Have you ever used a psychological trap for your players? (Tell your story)

[Linker2k]

Hey!

I'm planning in using the "House of Gemini" scenario from Saint Seiya in an adventure (the never ending house that leads them always to the beginning.

I wanted to hear from other DM's the most bizarre scenario that you have put your players and how it was resolved :smallsmile:

[Specter]

As a matter of fact, in the last session, but it was quite simple.

One of the game's main antagonists, a Wizard, visited the PCs in an empty tavern and transformed everything into metal (Mirage Arcana), just to show off and test their wits. Took them a long time to try an Investigation check, and even longer for the party's wizard to dispel the illusion.

[Karnack]

Not sure if this counts but I once did a sort of mind trap illusion in a dungeon for the last encounter of that was the tomb of a champion of Tiamat.

When the players entered the final chamber they had to walk through a dense mist and entered a natural cavern that held the sarcophagus and a pool of water. An ancient black dragon came out of the pool and had a chat with the players and combat commenced. They where level 5 at the time. They ofc freaked out.

The trick was that this cavern was wildly different from the rest of the dungeon as that was a built structure above ground. The chamber had four large crystals that the rogue and cleric where quick to figure out to smash, each time I mentioned the dragon flickered and the surrounding area flickered before quickly resetting. They managed it with only the rogue left standing but they got by with no deaths.

I love illusion magic <3

[j_spencer93]

The most funny one i recall was the party entering a completely normal room. There was a statue in each corner, and a wooden door on the far side. It was locked. There were also candles on the wall, a suit of armor on the left wall and some other decorations. The BBEG was in the middle of the room (in the middle of a pentagram design...was for fluff only) and he taunted them, something about he will enjoy watching them die as they try to escape this room. Magical he shut the door behind them and locked it before teleporting away.

We spent more then an hour in that room. My party did everything they could to escape. Oh forgot to mention that they couldn't teleport, was part of the enchantment of the castle they were in (the BBEG could). They tried extinguishing the candles to unlock the door. Tried wearing the armor thinking it would somehow unlock it. Tried standing in the circle to unlock it. If you can think of some way to use that room, they tried it.

The door was simply locked. It only had a DC of 12 to get through. But no one would try it, even after i suggested it. They were so sure if would either curse them, trap them, or somehow attack them. At the time...they were invading the castle of a foe that used tones of traps. Even caught one in an iron maiden, another in a room with a glass floor over gas, etc. It had them scared ****less.

[NewDM]

I don't know if you'd count it as a 'psychological trap' but I did once have a party examining a mind flayer statue get grabbed by it and the statue tried to eat their brains being a combination stone golem created by mind flayers.

Does that count?

[j_spencer93]

I don't know if you'd count it as a 'psychological trap' but I did once have a party examining a mind flayer statue get grabbed by it and the statue tried to eat their brains being a combination stone golem created by mind flayers.

Does that count?

Is that a pun? lol

[Theodoxus]

The most funny one i recall was the party entering a completely normal room. There was a statue in each corner, and a wooden door on the far side. It was locked. There were also candles on the wall, a suit of armor on the left wall and some other decorations. The BBEG was in the middle of the room (in the middle of a pentagram design...was for fluff only) and he taunted them, something about he will enjoy watching them die as they try to escape this room. Magical he shut the door behind them and locked it before teleporting away.

We spent more then an hour in that room. My party did everything they could to escape. Oh forgot to mention that they couldn't teleport, was part of the enchantment of the castle they were in (the BBEG could). They tried extinguishing the candles to unlock the door. Tried wearing the armor thinking it would somehow unlock it. Tried standing in the circle to unlock it. If you can think of some way to use that room, they tried it.

The door was simply locked. It only had a DC of 12 to get through. But no one would try it, even after i suggested it. They were so sure if would either curse them, trap them, or somehow attack them. At the time...they were invading the castle of a foe that used tones of traps. Even caught one in an iron maiden, another in a room with a glass floor over gas, etc. It had them scared ****less.

I'm kind of a jerk DM; when my players refuse to do the obvious because it's obvious, I take a mental note of their objections - and over the course of the next few sessions, those fears will make an appearance. On more than one occasion, I've taken a player suggestion as to the reason something was happening (or not happening, depending).

