The first one doesn't actually work. Sure it could work but the way chemistry works is if anyone has auspex (common discipline) they get the chance to break the illusion when first encountering it. So what actually happens is "you walk into the room and 10 people get a ping that something isn't right and has the chance to see through your deception"
@@chriswhite950 it’s a retelling. The GM likely had them do a check for it at some point. The guy specced for illusion, it’s entirely possible for no one to notice.
My father-in-law told me a story about an old friend of his DM'ing a game and gave the party an "Amulet of protection" that absorbed every single spell that had a radius on/ targeted the wearer. About 6 or 7 real months later the wearer is in a castle getting dressed to go to a fancy party and took off the amulet... Doing so immediately caused all absorbed spells to automatically be cast again centered on the user. Leveled half the town and killed the entire party.
As a DM players found a cursed ring of truth can’t lie only activates when the user lies or try’s to take it off. For a year and a half real time the character who claimed it did neither.
10:30 the players were running around trying to find the boss because his ship was seen in the area. However, it was only his ship, and he wasn't there. The DM tricked their players into chasing a red herring
My DM ran a false hydra as the BBEG and for the whole campaign there was a DMPC who had been helping us the entire time but was eaten by the false hydra so the DM flavored everything that they did as bizarre coincidences or feats of wonder from PC's aside from a few clues he dropped about outright strange things like whenever we'd take down a big creature the DM would tell one of the players "your arm hurts". Eventually DM opens the final session of play with "you wake up" mind you he's never done this, it's always been either cold opens or just a "you're at the cafeteria" (it was a modern campaign, think fantasy men in black) kind of thing. We find a bunch of strange things going on around the office like some staff positions just seem to be not present, as well as a whole desk full of paraphernalia we don't recognize. Scribbled notes, pictures of two cops in uniform posing together, one of them was one of our player characters the other we didn't recognize. For awhile now the DM had planted a red herring BBEG in the form of a mindflayer that works in our R&D department and the last session ended with them disappearing so we figure he's got something to do with this. Eventually we track a bunch of clues to the PC's old cop car where we watch the last dash cam footage of the pc and DMPC in the car and the DMPC playfully punches the PC's arm which he promptly rubs. It was then that it clicked that whoever that person is, they were always a part of our group and we just forgot them somehow. It was then that we all realized that the whole campaign up until now was actually just our memories of what happened rather than what really happened. Naturally we managed to track down the creature and kill it, in fact it was underneath one of the PC's beds, this pc had never slept in their room because they thought it was haunted or something.
My greatest long-con occurred during my most recent campaign a few years back; Was running a Planeswalker campaign based on the Magic the Gathering universe (around the time War of the Spark was about to release). Gave my players the ability to planeswalk as a channeled action that took 10 minutes -30 seconds/level. That way it wouldn’t be a get-out-of-jail-free card for combat. But it would still allow the players to visit all their favorite places in the multiverse, which pushed my worldbuilding skills to the absolute limit, lol. They needed a *reason* to visit those places, though, so I created an NPC named Raggs. Raggs was a shabby old man who clearly knew about planeswalkers and had a lot of info about magic, though he no longer practiced. He gifted the players an orb of ice - a plane that had been condensed into a small portable bauble. He told them that it was the plane Kaldheim, a Viking themed plane that had fallen into this state after their entire pantheon had abandoned it, one by one. It could only be restored if the gods were returned. Cue a multiverse-spanning scavenger hunt to find those deserter deities. They found the first on Ravnica, the city-plane, having been killed in a Rakdos coliseum. Returning the essence to Raggs, he told them the history behind that god. He told them about the Jotunsvell (Ice Giant) named Skapa, who had given up part of his body to fashion the deity and give it life. He described how the first god brought the land with him, creating the foundation for Kaldheim. They found the second deity on Innistrad, the plane of horror. It had given its life to save a town from the Eldrazi incursion (think eldritch horror). They brought back the essence to Raggs and learned more about the creation myth. How Skapa gave up another part of his body to create each of the gods, and how each of the gods brought a part of Kaldheim to life in return. One god for the earth and law. One god for the Sea and magic. One for flora and air. One for fauna and history. One for fire and war. One for death. Each took a part of Skapa’s body - except death. Death took Skapa’s soul. The third deity was on Amonkhet, the Egyptian plane. It had been killed by the other gods there. Upon returning the essence to Raggs, they were told WHY the gods were created. The first two were created out of loneliness. Skapa was ageless, like all the Jotunsvell, but alone. He was the strongest of his kind, which isolated him. Once the gods of land and of sea had created the foundation of Kaldheim, Skapa wanted to give them the happiness he had found; the joy of creation and of life. He created the twins of flora and fauna to help populate their fledgling plane. Raggs also mentioned that the Jotunsvell were jealous of Skapa’s happiness. The fourth god was on Theros, the Greek plane. She had been betrayed by a conniving satyr attempting to seize the opening in the pantheon that had been created after the fall of Xenogos. Returning the essence to Raggs gifted them more of Ragg’s backstory. How he was once able to walk the planes, but gave up his spark to seal Kaldheim. It had been the only way to save it after the gods abandoned it, even if it was only temporary (since he wouldn’t have been able to ‘walk anymore to find the gods himself). He also mentioned that his wife had been killed during those last few moments before the seal. The players noted that such an act was utterly beyond the capabilities of most mages, and that Raggs must have been truly incredible in his heyday. The fifth god was on the plane of Ir, a custom plane made entirely of water. The goddess had been slain by an ancient and terrible beast. The heroes found and killed it in a grueling battle… only to learn that they had actually found its progeny. They killed a juvenile and royally angered the mama. Needless to say, they noped out back to Raggs. This time they learned about the attack from the other Jotunsvell. How they dismembered Skapa and burned the parts on a pyre. From that pyre was born the goddess of war and fire, who was driven to hunt down and destroy the Jotunsvell. It is said that she essentially caused their extinction. But Skapa had been dealt a fatal blow. From his spirit came the god of death, who ferried their father to the afterlife. The final god was on Kamigawa, the Shinto plane. They found him, still alive but driven quite mad. The god of history showed them visions of the fall of Kaldheim. He showed them each of the gods abandoning the plane, leaving only Raggs and his wife, the goddess of war, to keep the place alive. The party watched as the goddess was badly injured in an attack on their home, but still attempted to planeswalk away in desperate attempts to find the other gods and keep the plane alive. They watched Raggs lose his wife, knowing that her wounds would prove fatal if she left… but that they would lose all of Kaldheim if she stayed. They saw Raggs hold the plane together through pure force of will, until he gave up his magic to seal the plane into the very orb the party carried. The mad god then attacked, chanting that only death could bring rebirth. The party killed the weakened deity, bringing his essence back to Raggs. Now the finale. After two years irl of hunting down deities and reaching ever-higher levels, they were finally ready for their hard work to bear fruit. Raggs met them in the citadel where they had seen his wife slain. They told him about the mad god, and returned the essence to him. Raggs seemed bittersweet, but thankful. He told them the whole story again, about Skapa and the birth of the gods. He reminded the players how Skapa sacrificed everything to create the gods, but that it was Skapa’s greatest joy. And now that the gods needed to be reborn, another sacrifice must be made. He told them of how he had lived a long time, and fell in love with the goddess of war during their battle. She was sworn to kill all the Jotunsvell, after all. And he was the last of them. He only asked that the players, who had already done so much for him, could grant him a warrior’s death. For only death could bring rebirth. Their battle was long and terrible. They had spent literal years falling in love with this eccentric old man and his epic tale. Only to have to kill him. They succeeded, and saw the gods being reborn as Raggs’s HP hit various thresholds. When they rendered him dying, the goddess of war was reborn. She thanked them for all they had done, but wished to be the final blow. She slayed her husband, the last of the Jotunsvell, with tears streaking down her face. But with that final act, the god of death was reborn and Kaldheim was saved.
