What was the biggest long-con that the DM or players have ever pulled off in a D&D campaign? Part 4 

These are amazing. Garthog's story is a great reminder that knowledge is power. The second is what happens when PVP is 'allowed' despite saying it isn't. The third is just a fun story.

I haven't reached the 'gotcha' moment just yet, but this is something I've been building up since session one. An evil Emperor in my campaign keeps tabs on everyone through magical birds he created millenia ago. He can see through these birds eyes, but he doesn't control them, so he let them spread across the world. They are cute little birds, and one of my players is an animal lover. So, in the first session, I just put one of those birds in front of her, and she did everyting in her power to domesticate it. She failed, sadly, so I waited a few more sessions before giving her another opportunity - didn't want the players to realize I WANTED that to happen, so I waited a while to make sure they'd forget. Second time worked, and the bird is now part of the team. Thanks to that, The main baddie can spy on the group at any time, and I'm just waiting for that to become relevant and see what they'd do with the bird.

We did a one off, so short in perspective, but long for the session, which lasted all night. A friend of mine made a paladin modeled after Holy Diver that used a trident. I was playing an orc cleric. During our adventures we found a trident under mysterious circumstances. The party asked me to take it and hold onto it as we suspected it was magical. Fast forward and we've entered a combat that is rather challenging. Holy Diver has thrown his trident at an enemy to save a party member and is without a weapon. I choose to toss him the mysterious trident for him to use. The DM has me roll an attack roll to successfully throw it without hitting him. Naturally, I failed miserably and he gets cut trying to catch it. He then proceeds to use the trident for the battle and it is definitely more powerful than his previous one. We all assume it's a +1 weapon or some such. Hours later we enter a chapel and find a warlock BBEG who dialogues at us for ruining his sport. He then notices the trident and smiles and tells us we don't stand a chance when one of our own will stand with him. He then says an activation spell while looking at Holy Diver and commands him to betray his friends. Suddenly, to the EVERYONES surprise (including the villain), my cleric turns and stabs the mage in the side. Turns out the trident was cursed so that the FIRST person to draw blood with it would be bound to the warlock. The party did not fair well without their healer...

This is a home brew, long running 1 to 20 campaign. An entire kingdom has been sent into a death spiral. Undead roam the land, huge monsters from all realms pop up everywhere, and even the survivors from the destroyed cities seem to be unhinged. My players are level 12 at the moment. As they travel from strong hold to strong hold that haven't fallen (yet). They keep running into the King who is VERY eccentric . His name is Bartholomew Estevot Heroldo Orthinian Letrine Dufemerious Elyas Rannulfus. This king loves his name, and introduces himself in full every time they meet. He has proven to be a spell caster. He'll cast teleport or Planar Shift every time he is done talking to leave. He also has a very curious wand that has an illusion over top of it to hide its true form. One player saw past the illusion once. The shaft is a human spine, on it's top is a human skull with glowing green eyes. If you take the first letter of each of his names, it literally spells BEHOLDER. He also has the wand of Orcus. There were a few times where the King practically ran from a Gold Dragon that had inherent true sight. My party is still COMPLETELY oblivious. They love when the King shows up, and even have given him a few gifts to "help his people". The King keeps rewarding them with a "hot tip" on where old stashes of weapons, or loot may be. It always turns into a death trap. One time the cleric single handed hauled out the entire "dead" party, so he could rez them back in town. Can't wait to see there faces when they finally figure it out.

A long con my party only figured out a year later. So they know this character and want revenge for the stuff he did to them Being a mini BBEG of a sort and the last name was Vellum. Around a year of investigation and intrigue later they come to find out this person is part of a secret organization and his job in the organization?. He handles all the paperwork and documents of course :) when it hit them they screamed

Pathfinder Kingmaker, no spoilers. I hid my current character's actual motivation for entering the campaign till just last week actually. He was running under the pretenses of wanting to stop a crime wave of banditry running under a robber baron which had managed to reach his home in the outskirts of a swamp. Last session I let it slip to the group who he now trusts why he's here. The bandits killed his wife and burned his home while he was out on the road. He's a cleric of Erastil and so he immediately had issues with the Stag Lord using the symbol of his god for evil. Basically my idea was to take the bare bones of Dracula's backstory in Netflix Castlevania, then give him a moral compass. Save a couple things like making him a dwarf and well...not a complete madman. Party's absolutely loving it so far and I've taken a villainous motivation and turned it to a quest for righteous revenge which is something I've wanted to try for a few years.