I'm pretty clever, but nothing beats a group of players trying to outsmart you for coming up with fun and plausible ways to mess them up later.

[j_spencer93]

Actually that empty room was just to see if the mission had gotten to them enough to destroy everything they trusted. Shouldve been there when they got separated and regrouped...they almost tore each other apart. I passed a note to each, saying something completely irrelevant, but they all thought it was me telling someone else they were mind controlled lol

[raygun goth]

Spoilered for length.

So I'd been without gaming for a little while and I had a solo player. No big deal, I've had solo players before, and he was still good for it, so I had him made a d20 Modern character, ex-SEAL, did tours in Iraq, pretty standard stuff for that character archetype. Anyway. He got involved with some pretty bad stuff, a few civilians killed, a court martial, he got home and discovered his wife left him. He's free on the wind and takes the bus out to Arizona.

So he wakes up in a room, a rusty, blood-stained room in a small chair. There's a lot of stuff on the walls: charcoal and chalk drawings, blood, little symbols. This guy, dear as he was, noted everything down that he could until a man in a nice suit enters the room. The guy turns and pulls his pistol, and the guy asks “Are you sorry?”

After a brief exchange, the guy only manages to get questions out of the guy, like “Are you sorry?” and “Do you cry?” and eventually shoots him and the dead man bleeds orange. He escapes, finds some stairs to the surface, and discovers he's in a small town called “Irokis,” somewhere in upstate New York. The place is busted down, a shambles, there's a few burned buildings.

He explores a bit, discovers there are snake statues that whisper things, some of them right in the front of doorways that he can't move (he eventually resorts to busting the wall next to one so he can get into the house because the statues are even blocking the windows). The statues all say the same thing: “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” All the houses blocked by statues all have the same sort of scrawling that the room did.

I'm keeping track of starvation rules. By day two the guy's trying to steal from the stores just to get food. He leaves town a couple of times, of course, but he finds out that if he goes to sleep, he wakes back up in the “chair room.” No corpse of the suited man, but there is a statue there now, that same cemetery snake statue. It says the same thing when he gets up and starts repeating it. “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” He's at the point where he just about ignores them. This one has a deep voice. After a bit of trying to engage it in conversation, he leaves.

The player is honestly starting to get a little creeped out and tells me so, but he has two friends he wants to bring in because apparently “you guys -have- to play this.” So he brings them by. Before they get their characters really done they watch a little and ex-SEAL guy makes his way into the good graces of the cut lady who runs the local bed and breakfast and is going to get a room in exchange for some handyman work. He goes through a few rather nice, calm days with nothing untoward happening. Well, you know, except for a few statues here and there, and there isn't much food. Still taking nonlethal, of course, but getting the DCs dropped here and there because he's eating sometimes (using D&D's nonlethal rules as opposed to d20 Modern's).

Things are actually going ok. Then he wakes up in his room with two other people. They get into some arguments, there are a few shots fired, but they do the Player Character thing and decide to team up to figure out what's going on. One is a cute blonde cop from New York City struggling with her sexual identity and coming up short and the other is a college student who's trying to figure out his major, since his dad wants him to go into business and he wants to get into a science career.

Science guy has all kinds of tests to run. They leave town, they hop a train, they drive to a nearby city, they always end up, now, back in the bed and breakfast and nobody remembers them leaving. They ask around about the statues and try to chip them. Nobody else can hear them, says “they've always been there” and they can certainly be pulverized. They come back the instant someone isn't looking at them.

By day 7 it starts to rain. Fatigue rolls on top of starvation rolls now. Day 9 they trade the cop's gun for food. They discover there's a woman on the north end of town who claims she can make elixirs that fend off the starvation, and they discover she has a sort of cult going , and is trading real food for drugs that just make you feel full. They decide to kill her. Science guy is killed in the ensuing fire, but wakes up the next day in the bed and breakfast room (with some more nonlethal damage). They're walking around with maybe 10% of their health left and Fatigued. At this point they're all trying to steal food.

Eventually SEALguy sends Science Guy off to get something for them to eat and maybe try to track down some animals or something. He's good at that. I run a side thing where Science Guy almost dies and even recovers some food. I mix in some dinner table conversation with the lady who runs the bed and breakfast and have her flirt with Blondiecop a little. They end up sleeping together and Science Guy comes back with more food. I manage to not have to make bed and breakfast lady react because she's with Blondiecop in her room and wants the other two to watch.

