PDA

View Full Version : DM Help Making an unusual one-shot, need help with the logistics of it



King of Casuals
2020-02-29, 12:42 AM
I'm thinking of doing a town of salem style one-shot inspired by (but not set in) the Magic the Gathering setting of Innistrad; every member of the party has to have some sort of dark secret, like vampirism, cannibalism, or lycanthropy, but no one knows how many of the other players are the monsters. The twist is: they're all monsters. I message them privately about it, saying that they are either the only one or one of the few chosen, and that while they must indulge their secret each night, if the townspeople find them out they will be killed.

I'm into the idea of making a sort of hidden-role style game where the players and characters all act paranoid and end up accusing each other to draw attention away from themselves, and while I don't mind the idea that they eventually work out the twist, I'm a bit stumped on how to actually do it. I'm experienced with Pathfinder 1e and 5e D&D, but I don't know if those systems would work all that well. In addition, I need to figure out what the situation is to propel the story forwards so they actually go out and interact with each other rather than just hang out in their homes all the time.

Any advice?

bc56
2020-02-29, 04:29 PM
What you're suggesting is definitely not going to work with PF or 5E, and probably not with any system that isn't designed for it. The problem with trying to run a werewolf style game is that other than deciding who to lynch each day and who to use your nighttime powers on, there isn't anything else to do. It's boring, and the players would likely want to skip past it to the action.

There is, however, a way to run this trust no one sort of gameplay in a normal RPG. Rather than have everyone sit around a town, give them a mission to complete, and each of the traitors want to twist the outcome of the mission in some specific way. Paranoia plays more openly and wackily with this, but it could be run more seriously as well. The key points are that the players have a mission and are aware that one of their number is a traitor. Then each of the traitors (assuming you're still going with the "everyone is a traitor" variant) have their own goal within the mission, and some unique extra resources they can call upon that, if they're caught using, will out them as a traitor.

Another key is not to get the party insight-checking against each other, but to try to force them to risk compromising their secrets in order to perform their traitorous tasks.

King of Casuals
2020-02-29, 04:47 PM
There is, however, a way to run this trust no one sort of gameplay in a normal RPG. Rather than have everyone sit around a town, give them a mission to complete, and each of the traitors want to twist the outcome of the mission in some specific way. Paranoia plays more openly and wackily with this, but it could be run more seriously as well. The key points are that the players have a mission and are aware that one of their number is a traitor. Then each of the traitors (assuming you're still going with the "everyone is a traitor" variant) have their own goal within the mission, and some unique extra resources they can call upon that, if they're caught using, will out them as a traitor.

Another key is not to get the party insight-checking against each other, but to try to force them to risk compromising their secrets in order to perform their traitorous tasks.

I’ve looked at paranoia before and made a character with it, and if I was planning on doing a sort of sci fi setting it would be perfect. Giving the players a task to do with their own motives would be a good idea, as well as making it so they can’t just use a dice roll to determine when someone is lying. I might make it so conversation is RP based instead of dice based, so everyone has to actually work to figure out who is lying.

Friv
2020-03-01, 11:53 AM
My thought, plot-wise, is that you need to have one other monster in town, who isn't being subtle. The players all want to deal with that person, because the town is getting riled up and their own secrets are liable to come out if something goes wrong. Then give them each an excuse to be investigating and follow the breadcrumbs, with plenty of chances for them to accuse each other or get people they don't like killed.

Other thought - each player gives you someone in town they like, and someone in town they hate. These people will be suspects.

Maybe include a single player who doesn't have any dark secret, and is actually just a true believer. That almost makes it funnier than if everyone's a bad guy.

MoiMagnus
2020-03-01, 05:37 PM
Here are the main lesson you have to learn from paranoia:

1) Small papers and GM screen!

2) Character sheets have two sides. One side where there is "public" information (that doesn't mean other players have the right to read it, but that's informations you'd expect the player to openly talk about). And one side with "private information". It contain the inventory of the character, and other aspect of their private life, but absolutely-nothing-illegal, absolutely-no-secret-objectives, and absolutely-no-superpower.

3) The players don't need to know how things work. They just need to know "what can I do, and can I trust it to succeed or not?". Stats and skills are just here to give ideas and rough estimation of difficulties. This is not a game where you're stacking bonuses to make the optimal choice. In fact, you could replace numbers by "weak/medium/strong/exceptional" and that would be far enough. You can also keep numbers. Just understand that the number on the PC sheet is not binding as consistency with the universe takes precedence on the result of a test, it just indicates what kind of result the Player will expect from its action, and it's important to keep the player trust that you will resolve the actions fairly, and that if something fail while it "should" have succeed, there is a reason and it's not just your whim.

4) You need to know what kind of ambiance you want. Do you want peoples faking to cooperate until the very end, where everybody betrays everybody? Or do you want something that get potentially more confrontational early? Or do you expect the party to split into teams? In the second case, I suggest to give to everyone a way to cheat death. [Paranoia gives 6 lives to every player, I've played one-shot where everyone has a secret power being essentially "free resurrection in that specific way few hours later unless killed in that way"]. In every cases, you need something you can get out of your bag when the situation gets too aggressive too early and you're risking player elimination early on in the one-shot. In paranoia, you have our Friend the Computer, which will frequently call the PCs to put them back in the main mission, and ensure a (very stupid) policy of "new clones are innocents of every crime, so just because you found the previous clone as a traitor, you MUST collaborate with the new one until you find another reason to execute him".

5) There are 2 important moments: the first conflict, and the last conflict. When I DM paranoia to new players, the first conflict is usually "light goes dark, your hear an explosion and some firearms, you're under attack, this is the first round of combat, so shut up and each of you send me a paper describing what you're doing", having given to some of them a secret mission of "killing as many clones of [player name] as possible". [I'm more subtle when they are not new paranoia players]. The first conflict is railroaded. This should work as a tutorial of "how to cooperate but not fully". The last conflict should not be railroaded, and you should make sure that it feels unique to the decisions took by the players. However, you must have an idea beforehand of what you expect as a last conflict and resolution. (a) It helps you to make sure every character has something to do until the end of the one-shot. (b) It's quite satisfying as a player when the DM explain you what he "planed" but you got something totally different.

6) Avoid monotone characters. If the character look like normal-joe from the outside, obviously he has a secret because that would be a boring character to play otherwise. If the only anormal thing normal-joe has is "he often hide his skin", he's obviously a vampire. In paranoia, characters have (a) A secret society and a secret mission (b) A mutation (a superpower) (c) Some secret equipment and skills (d) Possibly a second secret society and mission (e) Possibly some info about the official mission no-one else has. And the most important things: those might not need to be related to each others. You don't need to overload your players with secret stuff, but try to have enough possibilities so that when a player thing he guessed someone else secrets, he cannot be sure if "that's all" or if "there is something even bigger".