11:00 "rockandstone" Did I hear ROCK AND STONE?! ⚒️⛏️

guy from 6 minutes is THAT player... good luck finding a game

My best long con (that came to fruition) was from our pirate game where I play Aresse (Ah ress) an armorer artificer/Mastermind Rogue gestalt. So it all started with a cursed ring of protection and elemental Slayer cutlass. After attuning to it I was cursed into 1. Being extremely paranoid and 2. Believing everyone was out to get me. She decided if the party was out to get her she would get them first. Now Aresse is basically a rip off of captain Nemo even down to planning to build a murder sub with which to wage war on the world. So she was nothing if not patient, methodical and efficient. Thus began a multi month plan to kill as many birds with one stone as possible. Step 1. Frame the Pirate King for planning to betray the party. Step 2. Lure the 2nd and 3rd (a team made up of a diviner and a champion decked out with vorpal weapons) most powerful people on the plane into an ambush. Both were accomplished via a forged letter from the PK to 2nd and 3rd that I passed on to an information broker I knew, while "conveniently finding" a rubbing of it in the captains quarters. Of course we need to rewind to the party being informed of a murderer on board our ship (nothing personal. I just needed a crewman loyal to the PK to disappear). Sorcerer uses wish to cast zone of truth. I willingly fail the save and deny any knowledge along with the rest of the crew. Mastermind capstone makes me immune to ZoT. Druid finds the body in an aerial sweep and brings it back to the ship. Later I try to drug the PK and use animate objects to fake a revenant attack on the PK (accidentally resurrecting my victim as an actual revenant. Luckily i was able to ditch him over the side and revanents aren't known for their swim speed.) The party is thoroughly convinced PK is plotting to betray them so he can take the ship (it can only be won in combat) but they set a course that avoids my planned ambush despite my suggestions we make a counter ambush. The "PK" (disguise self) is seen correcting the course towards the ambush and they finally agree that my plan is tactically sound. 2nd shows up alone and disintegrates PK. Then she meteor swarms the ship. Twice. Me and the druid/monk come through unscathed but our sorlock eats a ton of damage and burns his one use of "I ignore this damage" for the day. I offer to take him down to the hold and patch him up. Once we're alone I stab him in the back. Initiative is rolled and I stab him again. Druid hears the commotion and rushes down. Then everything goes white. Earlier in the campaign we had saved a time dragon and it repayed the favor by reversing time to undo the impending party wipe. Right to the moment when we were made aware there was a murderer aboard. I spin a story about him having accidentally drowned in a keg of booze and the reporter having seen me give him a sea burial. I got uncursed, victim got reincarnated and retired with a small fortune. And sorlock didn't trust me for quite a long time after that.

So I’m the DM in this campaign and we have a few new players so I decided to have some fun. They are in my home brewed world of Amminia, which was ravaged by a ancient oath breaker Paladin warlord who was defeated by two powerful spell casters by trapping his soul in an object. The players know this object exists but not what it is. Our warlock has the object, which is a metal skull that talks to her during her rests. The skull has now convinced the party go find the bosses body to make sure they “destroy” it, unbeknownst to them that they will be ensuring his return. I can’t wait for this one.

