I will be a double agent in the party, trying to get them to kill my other character. - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

I will be a double agent in the party, trying to get them to kill my other character.

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
rhakiath
May 28, 2009 18:33:35 My DM and I recently got the idea after the last campaign collapsed (see sig).

We create a party of monster PC's, including satyrs, etc. It will exist in the same world as the last campaign, with my human character (the only surviving PC) as a major entity in the new plot.

The monsters will all be neutral, and My pally Roland will be going around doing things during the campaign relating to "temples". Essentially the temples are the key to preventing the apocalypse... The monster party won't know this, and will learn very slowly about this aspect of the plot.

Now, my PC in this monster party will be a satyr bard, who happens to be an evil bastard. I will help the party and try to influence them into attacking the paladin; It will be the party's choice to attack him or not, and whether or not to be good aligned. If they listen to the satyr and attack the pally, I will roleplay as him for the battle (likely with a tough CR, since I am using exalted feats and PrC's) and if they win, the consequences will be appropriate. If they discover that my satyr is using them, the pally will likely join with them for whatever climactic battle the DM has in mind.

The trick is that they never meet him until after hearing a good bit about him, good and bad. I had been good to most monstrous races in the past, so some NPC's will talk about me as merciful and good; others whom I had owned in the past would think ill of me. My pally's mentor's deeds would also be confused for my own and vice versa, since monsters wouldn't distinguish between 2 nearly identical humans, adding to the confusion. My satyr will try to convince them both in and ooc that the pally should be killed.

So essentially, me and the DM are working together to mess with the party's heads and make it tougher for them to see their path. We will of course allow all foreseeable outcomes to proceed naturally, and not try to railroad them. I for one would find it funny that I will pass notes to the DM the entire time and keep a poker face throughout the campaign over whether they can trust me; and that I will control my paladin should they choose to fight me.

Most of the people in the party are used to playing dungeon crawls or more straightforward adventures, so I think this would add a lot of depth.

I would love to be a satyr one moment, then smile, pick up my character sheet, walk over to the DM, sit down next to him, and begin smiting my former party due to their belief in the plotting of the satyr. Sound like an interesting mechanic for the campaign?
#2
silent_stone
May 28, 2009 18:43:30 Sounds like a brilliant way to annoy and upset your fellow players. Good, evil, neutral, unaligned, whatever—the game seems to work best when the players are all on the same team.
#3
rhakiath
May 28, 2009 19:14:48 the rest of the party is unaligned, but If the party follows the main quest, they'll likely end up fighting either my paladin or my satyr. The satyr only wants to try to manipulate them into being more evil, and therefore use them for accomplishing his ends.

The party can listen to me, or choose to be more good aligned and help or not oppose the paladin. I'm not trying to annoy or upset them, more like I'm the devil on their left shoulder trying to get them to take revenge on this paladin for seeming to purposefully and systematically harm innocent monsters.

The monsters in this world are beginning to battle humans, so this N party has to decide whether to side with fellow monsters, avoid it, or try to form peace.

There has to be some kind of conflict in a party, whether it be deciding to use stealth vs. brute force to solve problems, whether to be helpful or self serving, or whether to be good or evil. Having 5 identical characters is a drag. The players might not want to kick an irl friend out of the party due to in character issues, but we are a mature group and I know I am not exactly indispensable to this party. I would not feel the least bit angry if they killed or exiled me, considering my role in the story. It's the trust dynamic between the ooc players I intend to make them question...

If anyone would get hurt by this, it'd be me; my satyr character would be the first to be killed or cast out by the party if they found out I was not exactly loyal. Or, my paladin character would be killed who I actually like. It's not as if any choice they have would screw them over, it's more like they'd have a vague idea of what they were really doing, and their main decision over whether to attack the pally or not would cause consequences:

they might either decide to ditch the satyr and join the main quest, and try to save the world; or they could let things happen naturally and get a neutral ending, or choose to be evil if they want an evil-friendly ending.

The 15 or so levels between their encounter and the beginning would be plenty of time to decide their characters' outlook. The campaign will have plenty of other sources of fun for the month(s) until then.
#4
silent_stone
May 28, 2009 20:14:20
It's the trust dynamic between the ooc players I intend to make them question...