I was playing in a sci-fi 5e home game with some friends, and my character had been instantly killed by an unfortunate high-damage critical in an encounter at level 3, with no chance of resurrection in sight. The DM knew how excited I'd been to play the character, so he took pity on me and had his soul rescued by Ra, as the gods of the Egyptian pantheon had taken interest in our overarching quest. He was told that his behaviour would be observed by Anubis for the next month, as Ra had overstepped his domain to revive my character, and Anubis would be the one to judge his worthiness to keep his soul and carry out the quest. As well, at the end of the month period, he would face trials from Anubis, and if, between the trials and observation, he was deemed worthy, he would become a champion of Ra, with the stipulation that it would be impossible to return his soul from death again. All of this was pretty significant from a story perspective, as my character had been raised in a hyper-religious background and had grown to resent religion as a whole due to the influence it held over his early life. Our first major encounter after this happened involved one of our party members being kidnapped and held hostage by a cult, and while we attempted to rescue them from the outside, someone else had infiltrated the cult separately and was helping them from the inside, a canid character named Sayid. He showed up once or twice more, but was a little bit suspicious when he was mysteriously blocked from entering a room at the end of a dungeon encounter which housed one of the members of the group we were aiming to eliminate. Sure enough, as the trial period reached its end, Sayid appeared to us again and revealed himself to have been observing my character for Anubis's trial. He brought us to the final trials and guided us through them, pretty much following close behind my character the whole time. One of the trials was in a temple of Anubis, with a large statue of Anubis in the front. The trial eventually revealed statues representing the gods of the Egyptian pantheon, with the apparent answer being for my character to touch the statue of the god he was to serve and speak their name. However, to our surprise, touching Ra's statue and speaking his name did nothing. We remembered a clue we had uncovered as part of the trial, which stated that gods can only have one champion in any given star system: this brought back a memory of an earlier encounter with one of the members of our target group, who had claimed to be a champion of Ra. With that information, we tried to identify all of the gods associated with the other statues, and noticed that Anubis did not have a statue. We went back to the entrance of the temple, but the statue of Anubis at the front had disappeared, and funny enough, there was a small lock of fur on the ground where it used to be. That might have been my favourite moment of realization in any campaign I've ever played in. Sayid, still standing behind my character, asks if I have an answer. My character turns around, touches his shoulder, and speaks his name, ending the trial. So really, it was two long-cons in one. Not only was Sayid actually a vessel for Anubis the whole time, but there was never a trial to become a champion of Ra. In fact, Ra had already made this other person his champion, and the other person turned out to be pretty evil! Anubis told us that Ra had effectively "nominated" my character to be Anubis's champion, in order to atone for his mistake and try to bring his own champion to judgement. And this entire plot point and reveal stemmed from an unlucky crit on a character that my DM wanted to let me continue playing.
Man that first one was excellent. What this shows me is I really need to step up my long conning skills. Or just stop trying because I lack the knack for it.
In one of my earlier campaigns, I was playing a 2 1/2 foot tall war forged, who is basically a toy. I told the party that a wizard trapped my soul in the body of a toy, because I had been given an illusion magic via some random bullshit cleric God. We later on in the adventure, my character finally convinced the party to help him hunt down the wizard that trapped his soul. The wizard tried to win the party, but they were loyal to their new friend. When we killed him, my characters soul was released, and it turned out. He was a dragon. The next portion of the campaign was hunting that dragon down. He decided to spare the party because he had grown fond of them, but warned them if they had ever encountered one another again. It wound up being a three-year long con, but the look on my fellow players faces was priceless
Currently 6 months into a westmarches where I play a changling. No players have realized that all my characters are the same guy just in a different set of clothes and with a different face.
Oh boy my time to shine! Me and my roommates and girlfriend have been doing a homebrew campaign once every two weeks for about the past 6-8 months now. I’m the DM, and I’m also a huge fan of Coldplay. Everyone at our table is extremely aware of this fact, so in our first ever session, I made a very minor, non-obvious reference to song by Coldplay. The song is pretty trivial and not a radio hit by any means, so naturally, no one recognized it. At the end of the session, I mentioned where I had made the reference, showed them all the song, and someone made a joke about “oh watch, now he’s gonna do a Coldplay reference every session”. So in every session since then, I’ve made a subtle, but more obvious Coldplay reference, all to different songs. With a few exceptions. Where the long con comes into this, is after that first session, I redid the entire campaign to revolve around THAT Coldplay song. Mostly in very conspicuous ways. Important key characters, places, or things all share the same names as the ones in the song. I’m one session, I straight up gave them a napkin with the chorus translated into Latin as the only spell that can save the world. Every session where “I missed a Coldplay reference” was cause they found something or met someone that introduced them to a new verse of THE song. I’m not sure how I’ll do “the big reveal” yet, as the campaign could still change direction (1st time DM running homebrew), but my hope is that when the meet the BBEG, he tells them about a prophecy that always confused him. One that said he would always meet his defeat at the hands of a song that tells of a heroes life (or something along those lines) and he’d been trying to find out what song it was, and then trying to get the players to find out which song it was. It’s still up in the air, but I can’t wait to see how they react when they find out it was always Coldplay all along.
@@Clayton_Stewart I have to imagine it's viva la vida. It's the first one that comes to mind that could potentially be THAT Coldplay song and would fit in thematically with a D&D campaign based on the lyrics
I told my group 3 different 'years' as the current date as different NPCs. There were a bunch of 'Reborn' undead who weren't aware that time had passed, but for a solid 3 years of levels 1-13 the group was convinced they were in a time travel campaign and planning and talking about time travel. It just got better and better every week
Session 3 we saved a village from a cult and as a reward we were offered the house of the cult leader. Only catch was it was full of traps but if we navigated safely through them we would be rewarded. I should mention that this was my first ever D&D campaign so I was taking notes for ever session. One session and one dead rouge later (he died to one of the traps) my character finds a small silver tin with 4 invisibility potions inside. I put them in my bag of holding and we moved on with the campaign. 8 months later and we are level 9 trying to escape one of the big bads army's that have us trapped in some cave system. The DM had planed for us to have an epic battle inside the cave where we would either win or dye trying. That was until I piped up with "can I hand out these invisibility potions and we sneak out unseen?" My group and DM just looked at me like "what invisibility potions?" To which I pulled out page 3 of my note book and read aloud, small silver tin containing 4 invisibility potions 😂😂 my DM was shocked and my party cheered as we slipped away unseen and back to the village to plan our attack 😂😂