I may be a bit late, but I think I have a really good one. I was running a 5th Edition D&D one-shot for some friends that turned into a mini-campaign when everyone decided they wanted to keep going. That first one-shot, one player had been playing a very stupid goblin, and he decided that while he was fine for a one-shot, the character wasn’t great for a long campaign. So he asked me if he could switch characters, which I agreed to because I had a plan. I confided in this player that after the events of the one-shot, (the party had killed a thief in cold blood) the local authorities were interested in the party and wanted to send an undercover officer to investigate them. I had intended for this officer to be an NPC, but I offered for the player to be the officer himself, to which he very quickly agreed. The new character meets the party and goes through the adventure fighting more thieves, all the while gathering information on the party’s multiple criminal activities. Then came the trap. The player was “called home” when the party goes to fight the leader of the thieves, a scientist who has been using the money to fund horrific experiments. The party fights his greatest creation, a heavily modified gelatinous cube. (One of the party members in particular was horrified when he sliced off a part of the cube that quickly shaped itself into the form of the player’s character and started attacking) The party defeats the monster and steps towards the scientist, who hastily surrenders. He tells them that at least they managed to defeat the monsters in the cages elsewhere in his lab. When the party look at him confused, he says in horror, “You didn’t deal with them? But that means…” and as he speaks, the police storm the dungeon and arrest everyone. In the station, the party shouts that they haven’t done anything wrong, to which the police reply that they have proof of the party killing people without bringing them to trial first, of taking the law into their own hands. They say that the town near the dungeon was destroyed due to the party releasing monsters upon it. When one of the members of the party asks what proof they have that they did anything wrong, in walks the undercover cop. She reveals to the party everything that she knows about them, the crimes they committed in front of her and the ones they had committed before that they had talked about. The party is thrown in jail for the rest of their lives to think about what they’ve done, but the player playing the undercover cop tells me that she wants to try one last thing. She sets them free, wipes all mention of their crimes. Because (and the party still don’t know this part) her true goal is to rule the world, and she knows she’ll need connections on both sides of the law to pull that off. So when she’s finished positioning herself to take over, nobody will see it coming.

PANR has tuned in.

So I’ve already posted a story in these comments, but here’s a second one just for fun. This one literally happened today. This one isn’t that long of a con (it was set up for a one-shot) but due to preparation time for the one-shot and conflicting schedules among my players, we weren’t able to play it for several months. I got an idea to run a small 5e one-shot between sessions of a heavily homebrewed world, as a little way to play a harmless trick on my players. I told them ahead of time that there would be a small bit of homebrew thrown in, but for the most part it would be straight 5e. The idea was to run a heist of sorts, where the players had to rob a bank and get a powerful artifact from a vault. All five of my players said it sounded like fun. So the setup began. I told each one privately, “I used a random number generator, and I want you to play the part of an undercover cop.” They all agreed, and the trap was set. I also told them as a group that each one would have a small item to conceal from the others, and then told each one privately that their special item would be a sending stone shaped like a police badge. This was how they were supposed to keep in contact with their superiors. Then I gave the group a bit of backstory. The setting was somewhat modern-ish, with magical technology in place of a lot of our technology: magic vehicles a lot like cars, electricity-based lighting, etc. They were all criminals (ha ha) working for a notorious crime boss named “Jimmy the Axe”. Jimmy was a dwarf who loved his axe. Their mission was to steal the artifact and bring it to Jimmy’s right-hand man, who would deliver it to Jimmy and put in a good word for each member of the party. Of course, each character’s REAL goal (which I revealed in private) was to use this to get close to Jimmy’s right-hand man, capture him, and get him to flip on Jimmy. Each player was told that their respective police forces would be there to surround the meeting point and capture the criminals. That way they wouldn’t be outnumbered. Of course, in truth, each character was told this through their sending stone, which Jimmy had had replaced with ones that spoke to him. The day we play finally comes. The party enter the bank, first gassing everyone inside with Essence of Ether, and crack the vault. (It had a puzzle to solve that resolved in the combination being “12345”) The party enter the vault and take the artifact. Then, they leave the bank, pile into their getaway vehicle, and drive off. They arrive at the place where they were told to meet the right-hand man and get out. They walk in and sit around a table. Then, the right-hand man reveals what’s really going on. He explains that he’s a cop and the whole building is surrounded, so they might as well surrender. At this, the party are confused. One member of the party even asked, “You’re here to arrest *all* of us?” Then one of the party members revealed he was a cop as well. The rest of the players started to figure it out. The player in question thought everyone was confused because they didn’t expect his character to be a cop, but when each of them started revealing that they were cops too, he got it. Everyone thought it was really funny. Then, the other shoe dropped. The “right-hand man” spoke into his sending stone, to ask what was going on. And suddenly a spell was cast. A slightly modified Time Stop. (The only modification was that the characters were aware while time was passing) A laugh came through the “right-hand man’s” sending stone. One that started as a police chief’s and then shifted into the unmistakable evil cackle of Jimmy the Axe. He explained that he had come up with this plan to take all of the cops in his operation out in one fell swoop. Then Time Stop dropped, and in an instant the sending stones went flying towards the center of the table. They all broke open and revealed a small point of orange light inside each one. At that moment, six ninth level Delayed Blast Fireballs shook the building. The casters all had the “Elemental Adept (Fire)” feat, so any fire resistance was negated and any 1’s became 2’s. The spell save DC was 27. Needless to say all of their characters died. And that was the greatest con I’ve ever pulled on my players so far. Also, just so nobody calls me a bad DM, I know my players and was pretty sure they would enjoy this, which they did. They thought it was a pretty neat twist, though they did all fight tooth and nail to keep their characters alive.