The three of them eat. I make some notes and attack the bed and breakfast with some kids wearing plastic Captain Kirk masks and get some numbers thrown around in the air involving some diseases to cover for the fact that I haven't adjusted the starvation Con check. Blondiecop is killed and wakes back up in the bed and breakfast room.

The players, down to around 5% of their health, go ballistic. They move out into town the next day and kill the convenience store clerk. They steal everything in his store and go back to the bed and breakfast. Next day, the convenience store is run down and covered with ARE YOU SORRY and snake statues. They break every snake statue they can find. They start stabbing people in the street. DO YOU CRY

ARE YOU SORRY

DO YOU CRY

It's everywhere. The only person spared from their wrath is bed and breakfast lady, who is getting more sexually aggressive the whole time. She's slept with all three and had them all watch. Never all three at once. Just one at a time, one a night.

The rain gets worse.

YOU NEVER CRY starts appearing in the signs. YOU DON'T CARE. SEALguy finds pictures of the people he killed in Iraq lying around. Blondiecop's parents come in on the bus and start hunting her down to talk to her and force her to fellate random men at gunpoint. She kills them a lot. Science Guy's dad is stalking all three of them with the ability to seemingly make people follow him just by showing them the inside of a briefcase.

They team up and kill him, mostly by luring him close to a big statue and pushing it over. They traded their guns and armor for food already. The statue breaks open and a giant snake that breathes poison gas emerges. They spend two days tracking it and killing it.

They find the dead kids from Iraq inside.

SEALguy has a breakdown. The player literally starts crying. Finds himself on an empty road, haggard, tired, and halfway between Colorado and Arizona. He hitches a ride. Nobody pays any attention to Science Guy and Blondiecop. He arrives in Arizona, and they spend a few days hanging around, paranoid about everything, and SEALguy is eventually jumped by cops and dragged off to an asylum.

He spends time in the asylum. Blondiecop and Science Guy are actually free to come and go. Nobody stops them. They never have to check in at security. They have trouble talking to him or interacting with things when he's taken his meds, you see. Eventually he figures this out and gets off his meds and plans a breakout. He does break out when Science Guy drives a car through the wall. They get about thirty miles before SEALguy is suddenly back in his room at the asylum and getting injected.

He starts taking his meds, I start focusing the game entirely on him.

Up until he's released and he meets this college kid and an ex-detective from New York and the three of them discover that the asylum is performing illegal anti-psychotic research and get SEALguy (and most of the other inmates) released by the courts and some licenses revoked.

That's not the end of the campaign. That's just where I started, mind you. The level 3-7 adventure.

[MaxWilson]

Hey!

I'm planning in using the "House of Gemini" scenario from Saint Seiya in an adventure (the never ending house that leads them always to the beginning.

I wanted to hear from other DM's the most bizarre scenario that you have put your players and how it was resolved :smallsmile:

Yes. I gave them access to a mysterious, ancient machine which ate gems and performed xixchil biomodifications on you according to the mysterious icon which you selected. 5 of the 6 options give you some kind of a penalty, but also a permanent bonus. (E.g. "your eyes are replaced with huge multifaceted insect eyes. You now have blindsight out to 60', but are blind beyond that radius.") The sixth setting was just a straight-up brain-harvesting option that the original builders had kludged into the autodoc because it was convenient. I drew up all the icons and let the players select buttons, each time paying a gem and climbing into the modification pod.

After a number of modifications including extra arms, +2 Str, trollish regeneration, and natural AC 15 chitin, I finally got to tell the player, "You don't wake up," and watch him whimper. Due to the nature of what was going on (he was playing with the machine while the party was split) I got to keep him in suspense until another player came back to find Jandar, lying there in the modification pod with no expression on his head, and a suspiciously hollow-looking forehead. (His brain was replaced with an rudimentary brainstem stub in order to keep the body healthy without the brain, per the builder's original requirements.)

Because reasons, the machine had a way to restore the original brain at the cost of a 1000 gp gem, but still the palpable dismay from the player when he realized he'd just let his own curiosity and greed kill him off... ah, that was delicious. I love playing Mephistopheles!