There's quite a bit of context to this one, but here goes: So my character started out as the captain of a mercenary (Pirate) ship, and had been ferrying the entire party around from island to island for most of the campaign thus far (I think we were level 8 by this time). I had recently found a weapon created from the claw of an Ancient Cosmic Dragon God(Though they didn't really know that detail yet), and my character was slowly being corrupted by it, and only the DM and I knew this at the time. Over our voyages, we had met many NPCs and forged several different alliances. But the DM had been clear that a major regional conflict had been brewing the whole time, and eventually, war broke out and we were forced to choose sides. My character, being the ship's captain, chose to make a vote with his crew and we rolled dice to determine our allegiance. My crew and I, along with one other player, chose to remain as mercenaries and offer our allegiance to the highest bidder, while the other three players chose to join the resistance against a despotic queen. My ally and I were preparing to say our farewells and take the other party members wherever they needed to go, but one of them felt betrayed by our decision, as he had risen to a prominent leader in the resistance with my help. So in a classic case of "If you aren't with me, you're against me", he chose to attack us while our backs were turned. My ship was greatly damaged, and several of my crew were killed, including my first mate. Though they were all NPC's, I committed to the role and sought revenge on their killer. He escaped with the other 2 party members who allied themselves with him, and though they didn't approve of his actions, they were unwilling to abandon him. After this we had to split our D&D sessions, because we were effectively plotting against each other. The thirst for revenge only quickened the corruption that the dragon claw, The Talon of Triarch, held over me. I wanted to destroy them completely. My first move was to visit the queen that my former party had chosen to go to war against. Previously, she had tried to offer her hand in marriage to one of our other party members, a prince, but he had turned her down. Now returning to her months later, a Lord in my own right, I offered my hand to her, which she graciously accepted. I already had several ships and a thousand men at my command, but now I had whole armies at my beck and call. Eventually, Rhys (The man who butchered my crew), challenged me to a duel. Even though he was a more powerful character than I was, I accepted. I had a plan. Next, I sought an alliance with the 4 Witches. (In the mythos of this campaign, they were similar to the Fates and the Furies from Greek Mythology, so basically Goddesses) I appealed to them in every way that a Nat 20 Charisma role would allow, and eventually they joined my cause, which we sealed with a black magic blood pact. And finally, I went on a quest to retrieve the other artifacts of the Dragon God, Triarch, including his Eye, Wing, Fang, and Scale. These items were scattered across the world after he was defeated by Mance Pennhurst, the 1,000 year emperor and father of Nymphus (The prince who turned down the Queen), and this was the first time they had been reunited in a millennia. Then I put the finishing touch on my plan: using a ritual performed by the witches, they bound my soul to these artifacts, effectively making me a living conduit for Triarch. And now, If I was killed in that duel, it would effectively resurrect the Cosmic Dragon God. The day of the duel came. (It had been about 3 months in real world time, I think we were level 11. This was the first time the whoIe party had been back together since the attack on my ship) I used my newfound station as a King to make it a vastly publicized event, and one of the Witches who specialized in portal magic opened up viewing points so people from all over the world could watch. Rhys and his partners had done a lot on their own to increase his power for the battle, and it became pretty clear that we each possessed the power to one-shot each other. It was just a matter of who landed the first hit. We rolled for initiative, and Rhys went first. He slew King Jerick Florinson, his former captain, in one stroke of his sword. He jumped up from the table and laughed in triumph, but his victory was shortlived. Almost immediately, I smiled and said "Then the last shackle of Triarch has been broken". He quickly went quiet. The DM and I locked eyes, I nodded and soflty cackled. He was then given the description of a scene where my body gets up, glowing with red/black energy, as stormclouds swirl overhead to approximate the shape of a vast dragon, it's wings spanning the horizon, it's head eclipsing the mountains, and the look on my rivals face was absolutely priceless. Right then, he knew, He Had Fucked Up...
Imagine my surprise when I got a poke from an old friend telling me he spotted a tale about one of my old Camarilla characters on RU-vid. Thanks for the shout out
The longest con I ever pulled was for the entire campaign I played a character, but was actually the GM the whole time. I had another person playing the role of GM for me the whole campaign. The players would hold secret meetings trying to outsmart the GM but were always frustrated and couldn't figure out why. Then in the final session I finally revealed myself when I took over the GM role.
oh, it makes me think of a character named "otterton" on one of "Puffin Forest" videos... a random NPC they dragged into their adventure and helped set up a business...THEN suspected him of...SOMETHING...
I once had a character in a campaign where the GM didn’t ask for my character’s details or backstory. So there were incidents where arguments were going on in neighboring rooms and my character ignored it, or he would appear stand-offish not talking to people unless they got in his face, etc. The truth was that he was secretly deaf and could only lip-read. So a lot of times what was happening was him not hearing things in neighboring rooms or he was looking in another direction or at someone else during conversations. It was his curse from being a PF1e Oracle, and in-game he was frustrated for being afflicted with it. He even hated the power that ‘chose’ him. So he elected not to tell anyone and spent a long time pre-campaign to perfect his lip-reading skills. Yet not once did the GM or anyone else pick up on it for a year until one of the other players got clued in and inquired out-of-session.
My Paladin/rouge character has a +12 in stealth, and could blend into the shadows because of that, kept the +12 secret until I stupidly said I had the +12. Never had a chance to stealth afterwards.
I don't understand. Your DM wasn't aware of your stats, and once they were, they didn't let you use your skills? That seems toxic. DM vs Player relationships suck.
@@Gmorktron oh no, my DM let me use my stealth skills still, just not on low level monsters where the DC would be 12 or lower. There were a lot of them. And considering when he found out it was a few weeks before we were nearing the end of the campaign, it was mostly fights and things with an insane DC…. Or true sight for the BBEG.
My GM for a dark heresy game set my character up to become the BBEG for the extended campaign. The group had no idea my character was slowing going crazy and turning into a xenos/human hybrid so they elected him leader of the group. Nothing says "clear headed leader" like eating parts of ships or dirt because your insanity makes you do it out of some superstition
Hello again, I'm back with another misadventure to be from Idiots on Ice (Rime of the Frostmaiden) No spoilers this time, as the con is just starting but already bearing fruit. Our necromancy wizard had died and been resurrected recently, and while dead they met the Raven Queen. She essentially warned him about necromancy and that she would be watching. The wizard informed the party of this conversation because while smart, the wiz dumped wisdom. This is important for later. My character, if you've read my comments before is a Harengon genie warlock. Now, my patron wants entertainment and doesn't usually care what kind. I also happened to know that she was on good terms with the Raven Queen. In the last session, I had finally gotten the materials to perform the Find Familiar ritual in secret. Made easy because everyone got wasted. Yep, I summoned a raven whom I named Munin. Munin had a few orders, help out when things look bad, stare at the wizard as creepily as possible, stay out of sight from everyone but the wizard, and mimic creatures that might scare the wiz while out of sight. It. Went. Beautifully. First time the Wizard saw the raven, they curiously OPENED THE INN/TAVERN WINDOW and immediately got screamed at by every patron there. then the wiz went outside to talk to the raven. It was gone. His passive perception was bad enough that as long as Munin tried to hide it would succeed. Throughout the entire day, he would get glimpses of this raven staring at him, turning away to get people to see it, only to look back and have it be gone. One of the other characters, our naive kobold paladin who dealt with seeing things that others couldn't sympathized and believed him. Of course the pali actually did see the raven but the wiz was now so far gone with their paranoia that he didn't believe him. At the end of the session, while we were fighting an ice troll, our wiz had just been revived at the same time our pali went down, It was starting to look bad. cue raven getting in the trolls eyes. I crit my fire blast (we were on a ship so no fireball) and then our adopted bandit got the killing blow. Session ended there with the raven no where in sight. Not once during the entire session did any player ask for a perception, arcana, or any sort of check against Munin. I... might have abused the fact that the only people with high perception either didn't care, or were me, whom the entire party relied on to spot threats and abnormalities (Observant Feat is king). This entire thing was Ok'ed by the DM. In fact, the DC to identify Munin has gone up to 15 instead of 10. It will continue to go up the longer the player refuses to roll a perception or arcana check against it. Not my idea, the DMs and we are very much laughing evilly.