This is exactly the sort of thing that I found alarming. The trust between players is rather important. Without this trust, the players in your group will have to constantly wonder whether or not any one of the other players is actually going to screw them over in the future, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

I would love to be a satyr one moment, then smile, pick up my character sheet, walk over to the DM, sit down next to him, and begin smiting my former party due to their belief in the plotting of the satyr.

Further, the fact that you seem to be sharing the DM's seat to a degree, makes your two(!) characters on the verge of being DMPCs, which are so easy to do wrong. It sounds to me like both your characters have a special place in the story arc—the other PCs are merely a side story to this Paladin vs. Satyr arc.

These things can easily cause bad feelings in a group that last a lot longer than even a single campaign. Thus, I maintain that it is better for all the player characters to be "on the same team." This doesn't mean they should all be the same, nor does it mean they all have to have the same goals, nor does it mean they all have to agree all the time.

However, I will admit I'm not the end-all-be-all of DMs; I possess no especial wisdom. Hopefully I'm wrong about this and your fellow players will love this sort of thing.
#5
rhakiath
May 28, 2009 20:30:07 I have never tried this sort of thing, but I think it will be a good experiment and certainly very unique.

It is rather the Dm's job to be unpredictable, and as such, this is the last sort of plot twist I think they'll expect. I, as a character, will play fair and not "know" things my character shouldn't know, but I'll be the most knowledgeable about the temples and main plot. I'll try to avoid being the direct party leader, and won't be privy to any information from the DM besides my character's intent.

Therefore, I would not be any more powerful than the rest of the party, and would have to play the same way as them to profit and survive. I would get no special treatment from the DM, for example, if I turned out to die at some point. The mitigating factor is that both the paladin and the satyr would both be played by me, and be about equal in power; it is the party's choice who they'd want to play with.

Your concerns had certainly occurred to us, and we are not totally decided on how we'll play it or how suspicious my character would be. If we thought it would be less fun we certainly would not consider it, but our group loves to homebrew, alter game rules, and experiment, so I think this group will at least be tolerant of the idea if not totally loving it. I'll let everyone know if it turns out to work, it might be a cool idea for others to try.
#6
Guest1970847198
May 31, 2009 1:59:21 A few of my own experiences:

1) As a GM I had one of the players, IC, recruited to tilt the players towards the worse of two options. They were very unclear whether they would have gone that way anyways (I give the players tough choices with no clear answer), but it definitely rankled them a bit. There was a sense of "my ability to decide has been taken away." LESSON: Players like to make informed decisions

2) As a player, we had another party member we suspected (both IC and OOC) of having switched allegiances to the villain of the campaign. Every session involved some unfun tension of whether we could trust him and working around this without outright kicking him out. Eventually, a nasty combination of failed Sense Motive and Bluff rolls led my character to believe he'd 'caught' that person in the middle of an obviously double-agent activity. He panicked, tried to run, and we killed him on the spot. LESSON: Paranoia breeds antisocial gameplay. (And it turned out he was just being an idiot, not a double agent!)

3) We recently had a new player join the campaign. Wanting to be inclusive, we pretty much warped all our plans to include her. Because of this, our well-laid plan collapsed, and we had to spend two sessions regrouping and tracking our BBEG back down again. I actually very nearly quit over this. LESSON: Being screwed over IC, for being polite OOC, sucks.

---

Basically, you can get away with small amounts of it, as long as the players always have the final decision. However, the more paranoia you foster, the more antisocial the game will become. In this particular case, it might work depending on how informed they are come the final decision (if they slowly learn about it, they might form an opinion and decide to stick with it even when they know the full truth. Fun to RP ) It helps that your character isn't planning to PK or anything, just influencing and willing to go along with their choice.