The longest "Con" I had was the con of pretending I was having fun in a D&D game where a DM claimed to be open to suggestions from players but every time I tried to make a suggestion he'd turn it around on me and make it seem like I am at fault somehow. He also complained with me about a module we were doing and then a lot longer down the path chewed me out for "Complaining about the module every month" when I made multiple attempts to appeal to him saying that "If we want to switch out of the module we can say" and just really showed me every time something like that happened that *He* was clearly stressed the fuck out about DMing and wasn't taking it well sooo I just kept my mouth shut and the DM let me and the other players rework our characters since we've been playing for a bit and I decided to switch levels over to Druid because I picked Berserker knowing that Berserker was crap but was under the misunderstanding that my DM would work with me to make it so my character wouldn't just die from using their main feature which literally just gave barely any bonus. Soooo yeah, MCed into Druid because Druid is my "I'll always enjoy playing this class" kinda class and just tried to ride out the game because when I tried to quit priorly the DM started to get super weird about it and even asked me in a game we both were playing in as players "why is this game okay, but my game isn't?" and it was just so fucking awkward and had so much sociopathic vibes or psychopathic or what ever the fuck the word was so finally the one player who would *Constantly* make jokes at my expense ended up deciding to turn the party on my character and kill her off before desecrating her body by smashing her head in and feeding her to a giant. I could have done literally anything to stop this, but honestly I was so done with that shit that I took it as an opportunity after thinking on it and just stopped participating in the game and never showed up again. Honestly was a really good step to take for my mental health cause I realized that there was a lot of very just toxic shit going on in that group and honestly kinda in the friend group as well and I know that they don't intend to do that shit... well, at least, *Hope* they didn't, but in the end they still did it and they were just not good for my mental health to be my *Only* friend group. So yeah. An upside of that is it lead me to finding a new group of people to hang out with who were much more conscious about people's feelings and really helped me out of a huge slump with that prior shit of always thinking that I'd just have no friends I could talk to about my feelings cause pretty much everyone I'd talk to regularly in that prior group either made me feel like it was always my fault or just made fun of shit so... yeah. Honestly, I still consider them friends cause, well, honestly I don't really have a good reason, but I will give a lesson to who ever makes it this far... Never have just one friend group. Always at least two. As someone who is an introvert and hates socialization I know that is a really tall fuckin order, but don't let yourself fall victim to negativity echo chambers cause your feelings are valid and you deserve to have joy just as much as the people around you. So yeah. Idk if this counts as a long con, but enjoy.

Didn't know you were a DRG fan... For rock and stone!

11:02 DID I HEAR A MOTHERFUCKING ROCK AND STONE???? ROCK AND STONE!

