Been crazy busy at work lately. Knew the boards would be up/down a bit too. But I am back and trying to participate a bit more this week./
Nightcloak said:
Calling all DM's.
What was the most Rat Bastard thing you have pulled on your characeters? What plot, scheme, or event went off perfectly and caused gapes of horror and wonderment from the players?
Come on, admit it! We have all done it at one time or another. Come clean. We know you loved every minute!
Huh, not really sure. But I will pick some of my favorite moments from my last campaign. No spoilers to any of my players that way.
So one of my players writes up this kinda wacky, convoluted history and I keep checking with him that he _really_ wants to have a history that sad. He tells me he likes characters with a twisted history so I say "OK". Tell him a few things to change in his background to fit with the game world a bit better and have at it.
Get this, one portion of his history deals with his sister disappearing during a goblin attack on his home town. His father dies in defending the town. After the attack, some monks come down from the hills and take his brother for priest training. In the next couple of years, his mother goes insane. PC ends up running away from mom and asks the monks at the temple to take him in too.
OK, pretty wacky so far. Not a happy childhood. As he gets older, he has weird dreams of his sister playing in a white dress and then suddenly being covered in blood. Player wants a twisted background eh? His older brother is out one day when a bunch of ... unknown creatures come in and slaughter all the clergy. This propels his brother into position of the high priest.
So far so good right? Player wants a twisted background. Here is one of the kickers - I haven't changed any of this. This is the Player's writing so far.
As the PC tries to become a cleric, he undergoes this trial where a bunch of the acolytes have to fight some goblins and then climb up to this shrine at the top of a mountain. Several of the acolytes don't make it. The general consensus is that they were too weak. It's a shame, but these things happen. The weak don't deserve to be blessed.
Here is another kicker. The PC is supposed to be worshipping Pter the Crusader. Pter's other titles include Pter the Protector. Let's talk about my homebrew for a moment here. I don't use one published god. My entire cosmology and the gods are all homebrew. I also don't adhere exactly to the rules. Pter is a god of War, Good, Protection and Strength. He is very good. His followers include LG, NG, CG. Though, anybody that fights evil can call upon him. One of the aspects of Good in my games is compassion. Pter fights evil. He despises evil. He expects his priests and devout followers to always fight evil. Hey, Pter is popular amongst Paladins that want to worship a god. But don't forget that Pter is good and thus he is full of compassion. So we have these acolytes who are supposedly worshipping Pter and dying during their trials. The official response of the church is that they were too weak and they aren't a loss if they are weak. Umm, where did that compassion go? (Good question.)
So I look at this background and the Players says he likes it to be twisted. Hey, who am I to not cater to my audience. I tell the Player that his PC hasn't received blessings and spells from Pter. He is a wannabe cleric. There will be a RP event that he will need to work toward to become a cleric. In the meantime, I might suggest fighter as a class. Player is cool with this. (Good players.) His brother became distant and would often disappear after he became high priest. Nobody else seems to notice, but the PC does. After all, he is his brother. Brother finally has a "revelation" and sends the PC to the campaign location as an emissary of the church and because he will have the opportunity to finally receive Pter's blessings. Player writes in all appropriate changes. Makes a cool character.
I am looking at it and I have a minimum of one story arc to work from with his background alone.
I begin some history on what happened behind the screen. I keep looking where I can integrate the missing sister. Why you ask? Well hell, she is missing since she was 5 and the PC has dreams about here. Sounds like a good reason right? Oh wait, there is one more detail I forgot to mention. The Player named his mising sister Evilynn.
I kid you not. He even wrote it that way more than once in his background. Evilynn. And she appears in his dreams wearing white and then weraing blood. You tell me, could you pass up this opportunity?
Excuse me? Oh, you want to know where the Rat Bastard part comes in? OK, I can see where that might be a bit interesting. What did I do with this material? Yeah, that makes a good story. After all, there were a lot of events in the entire campaign that hooked off this background. Nah, I don't mind if you take a seat. Probably a good idea. I'm gonna hit a chair myself.
Where do I start? What the heck, I'll just pour out the background story for starters. You know, the stuff the Player, and the PCs, didn't know as the game started.
OK, the PC's name is Aaron. So Aaron's dad did something to get on the wrong side of a vendetta with a devil lord. This devil lord is a creature simply called the Lord of Deception. Actually, there are thousands of names it has been called over the eons. I mean, soembody who makes their entire existence revolve around tirckery and deceit is going to have a lot of aliases. Anyway, this devil lord decides to spend a bit of it's existence making some trouble for this family. A curse on you and your children, and your children's children throughout all time. Blah, blah, blah. This devil lord has an order of monks that follow it. Yeah, I know it sounds weird that somebody focused on trickery would be lawful, but this is where we insert bad lawyer jokes. Yada, yada, yada. The monks orchestrate an attack on the town using goblins as a way to take out Aaron's father. Afterward, they take Aaron's brother, Jack, back to the temple to be trained as a priest of "Pter". In this case, "Pter" is the Lord of Deception. Yep, a Devil Lord impersonating a god of Good. This is the type of thing that is the real Pter's nightmare. Jack falls for the fake dogma, but Aaron doesn't.
