Most interesting dilemma you've thrown at your players?

[Dracomeander]

Ahhh! The memories...

Here's one the GM threw at my character.

I was running a Paladin of Lathander in a long running campaign.

My character was married to a gold dragon (the surprise when that was revealed kept the group talking about it for years).

During an adventure featuring the Cult of Dragons as the primary foe, the group had to rescue my character's pregnant wife. After defeating the Cult and the Dracolich, the group gets my character's wife back home where she starts to show signs of illness.

A few divinations discover the pregnancy has suddenly budded into twins six months into it. The dracolich's spirit - which was a fragment Myrkul had hidden before the Time of Troubles - was trying to be reborn into the Realms as my character's son.

We managed to find a way to banish the evil demigod seed, and you would think that would be the end of the matter. But that discounts evil GM deviousness.

A couple of years later, the character's wife and child are kidnapped. Lot of tense hair pulling tracking down clues to discover they've been taken to Ravenloft (Ooooh! Evil, hateful, wonderful Campaign setting).

The Myrkul fragment has grown to a respectable strength and become a Domain Lord with an especial hatred for my character. He has set himself as an antithesis to my character but has built his body to be a near perfect clone. So using my character's form, he runs around terrorizing the countryside.

That was a real pain. It is bad enough trying to play a paladin in Ravenloft, particularly in a domain dominated by undead. But try to gather information and assistance to rescue a loved one, when the locals are convinced you are the one that has been terrorizing them.


That was a wonderful campaign, and I really miss that GM.

 

[Insight]

God, would I love to be able to reveal the little mini-campaign I am working on for my game. But alas, some of my players read these boards, so thats not gonna happen. Maybe after they know what's going on, but that may be a very long time in coming...

There are very few truly evil villains whom the players will really HATE (not just kill - thats easy). Getting the players to hate your villains is crucial I believe in making some of these special events happen during a campaign.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Love-Hate-Relationship:

It didn't happen to me, but to a friend and fellow player (and DM), and I don't know too much, but the basics are good enough:

They had a guy they hated, because he forced them into running errands for him (often dangerous and/or damaging to their reputation), but he also helped them more then once, or gave them information or much-sought items. Nonetheless, he always found a way to force them to do his dirty work.

 

[Allanon]

The party came upon a small hamlet which in ages past had been given an enchantment to protect the village from "All those who wish it or it's inhabitants harm". For decades the spell had protected the villagers from all manner of creatures and beings. One of the players BBEG's a evil half-fiend wizards had his layer not far from the village and the PC's used it as a safe haven. Unbeknowst to them the BBEG had devised a way to circumvent the protective spell.

After the party had returned from a recent adventure they learned that for several months the village had been plagued by mysterious dissappereances. Villagers outside of the village would dissappear and be missing for around 2 days after which they were mostly found close by the village, unharmed but unaware of what had happened to them the past days. The party tried to find the source and reason but was unsuccesful. One night they suddenly heard a cry in the village and when they went to investigate they found several villagers being attacked by a monstrous being (they didn't recognize it). They slew the creature. Two villagers had died in the assault, but more mind-boggeling to everyone was how it had circumvented the protective enchantments. Research the next they proved that the enchantments worked as fine as ever, nothing evil could teleport in, burrow it's way on or in any other way enter the protective field. The PC's then began investigating the corpses, one of the corpses had no vissible wounds. The cause of death wasn't the attack of the creature. The cleric asked his god some questions and found out that this person was responsible for the attack. He was the source of the creature. The PC's then began asking around about this man. They found out he was the first of the many dissappearences. They began investigating all the people who had dissappeared (which was 1/3 of the population) and discovered they had some sort of magic active on them.

When one of the PC's suddenly saw the pieces of the puzzle fall together they truly despised me. They had to choose, kill the 'infected' villagers and safe the rest or try and beat the clock and dispel the vile enchanment. The wizard recognised the BBEG's vile handywork so they knew were to look, but did they have enough time? Should they warn the rest, or keep it quit?

In the end they tried to find a cure at the BBEG's layer and not warn anyone to prevent widespread panick. I had given them (uknown to them ofcourse) 3 days before all the 'infected' villagers would change. the BBEG's layer was 1 day away. It took them 3 days and 4 hours and thus when they came back everyone was killed and the village was a ghost town inhabited only by the creatures and the dead (not undead). They really didn't like the BBEG (who had teleported away) or me after I pulled that one

 

[Cor Azer]

In my current face-to-face campaign, a lot of my emotional dilemmas stem from my party's cleric (the same one as in the first post). She started an in-game romance with an elf on her own (ie, without prompting from me) (and for those about to get confused with pronouns - both PC and NPC were female - my player is a lesbian, and prefers to make her characters such). The elf later broke up with her, saying that she couldn't handle the fact that the cleric was an adventurer - she was worried every time the cleric went off on a quest. Later the party cleric was invited with the rest of the party to a Lord's daughter's debuttant ball, where the cleric ran into her ex with another woman (who turned out to be the ex's sister). While at the party, a succubus-in-human-form (who had been haunting the Lord's family for generations) picked up on the vulnerability vibes being put off by the party's cleric, but was spurned. However, the party's rogue (a playa) noticed this stunning woman (the succubus) and decided to go after her. A few levels lower later, the rogue was able to flee, and the party chased off the succubus, but the devil is still out there.