I was running a murder mystery campaign where a cult was killing the city's governors in order to install a puppet government. Most of my players decided to be Yuan-tis so they all got along pretty well and weren't suspicious of each other. Unfortunately for the rest of the party, one of my players was secretly a member of the cult due them saving the PC in question's life and her being brought up by them. The PC that was the cult member gave these nice trinkets to a couple of the other party members and called these "friendship rings". Naturally, the other PCs thought nothing of it. These rings had a pretty sinister secret about them: a cult member could whisper a voice command to activate it and brainwash the wearer into joining the cult. Throughout the campaign, hints were dropped that one of the party's allies might be working as a double agent. It was never clear who it was until bad things kept happening whenever their ally that was a goblin priest was informed. Naturally, the party investigated him and they were brought to an abandoned temple. Two PCs decided to guard the exits while the PC secretly working for the cult and another PC went in to interrogate. The PC cult member, knowing that the temple was trapped, used the Goblin as a distraction to lure the other PC into traps which fueled the other PC to get to him quicker while ignoring the details in front of them. They both eventually got to the Goblin only to find out that he had been mysteriously knocked out. The PC that was the cult member then used the opportunity to activate the "friendship ring" and they successfully brainwashed the other PC into joining the cult. Checkmate. The campaign continued normally until the party had the final showdown with the BBEG. The city's governors were all taken hostage but the party was there to save the day (or so they though). As the BBEG was delivering his speech, the PC cult member and the brainwashed PC left the party's side and they killed two of the city's governors. It was then revealed that the PC cult member was actually the BBEG's right hand, she was feeding all of the information to him, and she was blackmailing the Goblin priest into working as the middleman. The shock on all of the other player's faceless was priceless.
I was able to convince my party that I was a wizard for 8 sessions when I was really a pact if the tome warlock that doesn't sound long but the game only lasted 8 sessions
Mr Ripper hey i know alot of people who attended Vampre: The Masquerade Larp, its a large forum RP and larp session game in Kent in the UK. god those people behind doors some really weird stuff lmao, but consenting adults do as they do xD
Going for a slightly cleaner telling of this tale. Not the longest of cons, but it delighted the group to no end. I am not the star of this story, just one who was privileged enough to witness it. Our party was following the Plot to a test of skill put on by a local Baron. As we entered the Baron's domain, we met an NPC, a young man named Arlas who our DM described as early 20's, tan skin, golden hair, and eyes the color of warm honey. Our bard was immediately taken with Arlas and made it his mission to bed him. Arlas happily agreed; queue "horny Bard" jokes. While flirting with the Bard, Arlas drops some hints that the Baron might be evil. When our group wins our Test of Skill and is invited to a "victory feast" at the baron's manor, Arlas says he'll tag along because something doesn't feel right. Well, at the victory feast, the Baron reveals that he is, in fact, evil, and the meat served at the feast was harvested from the "losers," and he also has no intention of letting us get out alive. Arlas tells us to hold on as we're surrounded by cambions and blackguards, and we're teleported out. Everyone vomits, and asks where we are. Arlas has transported us to his Grandfather's home; a massive castle set deep in the mountains. After ushering us inside, Arlas tells his grandfather a truncated version of events and the Grandfather sees to our comfort and care while Arlas goes out to check the perimeter. Bard follows Arlas outside, just in time to see Arlas reveal his true form; a Copper Dragon. Dragon!Arlas sees Bard watching, winks, and takes off on his patrol. Did the Bard seduce the dragon, or did the Dragon seduce he bard? We may never know.
@@rolandogutierrez6152 I don't have an answer for that... Due to some personal conflicts, the group disbanded after this, so the story didn't get to continue. Still, we had a good five sessions in which our Bard was flirsting with and seducing this you NPC and when he was revealed to be a dragon, it was a pretty awesome moment!
The only NPC the party chose to trust and bring into their circle was a supply runner for the campaign's BBEG. The NPC had been placed in a random encounter as a potential source of information but the party went all white knight syndrome and this guy was their maiden in distress. Eventually I just made a d20 chart to determine at the start of each session how much information the accidental mole was able to get to his boss to keep one step ahead of the party. A campaign designed to run to around level 10 ran well into the high teens.
Red Herring... had a party member who was flavor focused on blood related magics. Used this to try to track down an antagonist, but apparenly the way the player worded his efforts to use the blood from a crime scene lead to the party chasing the unaknowledge child via violent SA of the antagonist. This child served as a merchant marine along the coastal waterways of a large continent, and the party spent 4 sessions real time and close to 5 years in game time chasing a moving target that was inconsequential to the plot they were persuing.
had a friend who loved long-conning. one time, he had his character come into the campaign through being released from a small glass bead that contained a miniature depiction of a black hole, claiming that he had lost his memory. one player, who was a bit of a power-player, immediately claimed that he was his servant who he had just released a curse from, which caused him to forget his memory. my friend smiled and went along with him, playing the role of a tiefling that acted like a toddler that they named Amni (short for amnesia) just hanging around the party, who's one skill was that he could eat ANYTHING without limits (but he was a picky eater so he wasn't overpowered), which should have been a major giveaway to the party. (the DM was in on this scheme ofc). *3 years* later, at the near end of the campaign in the final fight against a very weak bad guy (a warlock with the ability to undo magic) 'happened' to be avoiding sending anti-magic spells towards my friend's character, and then 'happened' to cast a spell towards a player who could rebound spells... only for it to hit my friend's character. the warlock screamed and started running, which left the party very confused, until the DM said the line that will forever be engraved in my memory: *"You turn to see Amni floating in the air. the air around him seems to thicken and darken, as everything starts slowly getting pulled towards him. a bead with a miniature black hole in it that was hung on a necklace around his neck shatters, spraying shards across the room. the room seems to implode, as everyone and everything within 1000 light years is instantly vaporized due to the sudden undoing of the spell that saved the world 2,000,000 years ago- the personification and entrapment of a black hole about to swallow the universe."* absolute gold. (edit: spelling)
For about a year my tiefling bard (Therai) also pretended to be a god. I had managed to convince 200+ faeries, a cow, and multiple people of my status as a god. However, when my girlfriend found out that I was slowly gaining god-like powers the more followers that I got--she decided to put an end to this. See, she played a character named Silver, an elf--I've forgotten her class. Silver and Therai...did not get along very well. Silver was some fancy pants government agent whereas Therai was usually high. Silver found him to be incredibly annoying. So, we're hunting down this guy called "The Great Chikadee" because an evil guy called "The Chikadee" wanted him dead. On our way, we meet many others, such as "The Great Moth" and "The Great Moose". Well, on our way to speak to the Great Moose we are stampeded by moose. Most of the party climbed up into the trees to avoid them but Therai...couldn't move. Silver had cast Hold Person on him. And that is the story of how my demi-god character died via moose swarm.
Aresse was cursed into being paranoid by attuning to a magic item. For those of you who aren't aware, she is heavily based off captain nemo and is in the process of making a murder submarine. The first thing that went wrong is we learned of a murderer aboard the ship (I needed one of the original crewmembers gone to frame the pirate king). Our sorcerer used wish to cast zone of truth so we could question the entire crew at once. Aresse chose to fail the save, but as a high level mastermind rogue she could even lie under ZoT. The druid went and recovered the body, which had been drowned. Next Aresse used animate objects on the corpse to fake a revenant attack on the Pirate King and secretly gave the party forged evidence that the king was planning to turn us over to the 2nd and 3rd most powerful people on the plane. The evidence was an etching of a letter she had forged and delivered to an information broker while on an unrelated solo errand off ship. Aresse talked the rest of the party into springing the ambush, but secretly gave orders to keep a steady course for the rendezvous. The 2nd was the only one to show up and she immediately disintegrated the pirate king. Realizing we were out matched, we teleported back to the ship, only for the sorlock and the ship to barely survive 2 meteor swarms (evasion). Our druid monk began resurrecting what crewmembers she could, while aresse volunteered to take the sorlock into the hold to see to him. She stabbed him in the back, and then won initiative, the druid monk came rushing down and everything went black before we heard the phrase that started it all. "Captains theres a murderer on board." (We had rescued a time dragon earlier in the campaign and this was it repaying the favor by resetting the universe before Aressecould cause a partial party wipe). Aresse was uncursed and the murdered crewmember was resurrected and given the option to retire with a sizable pension from a treasure ship we made a direct course for. Tldr my character was cursed into paranoia and made an elaborate multi session scheme to eliminate all her threats. (Including the rest of the party)
83 sessions before my players realized that they were originally hired by the "big bad guy" at the very start of the campaign. It took another 43 sessions before they learned that it was all a group effort by the 5 factions to control people. (Including the corrupted 38k year old silver dragon that hired them in the 1st scenario.) I still cannot figure out how I was able to obfuscate the connections between the major factions on a continent. (And I hid the fact that all 5 were dragons for most of the campaign as well.)
