Should i do this plot-twist or not?

[Gnaritas]

I am working on a new campaign. There will be 5-players.

The story as i worked out at first:
The players are all level 1 commoners, they are required to have a good alignment, they do not know each other, are not near each other. In the first session, they will all die, for example the farmer is killed by it's bull and so forth.
Once all players are dead, the blackness they see will turn into a bright white light. They see each other, and nothing but whiteness, and not long thereafter an angel appears. He explains that they are chosen. Long ago, the gods of the Evil Pantheon and Good Pantheon have made a pact, to no longer meddle in the mortal plane (the homeworld of the players). The Good gods however recently discovered the Evil Gods found a Loophole in the pact, where they were able to resurrect powerful heroes from the past to aid in their evil plans. And this has indeed had its effect, because the homeworld of the players is in disarray. The Good Gods have collected 12 Good Heroes to ressurrect, and the players are the chosen ones to bring order back. They will each choose one of the heroes (which they will simply build themselves) and they will be resurrected as that former hero. Their own personality and that of the hero will mix, as well as their memories. They will arrive on the homeworld and do their thing to help this world. Once they die, they can reincarnate as a new hero.

Anyway, this is the story as i build it at first, but once finished, i got a new idea that seem to fit in well.

The plot-twist
What if:
- The angel is no angel, but in fact a devil
- The whole story the "angel" tells is nonsense
- The heroes they can play, are in fact the souls of heroes that the devil has collected through the years
- The heroes get actual missions from the "angel", which might start pretty ok at first. For example they need to collect item X from evil person, but the devil just wants that item for itself. The missions become more and more obvious. In the end, they will realise they are in fact helping the devil take control of this world.

The players could get a number of hints:
- The missions get more and more "evil"
- The heroes could get some memory of how they died (as a hero), they will have died by the hand of a devil. Once they realise they all died of the hand of a devil....
- The "Angel" can sometimes get angry when they dont listen wel enough or something. The Devil needs a second to compose himself, but the players might have gotten the message.
- Once a player dies, they need to make a pentagram of fire to let the player reincarnate as a new hero, although this might be too obvious, i could try to disguise the pentagram symbol as something else, but haven't succeeded yet, i can always see the pentagram in it easily.
- I think i will let the players home base be some kind of temple, where they can speak with the "Angel". This temple can have all sorts of hints, like there will be a spell active to protect against aligment detection. There is an altar, but the players might get to notice that there are small gutters (dunno the proper name) to let blood flow away. The "Angel" might respond that even good gods might have gotten sheep-sacrifices in the past, or that this temple is in fact of a neutral god, to hide the fact that the good gods are in fact meddling in this world again.
- More stuff...

But, do you think this could be an interesting plot-twist? I fear the players will take the hints too soon, and the campaign will end sooner than i expected.
Should i just stick to the original story?

[DeTess]

It sounds a bit obvious. I know I'd pick up on this pretty quickly. That doesn't make it bad, but if you really want to surprise your players I'd come up with something more unique. For example:

- The Angel is actually an angel, but he/she's acting without orders from up high. The angel figured out the loophole on their own and decided to use it to improve the world. The evil gods did not know about this trick.
- As a result of the loophole abuse, the evil gods decide to act, either by using the loophole themselves, or by just deciding the entire pact is void. The consequences of this are laid at the feet of the angel and the players.
- Let the players figure out their next step from here.

You'd have to make sure to include plenty of foreshadowing (for example, have bad guys accuse them of cheating in their dying breath, and show them how the world is actually getting worse even as they do their objectively good deeds as evil pops up in ever greater numbers).

[Calthropstu]

It sounds a bit obvious. I know I'd pick up on this pretty quickly. That doesn't make it bad, but if you really want to surprise your players I'd come up with something more unique. For example:

- The Angle is actually an angel, but he/she's acting without orders from up high. The angel figured out the loophole on their own and decided to use it to improve the world. The evil gods did not know about this trick.
- As a result of the loophole abuse, the evil gods decide to act, either by using the loophole themselves, or by just deciding the entire pact is void. The consequences of this are laid at the feet of the angle and the players.
- Let the players figure out their next step from here.

You'd have to make sure to include plenty of foreshadowing (for example, have bad guys accuse them of cheating in their dying breath, and show them how the world is actually getting worse evena s they do their objectively good deeds as evil pops up in ever greater numbers).

Yay chaotic.

Azatas would do something like this. In fact, it's a good way to set up a battle between archons and azatas (which happens on occasion).
I like this quite a bit.

Plus, it could result in a major planar court case. Technically, the good gods did not break the pact as they did nothing. A single celestial soul melding is hardly the fault of a god after all.

After the case, make a counter-operative adventuring party of similar evil heroes who keep reincarnating.

[Mordaedil]

I'm a big fan of the double-twist too. Angel is actually an angel, but all of the circumstances hint that he's a devil, but it's all a misunderstanding and might lead the angel and the players confrontation instead because of entirely the players being paranoid.

And of course the one misleading the players was a devil all along, but it wasn't the angel.