[Troacctid]

One room featured four suits of armor surrounded by force fields, with a big button in the middle. When the players pressed the button, the force fields vanished and the suits of armor animated and attacked them.

The next room had the same setup, so this time the fighters in the group stood in front of the suits of armor with readied attacks when the button was pressed. This time, the carpets in front of the suits of armor animated instead and started smothering them.

The next room was filled with objects of all kinds. By now, the players thought they had my number, so they destroyed as many of them as they could before pressing the button. When they pressed it, the floor and walls turned into earth elementals and attacked them.

[Uigeadaily]

I suppose this counts as an psychological trap, as it plays on the mentality of greedy adventurers.

I recently had my low-level party seek vital information from a mysterious sage who turned out to be an Ancient Green Dragon (Pro Tip: Always ask the DM for a description). She agreed to share her lore provided that the party performed a simple task for her first; That they hunt down a rival dragon muscling in on her turf and bring her it’s head and whatever treasure hoard it possessed.

They find the (half) dragon, slay it and find a sizable hoard of treasure, equipment and even a few magical items! Immediately they start divvying it up between themselves, acknowledging that while the Sage did indeed demand the entire hoard, she wasn’t going to miss what she hadn’t seen for herself, surely?

So they return to the dragon’s lair and lay out both the head and treasure. The Sage comments on the meagreness of the claimed wealthy, and doesn’t appear to notice the plethora of new gear upgrades and shiny bling brazenly worn by the PCs.

The Sage smiled, seemingly impressed by the heroes, “You may ask a question of me”

That they did, with the Paladin doing most of the deception. They quickly discover that a single question was all they were going to get answered.
((Behind the screen, I had a ratio of Information granted per value of treasure given, half expecting the party to admit their dishonesty and relinquish the rest of their spoils as agreed.))

With the party uncertain on how to further pay a price for their much-needed information, The Sage casually suggests that the party members could owe her a favour. One that could be called upon whenever she wished. Still not willing to own up to the deceit they all reluctantly agree, perhaps still thinking that they can get away with a false promise, that is until they are subject to a Geas effect.

The ritual complete, the dragon cheerfully states that the PCs are welcome to hold onto their ill-gotten gains as she will know exactly where to find them. In the end, the Sage got what she really wanted. Willing servants at her beck and call.

The moral of the story? Green Dragons are tricky. :smallwink:

[Chained Birds]

Not sure if it counts, but I did mess with one of my players involving a doppelgänger.

Essentially, the doppelgänger slowed the player down with difficult terrain, after a bit of rping with the "npc" version of the creature. It didn't take the creature long to understand the PC's motivations and the names of his companions throughout their brief meeting. It was a bit of a race for the PC to get back to where his companions were; combating the boss of the encounter.

Upon arriving, the Player was informed that his PC's special abilities and powers were being neutralized by some power coming from the boss, so he had to use his martial skills along with depending on his allies in order to contribute. He was able to at least take out the summoned creatures that the boss used, but could not hit the boss even on critical attacks.

After some time, I informed the PC that his cohort was not trusting him anymore, which makes sense. Especially seeing as his character just showed up on the battlefield this round, and now there were two of him.

At that moment, the "him" that the Player was using, striked at his closest ally; before shapeshifting into a more preferable look for the doppelgänger.

I rolled for how many round his character was going to be late; rolled hidden insight checks for all his allies anytime he mentioned being unable to use his abilities, or missing the the boss; and wondered how long it was going to take for the Player to figure things out... He didn't, which was super handy as his genuine confusion and frustration added to the character the doppelgänger was portraying.

Not sure if this was a psychological trap or a cautionary tale about splitting the party at mid-levels, but it did mess with both the characters and the Players.

[Draco_Lord]

I once trapped my players in a 'perfect' dream. The idea being that literally all their plans would work, all their crazy desires would be seen through. Basically I said yes to literally everything they did. I would have them roll for it, but if it was a good number it happened. Nearer the end I stopped having them roll, and they started to catch on that literally everything they wanted to happen happened, and quickly dispelled the illusion after that. But honestly I've never had so much fun saying Yes to my players.

[Roughishguy86]

My dm currently has my entire party trapped in a castle that is stuck in a time loop and keeps replaying the last night before it got stuck in this time loop. And none of us have any idea how to stop it or get out the loop and its seriously freaking me out.

