Looking for a few good (er, I mean EVIL) Rat Bastards!

[Asmodeus]

Howdy,

Okay here are a few that happened in my campaign.

1) The party was hired to guard a caravan as it travelled through a forest crawling with orcs. Of course, the party did not bother to find out how many orcs there were and aobut halfway thorugh they were waylaid by a band of 100 orcs. They surrendered and were promptly brought back to the orcish encampment where an enitre tribe of 400 stayed. The party was thrown into a jailed cave where formed an excape plan. The dwarven rogue was the one who kicked it off but another palyer anxious to get into the action tried to join in and creating a lot of commotion with his cahins. The guards are alerted and see the dwarve with his one hand free and attempting to escape. The next day, the chieftain deicdes to make an example of the dwarve by shaving him bald, drawing orcish swear words on his body and cutting of his toes. Needless to say the palyer hated me for the enxt few months.

2)The party was involved in the routing out of an evil thieves guild in a city. As part of it they had to clear out a deserted mansion. Oh course it was not sdo deserted and after they cleared out all resistance, they finally reach the topf of its main tower. The party's fighter monk pulls open the door. The rest of the party see a swarm of ghostly shadows dive into his body and snatch his vital essence and dissappear(14 Con loss). He slumps down and is pronounced dead by the cleric. They proceed on and enter the room after checking if the trpa resetted itself. In the room is a young lady standing absolutely still in the center of the room surronuded by a pentagram. The aprty decides she needs rescuing as she was most probably gonig to be sacrificed. How wrong they were! They free her with a greater dispelling and brong her back with them, since she claims to have no where to go. Her name is Naamah(who recogizes this name?) and she becoems the servant girl of the red wizard elven wizardress (long story) . She is treated by the wizard as slave with a sliver of compassion and Naamah vows to herself to get evenwith her. She starts to seduce two other aprty members to aid her and beocme ger tools of revenge. Fianlly the tiem came, a month later whne it was tiem to strike. Naamah was braiding the hair of the mage in the hotel room they shared when the two assasins burst in and in the first hit, the mage went down thanks to an overzealous bard who smeared his blade with black lotus poision. But to the player's horror, Naamah split open to reveal her true form, that of a snake like creature with a female body and several heads. She thanks the two for thier help and than goes up to the dead mage's body opens up gate belwo her feet and falls through it together with the mage. In the end the palyer was promised an eternety of torture in the nine hells.

3) Lastly there was the time the party managed to acquire a +4 keen vorpal scimitar as spoils for one fo their fights. They bring ti bakc ot study and find that the pommel is covered in soem sort of tracking and warded sigil. They burn it off and assuem they are safe. The enxt day they wander the city when they spot a red blib in the sky. It swoops down on them and they see it to be a collosal red dragon. It lands in fronty of the player carrying the blade and tells him to handover all his magical items. The player ask why and the next thing he knows he is sheafded in flame and burn to a crisp. The res tof the party in hiding see a githyanki clamber down the dragon and picks up his remains and flies off. The blade was origially one of the gihtyanki silver words which was stolen by another group. This group placed the sigil to prevent the gith form finding it and also to act as a tracer. In the end the aprty was screwed either way.

 

[Eraslin]

Just a single example, for now. I have a couple more, but they're currently being run to fruition in the game I'm running; so there won't be any sharing of those ones.

The players are currently running in a kingdom with a quite strict caste system. Any treasures found by one of the king's subjects is property of the king, and all that jazz. The party contains:
One (1) LG paladin-type. This character believes in kingdom before everything, and all that.
One (1) CG mage-type. This character is not from this kingdom, and doesn't believe in the caste system anywho.
One (1) CG rogue-type. Not terribly greedy, somewhat of a kingdom-man but really has no strong feelings one way or the other.

The scenario: The group finds a quite substantial treasure hoard -- the first one they've ever found. At this time, they're around 5th level and have actually sold some equipment to afford eating and staying at the local inns; I'm not known for making money easy to find...

The result: About 4 (maybe 5) hours, in real-time, of the players playing out the squabling over the treasure. The paladin-type, obviously, wanted to give it all to the King. The mage-type, on the other hand, basically refused to give it to the king. The rogue-type was, IIRC, bouncing back and forth between sides ("that is a good point, you know mage-fellow", "Oh ho! Even better point by the mage", and all that). The comprimise at the end of all the discussion was that they would bring it to the king, and explain the dilema.

-Eraslin

 

[Fayredeth]

Like sand through an hourglass...