---

If it's a group mature enough to handle the Big Reveal, they're probably mature enough that you could tell them in advance too! Why should you be the only person trusted with OOC knowledge? At worse they kill you in session 1, get it out of their system, and go on to have a nice normal campaign without a double-agent that would have enraged them later on
#7
mythster
May 31, 2009 22:24:03 I think the idea is awesome, as a DM having a player you can trust to not so much be a "double agent" but be a part of the plot and doing things with the DM behind the screen is often really, really fun and can lead to some awesome stuff.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 rhakiath May 28, 2009 18:33:35	My DM and I recently got the idea after the last campaign collapsed (see sig). We create a party of monster PC's, including satyrs, etc. It will exist in the same world as the last campaign, with my human character (the only surviving PC) as a major entity in the new plot. The monsters will all be neutral, and My pally Roland will be going around doing things during the campaign relating to "temples". Essentially the temples are the key to preventing the apocalypse... The monster party won't know this, and will learn very slowly about this aspect of the plot. Now, my PC in this monster party will be a satyr bard, who happens to be an evil bastard. I will help the party and try to influence them into attacking the paladin; It will be the party's choice to attack him or not, and whether or not to be good aligned. If they listen to the satyr and attack the pally, I will roleplay as him for the battle (likely with a tough CR, since I am using exalted feats and PrC's) and if they win, the consequences will be appropriate. If they discover that my satyr is using them, the pally will likely join with them for whatever climactic battle the DM has in mind. The trick is that they never meet him until after hearing a good bit about him, good and bad. I had been good to most monstrous races in the past, so some NPC's will talk about me as merciful and good; others whom I had owned in the past would think ill of me. My pally's mentor's deeds would also be confused for my own and vice versa, since monsters wouldn't distinguish between 2 nearly identical humans, adding to the confusion. My satyr will try to convince them both in and ooc that the pally should be killed. So essentially, me and the DM are working together to mess with the party's heads and make it tougher for them to see their path. We will of course allow all foreseeable outcomes to proceed naturally, and not try to railroad them. I for one would find it funny that I will pass notes to the DM the entire time and keep a poker face throughout the campaign over whether they can trust me; and that I will control my paladin should they choose to fight me. Most of the people in the party are used to playing dungeon crawls or more straightforward adventures, so I think this would add a lot of depth. I would love to be a satyr one moment, then smile, pick up my character sheet, walk over to the DM, sit down next to him, and begin smiting my former party due to their belief in the plotting of the satyr. Sound like an interesting mechanic for the campaign?
#2 silent_stone May 28, 2009 18:43:30	Sounds like a brilliant way to annoy and upset your fellow players. Good, evil, neutral, unaligned, whatever—the game seems to work best when the players are all on the same team.
#3 rhakiath May 28, 2009 19:14:48	the rest of the party is unaligned, but If the party follows the main quest, they'll likely end up fighting either my paladin or my satyr. The satyr only wants to try to manipulate them into being more evil, and therefore use them for accomplishing his ends. The party can listen to me, or choose to be more good aligned and help or not oppose the paladin. I'm not trying to annoy or upset them, more like I'm the devil on their left shoulder trying to get them to take revenge on this paladin for seeming to purposefully and systematically harm innocent monsters. The monsters in this world are beginning to battle humans, so this N party has to decide whether to side with fellow monsters, avoid it, or try to form peace. There has to be some kind of conflict in a party, whether it be deciding to use stealth vs. brute force to solve problems, whether to be helpful or self serving, or whether to be good or evil. Having 5 identical characters is a drag. The players might not want to kick an irl friend out of the party due to in character issues, but we are a mature group and I know I am not exactly indispensable to this party. I would not feel the least bit angry if they killed or exiled me, considering my role in the story. It's the trust dynamic between the ooc players I intend to make them question... If anyone would get hurt by this, it'd be me; my satyr character would be the first to be killed or cast out by the party if they found out I was not exactly loyal. Or, my paladin character would be killed who I actually like. It's not as if any choice they have would screw them over, it's more like they'd have a vague idea of what they were really doing, and their main decision over whether to attack the pally or not would cause consequences: they might either decide to ditch the satyr and join the main quest, and try to save the world; or they could let things happen naturally and get a neutral ending, or choose to be evil if they want an evil-friendly ending. The 15 or so levels between their encounter and the beginning would be plenty of time to decide their characters' outlook. The campaign will have plenty of other sources of fun for the month(s) until then.
