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Starlight1978
2012-05-26, 01:20 AM
Hi,

for my next campaign i was thinking of asking a player (without the others knowing obviously) to be a traitor, sabotaging the campaign. This will probably not last the whole campaign, once he is discovered and dealt with, the player will be able to join the party for real with a new character.

I will try to let the traitor decide for himself what to do, i might give him some suggestions on where/what/who he can sabotage.

How will the traitor let me know what he wants to do?
- In between sessions if possible, in this way he can give me as much details as possible on what his plans are.
- In the session itself, because he did not foresee he could sabotage something. I can imagine this could be done with passing a paper secretly (hard to do without the others noticing). Maybe a text-message on the phone could work (sound off). Or he could say he needs to go to the toilet, i say i need to go too and will be next, a note can be passed at the toilet.

Any other tips regarding this?

Examples:
- The party needs to be somewhere as soon as possible. When sleeping in a lonely tavern next to a road through a forest, he burns down the stable, killing all the horses.
Depending on the details i get, this will be done to the best of his abilities. I will make some move silently and hide rolls for him to sneak out of his room and into the stables.
Problem: what if he fails? It would be boring to just blow his cover, he should be able to bluff his way out. Let's say he is seen or heared while walking downstairs.
"Ok, everyone roll a listen check? Nice check John, you hear the door and see Terry (traitor) sneaking out of the room"
While Terry could be able to talk his way out of the situation in-game, everyone at the table knows Terry has not mentioned he was doing something, they just saw me roll some dice. So they know something is up in any case.
I really need help in this situation!
If he succeeds it's not much of a problem, the party wakes up from a fire and Terry is just as shocked as the rest of the party.
- The party is split up, and Terry manages to be alone with a partymember. He decides to kill him. I think i have a pretty decent idea on how to do this.
Instead of actually letting them fight each other, i will let two assassins appear, one will attack Terry and one will attack John. But when Terry is attacking his assassin, he will be matching his attack with John's AC to decide if he hits. When it's the turn of my assassins, i pretend to roll some dice, but in reality the previous attack made by Terry will have already decided if John gets hit. I can fiddle a bit with the damage (1 damage less one round, 1 damage more the other), so the players don't notice as easily that the attacks have similar results.
This is "easily" done when he is fighting a Fighter, but becomes more complicated when he is fighting a Cleric who might decide to heal Terry in combat when the Cleric is in reality kicking Terry's ass the round before.
In the end, either Terry or John is dead, or maybe one has fled.
If John died, the story of the assassins will be kept up.
If Terry died or either has fled, the real story (that Terry attacked John) will be revealed to the players (and explained that the assassin story never really took place).

Are there any other hints, ideas or stuff anybody has to offer that might help me to make this work?

Grail
2012-05-26, 01:30 AM
Get into the habit of making it seem normal amongst the players.

The best way to do this is to take other players into another room at random times during the game. Good examples of this are if the player's character is alone or sees something that the other characters don't see - this way, they won't sense that something is amiss if you take the traitor out of the room to discuss something.

If you don't want to use another room, pass notes. But include ALL players at some stage, or again, you'll arouse suspicion and this isn't what you want to do.

As to him needing to make move silently rolls to leave a room in an inn... you aren't serious? That's taking the mechanics of the game incredibly OTT. Why can't he just walk out of the room when the others are asleep. He could be going to the toilet, stretching his legs, getting something to eat. A good spy/traitor doesn't act like a spy/traitor, they act like a normal person. Moving silently and acting with subterfuge is only going to attract attention because that's not what normal people do, especially when around friends.

Hope that helps somewhat.

kieza
2012-05-26, 01:39 AM
3 pieces of advice:

1) It's really easy to pull off if a player wants to change character or leave the campaign (character permitting). I had a player tell me he was going to drop out once, and since there was an upcoming boss fight, I rewrote it and had him throw in with the boss. (He later made a one-session guest appearance and had books thrown at him...)

