be similar to surprise reveals in movies or literature. Sometimes I am enthusiastically blown away and other times I am left rolling my eyes.

 

[TerraDave]

There is also a question of duration.

If the players assume that the campaign will be hack and slash, and plan accordingly, and then it is one of courtly intrigue, thats probably a bad thing.

But to have courtly intrigue, even for extended periods of time, in an otherwise hack and slash game could very well be a good thing.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

I have 'baited and switched' once, but I'm not sure it counts, as nothing really changed. The (D&D 3.5) party was using wish from one plane back to their home base. I instead sent them to a 'Mirror, Mirror' type universe (complete with evil goatees) and they had to find another way home. Everybody thought it was cool, so no worries. Nobody got the goatee reference, though.

I have been screwjobbed once, though. (Okay, that sounded dirty) Same D&D 3.5 campaign, different DM. My Chaotic Good Dwarven Cleric was captured by the bad guys due to poor Reflex saves and Dexterity checks. The DM takes me into the other room and says:

DM: "After a few days of torture, they decide they're going to let you go."
Me: 'Really? What's the catch?'
DM: "You're going to have the Hand and Eye of Vecna."
Me: 'Really? The Hand AND Eye?'
DM: "Yeah."
Me: 'Dude, that's .'
DM: "Why?"

No choice. No options. No saving throws. Nothing. So, I became Chaotic Evil and exacted my revenge on the DM by basically becoming That Guy for a session. I was a total dick. To EVERYone. It came down to me vs. the rest of the party and I managed to kill three out of six of them. I mean non-resurrectable dead. Amazingly, at the start of the next session, my deity (Moradin, even though I didn't meet the alignment restrictions) had seen what 'dire circumstances' I was in and removed the Hand and Eye and gave me back my originals.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

Yes

The best campaign I ever ran, which involved my PCs being shipwrecked on an uncharted island while abandoning a failed colony on a ship basically captained by pirates, was a total bait and switch.

I wanted the campaign to be about people thrown into an unfamiliar environment and dealing with it , rather than it being about a bunch of PCs perfectly suited to survival on a tropical island. If I'd told the PCs what was going to happen I would have gotten a party of druids and rangers.

Instead, for example, we had two PC wizards (who had to collaborate on spell research, make their own laboratory, find a replacement source of parchment after their spellbooks got full, find magical ingredients in the jungle, etc). These needs became the seeds for many great adventures.

Ken

 

[chriton227]

As a DM, I've pulled this off three times. However, in one of those cases I warned the players that something dramatic would be happening after a few sessions into the campaign, and in the other two a new system had come out (Spelljammer and Chronomancer respectively) that the players wanted to try out without losing their current characters. In all three cases the players knew something campaign changing was about to happen, they just didn't know exactly what.

This is the way I'd prefer to go. You can let them know there will be a twist without necessarily letting them know when or what the twist will be. You might even get some good ideas from listening to the players trying to guess what is going to happen.