Hehehehe... well, I once was, but failed in my duties. I don't suppose I'd be taken back, as I deserved such fate. But it was fun, while it lasted...

 

[Nareau]

My DM is already a Rat Bastard...

...but I'd still love to join in. I promise I won't read his posts.

At any rate:

The party attacked the main gate of the Evil Cultists without doing much scouting. The Cultists managed to cut off their escape route, and killed all but one of the PC's (a Rogue/Monk who managed to tumble out to safety). I allowed the two players to create new characters (who happened to be in a nearby town, and who were eager to investigate the cultists). The idea was that they would play these PC's for a couple of sessions, so that they might retrieve the bodies of their old PC's in order to Raise them.
When they returned to the main gate, they came up with a clever invasion plan. It went well, as they managed to hack through the Evil Cultists...and through the Animated corpses of their old characters.

The party has agreed to investigate the disappearance of an orcish druid (who might have been killed by some Evil Druids). They discover (through scrying) that he's being prepared for some kind of sacrifice. They invade the temple of the Evil Cultists...only to find that the sacrifice is part of a summoning ritual. And the Evil Cultists start the ritual because their temple is being invaded. So not only do they come upon the druid as he's being killed, they also have to contend with the Tentacled Horror that comes through the gate.
When they manage to defeat the Evil Cultists, they decide to Reincarnate the poor druid. The only problem is, he turns out to be Evil himself. He wasn't killed by the Evil Druids...he joined them before being captured by the Evil Cultists.

And perhaps most bastardly of all... (Pielorinho, read no further)

Early on in the campaign, two players had PC's who were Brother and Sister. Their backstory consisted of the Brother rescuing the Sister from magical slavery. Unfortunately, the Sister was killed by an assassin after about 4 sessions. The assassin then escaped. But he took a souvenier...
The assassin managed to capture the Brother some time later. He (and his Evil Cultist friends) tortured and mind-probed the Brother for several days before robbing him and the rest of the party.
Now, the assassin (with some foresight) thought that the Party might cause the Evil Cultists some trouble in the future. He delivered the souvenier (an index finger) to the head of the Evil Cult. Should the party pose a serious threat, the Evil High Priest will Resurrect the Sister and hold her (and her sanity) ransom.
The Brother has made it his sole mission in life to seek out and destroy the assassin. I can't wait to see his face when he realizes that his sister is alive again, and being tortured/mutilated/driven mad.
Not to mention the fact that the assassin has been polymorphed into a female Drow, and is working to raise an army of dark elves to fight against the same Evil Cultists that have been plaguing the party since day one. If the PC kills the assassin now, the fight against the Evil Cult will be all that much tougher...

My Villians love to take hostages and kill innocents. The townspeople often blame the Heroes for stirring up the Villians.

The Villians are rarely "Monsters". If the PC's take a prisoner, I make sure they feel awful about killing him after interrogating him. After a 10 minute conversation, the Evil Cultist quickly begins to look like a Misguided Man of Faith.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

Haha, Cool! Just last night Jack Haggerty (a rat bastard member)was telling me i deserve to get in! I hope i live up to the standards.

Last two weeks games: Sent a tiefling Psy warrior to prison for 2 years in game. He attacked a guard, they dont like that. New character, but he can play that one again, 2nd level, after 2 years in game pass.

Andurin's (elf druid PC) nemesis has started a stripmine operation north of the druids residence. Andurin got pissed and attacked some guards. Lord Gone (the nemesis) got some payback. Lord Gone set up Andurins paladin friend for the murder of a 13 year old girl. Lord Gone has sent an ally, Beem Drake (NPC Bard), to destroy Andurins reputation. B. Drake has just destroyed Andurins boss, Ottolaff's, credit rating with a few songs. B. Drake also publicly humiliated Andurin in front of the local Barons niece, ensured that the stripmining will spread, and started a royal inquiry into the tax situation of the father of another of the PCs, a good friend of Andurin's. Lord Gone and his ally Beem Drake have just gotten started >

PCs were sleeping in the woods during a snowy, overcast night. One of them heard something on the nearby road. He woke everyone, they lit a torch and sent the halfling to investigate. After a tense moment it turned out to be just a badger. They doused the torch and went to sleep again. Of course this was after lighting the torch alerted the sniper to where they were, hehe. Moments later arrows sped through the air as the sniper tried to take out the dwarf, the only PC with darkvision. After about 6 rounds of chasing a sniper in the dark with torches, the whole time the dwarf getting shot up, the sniper retreated. Unsettling night.