I am planning a campaign where I use movie soundtracks for characters. Such as Lone Ranger for a cowboy type. I have siblings and cousins who barely remember VHS era. So I’m going to use Winnie the Pooh music for the goofiest of them all, and save the main theme for when they finally go to his hometown.
So I actually have a good one, and the players i did it to still don’t trust me to this day 5 years later. Dnd 5th edition homebrew setting on a cursed continent ravaged by plague. The party finds a bar called the “The Last Dance” where people come to lets say “call it quits” and have a final drink and party. The tavern was hosted by a super peppy and bubbly young man who eagerly served poisoned drinks and dishes. The party finds out the place is owned by a vampire, kill him, and find that the host was seemingly mentally damaged from the vampires control, and adopt him. Now this campaign was run daily for short sessions at school, and went through two phases, eventually they all become demi gods and enter phase two of the campaign, do note it has been months since they met this NPC they named Gill. They all pick gods to devote to after one of the players won a bet with the god of madness. Now they find out Gill was already a demi god, and to this day I have no idea why they never questioned this. Now the plot evolves to them scheming to take power from their gods and upset the balance, and all they know is the greatest god who installed this order was missing and they had a chance to sow some chaos. Can you guess the twist? So a mission to capture another demi god goes south bad, and Gill’s mortal form dies. When they return to the home of the gods and run into Gill, he greets them speaking full sentences with a disdainful tone. It had turned out that Gill was actually that missing god who had been trapped in a mortal form and had his mind scrambled. The party was floors, and one of them, the one who adopted Gill was literally screaming at me as I described Gill walking away from them to restore the order they had been upsetting.
One of the first times I dm'd a mini campaign for my forever dm, and new player fresh to it all to show them the ropes and *boy* am I proud of my long con. The two players, my experienced dm of other games, now a player: Tabaxi Cleric of Knowledge and the newbi: Gnome Ranger. This was a homebrewed campaign in my own world. The set up was vampires are rumored to be the source of disappearences of people. The Gnome Ranger, Faylen, is from the town that is having these problems. He is a simple wood carver who wants to carve wood and shit with his niece, Ivy. As we develop the campaign and find out that the vampires are after something, Faylen talks about how Ivy's father, his brother, abandoned her on his doorstep asking to take care of her, Faylen hated his brother ever since. But Ivy misses her parents deeply. We enter the middle of the campaign, we encounter two "commanders" of the vampire group. A visious lady who dispises all the mortals they feed on. She goads and taunts our party. But Faylen in particular, holding a bundled bunch of letters. Implying she knew his brother. Which sends Faylen into a rage. We fast forward, and the resulting fight causes a earthquake and our party now trapped under the mountain in a Nokessta like place like in Elden Ring. As they explore it, learn of what the vampire group that somehow followed them are doing, they aren't alone, a assassin of sorts is fighting this group off. They resolve to find them for their help. Oh do they do so. A lady who is also a vampire, but looks more.... in control of her abilities than the others. There is another fight, with two more ringleaders of the group. The same lady they fought before also included. Oh boy, does Faylen want a rematch with the bitch. Wanting to know more from her what she did to his brother. I'm also proud of the player too. Using more of their took kit to put the commander on the backfoot. But these vampires follow the "no stake in the heart? They return to their coffins." So they are teleported back to the surface, and the party, with their new ally, follow them to their hideout. The lady is noticeably uncomfortable around Faylen in particular. Knowing his name without him saying it too. She avoids all his questions as she takes them back to the hideout. Faylen may be a angry old gnome but he's seeing the signs. Theres dread building inside of him. He feels he knows the truth already. The assassin lady takes them back to their hideout, reveals the weapon the vampires are looking for, a bow to cover the sky in eternal night. The vampire lady is a true vampire. Who lived thousands upon thousands of years ago when the world *was* in an eternal night. But the goddess of glory sought to bring back the sun. But the vampires at the time were not ready for the change, and she refused to listen to their worry. They were spent so much time adapting to the night, when the sun came back, it caused a massive death and genocide everywhere for them. They retreated to under the mountain for protection, while the god of night tried to fight the goddess to stop her. The Vampire Lady, Carmilla, couldn't get there. Her transport was stuck underground. Where she was trapped for gods know how long. Stuck 6 feet under for CENTURIES.... Until a gnome found her coffin and rescued her. She explains all this as she shows them one last thing. Something Faylen needs to see. They traveled together in the new world. Seeing that what she thought was the worlds end still continued on. She found love with that gnome as they fought to find answers to what this new vampire group was doing. And that fight lead them back to the mountain. And what she shows is a grave. Faylen's brother's grave. He doesn't take it well. He has a violent reaction. Punching the grave, yelling and crying over his brother. Why did he have to? Why did he go without him? After a minute to collect himself, Carmilla simply looks at the grave with sadness. And then this exchange "I... I dont know... how to explain all this to Ivy" "IVY!? HOW IS MY IVY!?" "*YOUR* IVY!?!??!?" There is a massive pause Me: anddddddd that's where we are ending it tonight The Gnome Player: ***WHAT NO!!!*** Tabaxi player: Fucking KEK Gnome player: NO WE ARE CONTINUING, ANSWER ME NOW Me: *laughing like a hyena* Gnome Player: ***I NEED ANSWERS, GIVE THEM TO ME!!!!!!***
In 2013, we were playing superheroes and the heroes defeated the big finale villain of the arc. The villain had gained some sort omniscient at the cost of their sanity after three uses and had used it to develop super weapons and used them with minor provocation. The heroes defeated him after calling in every ally and some of the villains they had made over a three year period (2011-2013) at great cost. Allies died, and one of the PCs sacrificed himself to kill the villain by teleporting them both into the sun when the fight looked to be turning against the heroes. But before the hero killed them both, the villain transferred his omnience to one of the heroes as a means of a curse of sorts. The hero was a robot so they thought they'd be fine, but the player of the robot hero started to lose sanity so they went to the only person they could think to save them. A villain who was a super genius. The villain removed the power in exchange for keeping the power, far too smart and self-controlled to use it to insanity, he kept it. Years pass, no progression on that plot point, most forget. Now 2016, the villain nearly conquers the world by becoming the boss of a superhuman agency that registers and employees all heroes. The heroes overthrow the agency, but don't defeat the villain. Now, 2019, the heroes face off against this villain again and overthrow an already successful world conquest, by breaking global mind control. 2021, the heroes run into the villain again, but are forced to ally against demons. The villain grabs a magic item. 2022, the villain returns and reveals they've been using the three uses of omniscience to take over the world three times and this one was his last success. The group was shocked and many didn't remember until reminded. Then he destroyed the heroes with nuclear weapons with only three survivors and those were scattered. Survival in the post-apocalypse turns difficult but then reality is rewritten thanks to using the magic item as a component in a device. Which restores everyone but the heroes. The remaining heroes and the new ones then face off in a thrilling hunt for a time travel device. Steal the device from the villain and then jump back into time restoring the world and saving their original characters by possessing their younger bodies. But before they go, they look back and see the world they lost, a perfectly ordered utopia where dissent is crushed and the god king rules thanks to their once negligence.
