When stories take an unexpected turn…

[Veritasinpersonam]

When stories take an unexpected turn…

I delight in the unexpected (at least from a game perspective). Most roleplayers have a keen mind for story and sometimes find it difficult to enjoy things like movies and televisions because they can call all the major plot twists in the first five minutes of viewing. However every now and then something happens that no one sees coming and it’s a game changer.

The events in the game I’m playing that spurred this post went like this.
Warning: Some talk about my character so if that makes your eyes glaze over, skip to the question.

The Background
For a change of pace I had been playing a Warlord, a black strategist unimaginatively named Ebon Darkblade for irony’s sake. He has something of a Napoleon complex from a higher class upbringing; his primary motivation was ultimately to take a slice of land by force and becoming its undisputed sovereign. No playing second fiddle as a vassal count for some foolish king or emperor, in the end he’ll be a nation builder. He’ll play the role until he can turn the tables and claim his rulership by force.

As you can tell he can be obnoxious, (he likes to think of it as authoritative).
He started fresh off the boat (a prison ship) after he was exiled from his homeland. Over a successful mercenary career he amassed wealth which was promptly sunk into acquiring title to some corner of a province, and then began building a stronghold. The catch was, generally, if he should fail as a subject all lands would immediately be forfeited to the crown.

The Twist
While dungeon delving the party unexpectedly encountered a vampire sorceress who in death laid a curse of vampirism on poor Ebon. This of course didn’t manifest until his transformation literally erupts very publicly at the mercenary hiring hall at night as he woke. He’s promptly run out of town by his allies, only managing to claim some of his expensive armor and weapons with search parties and his (former) allies in hot pursuit.


Why he can’t explain “But I’m a GOOD vampire! Really!”
In this particular region of the campaign there is a pervasive belief that upon conversion to vampirism the soul of the individual is cast out and a demon steps in, wearing the face and memories of the person. It is *NOT* the person himself who is considered to be dead but a blasphemous mockery.

Ebon’s wealth and equipment are lost. The lands with a keep that had just had construction begun on it have been forfeited to the crown. There is no cure for vampirism (that we know about anyway).

The conversion came completely out of left field and running with it has been a blast. While ‘losing it all’ isn’t exactly an uncommon convention, this character having no hope has been a joy to play with, exploring his rage at this perceived cosmic injustice as he descends into a decidedly darker role. Secretly he even finds that he enjoys his enhanced supernatural strength although he has yet to learn how to use his new abilities. He’s definitely heading towards a decidedly more debauched lifestyle.


The Question:

What twists happened to your characters or campaigns that ‘Changed The Game’ taking it in a new and wholly unexpected direction?

 

[Slander]

The biggest one was in our first 3E campaign. Our group had spent about a month together, jointly creating a home brew campaign. We created the primary campaign region, detailed cities and race relations, and jointly filled in plot hooks that could be picked up at later times (we played a round-robin DM game). Then we set out to create our characters, back story, and wove them together so our first adventure group would have strong ties.

Finally, the game begins. In the first adventure, two of the characters die (not in combat, mind you). From that point on, the three surviving "core" members always took lead from any of the "hire-ons" that came after. By the third adventure, the whole party finds themselves unexpectedly 42 years in the future, with what had been planned to be the campaign nemesis fully in control of all the campaign world (a la "Samurai Jack", but before it aired).

For the next three RL years of the campaign, our only goal was to survive and return to our own time. None of the hooks we had created really meant anything anymore, so each DM started from scratch. (For the record, we did get back to our original time, and beat down the nemesis).

It wasn't anyone's fault, and to this day, we still talk about the campaign fondly. Hell, we even started two short-lived spin-off campaigns based on it. But it was definitely "game changing" to have most of the work we put into the start of the campaign erased in the first three sessions.

 

[EP]

With my all-time favorite character, Markus. What started as a generic fighter rolled out of boredom and indecision because one of the best roleplaying experiences I ever had.

The party was short in fighters (lots of spellcasters) and had been on a couple of quests before I came on board. So I rolled him up, had permission to go 18 Strength automatically and rolled a 23 for his percentile (which means it was AD&D) and prepared to simply sit back and just kill stuff for a few evenings until something else stuck me.