One of the first adventures was a search for a tomb of ancient king-priests, said to hold uncountable riches. However it was burried deep and secret................below the town sewers. I told my players, no matter how far they get, when they defeat the Temple of Elemental Evil, when they explore the invisible moon on skyships, when they Epic level, and then become gods in their own right! They all started filthy, penniless, hanging from a rope while a crocodile snaps at you from below and a waterfall of waste and urine pelted you from above. Deflates (defecates?) the most noble paladin.

Plenty more, and better. Just let me dig out my Legend of the Five Rings annuls. My favorite was when a character died for some reason, he did something stupid, kissed poisoned lipstick maybe. Anyway, i fudged and let him keep the player a little longer. But now he belonged to ME!! Or more specifically, a secret society that had been using him as a sleeper until they needed him to kill another PC. We kinda fudged his background at this point. Unfortunatlly he finally snapped and killed his character, i dont think he could handle playing a character he loved knowing i could 'activate' him at any moment. He knew he'd get maybe one other character before they dropped him. Even better the other Players knew about it, but not their characters so they were always giving him sick grins just waiting to get killed in their sleep, but straining not to metagame. The stress on the players faces those few months was a DMs purest joy.

 

[Maldur]

What about after a whole series of elemental traps: earth elementals gaurding doors, waterelementals in partially flooded tunnels, etc, etc the party found the following room.

You open a set of double doors and after a short hallway fou see a rounded chamber on the far side is the exit door. The walls, ceiling and floor have a strange sheen to it like it has been polished and buffed. In the centre of the room is a big pile of pebbles.

They found the air elemental trap.

 

[gothwalk]

Long Term Rat Bastarding

My last campaign ran for three years; the current campaign is a sequel of sorts.

While I throw plenty of opposition at the PCs, at the high levels that they're now holding, physical opposition isn't the best. To have impact any more, you need to go for the heartstrings, the drama. Some of this can come from the elation of defeating a powerful foe. But some also has to come from the downsides, from loss and betrayal. And this needs to be built over time.

Some examples: A powerful, practically unknown NPC had been helping one of the PCs from behind the scenes for a long time. They knew him as just "the Keeper", and knew he had an interest in that PCs extended family. He had given them powerful magical items, information, helped them out of tight spots, and so on. Buried in all of this was one, just one piece of false advice - carefully engineered to still look good under the worst of examinations. But it was the make-or-break for the campaign.

Earlier in the campaign, an NPC had died. He was the first major NPC not to survive a battle, and the PCs put on a funeral for him (cleric-heavy party). During the funeral game, two of three players were crying.

Later, they discovered that this NPC was, in fact, the avatar of a god. They nearly killed me - not because of the plot point, but because of the emotional wringer they'd been through. They still bring it up from time to time, more than two years later, quite often in dealings with that god. (One of the original PCs, the only one still being played, is his Proxy now).

In a final example, in the make-or-break of the campaign, it became apparent that the only way out of the situation they were in was to have another god die. They were very fond of this god - one of the PCs was a part of his family, and they'd seen him go from a demigod to a full deity, and have his Order grow. In my campaign, dead gods don't come back. Ever. When they realised this, all three players were weeping, for almost half an hour in the case of the family member's player. And, of course, what had pushed them into this decision was the advice of the traitorous Keeper, from almost two years ago in real-time, and two and a half in-game.

They did find a way out, eventually, with some excellent high-fantasy reasoning, and superb playing. But I have heard them mutter, under their breaths, as I call for a saving throw, or tell them that the NPC they've been pursuing for days across the planes is gone without a trace, "You are an evil man."

While the campaign I run is high-magic, and high-fantasy, the emotional effects work perfectly - perhaps even better, in low-magic settings. I also have some interesting (to me, at least)techniques of writing adventures that I'm dying to share with other DMs - but only where my players can't see them.

Drew.

http://www.badgerofthelord.net/

 

[River]

1. Cheddar villians use power attack... REAL villians use sunder!

2. Nothing says loving like sending the PC's on a mission to sneak in and desecrate the high holy place of their own religion... Seems the enemy army has captured it and the most holy order of goody two shoes paladins are mounting an ill concieved and suicidal campaign to recapture it.

So its up the PC's to go in and desecrate the place, preferably destroy it, so the paladins won't bother.

Oh and at some point let the goody goody palaidns learn who desecrated their thousand year old temple.

 

[Black Omega]

I'll give it a try.

The low magic part hooked me, since that's what I've been running in my Rokugan game. Low magic. Magic items are the type from Magic of Rokugan, so they are attuned to their users. As a result most magic items found don't work well for the PC's and the couple of times an items did seem to like a PC it simply worried them.

