Watta Tweest!

[greyscale1]

The twist is a staple of all forms of entertainment, movie, books, videogames, etc.

It is an incredible tool that can make a simple plot memorable and breath new life into a story.

As a DM and as a player, what have been some of your FAVORITE roleplaying Tweests?


DO THE TWIST

 

[Staffan]

It's a pretty basic twist (the Dishonest Employer), but in my Eberron campaign I had the PCs hired by a dwarf merchant to reacquire some goods he had had stolen by a tribe of orcs in the Shadow Marches. The dwarf, of course, insisted on accompanying the PCs.

After the PCs had killed or driven off most of the tribe, and were fighting the tribe's druid and some of the few remaining tribe members in their fallback cave with weird glyphs on the walls, the dwarf suddenly smashed one of those glyphs. This released a weird-looking humanoid with a tentacle attached to his hand, and who made the PCs feel strange just looking at him. The dwarf and the strange being teleported out pretty quickly after that.

Their employer, of course, wasn't a merchant at all - he was an aberrant-worshipping cultist that had discovered the location of one of the daelkyr that was trapped millenia ago. Since the location was guarded by the orc tribe, he enlisted the PCs to help him free it.

This then became the main focus of the campaign. Unfortunately I never came around to finishing it, because I moved away, and a later adventure had a near-TPK.

A later adventure in the campaign started with the PCs coming home after a night out, and finding an Inspired who had been an enemy in a previous adventure sitting there. Before they attacked, he explained that he wasn't there to fight, but that he had discovered something that could help them defeat the daelkyr, and that while he and the PCs might not see eye to eye on everything, neither wanted to see a world where aberrations overran everything. When one of the PCs asked how he got the information, he just replied "Please, I'm a telepath. You do the math." That sequence was unabashedly stolen from a Babylon 5 episode.

 

[El Mahdi]

The twist is a staple of all forms of entertainment, movie, books, videogames, etc.

It is an incredible tool that can make a simple plot memorable and breath new life into a story.

As a DM and as a player, what have been some of your FAVORITE roleplaying Tweests?

Well, I ran a game once with a "unique" twist; the PC party found out, during a big reveal moment, that the BBEG was one of the characters father.

But seriously, I'm not very good on plot so I don't have any good twists that I've come up with on my own. However, one of my favorite twists in a module has been The Apocalypse Stone. I love the twist where the PC's recover the "stone" for the "angel", and think the adventure is basically done, only to find out later on that there actions may have brought about the end of the world. That's a pretty dramatic bomb to drop on them.

 

[Ktulu]

In Chapter one of my current campaign, a player's goal was about avenging the death of his fiancee' who he watched burn alive in their home (caused by his once best friend). He made a pact with a devil to give him enough power to do so.

As the story evolved, he found the best friend (now a lord of a small fiefdom) and made his way to kill the man. To his shock and surprise, his beloved was alive! Throughout the rest of the climax, he learned that it was he who burned in the fire.

It was then that his memory was cleared. On his death he called out the devil's name, and offered up his soul for vengence. The devil, being a devil, granted his wish, but returned him to life five years after his death, with a confused memory of who died.

It was one of the best twists I've ever thrown in a game. The players were on edge waiting to see what would happen next..

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think the best twists are often player created--at least that is the way it often works for me.

In a 3E game, I had a dwarf informer and fencer of stolen goods--really, a quite minor character, with a really obnoxious personality. He was deliberately over the top, which was a great cover--what kind of guy up to covert trouble would call that much attention to himself?

The main foe had some minor wererat henchmen that used the dwarf occasionally for information. The players were after the wererats, and got suspicious of the dwarf. However, they gave themselves away during a fight, and the dwarf acted on his longstanding plan to escape with his portable wealth, leaving behind a burned down house and some charred dwarven bones.

That was supposed to be it, or mostly it. The dwarf was vengeful, and would send annoyance thieves and bandits after the party for the rest of the campaign. But the players decided that the dwarf was innocent, and a victim of the wererats. They pursued the wererats unmercifully and thoroughly. Meanwhile, the increasing banditry and thievery convinced the party that some key member of the ring had escaped, and they suspected one of their main allies of being a traitor!