#4 silent_stone May 28, 2009 20:14:20	It's the trust dynamic between the ooc players I intend to make them question... This is exactly the sort of thing that I found alarming. The trust between players is rather important. Without this trust, the players in your group will have to constantly wonder whether or not any one of the other players is actually going to screw them over in the future, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I would love to be a satyr one moment, then smile, pick up my character sheet, walk over to the DM, sit down next to him, and begin smiting my former party due to their belief in the plotting of the satyr. Further, the fact that you seem to be sharing the DM's seat to a degree, makes your two(!) characters on the verge of being DMPCs, which are so easy to do wrong. It sounds to me like both your characters have a special place in the story arc—the other PCs are merely a side story to this Paladin vs. Satyr arc. These things can easily cause bad feelings in a group that last a lot longer than even a single campaign. Thus, I maintain that it is better for all the player characters to be "on the same team." This doesn't mean they should all be the same, nor does it mean they all have to have the same goals, nor does it mean they all have to agree all the time. However, I will admit I'm not the end-all-be-all of DMs; I possess no especial wisdom. Hopefully I'm wrong about this and your fellow players will love this sort of thing.
#5 rhakiath May 28, 2009 20:30:07	I have never tried this sort of thing, but I think it will be a good experiment and certainly very unique. It is rather the Dm's job to be unpredictable, and as such, this is the last sort of plot twist I think they'll expect. I, as a character, will play fair and not "know" things my character shouldn't know, but I'll be the most knowledgeable about the temples and main plot. I'll try to avoid being the direct party leader, and won't be privy to any information from the DM besides my character's intent. Therefore, I would not be any more powerful than the rest of the party, and would have to play the same way as them to profit and survive. I would get no special treatment from the DM, for example, if I turned out to die at some point. The mitigating factor is that both the paladin and the satyr would both be played by me, and be about equal in power; it is the party's choice who they'd want to play with. Your concerns had certainly occurred to us, and we are not totally decided on how we'll play it or how suspicious my character would be. If we thought it would be less fun we certainly would not consider it, but our group loves to homebrew, alter game rules, and experiment, so I think this group will at least be tolerant of the idea if not totally loving it. I'll let everyone know if it turns out to work, it might be a cool idea for others to try.
#6 Guest1970847198 May 31, 2009 1:59:21	A few of my own experiences: 1) As a GM I had one of the players, IC, recruited to tilt the players towards the worse of two options. They were very unclear whether they would have gone that way anyways (I give the players tough choices with no clear answer), but it definitely rankled them a bit. There was a sense of "my ability to decide has been taken away." LESSON: Players like to make informed decisions 2) As a player, we had another party member we suspected (both IC and OOC) of having switched allegiances to the villain of the campaign. Every session involved some unfun tension of whether we could trust him and working around this without outright kicking him out. Eventually, a nasty combination of failed Sense Motive and Bluff rolls led my character to believe he'd 'caught' that person in the middle of an obviously double-agent activity. He panicked, tried to run, and we killed him on the spot. LESSON: Paranoia breeds antisocial gameplay. (And it turned out he was just being an idiot, not a double agent!) 3) We recently had a new player join the campaign. Wanting to be inclusive, we pretty much warped all our plans to include her. Because of this, our well-laid plan collapsed, and we had to spend two sessions regrouping and tracking our BBEG back down again. I actually very nearly quit over this. LESSON: Being screwed over IC, for being polite OOC, sucks. --- Basically, you can get away with small amounts of it, as long as the players always have the final decision. However, the more paranoia you foster, the more antisocial the game will become. In this particular case, it might work depending on how informed they are come the final decision (if they slowly learn about it, they might form an opinion and decide to stick with it even when they know the full truth. Fun to RP ) It helps that your character isn't planning to PK or anything, just influencing and willing to go along with their choice. --- If it's a group mature enough to handle the Big Reveal, they're probably mature enough that you could tell them in advance too! Why should you be the only person trusted with OOC knowledge? At worse they kill you in session 1, get it out of their system, and go on to have a nice normal campaign without a double-agent that would have enraged them later on
#7 mythster May 31, 2009 22:24:03	I think the idea is awesome, as a DM having a player you can trust to not so much be a "double agent" but be a part of the plot and doing things with the DM behind the screen is often really, really fun and can lead to some awesome stuff.