Is it mean for a DM to....

[veven]

ANDREW L./Kasmodian Get OUT!

Would it be an awful thing for me as a DM to sort of invalidate a PC's life-long beliefs?
I am running a campaign and one of the reoccurring themes has been destiny and all that jazz.

I asked the players for some goals that their character's had and the Druid came up with this back story where he was kidnapped and raised by a tribe of nature worshipers and thats sort of where his druidic bent came from. His story is that these people (for some reason...i haven't thought of one yet. Help?) believe he is the key to ending the imprisonment of a powerful nature spirit (The Wild Hunt) to help combat the urbanization of nature.

Another Character had his family sacrificed by a cult (of Tharizdun, they don't know that yet). This cult is trying to free Shothragot, an Elder Evil who follows Tharizdun. Shothragot was imprisoned on the material plane many millenia ago, shortly after Tharizdun was imprisoned in the Ethereal. The cult believes that freeing Shothragot is the first step in freeing Tharizdun. This second character is destined to stop the cult (as destined as someone can get while avoiding a railroad).

I realized I have two groups of people trying to free trapped powers and I thought it would be awesome if they were actually trying to free the same one. Tharizdun has his Elder Elemental Eye alter-ego so it seems logical that his follower would also use such deception.

I decided that the people who raised Player A pretty much for the sole purpose of freeing The Wild Hunt will actually have been misled by Tharizdun into into believing they were working to free The Wild Hunt when in fact, they were working to release Shothragot with the Druid player as the key.

Do you think it would be terrible for me as a DM to sort of Invalidate this characters supposed destiny? I really like the idea because it intertwines character arch's and helps the players to be more interested in the other player's characters (I hope to somehow intertwine the other two in this whole mess eventually).

Before I go through these plans I wanted to see if the playground though this would be a sort of awful thing to do, or if I should go ahead with it.

Thanks for the advice!

[Divide by Zero]

Is he the type of player who you can trust to keep IC and OOC knowledge separate? If so, then talk to him about it and ask him if he'd be ok with that.

[Ajadea]

Your players, if they don't expect that the knowledge they get, the beliefs they'd lived by all their lives can be and in some places will be flat-out wrong, then it will not work. If you make the signs too obvious, it won't work either-suspension of disbelief breaks and everyone gets annoyed.

What'd I'd do is something like this:

They're racing for the same place, right?

That's cool.

Okay, now go back into the history of your setting. Who is this Shothragot? Would he be someone the Wild Hunt liked? How powerful is he? What imprisoned him? The Wild Hunt exists, in theory. If one or both of your forces aren't imprisoned, then where are they and what are they doing?

Think about that, then use that to weave everything together.

Could it be that members of the Wild Hunt fought against Shothragot and were imprisoned with him (on accident no less!)

Maybe that they are allies, imprisoned together in the same MacGuffin?

Perhaps one has imprisoned the other, and left only the supposed imprisoner as a fragment of their consumed powers?

There is a possibility that one or both is not imprisoned but dead-and what happens then? If one is imprisoned and one is dead, could the life from one revive the other?

What if everyone was just wrong? Maybe was mistranslated. That happens a lot. It's not exactly a [I]hunt in there so much as a hunter. And yeah, he's pretty wild. In all possible interpretations of Wild. So-called servants of Elder Evils aren't exactly the most stable people. Oh, he'll definitely spread wilderness. He might destroy the Material Plane in the process though.


So, there are a lot of ideas, and most don't need complete invalidation of any one person's ideas.

[Dyllan]

I'm not sure it's wise. Not because it's mean, but because you're setting the party up for a split. One character's family was sacrificed in an attempt to free someone. Obviously, this individual is very much against this someone being free. If you then set up another character as trying to free the same creature - you can't get much more polar opposite goals in the party than that.

Unless your group likes that level of intra-party conflict, I don't think it's a good idea.

[Luckmann]

On paper, I don't think it sounds mean or bad at all.

But in practice, Dyllan makes sense. It's a set-up for inter-party conflict, which isn't necessarily bad, but you'll want to keep it in mind. If we see you making a "My players are trying to kill eachother, what do I doooo?!"-thread later, we'll know what you did. :smallamused:

[veven]

Yeeah..after they find out it's Shothrogat and not The Wild Hunt I don't know why the druid would go ahead with it anyways, considering Shothrogat serves a god who wants to undo reality.

Hmmmm....What if both entities are imprisoned together? Like, The Wild Hunt was a part of a the crew that went out to hunt Shothrogat down and when the battle took a turn for the worse the binding ritual was performed out the both of them?

That way no one is completely invalidated and everyone is sort of right and they players get to have their fun cultist battle with an Elder Evil fighting an ancient Fey spirit as a back drop.

Although having The Wild Hunt finish off Shothrogat might live the players feeling like he stole their thunder. Any ideas?

[Eldan]

You'd need to, of course, set up a far-reaching intrigue the PCs will "accidentally" uncover.

Suggestion for a setup:

The high priest of the druid cult trying to unleash the wild hunt has long ago been corrupted by said elder evil, in dreams and via telepathic contact, later. He no longer seeks to unleash the wild hunt, but to free his new master. He has subtly influenced the cult's rituals, so that by now, they serve the elder evil, no longer the hunt.

When the PCs find out, you bet they'd immediately band together to stop the priest.

[danzibr]

Personally, I love your idea and would spring it on them with no heads up. In fact, you've given me ideas as a DM.

[Fable Wright]

I'd agree with Ajadea, on them both being half-right. It's more even overall. The Wild Hunt was a servant of Tharizdun, and destroyed civilizations, giving birth to the Wild behind it. It is the key to unleashing Tharizdun, but it is also the embodiment of what the druid kind-of-believed.