This all came to a head when a lone thief succeeded in looting the wizard's spell book. The party dropped their world saving activities to track down the thief, eventually trailing him to where he had sold the spell book to the dwaf.

The looks on the players faces were priceless. All at once, they fully realized what had happened.

 

[El Mahdi]

In a similiar vein, although this isn't D&D and may be dificult to convert to D&D, Ambrose Bierce short-stories are renowned for their "twists". Some of them have even been turned into movies (although it may be hard to find them - I saw The Boarded Window in high school but I don't even see it listed on IMDB). Off the top of my head, some of the best are; An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, The Boarded Window (damned cougars), and another I can't remember the title of but was about a cowardly sniper in the American Civil War. Most of them are centered around the Civil War but they are all either ghost stories, or a creepy Civil War era story with a twist at the end.

(The post above about the man who made a deal with a devil reminded me of these. That plot sounded very Ambrose Bierce like.)

 

[Rechan]

I can think of two twists that I've used in the past.

One is fairly simple: the players were investigating a murder of a female bard in a noble's garden. The bard was the "best friend" of the house's betrothed daughter. When they interviewed the daughter, she confided in the female PC that the bard and her were "more than friends" in a very intense way. They didn't see that coming, and it made the wheels in their heads turn fast.

A more serious situation: The PCs were camping out in the wilderness. I ran a little side-trek where the priest and the rogue were out hunting, and came across an abandoned mine entrance. THey walked in, and found the mine had collapsed. However, sticking out of some rubble was a piece of wood with a red gem on the end.

The rogue grabbed it and pulled. Out came a broken stick. To be more precise, it was a broken axe haft, and the weapon's head was across the room.

They uncovered the pile of rubble, and found a dwarven skeleton underneath, with a hole going through its back.

PCs decided to turn and walk away.

On their trip back, they had gotten suspicious of the circumstances, and went to check it out. They found the skeleton was gone, and a fresh, blood-drained corpse buried in the snow nearby.

That dwarven vampire became a recurring villain. All their fault, too. He just wanted his axe back.

 

[greyscale1]

I really want to post some of the upcoming twists in my current campaign, but I have to resist because I'm planning on writing up a story hour and because one of my players might find it. Suffice it to say that the current plot is INCREDIBLY heavily laced with totally plot reversing revelations.

Basic Plot:
We are good guys saving the kingdom from the evil empire! Yay!
There is something terrible going on just beyond our vision...
That man, he was a devil, why did he help us?
Empire shattered - wait, they were doing it for a noble purpose?
Our young party is formed by agents of celestial parties all who want a stake in what we are doing.
Going to save the world again!
The angels were lying!
And so on.




As for past games, the biggest twist I've ever done was to reveal that 'Beauty' (a horrible disfiguring and highly addictive narcotic) was being sold by cultists of Jubilex, and that each Beauty addict the party killed formed a piece of his terrible new body, bringing him closer to life.

One of the biggest I have ever seen as a player was when our party descovered that warforged have souls because they are vessels for all of the ancient giant spirits. An imperfect mechanism to allow them to escape being wiped out. It worked, warforged were created and the giant souls were saved, but they are not perfectly built - they have no memory of their past lives whatsoever. Thats a pretty hardcore revalation for the Warforged in our party.

 

[Rechan]

Oh, here's something.

This is what I've been planning for a long time, whenever I have a PC die in the game (this really hasn't happened yet, shockingly).

Immediately upon their death, as soon as the conflict is resolved, I take the player aside. The character wakes up in a boat, tethered to a dock during a storm. Standing on the dock is a Mysterious Stranger.

The stranger holds the tether, and offers the character the opportunity to return, right as rain. He'll just... owe him a favor. And of course, this Mysterious Stranger is going to be very coy and obtuse with any questions. Because hey, the character is the one who's up a creek here.

 

[greyscale1]

Rechan, that's great.

Funny thing: Its true, players are more vulnerable AFTER death!

Each of my players is an agent of one force or another, so depending on who dies, the situation will be completely different. They dont know it now, but each of them gets 1 freebie, at a cost. I planned on doing just like you said, horribly mysterious, but the players are not in a position to do anything about it.