I do like to hit thePC's from different directions.

Mental: A PC was hit with a Tainted arrow and failed his save. He ended up collapsing with a fever, had to be taken to the temple for special treatment. And woke up finally blurting out about a 'vision' he'd had where he was on the Kaiu Wall, the massive fortification his clan was charged with guarding. In the vision everyone from his clan was killed, the Wall fell and he was left alone, fighting off his own doom. He's now trying to decide if the vision means he'll cause the fall of the Wall, or if the vision is supposed to scare him away from going to the Wall. A very fun way to torment a character.

Physical: Most of my fights use humans with levels, with now and then a dash of shadowlands creatures. This emphasises tactics and dirty tricks over brutal power and magic. Varoius people in the grouphave run into an archer named Taka over three combats. In the first he stole one PC's double sword. In another he used a Obscuring mist cast by someone else as cover to shoot up most ofthe group, then escape. The last time he layed out a challenge to the other two samurai in the group. The two met him on his terms and between being filled with arrows from unexpected spots, they ran into traps he set ahead of time. When they retreated he left out a sign calling them cowards. Then people started turnbing up pinned to walls by arrows and slashed up by a double sword..as he started practicing how to use it.

Beyond that I like keeping players off balance. Smiling villains. Situations that are rarely what they seem, from a simple 'guard the gold' mission that turned into a fight with undead to a mission of revenge against an old lady and her guards that turned into a death struggle with hulking figures in mysterious masks. As well as luring characters into an inn that turned out to be filled with undead under an illusion. Even deadly temptations, like showing the grouip the most powerful magic weapon they had seen to this point..a flaming greatsword of known power, then attaching it to one of those massive figures in masks. The group ultimately decided it wasn't worth the price to go after. Really the mystery ofthe game is a great part ofthe challenge. No one is scared by a half orc. But if they don't know what they are facing...-that's- scary.

 

[Zhure]

I think the best Rat Bastard (tm) thing I ever did as a game master was during a Champions campaign.

Rat Bastards work in any setting.

The players had been told it wasn't an off-the-shelf game; every NPC was hand-crafted and I wasn't using the default universe. One particular player insisted on using Foxbat* (an infamous NPC from the default setting) as his Hunted. He also took it as a Psychological Limitation (he pursued Foxbat). All told it was something like half his Disadvantage points after a few other Foxbat related things.

I reminded the player that Foxbat wasn't really in this campaign, so the player said, "well, just do something similar."

Rat Bastards are firm but fair.

A few weeks later, play started and the player apparently forgot our conversation. He role-played it well, always asking about Foxbat this, and Foxbat that, always putting forth theories about the current investigations that Foxbat was the perpetrator and so forth. Every time he mentioned Foxbat the other PCs would look baffled, as would the NPCs. They would even ask him in incredulous terms who he was talking about but the player never made the connection.

Time passes, a month or so of regular play and the player has accumulated about a dozen points but tells me he doesn't know what to spend it on.

Rat Bastards plan for the long term.

I tell him I have a plan. I'll let him buy a "Mystery Power" worth 20 points. The power will work occasionally for plot-driven reasons, and he won't be aware of it's action. Once he's saved up the entire 20 points, I'll tell him what the power is and if he doesn't like it he can refund all the points to spend on something else of his choice.

Rat Bastards are willing to be gracious in victory.

As the next month or so of games went on, the campaign focus began to change. This "new" supervillain Foxbat started making appearances, stealing things, harassing the PC, never getting caught. The PC once flew around the building everyone else was hiding in as part of a security sweep. First pass-- nothing, second pass, there was pro-Foxbat graffiti all over the walls.

Foxbat made a giant dirigible to flood the city with shaving creme. The PC threw it into the ocean where it reacted with the saltwater, leaving virtually no clue as to its origin.

In just a few short weeks Foxbat went from being nonexistent to being practically omnipresent.

Rat Bastards love to grind a point home.

Finally, the player saved up the 20 points and I revealed his entire Mystery Power. I'd bought for him a Multiform into Foxbat (No Conscious Control). Essentially, the PC *was* Foxbat. When certain conditions arose, he'd change shape and change costume, gaining an entire new persona and new powers to reflect his multiple personality problem.

Ah. Priceless. The player was stunned upon the revelation as it made many of the campaign's mysteries make sense. As in how everything the PC did seemed to only make finding Foxbat or confronting Foxbat even more difficult.

Rat Bastards are patient and cunning.

I hope that's helpful,
Greg

*Hiya Bruce!