Until the DM gave me my objective.

"You will be a mole in the party. The king wants them to fail. No matter what, do not let them come back alive."

I grinned and accepted wholeheartedly. From there, I expanded my character's background to a burned out soldier dying of cancer. Rather than waste away at home, he saw this as a chance to die in the service of his kingdom in battle. He never planned on coming back alive.

A few sessions later, Markus teetered on the edge of death and was surrounded by half a dozen shadow demons. The party bent over backwards and pulled off an amazing rescue to spare his life (to the point that the dwarf nearly died himself). Overwhelmed by the sacrifice displayed for his meager hide, Markus told them the truth of his mission. And when I did it, I felt genuine gratitude for what the players did. Their mouths hung agape and the players turned to the DM. After a long pause, the dwarf picked himself back up, half the healing potion in his hand, and said "Well, guess you won't be tryin' that, will ya? Let's go."

Changed the character forever. From that day on, the party became his reason for living and he even betrayed his king to defend his comrades. Hell, I get choked up just thinking about it.

 

[Richards]

Our 3E/3.5 campaign took a completely different turn as a result of a TPK - the first TPK we'd ever experienced. To explain any further, I'll have to mention a few SPOILERS about the adventure which caused the TPK, the Dungeon adventure "Headless" by James Jacobs.

Spoiler

In the adventure, a disciple of Orcus has created a device that sucks up the souls of everyone who dies in a 200-mile radius. The PCs died fighting off the forces that were defending the device that the PCs were trying to destroy. So, since the device was still active, the PCs' souls were sucked into Orcus's realm.

I opted to take the opportunity to try something a little different. The next adventure, the PCs all wake up in Orcus's realm, naked, with their memories wiped. They're informed by Orcus that they had been his trusted demonic lieutenants who had attempted to overthrow him. As a punishment, they had been placed into these puny human and elven bodies and would have to earn their way back to full demonhood. So, the next few adventures had the PCs believing they were demons working for Orcus, and accomplishing missions for him. Their first adventure had them killing two paladins just for their gear (since they had been gated to Oerth naked and with no equipment), and taking custody of a wizard's tower which blinked back and forth between Oerth and the Ethereal Plane - a nice, handy backdoor to the Prime Material Plane. They stole powerful weapons for Orcus, killed celestials for him, and so on. And then, they ran into a celestial who was the PC sorcerer's father (who had been slain dozens of adventures earlier and become a celestial after his mortal death) - when he called his daughter by name, her memory was instantly returned (that had been part of the curse Orcus had laid upon the PCs), and she in turn called out the name of the cleric PC and restored his memory as well.

So, the next few adventures after that had those two PCs going back and trying to undo the damage they had done as "demons" (including destroying the soul-sucking device that had set them on this path). And now, the entire campaign goal is to take down Orcus as revenge for what he did to the PCs. To that end, the PCs have cast their lot in with a disgraced devil who has been cursed with incorporeality (after having been caught "poaching" in an Archduke's personal harem), whose only way to have his curse removed is by taking down Orcus himself. (The Archduke figured that would be a suitably impossible task.) So now it's Justaine the pissed-off cleric, Tiatianna the pissed-off sorceress, and Benny the incorporeal devil out to permanently destroy Orcus. To achieve this goal, they're gathering up items of power to negate a bunch of Orcus's abilities, so that he'll be weak enough that they might actually have a chance to slay him. Unfortunately, the other two original members of the PC party (a druid and her awakened dire wolf) are still under the belief that they're Orcus's trusted lieutenants, and are doing their best to stop the PCs. Right now they PCs are at 16th level, and I'm trying to line things up so that they'll have their final showdown with Orcus when they're both at 20th level. Whether they succeed in slaying Orcus or go down in a blaze of glory, they're both psyched about the upcoming battle. And whichever way the battle goes, it will be the final adventure of this campaign.

It's been a completely different campaign than the one I had originally envisioned, but it's been a blast to run (even if I've had to come up with a whole lot of adventures on my own rather than running them through published adventures).

Johnathan