[Talverin]

That would be a rather neat twist, and I like the 'rogue angel' idea. That sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

Perhaps it could be an old, abandoned temple, overgrown and the like. Clearly hadn't been worshipped at for a while. Perhaps there are well-worn statues depicting a minor Saint that they don't recognize, but through research and finding other info in the world could discover it was a Joan of Arc-type person who became an Angel. Later on they could find empty plinths in other temples where this Saint would have been depicted... And perhaps inquire as to why its' statue was missing, bringing them to the attention of an Archon - or even more fun, an Inevitable! Inevitables are contract-enforcers. A breach of contract met with the steady juggernaut force of an Inevitable hunting it... If they don't pass the Lore checks, they might not know that the creature would only hunt an oathbreaker, and may simply see it as a tool of the Devils and Demons trying to strike back at them.


Me, I love corruption stories. As the acts get more and more extreme, the Azata may in fact fall and become a Demon, still obsessed with 'doing the right thing', but in too deep to acknowledge her cause has made more harm than good. Her alignment steadily shifts to Neutral, and later, to Evil. The statues become tarnished, the altar grimy, and her appearance becomes more and more disheveled.

That avoids them being able to go, "Aha! A demon!" too early, while still giving you the 'You're the bad guys' speech later.

[Selion]

It's a cliche, but isn't the entire fantasy genre based on cliches?
I'd love to play this campaign.

[J-H]

Sounds good, but in the interests of time, you may want to have the character building done before the first session.
Then again, I only do PBP, so maybe sitting around a table is how people actually like to construct characters.

[DeTess]

It's a cliche, but isn't the entire fantasy genre based on cliches?
I'd love to play this campaign.

Yeah, I didn't stress this enough in my initial post, but your idea itself is a good one and could easily make for a fun campaign, despite it being a bit of a cliché.


Sounds good, but in the interests of time, you may want to have the character building done before the first session.
Then again, I only do PBP, so maybe sitting around a table is how people actually like to construct characters.

Depending on the group, the kind of campaign and the starting level, making characters together can help with group cohesion, and can even save people time and keep the group balanced if the better builders help out the rest.

[Dekion]

This may also be a bit cliche as well, but what if the intentions of the devil are not wholly evil, but the only way to counteract something it sees as disruptive to long term plans, and the only way it can see to impact what is being done by the evil deities is to use the same loophole to level the playing field, thus involving the PCs. Of course it would have to disguise itself as something else to gain their cooperation and trust, and it would have a hard time fighting against its natural inclinations, lending to your original thoughts regarding the angel disguise and clues, but in reality it is working toward something that the PCs can get behind, however begrudgingly. An ends-justify-the-means approach might be tip the players off, but, perhaps, even when they find out, they have a hard time disagreeing with the intentions. Kind of like a, "Look, if you want to stop this thing from happening, this is what has to be done," approach. Then, when they are on board, and think they are "doing the right thing," they ultimately learn that it was all about a grasp for personal power, or something of the like, not that the devil was really lying, just providing half-truths with the full intention of rewarding the party for their contribution. Of course at that point, they would need alternatives, choose the lesser of two evils, or you could slowly introduce a less obvious third choice where the party, or another entity could proxy in the grasp for power and become a major player in the good vs evil conflict, depending on where you want to go with the story. This would give you a less obvious secondary plot twist, a potential moral dilemma for the characters, and ultimate player agency in the end. Sorry, ideas just started falling into place as I was typing, so I apologize if any clarity was lost.

(edited for grammar)

[tiercel]

The story as i worked out at first:
The players are all level 1 commoners, they are required to have a good alignment, they do not know each other, are not near each other. In the first session, they will all die, for example the farmer is killed by it's bull and so forth.
Once all players are dead...

Just a note, no matter which way you take the twist: requiring that the first thing the commoner “PCs” do is die in order to get the ball rolling means you might want to handle that part of the story as an introduction, a non-interactive cutscene.

I say this because I remember an adventure (from back in 2nd edition Ravenloft, part of the Grand Conjunction series) where it was required that the PCs died to start the adventure, so that the NPC lich could mess about with their souls to do time travel, change the past, escape Ravenloft etc. — and the “you must die” part of it (in the intro, and then to an extent during the time-travel portions) just came off as railroady.

(The time-travel gimmick is/was interesting, but the whole “fine we accept our characters’ deaths so we can play the story you have ready” concept is metagame; moreso if one or more characters are a little too lucky or good to be killed off easily and you have to keep upping the threat until it’s obvious that They Are Just Supposed to Die. —And yes, I’ve done this sort of thing as a DM and later regretted that I didn’t find another way to integrate the story better.)

Sure, fine, YES, we want to play the story, but if there’s literally no player agency, maybe just read off the intro as starting with “you have all recently died, by one means or another, and the story begins when...”

[Fouredged Sword]

Halfway through the plotline have a second faction show up and explain that the creature they are working for is actually a demon and they are furthering the abyss and need to stop and work for THEM instead.

But this second being is ALSO a demon, just out to backstab the first and get in on their game so to speak.

[noob]

Halfway through the plotline have a second faction show up and explain that the creature they are working for is actually a demon and they are furthering the abyss and need to stop and work for THEM instead.

But this second being is ALSO a demon, just out to backstab the first and get in on their game so to speak.
what if the adventurers just starts guessing the gm is out for sending them to do evil quests and starts killing all their employers except if they subject themselves to a trial made by them for checking if the employer is a good aligned creature made out of good.