I once did a cyber punk style game, and dropped hints throughout the game that things weren't quiteas they seemed. I even went so far as to make jokes about glitches and clipping. Finally, at the end of the game, I had everything falling apart until the players woke up to find themselves in the pods they'd woken up in at the beginning of the game. They were then informed it was a simulation to train them for the real world, as a set up for future games
I'm in my fifth month of playing a LE illusionist drow sorcerer who's actively trying to kill Lolth. The party remains totally convinced I am a helpful elderly elf wizard who's on a last adventure before he retires. Lots of secret notes have been sent to the DM where I've been hiring on and then brainwashing any enemies lucky enough to survive us as a slowly building army to invade the Underdark. The reveal is due soon.
@@SeventyTinyWyverns It's gotten so much worse. The DM let slip how gods are powered by belief in this setting, two party members are now unwittingly worshipping my character because I set up a fake church.
Really hope my players don’t see this. KEEGAN GET LOST PLEASE AND THANK YOU. I said get! Shoo! Alright here we go. So I’m currently playing a Dragonborn wizard in a world that’s magic vs technology but the tech side makes an exception for clerical magic deeming that as not casting your own magic but using the gods which is fine. So my party is actually all from the tech side except me, I’m from the magic side. I was introduced as an infiltrator looking for the secrets of technology and intel on the enemy. The aforementioned Keegan is a paladin who works like a cop for the city I was in. Immediately upon meeting him I tried to make him look bad, I apologized Irl but said that’s what my character would do (I’m trying to give hints). After making him look bad (to be fair he was racially profiling a hobo by meta gaming) I eventually wound up working for him without his character knowing what I was, I was disguised as a human using disguise self. I then convinced his character to take me to the library (I was to translate an old book I could actually just read but he didn’t know that) and while there I texted the DM my actions to give him the slip ridiculously effectively. Nobody knew where I went and he had zero way to actually track me except I decided to make it possible for him to assist the DM. I had cast disguise self again to make myself into a guard, and instead of just walking out the gate I jumped off a bridge and used adapt self to grow gills and swim away. I said that would have been noticed and Keegan could pick up on it. Remember he still officially thinks I’m just a wizard looking for new knowledge (I also said I’m a follower of Deneir which is true). Since then he tracked me down outside since I didn’t bother to hide, and frankly couldn’t probably hide well in a forest anyways. We’ve met and he apologized for being racist yada yada. Now we’re traveling together and I’ve decided to keep a tally, every time he’s nice or mean to me I make a mark on the appropriate side of the T chart. This determines how I feel about him (big things can get more than one mark). Now the twist, I’m actually a professional secret ops agent and my father is high ranking in the magic kingdoms spy division. My mission to infiltrate and gather any useful information and the same mcguffins we’re hunting down as the campaign anyways, fragments of godhood from fallen or dead gods that can be used to grant someone great power or to revive their god. We’re officially trying to revive the gods and I’m not against this plan. But eventually the DM plans a confrontation between our group and probably my father to see what side I choose. And I honestly don’t know what I’ll pick but it’s probably not what people expect. I’ve been trying to subtly drop hints that I’m not just a scribe by knowing too much about certain things and being way too good at other things but I also don’t want to make it too obvious. And he someone reads this I’ll just change what I’m doing, it’s not too hard to change a background like this
I know one game I'm in the Druid was cursed long enough the curse became a major plot point in the story. Games on hiatus as DM is unavailable for an extended time, hoping they can return eventually as we were right at what I felt was the Point of No Return moment. I was in a game where my character never revealed their secret fully because it died. M&M where they party thought she was just a powerful martial arts mage who could shapeshift into a dragon. If her magic ever got surpressed though, or even spells on her canceled, she'd POOF back into her dragon form as that was her true form.
My cleric’s mace that had an extra damage feature also had a chance of animating anyone it killed into a zombie that tried to hunt down the wielder. I miss you, extra damage mace.
Oh, I have a good one. It was a Harry Potter inspired session. Students were going missing at Hogwarts and our adventurous students took it up on themselves to find out what was going on. As the years went on, however, bodies of the students were found. Horribly mutilated and foul magic was expected. The crimes were so grotesque, they thought it had to be a dark creature. So they eventually turned to the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, a man by the name of Jack. Jack was an older man, who always had a kind word and a kettle of tea ready. One of our adventurers learned from his rich father that Jack was most likely a thief because that brand of tea was far too rare for a teacher to buy. As a matter of fact, they stopped making it over a hundred years ago. But Jack would view the bodies as they found and always find them detestable. As he put it, "sloppy and unpolished". Eventually, after close to 3 years in real time, two of the party members went missing. They were found strung from the owlery by their own intestines. A gruesome and awful display. And sitting below them, in a wicker chair was Jack. As the heroes asked him what happened and who did this, he calmly responded "Did you know wizards can live for 500 years, sometimes even a 1,000. It's the year of our lord 2020 and I've been kicking since the 1800's." They asked him why this mattered and went to cut their friends down. Before they could do so, Jack was on them, kicking them away from the bodies and down, all without spilling a drop of tea. "Well, it matters twofold. One, this is some of my finest work, and two, you keep calling me Jack but I prefer the name those of Whitechapel gave me. The tabloids called me the most dangerous murderer to ever exist. But I always offered Jack the Ripper."
I was playing a spy, who went to this kingdom and joined the guards to, well. Spy on. Eventually, he joined the spies among that kingdom. We adventured together for some time, and one of the players was like. "We'll make a spy out of you, yet." Tehehehehehehe.
After several months of sessions, the party met one of the player character’s family. Namely her father and sister. In terms of in game time, she hasn’t seen them in years after abandoning the undead-worshipping cult that she was part of, who had raised her late mother into an undead. When they were all reunited, I revealed that her family had actually missed her, and didn’t hold any resentment for her leaving because they sympathized with her, and that her sister was secretly studying druidics in order to have some standing ground in the revolt against the cult they were all planning. But that’s just the context for what came next. The revolt against the cult happened, and it was then in the boss fight that I revealed that the leader, Ezekiel, was a vampire the entire time. A very powerful on at that. And that he’s been using his control of the undead in tandem with a powerful warlock patron, to corrupt the soul of the player character’s mother, as an undead abomination who was a force to be reckoned with in combat. TLDR, player’s former cult leader was a vampire, and she had to fight her own mother.
I was play a Gnome wizard in 3.5 heard about how God's was given powers thru worshipers. So I would introduce myself with my Nickname and I would act like a piest person to an unknown God but I would pray 🙏 to whilst casting spells which was my character's name hopefully to fool the people into worshiping them didn't get to play past 2nd campaign for DM Crashing do to Tree Token antics. And phenomenal dice rolls on insane called shots. Using familiar to scout landing quietly on the head of one invading orc played the distracted sparrow whilst one was trying to club me I called shot up the nose with a ray of frost nat 20 max die roll then flew off the orc club his buddy for it temporarily blinded him whilst in the middle of the idea.