2) Tell the players that you have a mole...but don't tell them who it is. Routinely pass out pieces of paper that either give the mole instructions...or say something tangential to the situation, so that the players can't tell who you're working with. This way, they can't say you didn't warn them.

3) Warn the player ahead of time that playing a traitor, especially a long-term traitor, may end with the other players cheesed off at him--not his character.

Acanous
2012-05-26, 01:39 AM
the assassin thing might work, but also may be a bad idea. I mean, the PC is going to react differently to a faceles assassin than to a friend stabbing them.

For instance, your traitor WILL get the surprise action, gets to decide the terms of engagement, and might get a second free attack in as the PC attempts to find out if there's an enchantment at work, or if it's a doppleganger, etc.

Furthermore, they're more likely to run from another PC in this state, wheras an assassin they'd not hesitate to bring out the big guns.

If you must do this, make it some kind of Illusion or Enchantment spell, one that the Traitor can choose to employ. Then if the attacked PC kills his Assassin, and the other Assassin kills your traitor, the spell ends and the PC sees he's killed his friend... you can just roll with that. That's what he saw, that's what happened.

He'd probably pay to have your traitor rezzed.

RedWarlock
2012-05-26, 02:02 AM
I can't make any better suggestions than what's already been said here, but I love these kinds of games. (But then I love turning my players on eachother, my WoD games always start off with the characters at eachother's throats, and THEN they settle down and team up against bigger and badder.)

Maybe for extra suspicious note-passing, throw in occasional random hints that say so-and-so is acting suspiciously in the note, and select someone at random, including the actual traitor, each time, just to drive up the paranoia..

NikitaDarkstar
2012-05-26, 02:12 AM
First make sure your players are mature enough to handle it. And I don't mean just think they are, make sure. Because something like this, especially long-term can upset a lot of people, and ending friendships over a game is simply not worth it.

Now if you are sure this is a good idea. First of all, you're the DM, if you say he passes the check he passes the check, end of that. If he for some reason does meet someone he knows, well he couldn't sleep so wanted some air.

The assassin thing is honestly over-complicating things. By the point where he's stabbing a friend in the back his cover is blown, both IC and OOC. If you want him to kill someone do it more subtly, poison for example or hires an assassin to do it for him. (If he can afford it/has benefactors that covers such expenses.)

And if you're not sure of your group but still want to run something similar, bring out a doppelganger that does all of this and tries to pin it on the PC. Then when they eventually do blame the PC he can plead innocent (there are spells to make sure people can't lie), meaning that now they have a bad guy who's not only trying to stop them, but is also trying to ruin their reputation AND turn them against each other! Things will get quite personal, quite fast and if they work like most players they'll want whoever is responsible deader than dead. Then possibly resurrected to be killed all over again.

Mnemnosyne
2012-05-26, 03:10 AM
I'd definitely just get used to pulling the players off to another room to play out little encounters like that. Anytime a player separates from the party or wants to do something on his own, get into a habit of pulling them aside or otherwise not telling the rest of the party. That way when your traitor goes off on his own, it's not an unusual thing for you to step aside with him for a moment to resolve that.

Similarly, if your traitor and another party member are together and not with the others, you can actually have them in a separate room. Then if your traitor attacks the other party member, play it out straight up. If he wins, you've already got the other party member pulled aside and can discuss it with him so he won't spill the beans in an OOC manner.

deuxhero
2012-05-26, 09:44 AM
Give the traitor one sub-goal (such as oh... "kill Giacomo") that aligns with the rest of the party. Foils magic lie detection (because he genuinely wants to kill Giacomo) and gives the character more motivation to do things other than screw over the party.

Hopeless
2012-05-26, 09:55 AM
Ideally there should be nothing to link these actions to your turncoat PC.

if the stable burns down then it happens because earlier in the day your PC left an otherwise unremarkable box with a slow burning fuse inside that takes that much longer before it reaches a stage where it can be spotted, perhaps can be smelt but the idea here is to make it look like an innocent mistake.

