Evil DM's, I need your help!

[Pbartender]

Then just let the party wait for the other shoe to drop. You can use the demon as a dodgy contact, but if it was so much more powerful than the party, it's probably not a good contact. Just wait.

Oh, until they really need him for something, just have pop in odd locations at odd times...

They run across him in some tavern in Waterdeep, for example, where he spots her and starts in on some small talk: "Oh, hey Janice! Fancy meeting you here. Great place isn't it? I love the decor, and it's the only place that makes perfect roe-beer*. I'd recommend it, it's delicious. You look good... (Uncomfortable pause) Oh, but hey, I gotta run. I'm closing on a big contract this afternoon, and I've got a two o'clock with some Red Wizard that I can't be late for. But you should give me a call -- here's my number -- I had a lot of fun on that trip we took last month. We should do it again some time..."


*If anyone decides to try roe-beer, describe it as having a texture similar to watered down tapioca pudding and having a flavor that's akin to mixing salted tuna water with cheap beer.

 

[Verdande]

I agree with Pbartender on principle, but then again, I couldn't personally let such a cool experience go to waste. I'd have to do something, anything.

In the end, it all pans out the same. But it's the difference between describing a man as having a ghoulish face and missing an eye but having the voice of an angel and he's tripping over himself to be helpful, versus just saying, "That's Ugly Joe over there and over heeeeeeere is the dungeon, hurry up guys."

Just saying, you know. If you do it right, it could be the sort of thing you reminisce about for a long time. After all, it's what your players want. They want to see horrible hideous things and go strange and exotic places, not have the demon say, "Nah, I'm just taking you home where you belong so you can get back to ADVENTURE!" or whatever it is demons say when they're busy being disappointly mundane.

 

[ajanders]

Verdande, you're right about it being a cool experience. For you and the bard's player.
Everybody else has to sit and watch or listen while the bard does this cool thing they don't know about in-game. That's when bad things happen to gaming groups.

Now, if you want to blue-book it with the bard, that's fine.
If you do it some time when you and the bard are the only ones that can make a session, that's fine.
If you want to do a wacky interlude session where all the players are playing demon adventurers except for the tagalong bard, that's actually great. (Difficult, but great.)

But no experience is so cool as to be worth boring the other players for half a session.

 

[TheClone]

If you want to get out a twist for your campaign, the proposed journey to all those mind-blasting locations is not that much fun. I guess your players won't be happy with that either, because it seems like nastily breaking the contract. It's too much of a "They have made the contract, but how may I as the DM harm them as good as I can". Feels strange to me, although they made it with a demon.

But the idea of a "backlash" later one seems good to me. for example, let the demon take the bard back home or to some evil plane. At that location some fight is going on. With that much adventuring parties roaming around the country there easily can be on a quest to that evil plane, maybe trying to obtain an evil artifact. When the demon arrives with the bard, he is involved in that battle and helps turn the tide for the legions of evil. The adventurers flee (some of them may be killed). That's all then concerning the journey. After the bard returns to the group eventually they come to a city form where the party that was driven off in it's quest came from. The survivors are still there nursing their wounds and they do recognize the bard and think he was on the side of evil, too. They accuse him of that in public and the party has to cleanse their name (maybe by visiting the evil plane to obtain the artifact. you can then reuse the demon and the (un)dead killed adventurers).

 

[Pbartender]

You can handwave the whole trip in a five-minute montage.

I agree with Pbartender on principle, but then again, I couldn't personally let such a cool experience go to waste. I'd have to do something, anything.

In the end, it all pans out the same. But it's the difference between describing a man as having a ghoulish face and missing an eye but having the voice of an angel and he's tripping over himself to be helpful, versus just saying, "That's Ugly Joe over there and over heeeeeeere is the dungeon, hurry up guys."

I think you guys have misinterpreted the focus of my original post. It has less to do with the method of presentation (a short montage... a full on side adventure... use what ever suits you and your group), and more to do with the style.

What I'm talking about is the expectations of what the demon's going to do, and the demon's potential for becoming a recurring NPC. If you simply show her around the typical horrors of the damned, he'll come off as a typical demon and the whole escapade becomes a minor footnote.

But if the demon does something wholly unexpected, and does it in a way that allows him to occasionally pop back into the plot line in a way that's equally unexpected, then he'll become a truly memorable character.

Instead of "Demon #42 that took the bard on a fun house ride through hell," he becomes "Okfiz, the demon that fell in love with Janice, and did his best within the confines of his demonic contract with his abyssal master to change his ways in order to win her love... Oh, and he was a surprisingly good dancer for a demon as well."

Regardless of how you present it to the players, that's what I'm talking about.

 

[Hand of Evil]

As a demon, I would wonder how many planes I could take someone to, so that they go mad or have alignment changes based on the plane. Planes were pleasure and euphoria roam, where scope and size is hard to gasp, where the elder gods sleep. It is not harmful if it is enlightment!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

"Oh look! Absolute and utter paradise, a cessation of all pains, worries and needs. Eternity here would be bliss...too bad we can't stay. Next stop, Tartarus!"

 

[Verdande]

Instead of "Demon #42 that took the bard on a fun house ride through hell," he becomes "Okfiz, the demon that fell in love with Janice, and did his best within the confines of his demonic contract with his abyssal master to change his ways in order to win her love... Oh, and he was a surprisingly good dancer for a demon as well."

Regardless of how you present it to the players, that's what I'm talking about.

Got it. That is pretty cool, actually.

For my style of games, demons are a horrific impersonal force, more like elementals than evil spirits. But if one has the stock Big Red Dudes as demons, that could be seriously cool.

I guess I was thinking of ajanders, whom I still disagree with. To let down the players' expectations of something cool and then give them something else is like having, at the end of a grueling adventure, all the treasure be rusty bronze painted gold and the magic items are cursed and the scroll are actually rolled-up kick me signs. Sure, it can be funny to make your players squirm, but it's not very nice and doesn't jive with what you and your players want out of the game.

 

[Pbartender]

Got it. That is pretty cool, actually.

For my style of games, demons are a horrific impersonal force, more like elementals than evil spirits. But if one has the stock Big Red Dudes as demons, that could be seriously cool.

Even if not -- I generally reserve the devils for the stock big red dudes with horns and black goatees -- you can still have a variation on the stereotypical "beauty and the beast" trope. Imagine a cross between King Kong, Beast (from X-men), and some unspeakable Lovecraftian horror. And he's utterly smitten with the bard.

I guess I was thinking of ajanders, whom I still disagree with. To let down the players' expectations of something cool and then give them something else is like having, at the end of a grueling adventure, all the treasure be rusty bronze painted gold and the magic items are cursed and the scroll are actually rolled-up kick me signs. Sure, it can be funny to make your players squirm, but it's not very nice and doesn't jive with what you and your players want out of the game.

Absolutely... This is one of those points where it's perfectly acceptable for the DM to pause the game for a moment, and ask, "How do you guys want to handle this? Do you want me to montage it and get back to the action, or would rather have me turn this into a full-blown side adventure?"

My only point was that "something cool" and "players' expectations" don't always have to be the same thing. Though, admittedly, you have to be careful when breaking those expectations... It's not all that difficult to miscalculate what your players might think is cool. You really need to know your players to pull it off just right.