[mealar]

our Dm tried that for the hook of one of the side areas in a campaign, idea was we were on the road in awful weather when we see an inn at the side and head inside. it's all warm and cosy and just in time for happy hour.

the idea was we'd drink some mead and be drugged into unconsciousness by the three sucubi barmaids then wakeup as prisoners in the orc camp with no weapons, unfortunately for him two of us are extremely paranoid and as he's normally a cheapskate as soon as he said free drinks for happy hour we all thought TRAP!!! and started using checks and detect magic to see the illusions.

at which point a number of disintegrates and lightning bolts were launched as well as one very annoyed dwarf barbarian, we burned the place to the ground and he had to come up with an on-the-spot change as to finding the camp.

the lesson i'd impart (and he has since learned) is when you bait any kind of trap make sure your not suddenly out of character or they'll see it coming.

[Linker2k]

Spoilered for length.

So I'd been without gaming for a little while and I had a solo player. No big deal, I've had solo players before, and he was still good for it, so I had him made a d20 Modern character, ex-SEAL, did tours in Iraq, pretty standard stuff for that character archetype. Anyway. He got involved with some pretty bad stuff, a few civilians killed, a court martial, he got home and discovered his wife left him. He's free on the wind and takes the bus out to Arizona.

So he wakes up in a room, a rusty, blood-stained room in a small chair. There's a lot of stuff on the walls: charcoal and chalk drawings, blood, little symbols. This guy, dear as he was, noted everything down that he could until a man in a nice suit enters the room. The guy turns and pulls his pistol, and the guy asks “Are you sorry?”

After a brief exchange, the guy only manages to get questions out of the guy, like “Are you sorry?” and “Do you cry?” and eventually shoots him and the dead man bleeds orange. He escapes, finds some stairs to the surface, and discovers he's in a small town called “Irokis,” somewhere in upstate New York. The place is busted down, a shambles, there's a few burned buildings.

He explores a bit, discovers there are snake statues that whisper things, some of them right in the front of doorways that he can't move (he eventually resorts to busting the wall next to one so he can get into the house because the statues are even blocking the windows). The statues all say the same thing: “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” All the houses blocked by statues all have the same sort of scrawling that the room did.

I'm keeping track of starvation rules. By day two the guy's trying to steal from the stores just to get food. He leaves town a couple of times, of course, but he finds out that if he goes to sleep, he wakes back up in the “chair room.” No corpse of the suited man, but there is a statue there now, that same cemetery snake statue. It says the same thing when he gets up and starts repeating it. “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” He's at the point where he just about ignores them. This one has a deep voice. After a bit of trying to engage it in conversation, he leaves.

The player is honestly starting to get a little creeped out and tells me so, but he has two friends he wants to bring in because apparently “you guys -have- to play this.” So he brings them by. Before they get their characters really done they watch a little and ex-SEAL guy makes his way into the good graces of the cut lady who runs the local bed and breakfast and is going to get a room in exchange for some handyman work. He goes through a few rather nice, calm days with nothing untoward happening. Well, you know, except for a few statues here and there, and there isn't much food. Still taking nonlethal, of course, but getting the DCs dropped here and there because he's eating sometimes (using D&D's nonlethal rules as opposed to d20 Modern's).

Things are actually going ok. Then he wakes up in his room with two other people. They get into some arguments, there are a few shots fired, but they do the Player Character thing and decide to team up to figure out what's going on. One is a cute blonde cop from New York City struggling with her sexual identity and coming up short and the other is a college student who's trying to figure out his major, since his dad wants him to go into business and he wants to get into a science career.

Science guy has all kinds of tests to run. They leave town, they hop a train, they drive to a nearby city, they always end up, now, back in the bed and breakfast and nobody remembers them leaving. They ask around about the statues and try to chip them. Nobody else can hear them, says “they've always been there” and they can certainly be pulverized. They come back the instant someone isn't looking at them.

By day 7 it starts to rain. Fatigue rolls on top of starvation rolls now. Day 9 they trade the cop's gun for food. They discover there's a woman on the north end of town who claims she can make elixirs that fend off the starvation, and they discover she has a sort of cult going , and is trading real food for drugs that just make you feel full. They decide to kill her. Science guy is killed in the ensuing fire, but wakes up the next day in the bed and breakfast room (with some more nonlethal damage). They're walking around with maybe 10% of their health left and Fatigued. At this point they're all trying to steal food.