If another player is targetted then this PC must be nowhere near the scene and have an alibi that is reinforced to the point that it never dawns on the other players that something is going on.

One way of doing this is having an alternative identity for your turncoat so he recruits help but assuming he has help from his superiors he can insure the other players won't suspect a thing.

This is important because from my memories of gaming the other players will take advantage of information their characters don't have and the extra detail is necessary so if they do stumble onto the turncoat he has the means to pass scrutiny and do it in such a way that you can distract the other players by having him attacked since his superiors will have people keeping an eye out for just such an occasion.

He could be used as a sacrifical pawn but he should have suitable warning that his employer has no interest in his personal safety...

Reluctance
2012-05-26, 10:13 AM
Sabotaging the party on that sort of scale is pure folly. It's also going to engender bad blood no matter what. Some players will shrug it off easier than others, but everybody would be a little steamed finding out that their friend (the player, not the character) has been screwing their characters over. Attacking fellow PCs or destroying their stuff is bad form, as is making tactical "accidents" in combat.

You also run another problem. PCs often extend each other the benefit of the doubt in early meetings to facilitate getting to the fun part of the game. Breaking this social contract will bog down every new character introduction.

And then there's the simple question of why a so-called saboteur would play their role properly in regular life and death situations. If you want the PCs dead, find a way to disable a key player next time they're in a serious fight. Having one party member down and another change sides should throw expected balance off considerably. Simple, effective, and yet incredibly anticlimactic. Although then again, there are few ways to pull off such a reversal that don't reek of anticlimax.

If the player wants to do this, doppleganger plots are custom-made for it. Have a trustworthy character be replaced at some point in the campaign. Somehow, those short-term plots get a pass that an extended (richard)ing over doesn't.

If you want to pull a longer-term con, either have the character tag along with the party until they can abscond with a macguffin, or have them keep feeding info to the BBEG. The point is for the player to be an overall good player, rather than introducing PvP elements into a game where the other party members may not enjoy it.

W3bDragon
2012-05-26, 12:25 PM
Let me preface this by saying I think this is a bad idea. It can very easily cause animosity between the group that'll kill the fun for not just this campaign, but any future gaming. However, here are my 2 cents.

Instead of giving specific advice, I'll just say how I would do something like this.

First, at character creation, I'll announce that this campaign can and will have pvp. This isn't an off hand remark, this is a part of the campaign intro. I make sure the players know this BEFORE they make characters. If the players object, I'll forget about it. If the players are on board, then I'll run with it.

I'll start them off normally without any of the being an assassin. At some point during the campaign, I'll assign the job of being the assassin in a believable way to one of the pcs in secret.

Whenever the assassin or saboteur goes about his task, I'll make doubly sure that I give him no dm fiat. Everything has to be done fair and square. I won't just say "okay fine you slip out of the room because that's normal, all the pcs go out for a stretch or a trip to the toilet." If I am to use that, it has to have been established before that this is the routine. Any fiat I give him, even if its something small like stepping out of the room, is an opportunity for one of the pcs to notice something and start watching his back against the assassin.

If the assassin kills one of the pcs, I'd ask that player to play along. I'll tell him to support whatever story the assassin says if he's asked. (though they should't be asking him anyway).

Frenth Alunril
2012-05-26, 12:41 PM
Don't make the Traitor about the party.

Here is a great example of what happened in my game. Sorc, we'll call him Reese, has a control issue, and like to murder people who are weaker than he is so that he can twist the hearts of people who are stronger than he is. This is part of his back story.

Reese joins the game from the beginning. He is a coward and hides a lot. He always puts other people out to fight for him (spending his money to higher body guards for adventuring, and claiming not to have any skills)

Secretly, in emails between sessions, I have Reese write little stories. He develops his goals to become rich, and an influential character in the town, someone everyone looks up to, but never has to do anything.