It was sometime later (ie, when I thought of the werewolf thing), that the cleric's elf lover came to her wanting to get back together - the pain of missing her was more than the anxiety of worrying every time the cleric was on an adventure. The cleric was hesitant (strangely, she suspected I was up to something), but the player and character were romantic at heart, so agreed to be together again. A few months later, my werewolf situation in the first post occured.

In my play by email campaign, the party's paladin received a note saying that his youger sister was very ill. When he got home, she had already died, but now her twin sister was suffering from the same illness. Some investigation showed that the first sister had been turned into a vampire, and was slowly turning her twin into one as well (over time a la Dracula, rather than the all at once of many other vampiric tales). The party had to track down young-sister-as-vampire, and the paladin gave a nice speech as he struck down his now undead younger sister.

I don't consider a session complete until I've been called an 'ASS!' by at least one player

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

2Allanon:
The twist could be made even worse, Allanon: When the party figured out that the kidnapped villagers were responsible for the attack, and they decide to harm them, they could have been expelled from the village because they wish (some of) the villagers harm

 

[Allanon]

2Allanon:
The twist could be made even worse, Allanon: When the party figured out that the kidnapped villagers were responsible for the attack, and they decide to harm them, they could have been expelled from the village because they wish (some of) the villagers harm

OOH, OOH...dangnabbit I should've thought of that , where were you that faithfull day Mustrum ? I definitely have to post plot ideas like this more often, people here have the most brilliant basterdly ideas

 

[Kae'Yoss]

OOH, OOH...dangnabbit I should've thought of that , where were you that faithfull day Mustrum ? I definitely have to post plot ideas like this more often, people here have the most brilliant basterdly ideas

As long as your players don't read it.. Sure. Depend on us to give you some evil pointers. Also make sure to read the evil overlord list ;-)

 

[der_kluge]

In our last campaign, one of the players decided she didn't want to play a rogue that she had written up, so she became an NPC. Well, they were on an isolated continent, without any civilization to speak of, so her character stay in this dryad's grove that they had befriended.

Well, the party came back and found there had been a large battle, and they eventually found the rogue. The rogue told them that Slaad had come in and kidnapped the avatar (ok, long story), who was also staying in this grove. And, despite their protestations, she convinced them that they should travel at night, that haste was important. So, along the way the minotaur in the group notices that he can't smell any slaad, and the field they are traveling in doesn't have any visible tracks at all. The sorcerer casts detect evil on the rogue, and figures out that she is, in fact, a vampire now, and is probably leading them to a trap. So, acting quickly, he casts an Otiluke's Resilient sphere around her and traps her.

He struggled on it a bit, even paced around the table for a while, but decided that killing her was the only option.


In another game, the party came across this line of peasants who are seeking someone they call "the goddess". She heals people of their ailments. Turns out, the "goddess" is a sorcereress/follower of Loki, and she's just casting some modified form of the suggestion spell on people to just convince them that their healed, in exchange for large tithes, and worldly goods. The PCs figure this out fairly quickly, but the peasants don't take too kindly to the PCs trying to kill their saviour.
... This one didn't end very pretty.


Lastly, not a role-playing problem, but I pitted my Al-Qadim group against a genie-crafted dungeon that had a circular room. The room had three levers - each rotated the dungeon a certain number of feet, either clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on whether they pulled or pushed the lever. There were hallways that led off this central chamber and ended in deadends, but when the levers were moved accordingly, opened up other doorways. They figured out that there was another doorway, but it had to be lined up perfectly. I had all the players practically laying on the table working out the math in order to figure out how to get that last room to open.


p.s. I really liked some of Crothian's stories, and Jolly Giant's story.

One I want to use:

I want to, at some point, pit the PCs up against some horrible necromancer, whom they've heard legends about, but no one has ever seen. So, the party gets hired to find the necromancer, and fights all manner of undead to get to the necromancer's tower, and they finally get to the top, and they find a pregnant woman, whose ready to give birth at any minute! So, the party will have to decide if killing the woman is worth taking the life of an unborn child as well. That should be fun.

 

[Jolly Giant]

I really liked some of Crothian's stories, and Jolly Giant's story.

Thanx!