Boy do i have a story, I was a forever DM, so when i got the chance to play as a character in my friends DND campaign he was DMing, i gladly joined. Upon character creation, we had 6 players, me and my sister decided to be cute and create twin artificers. my character had a list of priorities, protect his twin, get stronger, always uphold every deal he makes to the letter. the DM gave us the overview of the world, It was the Corrupt government rules and unknown gods hide amongst the crowd. he then passed each of us a note, If you act as a spy for the government you will be given 1 wish. I read the note, marked i would, then said to the group, that i didnt. fast forward, we were tasked with protecting the daughter of a fallen god to a safe haven, away from the government who was hunting her. so began the master plan, we travelled by train as far as we could, this took month RL until we hit the ocean. then, i decided, hey we are in a forest town by the ocean, im going to build us a boat to cross it. everyone liked the idea and began pitching in, gathering timber, funds, workers. i drew out actual blueprints irl, including things like Warding stones, Air conditioning, Bedroom Cabins which in a pinch we could convert to temporary prisons. during the construction, i had went and did some sidequesting, which involved pretending to be a cultist hunter and recruiting the leader of a cult (another player) as my assistant to hunt down his cult. this then whenever i had meeting with the government made it seem like i was a cult hunter, not a spy. i leaked our sailing route and told them to meet me at a certain point at a certain time. and then i ordered a fairly large amount of Sleeping mist. upon setting sail, i gave the daughter of the fallen god an amulet of nondetection. then night fell and everyone went to bed, except for the me who stayed up for first watch. While they were sleeping, i swapped out the coolant for the AC with sleeping mist, Causing everyone to go catatonic, locking every one up in manacles so they couldnt stop me, i then moved on to the risky part. I met up with the government, traded her off for a wealth of forbidden knowledge, a promotion to a duke, a seat on the goverment council, and a confirmation that the job was done, and a confirmation that they were fully responsible for her capture now and that i was no longer involved. i then sailed just out of eyesight. woke up the crew, and told them what happened and my plan for rescuing her, since i had made a promise, i would keep her safe, so thats how i became a Double agent, eventually climbing to the top of the government while actively helping my sister fight against it. this whole plot took 1.5 years to come to fruition, and so a lot was left out but i had fun with it, and there were no hard feeling from my Sudden but Inevitable betrayal.
I did a world of darkness campaign where me and the dm made everyone think they could be a traitor and side with the dms character. My character was a insane dude with mpd and was just a weirdo. Then after killing the final bbeg the dm made everyone want to kill eachother but then he murdered everyone but me. Then my character became sane eventually and decided to kill the dm character after becoming super over powered. Somehow surving through multiple campaigns where they tried to kill me. Then eventually he was like screw it dm character fights you. Then my character procedes to murder him and do the biggest taboo in vamp community and ate the dm character to become even more powerful.
Im currently playing a dnd style game where I’m pretending to be a human bard, when in reality Im a support mage trickster spirit. The problem is there is a person in the party who can see through deception so every time I do something he has to roll to see if he can see what I’m actually doing.
"dnd is not a spectator sport" my ass, what do you think everyone at the table currently not speaking is doing? If a dm just doesn't want a non playing audience at their table that's fine. But we literally live in an era where dnd is spectated by an audience to big success.
Be me session v1 buy a self heating frying pan Over the game cook During game buy sovereig glue Last session of the campaign Glue the pan to the beg?s face
My friends and I were playing 2nd edition. I was playing a dwarf and was searching for my cousin who had gone missing. After 2 years into the campaign we finally got to the final boss before ending the campaign. It was my cousin. Now my dwarf was not the most charismatic person and constantly butting heads with the other party members. So I made them persuade my character to fight with them instead of joining my cousin. They persuaded me.
Here's one I'm pulling as I type: players are working to save a beloved npc's father, who the baddies want to hurt through any means necesary. It's the final battle withe these particular enemies. Everyon'es on bodyguard duty. They're not really trying to kill him. Before his eyes, they're going to swiftly kill his daughter, who has low con and dex on Purpose, while the party scrambles to change tactics. Any means necessary. EDIT: she rolled a nat 1 on her save and took EXACTLY the amount of damage needed to kill her instantly with no saves and i didnt get to do my death monologue bc it was SO SUDDEN im YELLING
DM kinda knows about it, but not the details. Long story short, Pathfinder (Magic rogue essentially) rabbit guy named... Stue, with a companion, a large dire wolf with a secretive past, What they party doesn't know is, it's part werewolf and when in dire need (pun intended) it will bite me, providing me lycanthropy and turning my character into a were-rabbit... Yep. Still trying to figure that part out.
Was DMing my first serious game with a Goliath Barbarian, Dragonborn rouge, half elf cleric, and half ling fighter. ( Quite the group ) Anyway all the way back In session 2 they met a sheriff that was just supposed to bring them to the next village but then I started to roll good like insainly good for this guy. I remember him doing 15 damage with one shot from a light crossbow. The party fell in love with him and labeled him their lucky charm. And seeing this by session 3 I had found an insanely strong dragon that has the ability to shape shift. So naturally I had hints around the campaign (around 1 and a half years in length) that this sheirf was this ancient dragon. The boss terrorizing them up till the point when they killed him said "I'm not the real enemy he's already with you already gained your trust," The sheriff also survived things a normal human wouldn't die the dragon maintaining it's health in its form. They then went on killing dragon after dragon not suspecting a thing until lv20. They had just killed the "final boss" of the campaign and laughed and cheered, and the sheriff laughed too because he then transformed to his true form with no others to challenge his rule of the world but the party. With absolutely no health and 2 out of the 4 party dead they had beaten the npc that had helped them kill all there enemies in the campaign. Just to realize they where being used the whole time.
Help please. What is the best way to find a ttrpg group in my area. I have no experience but have wanted to play for a while I just don’t know how to look for a group. Especially one that would accept a brand new player.
I just spent a year irl to defend and champion some mediocre duchy only to have its leader be seduced by a party member and immediately sacrificed in a lich ritual.
Rogue here Kept stealing Stealing Stealing Capital end game Purchased enchanted arrows Monster den with end boss meetup Flash of light as I released multiple arrows All dead with end boss last hit points Tries to kill me with touch death Paladin I was hiding behind gets opportunity End boss cuts in half Years of work made up by dm thrown in trash He loses it kills all our characters and revs with gods lol My remaining arrows get taken away lol
The long con I played involved a meta bluff so it’s going to need some explaining. Adeptus Evangelion is a hack of Dark Heresy to play a mecha genre campaign in the flavor of Neon Genesis Evangelion. This leads to the setup for the meta con. The single most powerful enemy a party might face in a normal game is Tabris, who’s best trick is that Tabris fakes being one of the fellow teen pilots. The game expects players to be familiar with this plot point of NGE, so one of the suggestions to handle it is to simply quietly tell a player at some point “You are actually Tabris.” and watch hilarity (and a likely TPK) ensue. One of my players, let’s call him R, was having trouble putting together a character. R had some basics down, but struggled with the kinds of specifics you’d want in these character centric games. So I made R an offer, I’d take what R had worked out already and fill it in for R. But I would leave these facts to be something for R’s character and the party to find out during the campaign. I’d gamed with R for long enough that R knew well I wouldn’t use this to screw R or the party over, so R accepted. The key points R had nailed down can be summarized as ‘From France, trained their entire life to pilot, pistol expert.’ As the campaign went on, the player’s didn’t notice the obvious signs something was wrong with R’s backstory. Which was fine with me, but I had promised R to deliver, so I started to drop hints all was not well with R’s story. The command crew treated R slightly differently, R deliberately (in character) ignored a highly disturbing ‘find your own body on a stretcher’ sequence that came up for their sanity’s sake. (That lead to the staff being pretty caring and concerned for a bit afterwards.) I let R ‘fudge in’ skills a couple of times, explaining that while R didn’t remember it, it came naturally. The biggest ignored sign was when supplies for R’s weapons came in, they usually came from NERV (the organizations) France branch but players never met any member of the branch on screen. When the players started to suspect something was wrong with R’s background, they all leapt to the conclusion I had intended them to make, that R’s character was Tabris. Even R was pretty sure this was so and I refused to answer that one way or another because by now it was too much fun to have this mystery that the PC’s never seemed to have time to look into. Well as the campaign started to ramp up for the final battle, the PC’s were desperate to get every last bit of gear they could secured for their branch. Meaning they had the bright idea to hit up NERV France’s branch, and brought this idea up to the commander. Who had to awkwardly tell them ‘No.’ and refused to elaborate on the matter. A little investigation later, the PC’s asked the head of logistics about it, thus going behind the Commander’s back (he was being pretty suspect before this and it was a straw to break the camel’s back on trusting him.) The head of logistics, who had never met R’s character, thought he was being pranked initially. Because NERV France wasn’t a full branch with a base, it was a mech parts factory and always had been. The PC’s then questioned R’s character on their memories of the base itself, of the people there, of the ones who trained R. Naturally, I told them it was nothing but a blank, and now R was pretty convinced I was pulling the Tabris card on them. So R decided to get it over with and passed the brutal fear check to look into the shipment of ‘spare parts’ that had been shipped over from NERV France. Fortunately for the PC’s, they opened the box with the laptop full of files, manuals and invoices, first and not the parts themselves. I proudly announced to R the details of the entire series of ‘Mass Produced Pilot Patterns’ or MP3’s, which included R’s type listing out all the skills R’s character had, a couple they’d never tried or knew about, but missing a few that they’d developed during the campaign. Several NPC pilots from other branches they had met were also listed as MP3's. R was indeed ‘trained all your life’ to pilot, was from France and was an expert pistol user. Because they were manufactured at NERV France, which made MP3’s to pilot mechs and fulfill specific combat roles. Command had known this the entire time and this is why they’d been odd with them, unconcerned because they ‘had spares’. That ‘your body on a gurney under a sheet’ experience had been from a spare who’s container had failed. It wasn’t a hallucination, and the staff had feared R’s character would ‘go rampant’ at the revelation. R took this like a sport (complete with in character little friendship speech and all!) and we all had a laugh, until another player pointed out this meant that Tabris was loose and they had no idea where it was and they stopped laughing. I just laughed harder of course. The group still collectively decided never to leave such a ‘backstory hole’ open for me to exploit ever again.