He figures out on his own a way to get financially independent, and swindles his way into an old womans bed, to take over her mine. Using his Sorc powers he charms her into restarting the mine so that they can stick it to the successful townsfolk who she feels persecute her.

That's cool. He keeps killing in emails.

I make the crime scene, as described by the player, an investigation adventure. We made a whole bunch of rolls in email to cover up all angles for the players to roll against.

Then, Reese starts misleading the party with symbols of a Mad God. The temple gets dragged in, and an inquisition is proposed. The Paladin's of the keep don't care how the people solve their own problems, and the Inquisition becomes an almost certainty. The party splits up... They want to stop the inquisition. Two of them higher a wizard to srcy on the killer, they know a lot about him, and there is a chance the scrying will work, the rest take to the streets. Meanwhile, Reese joins with evil NPC clerics of the Mad God he way trying to mislead the adventurers with.

When the Adventurers scry the killer, they find an image of their friend Reese, and say, "Oh, the Scrying must have misfired."

In the very next adventure, the whole town gathers together to hear the decree from the Mayor, the Paladin's and the Temple about the Inquisition. Reese has gathered a bunch of privacy minded towns folk, and during the decree he calls the skiddish mayor into question.

The towns fold support him, so rolls are made, tough rolls, but Reese belittles the mayor, encourages the towns folk to out their own killer without the inquisition.

Reese has the evil clerics plant a fall guy, the fall guy is found, Reese gains the support of the people, ousts the Mayor, becomes the peoples town leader, and is now an NPC that I run, because he won at DnD!


So, you should have your traitor deal in their own misbehaviors. It's not about handicapping the team, its about meeting your own goals. Evil is for Evil's sake, and that is usually dependent on the persons interests. I can't think of a successful villain who wants to see others fail yet gain nothing in its place.

Use some kind of hidden correspondence, encourage note passing between all players. But have your evil character sending you stories on the outside. making their rolls ahead of time, so you can reference them.

"I see a trail of blood, and try to follow it." look at pre-rolled survival stat to hide tracks, "Okay, Roll away" etc...

I would also encourage you to do this with good guys as well... I have a lot of good henchman stories going on with my players. While the main party is off saving the day in some sacked town, their henchmen are following up on other things. Great fun, lots of story. All through email.

Mastikator
2012-05-26, 12:51 PM
The best way to make the others not notice is with the paper clips. But use those for every piece of knowledge each of the characters have that not everyone have. For example, if one of the players (not the traitor) notices something, give him a paper clip containing the information instead of just announcing "the Mr Ranger sees that there are carefully hidden tracks leading into a boulder".
This is easily justifiable and means that you don't do anything with the traitor player that you aren't doing with everyone else.

Secondly, I would seriously advice against working "with" the traitor more than you are working with the other players. A DM should be working with the players, even if he's a killer DM out to kill them he's not their adversary. Your goal as a DM is to facilitate fun with all the players, not help the traitor beat the others.

tensai_oni
2012-05-26, 02:27 PM
This is very hard to pull off convincingly, and even harder without the players getting angry both at the traitor and at you.

If you have the slightest doubt about your ability or your players' maturity, don't do it.

navar100
2012-05-26, 05:09 PM
Not only is the player a traitor, but so too is the DM. Obviously in every game the DM plays the bad guys. He sets their plans in motion, and it's up to the players to defeat them. The DM is supposed to be a neutral arbiter of what happens. With this scenario, he is actively working with one player to screw over everyone else. Whether the player traitor is successful or not, the DM has already broken the trust.

Thanatos 51-50
2012-05-26, 09:54 PM
This works best when it occurs naturally.
I was in a game where my character's goals (Get in good with the local Thieves Guild) ran more strongly than the rest of the party's stated goal of "Get paid. Try not to upset potential patrons.", so my character set the party up to take Thieves Guild gigs almost exclusively.
The party had a Paladin in it. He never found out until...