Oh, did I mention that Evilynn was actually abducted by a Nalfeshnee during the goblin raid? That will be important later.
Aaron, the PC, retains too much actual goodness to ever become a false cleric of Pter. That's why he can't become a cleric. I set it up so he will become a cleric when he finds the true Pter. Hey, don't worry. I don't screw a player over just for the sake of doing so. The campaign includes a Paladin of Pter as another PC. (Actually a Hero, which is another homebrew thing. But that's another story.) There is also a Cathedral to Pter in the campaign location. There are also smaller chapels that the PCs will find all over the place. In short, Aaron is not going to have any lack of ways to find the true Pter.
My thoughts were that the PC would figure out that something wasn't cool at home pretty early in the game. The joke was on me though. It took them a long, long time.
Jack kept sending monks to bring Aaron home before he was contaminated by the bad temples of Pter that Aaron was encountering. The party would fight these guys off and Aaron would scratch his head and try to figure out what was happening. *sigh* Aaron did figure out how to become a cleric around 4th level. Even then, he wasn't entirely sure that Jack was wrong. He thought that maybe Jack just had a slightly different perspective on Pter.
So the group is cranking along around 7th level. They have just accomplished a major victory that had some kickin' RP as well. They are happy and cocky. Aaron has had another (GM inspired) dream about his sister. They come back to the home location for the game and find out an army of undead is on the way. They pony up to offer to help fight the undead army. OK, this actually segues in with an event that transpired with the first adventure of the game. It is also one of the major story arcs. Suffice to say that the PCs were indirectly responsible for the army of undead and they kind of knew it. It wasn't a big surprise. What was a surprise was the leader of the army.
During the battle, every single soldier that wasn't a follower of Pter broke morale and ran. It doesn't become apparent until much later that there was a custom built magic affect to cause that to happen. The army was here to kill every follower of Pter that it could. Heck, they were almost successful too. There were only two followers of Pter left at the end of the battle. Both were PCs. Go figure.
The PCs have made a stand on a hill and done a damn fine job of it. The battle is nearing completion and the undead swarm around the hill. It's all heroic and the players are both excited and a little scared. The undead stop advancing and part to allow two demons passage. Following the demons is a girl. She has blond hair, she is wearing a white dress, with little frilly gloves. She is dainty, and cute as a button. She snaps her fingers and has an imp deliver a letter to Aaron.
This is classic. We are dealing with a cleric who also has a high wisdom right? Decent Will save right? I have an actual prop of the letter. Partway into it, I have a spot that says "Make a Will save". He rolls a 1! Muhahahahahah. It couldn't have worked any better since I didn't want him saying anything when his missing sister calls the paladin out for a little one-on-one combat.
Let me tell you a bit about Evilynn. At this point, she is a Sorc 7, Ftr 4. Yep, she alone outclasses most of the party. She is also insane. She has three personalities. The Nalfeshnee that kidnapped her has been feeding her stories about how Pter failed her father. He has also been telling her stories about how her brothers worship a devil. (Hey, he was half right.) Evilynn hates Pter. She has orchestrated this entire attack to wipe out the followers of Pter. She also hopes that maybe her brothers will see the light and will come help her. Sure, they would then be following a demon, but that's just a minor detail. Evilynn is also a buff monkey. By the time the fight with the paladin started, she had an AC into the 30's. The poor paladin never even hit her. She would taunt him one round, dance around, then occasionally swing and hit him. She told him before the fight began that she would "Kick his --- and kiss him." She did too. She brought him to staggered, kissed him, then knocked him out. She then got all sad about the "poor paladin", then got mad and started kicking him again. Then she cut off his shield hand, and left. She had the imp grab his hand and leave.
Yeah, the rest of the party was busy with other things while this was happening. I'm just covering the interesting parts.
Aaron was not pleased that his sister had been "found". The paladin was not pleased that she had cut off his hand and taken it away. I was thrilled that I had tied up one PC's history into two major story arcs and personally goaded the players to find a way to figure out that the hell was happening.
One PC's family was responsible for 2/3 of the bad things that happened in the campaign. The PCs personally intervened and gave Jack the artifact that their father had died protecting. They chased Jack down into his sanctum and Aaron personally watched his brother cast the Plane Shift spell that took Jack (and the artifact) to the home plane of the Lord of Deception. They did manage to save Evilynn and even repaired her broken mind so that the non-evil personality became dominant. This gave them a lot of information in story arc #1 and allowed them to actually save the world.
The campaign had both success and failure. Both drive character growth. Aaron's player loved it. Most of the other players had a damn good time too. It was a good campaign and it is too difficult to run over every interesting highlight in the span of a single post. But I had many, many nights where the players would look at me from across the table and curse me. All with a smile. We had a blast, and that is what it is all about, right?