Back in the days of advanced d&d our old gm wanted to take a break after a 3 yrs campaign. I ran the next campaign I used our characters from his campaign as npc same world thirty years later. They trained the party everything. Everyone found it cool my own old character was a high priest of the god of fate. The high priest acted as factor for their adventures to get things like vecna' s body parts various artifacts of evil that needed to be suppressed Well long story short the entire old heroes used them to become gods and take over the abyss completely pissing off the present party.
After clearing the sewers of the capital City of a goblin horde. A druid PC asked to petition the King to beautify the city as his reward. He was granted full control of the sewers. Over the course of a year, he planted roses all over the city, cut from the same parent bush. Using the sewer system, the druid connected all the roots of the various individual plants together, making it a single plant. Without the party knowing, he awakened the now city size rose bush. When the massive goblin army besieged and took the city, the PC had the citizens evacuate and we proceeded to annihilate the goblins with our ally, the city sized rose bush.
I tried a long con once, I was the DM and it was my first two sessions ever. I tried to make a rival enemy for my players who started as a dream… no one came for sessions 3-4.
This is both a con as the main campaign plot at the same time. We were playing basic 3E D&Don the Forgotten Realms with a more roleplaying and story-driven focus than the typical D&D. This was just after the Forgotten Realms Campaign guide came out. I had loved the Realms and played in them for a while in AD&D, but in 3E this was new. As an important information: The campaign was set a while after the times of trouble, when the gods had walked Faerun in mortal avatar forms. The campaign focussed on a slightly lesser known god, who was a victim of that cataclysmic events, Ibrandul, god of caverns and dungeons. In all my AD&D source material it mentioned that he fell victim to Shar and lost his portfolio to her, but it never explicitly mentioned that she killed him. Also, Ibrandul had two avatar forms. One a giant subterranean fire lizard and a colossal, humanoid storn form. I had no idea, that they were about to use Shar as a major focus of Forgotten Realms lore in the years to come (City of Shade, Phaerimms, the Shadow Weave and so on), I swear. I had only the faiths & Avatars sourcebook, the Times of trouble novels and my own imagination at my disposal, All PCs had started at Lvl 1 but I coaxed them each through a solo prologue adventure, so when they met, they all were Level 2. We had 5 players plus me as the GM. We had a duo of brother and sister (IRL they were husband and wife) from Silverymoon, she a human wizard, he a half-orc paladin of Tyr. We had a female half-elven ranger from the High Forest, a human farmer's son turned warrior from some unnamed village south of neverwinter and a barbarian from Mithril Hall (the village formed around that at least, sorry forgot the name). All characters were of good morals (we didn't follow the standard alignment types, but the group was good though and through.So far for the group. As the first thing in each solo session, I had each player draw a glass bead from a cloth sack. There were 4 white ones and a blue one. I never told any of them if their bead was anything special. In the end, the blue bead ended with the ranger. The characters met for the first time in the small town of Yartar. I described the village and its points of interest. As the characters arrived at different times, I had enough opportunities to prepare. The ranger, having arrived before noon, had already stored her gear and cart at the local warehouse/storage office and went shopping. (As a side note, she had a lot of preserved foods and survival gear in a pony-drawn cart. She was considered a caravan scout/guard and not travelling very light, as other rangers might do.) After she left quite a few coins at the store, the owner gave her free choice of a necklace. These necklaces were made by a local craftsman from stuff found in the region. Rustic, yet charming was my description. All had some kind of adornement, a gnarly piece of wood, a clay pearl, a coloured stone and so on. One had a dark stone, vaguely resembling a lizard dangling from it. She bought that one. (I had made sure she would choose that one. I had drawn every necklace, but put way more effort in that one. Also had it adorned with falcon feathers because I knew she would go for it then, as a falcon was her animal companion.) The group then met up and were forced to work together as an unusually large and organised group of orcs and goblins (led by hobgoblins, to explain the organisation) were about to attack Yartar. During this attack, the leader, a nasty hobgoblin, showed signs of being under the influence of a higher power, he believed to be the hobgoblin god. After his defeat, the PCs examined an amulet he wore. When the ranger touched it, the necklace suddenly tightened a bit around her neck and she felt a brief flash of warmth emanating from it. The necklace couldn't be taken off, after that moment, which freaked them all out, her especially. A few weeks and two separate adventures later, the group was travelling to Silverymoon, to consult with the mages there concerning the necklace. The necklace had given the ranger some benefits. She now had an additional +1 to Spot, Listen and Search but only underground. I had now talked to the ranger's player and suggested she should, over the next few months show increasing signs of agoraphobia (fear of wide, open places) and comfort when insode stone buildings or underground. She did this extremely well and quite subtle. She also believed to play a curse that lay upon that necklace, little did she know, har har. In fact, she had played it so subtle, that the other players had not even recognised the signs. As they were travelling through mountainous terrain, they had sought shelter for the night in a cave. They knew they were followed by a small cell of Malar cultists, of which they were about to inform the Silverymoon authorities. So they put up guards. When the ranger was doing her shift, she failed a roll to stay awake. This was of course the moment the Malarites (no priests, mostly some hunters with a swarm of vicious beasts and a gnoll) attacked. Alarmed she awoke and screamed to wake the others. As the others woke up, they saw a 8 foot tall "golem" defending the cave entrance against their foes and making a very good effort of it as well. After the fight, the golem just stood there. The ranger was nowhere to be seen. After an unsettling hour, the golem transformed into the ranger. She had no recollection of anything, as if she was torn from her body. By the way, the necklace now could be taken off without a problem. The campaign lasted for almost 2 years. The PCs were around Lvl 14-15 at the end. The ranger had learned to harness the divine spark, that had been transferred from the figurine to her body. They had fought servants and plots of Shar throughout the Sword Coast and the Silver Marshes, even travelled to Tethyr one time. In the end, they visited the pocket dimension, where the Shades were banished to, to wrest a part of Ibrandul's essence back from the Mistress of the Night. The ranger got elevated to demigodhood with the former barbarian as her first priest. So my Realms now have a neutral good aligned demigod of Caverns and the realms below, Sayara; more centered on guidance and protection than domination.