We ended up angering a rival faction of the Thieves Guild - which took said Guild over and put bounties on our heads while we were out of town.
Then we took the Thieves Guild back over. Great fun was had by all.

Jay R
2012-05-28, 12:00 PM
Three pieces of advice:

1. Make clear to everyone at the start that you have a fun idea that might actually lead to character deaths. Don't give them a hint about a possible traitor, but this scenario is in fact more dangerous than the usual.

2. Make absolutely sure the traitor cannot succeed. As a temporary situation to laugh about later, it can work. But if the action of one player kills off all other players' characters, then he wasn't playing an NPC until his character shows up; his PC killed their PCs.

3. Do not run this scenario if you have any player who has any idea that the game or the DM owes them "fair" treatment, rather than a simulated world full of dangers. Both types of gamers exist, and there's nothing wrong with either type. But make sure you're offering a game that these players will accept.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-28, 12:24 PM
The "assassins" idea breaks down pretty instantly if tactics other than pure damage and individual duels are used.

Party conflict doesn't work terribly well in D&D for a simple reason...combat is lethal. In short, any time it comes to blows, you likely have someone rolling a new char. If the party catches wind of this, you can expect your traitor to be stabbed rather a lot, and to die horribly. If he's successful, the rest of the party will almost certainly die.

In short, there's no possible outcome in which everyone's successful. A LOT of time is going to be spent regenning chars, and there is significant risk of bad blood.

I wouldn't recommend it.

hangedman1984
2012-05-28, 11:30 PM
Let everyone make their own characters first, then contact the player whose character is most likely to be a traitor. That way traitorous player still gets to play a character fully of his own design.

tahu88810
2012-05-28, 11:57 PM
I have had this work once, without everyone getting mad at everyone else and without it being a paranoia game.
Here's how I did it, and maybe you can adapt it to your own playstyle

1) The Game made heavy use of intrigue and the information game already.
2) Play sessions were episodic: The party had downtime between sessions where it was assumed they were training, studying, etc. and they could contact me to do things that didn't require a full session (such as reporting to a secret superior!)
3) The players were all fully aware that PvP could be a thing.
And finally, 4) There wasn't really a Team Good and a Team Evil. It was more like Team Orange and Team Purple. Both had their merits, and the players chose their side more based on things like character nationality and goals.

The fact that the mole was played very well didn't hurt. He actually willingly dropped hints as to his true nature throughout the campaign.

I honestly wouldn't recommend it, though. It takes a very rare sort of group dynamic to allow that sort of thing without bad feelings afterwards.

Wyntonian
2012-05-29, 12:54 AM
First, are you fellow players more likely to respond with:

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/oh-you-dog.jpg

Or ragestomping your face? Even if this was addressed, it's important enough to warrant repetition.

Keep in mind that this is a game, and making the game less fun for someone rarely ends well. However, if playing a traitor adds to your - in the plural sense- fun? Get on it.

GnomeGninjas
2012-05-29, 06:15 AM
I don't think the assassins thing will work well. I think it would be better if when there characters are alone you take both of them out into the hall, other room because then tell them to fight each other to the death because traitor attack other guy. When you go back to the rest of the group hint that the people out in the hall came across a riddle or puzzle or something and they are working to figure it out. The reason you did it in the hall was so the rest of the party wouldn't tell them how to solve it.

soir8
2012-05-29, 06:41 AM
The first D&D 3.5 game I ever played, the DM roped me into being a double agent. All it accomplished was getting my character tortured and killed by the rest of the party.

Damn clerics with their magic lie detectors...

phlidwsn
2012-05-29, 08:59 AM
3 pieces of advice:
2) Tell the players that you have a mole...but don't tell them who it is. Routinely pass out pieces of paper that either give the mole instructions...or say something tangential to the situation, so that the players can't tell who you're working with. This way, they can't say you didn't warn them.


For bonus fun and mind games: do this, but don't actually assign anyone to be the mole.

Jay R
2012-05-29, 11:40 AM
For bonus fun and mind games: do this, but don't actually assign anyone to be the mole.