Eventually SEALguy sends Science Guy off to get something for them to eat and maybe try to track down some animals or something. He's good at that. I run a side thing where Science Guy almost dies and even recovers some food. I mix in some dinner table conversation with the lady who runs the bed and breakfast and have her flirt with Blondiecop a little. They end up sleeping together and Science Guy comes back with more food. I manage to not have to make bed and breakfast lady react because she's with Blondiecop in her room and wants the other two to watch.

The three of them eat. I make some notes and attack the bed and breakfast with some kids wearing plastic Captain Kirk masks and get some numbers thrown around in the air involving some diseases to cover for the fact that I haven't adjusted the starvation Con check. Blondiecop is killed and wakes back up in the bed and breakfast room.

The players, down to around 5% of their health, go ballistic. They move out into town the next day and kill the convenience store clerk. They steal everything in his store and go back to the bed and breakfast. Next day, the convenience store is run down and covered with ARE YOU SORRY and snake statues. They break every snake statue they can find. They start stabbing people in the street. DO YOU CRY

ARE YOU SORRY

DO YOU CRY

It's everywhere. The only person spared from their wrath is bed and breakfast lady, who is getting more sexually aggressive the whole time. She's slept with all three and had them all watch. Never all three at once. Just one at a time, one a night.

The rain gets worse.

YOU NEVER CRY starts appearing in the signs. YOU DON'T CARE. SEALguy finds pictures of the people he killed in Iraq lying around. Blondiecop's parents come in on the bus and start hunting her down to talk to her and force her to fellate random men at gunpoint. She kills them a lot. Science Guy's dad is stalking all three of them with the ability to seemingly make people follow him just by showing them the inside of a briefcase.

They team up and kill him, mostly by luring him close to a big statue and pushing it over. They traded their guns and armor for food already. The statue breaks open and a giant snake that breathes poison gas emerges. They spend two days tracking it and killing it.

They find the dead kids from Iraq inside.

SEALguy has a breakdown. The player literally starts crying. Finds himself on an empty road, haggard, tired, and halfway between Colorado and Arizona. He hitches a ride. Nobody pays any attention to Science Guy and Blondiecop. He arrives in Arizona, and they spend a few days hanging around, paranoid about everything, and SEALguy is eventually jumped by cops and dragged off to an asylum.

He spends time in the asylum. Blondiecop and Science Guy are actually free to come and go. Nobody stops them. They never have to check in at security. They have trouble talking to him or interacting with things when he's taken his meds, you see. Eventually he figures this out and gets off his meds and plans a breakout. He does break out when Science Guy drives a car through the wall. They get about thirty miles before SEALguy is suddenly back in his room at the asylum and getting injected.

He starts taking his meds, I start focusing the game entirely on him.

Up until he's released and he meets this college kid and an ex-detective from New York and the three of them discover that the asylum is performing illegal anti-psychotic research and get SEALguy (and most of the other inmates) released by the courts and some licenses revoked.

That's not the end of the campaign. That's just where I started, mind you. The level 3-7 adventure.


Wow, please let me know how it continues.

[JackPhoenix]

In a 3.5 game years ago, the characters (husband and wife ranger and cleric) ran afoul of a succubus when they destroyed a cult that worshipped her. She was understandably angry and she turned into recurring villain, but because succubi aren't fighters, she spent a lot of time messing with them in other ways.

Propably the best incident was when she took the wife's shape when she was away doing whatever and slept with her husband. When the wife returned, the succubus (when the husband was asleep) took a shape of a random girl from the town they were in and "sneaked" out of the bedroom, making sure she'll be caught. She has "admitted" everything to the wife and ran away before she could be confronted by both of them together. The incident almost broke their marriage, and it took the husband a lot of explaining he wasn't actually cheating on her.

There was much rejoicing when the succubus finally got her head ripped off by a summoned celestial dire bear when she tried to take the wife's shape again much later in the game, when it looked like the wife was buried in the rubble of an exploding tower. (well, she WAS buried in the rubble, but survived and could see the impostor with her husband, and had Summon Monster prepared).