I’ve got a story you might enjoy We were doing what was essentially a battle Royale style game. Winner gets a small island with a castle on it. We saw several enemy teams. One was at end of bridge but down to three members, all wounded., Another team had most of its members and was pursuing the first, but was attacked by giant squid trap at bridge...our team was lagging a bit and the zombie hoard (basically our storm circle) was close. At least one more weakened team was behind us. That team was down to just a few tanky but slow units. First, my team used spells to create a barrier behind us and slow the rear team… leaving them to zombies. They hit us pretty hard, but zombies would finish them off before that could be a problem. Since sharks infested the waters and zombies were approaching, we really had to book it across this bridge and into a multi squad battle. I, an artificer used oil so our team could slip n slide across the bridge. The dm allowed it if we passed acrobatics check. I rolled at advantage since I cast it. Everyone passed the check… except me. I rolled I think a 2 and 3. Two players rolled high (not quite nat 20, it was 18 or 19) and not only slid past squad fighting the squid, but dm said they had enough momentum to score opportunity attacks with advantage Against squad at bridge end, as they were distracted fighting other squads further ahead of us. I of course, slipped and slammed right into an enemy spearman at other bridge end. with fire enchanted spear. Headfirst. Then the oil ignited. Somehow I survived his next attack an Saved a lot of time for party. But the crazy stuff doesn’t end there. It gets so much better. Two players chose wardrobe malfunction as a joke cantrip long before knowing anything about this arena session idea. This arena had a special rule: all contestants get necklaces that when pressed can teleport them out of arena if otherwise fatally wounded, so they don’t die. They get teleported to a losers booth where they are (very slowly) healed, but also humiliated by drunk spectators. One player remembered in the long and sarcastic list of terms and conditions for tourney it said they are not responsible for lost necklaces. That party member was also a skilled thief with wardrobe malfunction, limited flight ability, and invisibility spell. They also synergized well with another player who had the same cantrip. Not long into the royale They reminded us that if Lose your necklace for any reason and it’s your own fault… in an absolutely brutal and sadistic way. First, These Two players started stealing every necklace they could and leaving wounded (not not ko’d contestants to the zombies. Ostensibly to slow the horde down instead of just eliminating the other squads. And moving on. Then when things started looking up, some of us got the idea to not only win the tourney, but destroy it and loot more than just the first prize. How? Remember how I said the defeated contestants don’t die, but get teleported to loser booth if they keep necklace? Well what happens when you not only remove necklaces from some contestants, but give them to a few infectious zombies? Now you’ve got zombies in the booth attacking already downed npcs and drunk clueless npcs next to them. This would have led to a terrifying chain reaction if the dm didn’t immediately shut this down by saying not only are zombies they too stupid to press the crystal, but also they dont affect undead. and the arena had elite guards all throughout arena in case of something like zombies escaping (which wasn’t mentioned much prior but makes sense). We all laughed the idea off as if it was a joke. Still, between using the fallen as distractions for zombies, making illusions of screaming kids to further guide them to other squads first, lots of theft, and a few other unrelated war crimes, it became abundantly very clear our party were not gonna be the noble heroes of this dnd campaign.

Mine spanned the course of 2 campaigns, one I played in and one I DM'd. The other DM was my player as well. One player, let's call Kazir, wanted to try out a new character and pitched playing one that would be an agent for the BBEG. He would roleplay getting information to the BBEG about the party, with no PC's or their players becoming wise to this. In the campaign my player was Dm'ing, there were 2 other players within my campaign. In order to throw them off, I asked the DM if my good-guy cleric could leave the party of murder hobos. He was down for this, as the party's actions had ended in the death of innocent CHILDREN (mainly one problem player, but alas), especially when I asked if I could be a double agent bent on betraying the party. I had acted like this was a sudden realization of a fun character concept, which everyone had a great time with once I showed my true motives. This all led to the surprise of the DM when, while playing in my campaign, realized this was all to dovert him from my own campaign, when Kazir went for his betrayal. The whole process was about 6 months of weekly sessions