Oh, that's funny. I'd just want to see how long I could keep it up.

averagejoe
2012-05-29, 01:31 PM
I played as a saboteur/traitor once, at the DM's request. I kept trying to give off subtle hints that my character was evil but the (good aligned) party kept acting even more evil and thinking my ideas were awesome. Good times. :smallbiggrin:

In my opinion, if the player's aren't warned about this beforehand (creating a sort of who-done-it mystery subplot), if this guy turning traitor results in any deaths it will probably come off as cheap/DM fiat deaths. A traitor isn't something most parties routinely prepare for; it goes against the implied and expected dynamic of the game. Now, upsetting that dynamic can bring great fun, but it has to be handled in a way that lets the players respond to it.

Another way besides the who-done-it mystery would be to set up a situation that forces the traitor character's hand in some situation that isn't advantageous for him, perhaps allowing him to escape. This would potentially create a great villain, because the players already have a reason to be upset and go after him aside from any world-ending shenanigans, which are always fairly impersonal let's face it. But having him betray the characters in the middle of a desperate fight that would be a close thing even with his help, well, you might as well just have rocks fall on their heads.

SowZ
2012-05-29, 02:49 PM
Sabotaging the party on that sort of scale is pure folly. It's also going to engender bad blood no matter what. Some players will shrug it off easier than others, but everybody would be a little steamed finding out that their friend (the player, not the character) has been screwing their characters over. Attacking fellow PCs or destroying their stuff is bad form, as is making tactical "accidents" in combat.

You also run another problem. PCs often extend each other the benefit of the doubt in early meetings to facilitate getting to the fun part of the game. Breaking this social contract will bog down every new character introduction.

And then there's the simple question of why a so-called saboteur would play their role properly in regular life and death situations. If you want the PCs dead, find a way to disable a key player next time they're in a serious fight. Having one party member down and another change sides should throw expected balance off considerably. Simple, effective, and yet incredibly anticlimactic. Although then again, there are few ways to pull off such a reversal that don't reek of anticlimax.

If the player wants to do this, doppleganger plots are custom-made for it. Have a trustworthy character be replaced at some point in the campaign. Somehow, those short-term plots get a pass that an extended (richard)ing over doesn't.

If you want to pull a longer-term con, either have the character tag along with the party until they can abscond with a macguffin, or have them keep feeding info to the BBEG. The point is for the player to be an overall good player, rather than introducing PvP elements into a game where the other party members may not enjoy it.

I've done these kinds of campaigns twice in my DMing career. One time it was successful, one time it was not. The difference was the unsuccessful one had the PCs goals to actually destroy the other players whereas the successful one wanted to sabotage the parties goals. It isn't always bad, but you have to be delicate with it. Also, in the successful one it was a shorter game where the party where all murderers and criminals, (so when it was over they knew they shouldn't have trusted each other,) and the other time it was a longer game which was more of a traditional hero quest thing.

Also, one time I thought it would add some drama to the game, (the game was about demon possession,) so I asked the player if he wanted to play traitor and he was very excited about it but it didn't end as well. The other time a player approached me and asked about her characters goals being contradictory to the parties and I said sure, she didn't want to kill them.

Narren
2012-05-29, 08:44 PM
One of my players was a spy for the horde in Red Hand of Doom. He played a goblin ranger/wilderness rogue with a hat of disguise. The player was actually late for the first session, so they "rescued" the "halfling scout" after killing Koth (we fluffed it that he realized he couldn't beat the party, so he would do his best to take them out from the inside). I can't remember how, but they figured him out in Rhest. He did take out one character, disabled another, and slipped away. At that point, he relinquished control of the character to me and they both rolled new ones. The goblin tracked them some time before they got back to Brindol. I think he was sabotaging something, I can't remember, but they found him and finished him off.

My group is used to this kind of stuff, and they like when the unexpected happens. Some groups may not be cool with it.