Thinking about that, I loved messing with them in that game...in other situation, they were both treated to a vision when the other one joined the BBEG, turned against them and tried to kill them. The ranger actually refused to fight or even defend himself against his wife, and let himself be "killed"

And to think he stabbed her in the back in their first adventure together, because it looked like she's trying to finish a dark ritual, because the scroll she was using to get her home (she was originally from a different material plane world, sent for an artifact her nation needed to defend themselves against demonic invasion, and was equiped with a scroll to create a portal back) had an effect kinda similar to the ritual the cultists they defeated in the adventure tried to create a gate for similar demonic invasion to his world. That wasn't any machination on my part, just a refusal to share information on her part, misunderstanding on his, and he was very, very sorry afterwards.

[Linker2k]

In a 3.5 game years ago, the characters (husband and wife ranger and cleric) ran afoul of a succubus when they destroyed a cult that worshipped her. She was understandably angry and she turned into recurring villain, but because succubi aren't fighters, she spent a lot of time messing with them in other ways.


I was never able to involve the romance or love on my games, how did you make the characters take this part so seriously?

[JackPhoenix]

I was never able to involve the romance or love on my games, how did you make the characters take this part so seriously?

I didn't. It just happened, I saw the relationship between the characters evolving since start of the game and I've exploited the situation. No offense to my current players, but I consider that game the best I ever ran, not because of my GMing skills (in retrospect, I cringe at some things I've done...using a Mary Sue DMPC being my worst sin, it was the second game I ever GM'd, I've got (I think and hope) much better since then), but because of the awesome players and great RP.

The most incredible part about that? It was during high school, and both characters were played by 16-18 year old males.

[Saeviomage]

I once had an NPC use modify memory on a character. In game, the NPC had ordered a hit that the PC had interrupted: the modify memory was "hey, remember me, I helped you fight off those guys in that alleyway at the beginning of the campaign". Which is what I told the player. They didn't remember the fight too well, and simply believed me, and after that I ended up having the PC assist in a kidnapping plot on behalf of the bad guys.

[BayardSPSR]

Spoilered for length.

So I'd been without gaming for a little while and I had a solo player. No big deal, I've had solo players before, and he was still good for it, so I had him made a d20 Modern character, ex-SEAL, did tours in Iraq, pretty standard stuff for that character archetype. Anyway. He got involved with some pretty bad stuff, a few civilians killed, a court martial, he got home and discovered his wife left him. He's free on the wind and takes the bus out to Arizona.

So he wakes up in a room, a rusty, blood-stained room in a small chair. There's a lot of stuff on the walls: charcoal and chalk drawings, blood, little symbols. This guy, dear as he was, noted everything down that he could until a man in a nice suit enters the room. The guy turns and pulls his pistol, and the guy asks “Are you sorry?”

After a brief exchange, the guy only manages to get questions out of the guy, like “Are you sorry?” and “Do you cry?” and eventually shoots him and the dead man bleeds orange. He escapes, finds some stairs to the surface, and discovers he's in a small town called “Irokis,” somewhere in upstate New York. The place is busted down, a shambles, there's a few burned buildings.

He explores a bit, discovers there are snake statues that whisper things, some of them right in the front of doorways that he can't move (he eventually resorts to busting the wall next to one so he can get into the house because the statues are even blocking the windows). The statues all say the same thing: “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” All the houses blocked by statues all have the same sort of scrawling that the room did.

I'm keeping track of starvation rules. By day two the guy's trying to steal from the stores just to get food. He leaves town a couple of times, of course, but he finds out that if he goes to sleep, he wakes back up in the “chair room.” No corpse of the suited man, but there is a statue there now, that same cemetery snake statue. It says the same thing when he gets up and starts repeating it. “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” He's at the point where he just about ignores them. This one has a deep voice. After a bit of trying to engage it in conversation, he leaves.

The player is honestly starting to get a little creeped out and tells me so, but he has two friends he wants to bring in because apparently “you guys -have- to play this.” So he brings them by. Before they get their characters really done they watch a little and ex-SEAL guy makes his way into the good graces of the cut lady who runs the local bed and breakfast and is going to get a room in exchange for some handyman work. He goes through a few rather nice, calm days with nothing untoward happening. Well, you know, except for a few statues here and there, and there isn't much food. Still taking nonlethal, of course, but getting the DCs dropped here and there because he's eating sometimes (using D&D's nonlethal rules as opposed to d20 Modern's).