That last one is awesome

I haven't initiated it yet, but I do have a con I'm about to pull. This stems from my character and another player's character not getting along, and the group (immediate and extended family with the DM as my brother in law) wants to fix that. I have become privy to the plan to have the two of them captured and forced to work together, which doesn't sit well with me. My plan is instead to have my character swapped out with a changeling with the same class, but different subclass and personality. They will initially imitate the original character but with some new quirks, but quickly evolve into someone the other problem character can get along with. The DM doesn't seem to keen on it with his response being something like 'how does this solve the conflict between OG character and other character?' I want to do it anyway since I already tried changing my character to be more in tune with the other and it a) didn't feel true to my character and b) the other player did not reciprocate in a very frustrating manner. So, I've come up with another opportunity. This this campaign, we came across a sad, pathetic goblin that has been essentially adopted by the group. My character is not happy about this, but as a paladin they try their best to protect the poor sad creature from the antics of the party (the 'parent' characters are a niece and nephew of mid to young teen ages, so questionable parenting decisions occur frequently, including asking the goblin if they want to play tag during a short rest in a zombie infested village we haven't even 1/2 finished clearing out). My character has gone behind the backs of the other characters in the current city we're visiting and has approached another group about taking in the goblin and actually giving it real fighter training as the goblin has actually shown some character development that would fit with getting training, in his mind. I WILL be getting push back from the party when the group approaches our party and attempt to take in the goblin, I know. I don't know if the goblin will end up joining or not, but the plan is that the paladin will storm off because this group has proven they are not fit to make decisions that will ensure the wellbeing of this poor goblin and he will no longer stand for it and cannot condone their actions. I'm hoping the goblin is kept from joining to make this work better, but I may just do it anyway. At that point, another paladin from a different set of kingdoms will get wind of this and use it as an opportunity to join the party. This will be done in part because they actually belong to a kingdom outside the Lords Alliance, and their kingdom does not trust the Lords Alliance. This will be viewed as the perfect chance to infiltrate a party with ties to the LA and even pose as a member of the LA, acting as a spy. The new character is a redemption paladin and believes in talking things through much more than the original paladin, which will mean they will seek peace with the problem character more directly and even agree more often with the decisions that one makes (likes to talk through problems and/or throw money at them). Only person who will know will be my wife and MAYBE the DM. Reason for only maybe on the DM is because he didn't seem to like the original idea but I am putting my foot down on just changing my original character's personality for convenience; I'd rather have a new character and keep the original faithful to himself. I very much look forward to seeing if anyone in the group catches on to the changes in personality, not to mention the different abilities that come with the change in subclass/race. Even that is being calculated to an extent. If asked why I don't use my racial spell, I already set it up as being a traumatizing first use of the spell (hellish rebuke used by a Teifling Paladin) and they don't want to use it again as a character trait/flaw. So, that is my long con on which I am about to embark. Completely swapping out an existing character with a changeling and seeing how long I can get away with it. And since my new paladin doesn't have the restriction of the Devotion subclass (can't lie) I think I can play that to my advantage.

Sadly I’ve never had the opportunity to play a “long con” on my group as a player or as a DM. The problem with my old group was that everyone in the group who was a skilled/talented DM had the same fatal flaw. They all got bored too easily. So they would often start a new campaign, and then abandon it after a few weeks because all of a sudden “they’d rather be a player”. As a result I’ve got a binder full of 1st level characters, some of them with really cool backstories or concepts, that never got to reach 2nd level because of the DM’s disinterest in running a long term campaign. The only time I’ve ever got to witness a long con play out is on Critical Role, when the Dragonborn Paladin Arkhan cut off his own hand, replaced it with Vecna’s, and then teleported away saying “Nothing personal, it’s just business.” Now that was the biggest swerve I’ve seen in a long time. That was almost as epic as Hulk Hogan joining Scott Hall and Kevin Nash and forming the nWo. I only wish that I had something that amazing to share with everybody.

I have a long con that was created by my players. Background: in my world there are pockets of corruption that can take people and creatures over, and they are trying to create chaos to take over and find some items. The cult that worships the corruption is using the words of an anarchist who tried to disrupt an area. The anarchist is also the father of one of my characters (who hates his father), and my players have speculated that the anarchist is taken over by the corruption. However that is not the case as the only info I told them is that they use the words of the anarchist to stir things up, they are going to surprise themselves when it comes out the anarchist is just that, an anarchist

ROCK AND STONE!

10:59 Deep Rock Galactic reference ftw.

Love your content!!

Nice! I like all of these.

The wizard deserved worse.

Wizard got what they deserved honestly. ~_~

That first story. That Jedi learned NOTHING from Order 66.

I really wish I had a good story for you.

Need more derailment vids

All I heard the ogre story was red flags. Like aren't yall supposed to he friends? Who acts like that? The wizard and orge are both shitty the dms shitty for letting it happen

First comment

Yeah, I don’t really agree with what the second person did. The wizard did not do the right thing, but we were not told what his original character did to get turned into an ogre. As well, it sounds like he was kicked out of the party after he killed the wizard. This player made the decision to keep playing and planned to disrupt the party. If he had an issue with a player, then he needed to resolve that issue with the player or the DM. Instead he decided to be THAT PC. I think he was in the wrong, and deserved to be kicked out of his group.