Things are actually going ok. Then he wakes up in his room with two other people. They get into some arguments, there are a few shots fired, but they do the Player Character thing and decide to team up to figure out what's going on. One is a cute blonde cop from New York City struggling with her sexual identity and coming up short and the other is a college student who's trying to figure out his major, since his dad wants him to go into business and he wants to get into a science career.

Science guy has all kinds of tests to run. They leave town, they hop a train, they drive to a nearby city, they always end up, now, back in the bed and breakfast and nobody remembers them leaving. They ask around about the statues and try to chip them. Nobody else can hear them, says “they've always been there” and they can certainly be pulverized. They come back the instant someone isn't looking at them.

By day 7 it starts to rain. Fatigue rolls on top of starvation rolls now. Day 9 they trade the cop's gun for food. They discover there's a woman on the north end of town who claims she can make elixirs that fend off the starvation, and they discover she has a sort of cult going , and is trading real food for drugs that just make you feel full. They decide to kill her. Science guy is killed in the ensuing fire, but wakes up the next day in the bed and breakfast room (with some more nonlethal damage). They're walking around with maybe 10% of their health left and Fatigued. At this point they're all trying to steal food.

Eventually SEALguy sends Science Guy off to get something for them to eat and maybe try to track down some animals or something. He's good at that. I run a side thing where Science Guy almost dies and even recovers some food. I mix in some dinner table conversation with the lady who runs the bed and breakfast and have her flirt with Blondiecop a little. They end up sleeping together and Science Guy comes back with more food. I manage to not have to make bed and breakfast lady react because she's with Blondiecop in her room and wants the other two to watch.

The three of them eat. I make some notes and attack the bed and breakfast with some kids wearing plastic Captain Kirk masks and get some numbers thrown around in the air involving some diseases to cover for the fact that I haven't adjusted the starvation Con check. Blondiecop is killed and wakes back up in the bed and breakfast room.

The players, down to around 5% of their health, go ballistic. They move out into town the next day and kill the convenience store clerk. They steal everything in his store and go back to the bed and breakfast. Next day, the convenience store is run down and covered with ARE YOU SORRY and snake statues. They break every snake statue they can find. They start stabbing people in the street. DO YOU CRY

ARE YOU SORRY

DO YOU CRY

It's everywhere. The only person spared from their wrath is bed and breakfast lady, who is getting more sexually aggressive the whole time. She's slept with all three and had them all watch. Never all three at once. Just one at a time, one a night.

The rain gets worse.

YOU NEVER CRY starts appearing in the signs. YOU DON'T CARE. SEALguy finds pictures of the people he killed in Iraq lying around. Blondiecop's parents come in on the bus and start hunting her down to talk to her and force her to fellate random men at gunpoint. She kills them a lot. Science Guy's dad is stalking all three of them with the ability to seemingly make people follow him just by showing them the inside of a briefcase.

They team up and kill him, mostly by luring him close to a big statue and pushing it over. They traded their guns and armor for food already. The statue breaks open and a giant snake that breathes poison gas emerges. They spend two days tracking it and killing it.

They find the dead kids from Iraq inside.

SEALguy has a breakdown. The player literally starts crying. Finds himself on an empty road, haggard, tired, and halfway between Colorado and Arizona. He hitches a ride. Nobody pays any attention to Science Guy and Blondiecop. He arrives in Arizona, and they spend a few days hanging around, paranoid about everything, and SEALguy is eventually jumped by cops and dragged off to an asylum.

He spends time in the asylum. Blondiecop and Science Guy are actually free to come and go. Nobody stops them. They never have to check in at security. They have trouble talking to him or interacting with things when he's taken his meds, you see. Eventually he figures this out and gets off his meds and plans a breakout. He does break out when Science Guy drives a car through the wall. They get about thirty miles before SEALguy is suddenly back in his room at the asylum and getting injected.

He starts taking his meds, I start focusing the game entirely on him.

Up until he's released and he meets this college kid and an ex-detective from New York and the three of them discover that the asylum is performing illegal anti-psychotic research and get SEALguy (and most of the other inmates) released by the courts and some licenses revoked.

That's not the end of the campaign. That's just where I started, mind you. The level 3-7 adventure.

That's... beautiful. I hope you post more on this as it goes.