Complete mind block. Need som help nailing down some plot hooks/details.

[magnusruud]

I am at the stage of pre-burnout where I still get ideas that i want to use but struggle to flesh them out and make them make sense in game. And thus I could use some help. This might be a bit unorganized and for that i apologize.

My players (5 level 8's) are in way over their heads (along with me, the DM) and are preparing to join a coup to overthrow a king. They don't know that the royal family, most of the court and other key functionaries are actually oblexes/doppelgangers (haven't decided which yet). At the moment they are trying to coerce a banker, that is in effect the ruler of a smaller city outside the capital, to join their side of the coup.

What they know is: The Banker is an old mercinary that is known for both ruthlessness and a sort of mobster version of fairness. They know that his daughter is well thought of and helps her father with the household and business. They know that the son is the family ****-up and low-life abusing party boy. Their original mission was to kidnap the daughter in order to coerce the father.

What they don't know is that the father is suffering from an unnatural dementia that is making him confused and tired all the time. This dementia is caused by the doppelganger/oblex that is posing as his daughter, either through poison or magic (haven't decided). His real daughter is imprisoned in the cellar underneath the manor. The son found out about the situation at some point but is such a sociopath that instead of rescuing his sister he made a deal with the impostor to keep quiet in exchange for more money, power and mentally torturing his real sister now and then.

What happened last session was that they found out that the son was abusing prostitutes. The sorcerer flat out told the owner of the towns upper class brothel that they would kill the bankers son. A few hours later, out on the street, the city guards aka the bankers private army tried to arrest them but they got away. The warlock went out on her own later that night to look around town and happened upon a gentlemans hand crosbow duel where one of the participants was the bankers son and the other was the brother of a prostitute he had beaten to death. The warlock was aproached by someone offering her 500 gold if she would distract the prostitutes brother at a key moment and ensuring that the banker's son wins the duel. She turns him down, and does the complete oposite and the session ends with the banker's son lying dead on the street with a crossbow bolt in his brain.

That is the imidiate situation that I will have to expand on next session a week from now. Ideas to expand on this or make it tidier is welcomed.

After that, and possibly already during next session another factor comes into play. The warlocks player told me they wanted to take a break from the character and try something new for a while. This gives me the oportunity to do something cool. I had planned for them to be betrayed by an NPC down the line. This person would turn out to be a doppelganger/oblex spy from the capital. But now I could do something even better. The warlock could be the one swapped out with a traitor. I talked with the player and they loved the idea. So now that has to happen. Both me and the player are open to making it so that the warlock has already swapped out and is activly a traitor at this time.

Knowing my players, what I plan that wil take a session might take three, so the traitor can't be to obvious. I need their objective to be more in the line of misdirection, light but meaningfull sabotage, and possibly leading them into a trap during the coup. Ideas are apreciated on this to.

The siege of the capital will happen in a week (in-game) and the party plans to use this as a distraction to sneak into the palace and secure the coup from within. I fully plan to make this possible for them, but howcan I tie all this together and make it work make it harder for the players to completly ruin it?

[Unoriginal]

I'm a bit confused. Why are you expecting the players to ruin it?

For the rest, I'd suggest that the Oblexes/Dopplegangers would know the coup is coming thanks to their spying, their plan is to fake the death of their current personas and steal the identity of the coup's leaders.

Fake Warlock could be tasked into tricking the PCs to go down in the prison where the banker's daughter (and the real warlock) is kept, only for it to turn into an ambush with for goal to capture the PCs so they can be replaced as well.

[Temperjoke]

I think you need to step back and fill in some big picture details. What is the goal of the dopplegangers/oblexes? Why did they take over the kingdom in this way? That would affect their response regarding an attempted coup. If they've replaced the banker's daughter and not him, then they would likely have knowledge of a coup attempt forming, if not an exact timetable. And now that they've replaced the PC warlock, then they would know when the coup is about to take place.

So how they react will depend on why they took over to begin with. This is replacement plot is too elaborate and widespread (meaning how many important figures have been replaced) to not have a bigger goal in mind. If it's important to the duplicates to remain in charge, then replacing the leaders of the coup and/or whomever is placed in charge of the kingdom when the dust settles would be a priority.

[Corran]

Oblexes are more obvious and somewhat limiting in how you can use them. I'd go primarily with doppelgangers, and maybe use one oblex for targets that risk less discovery (eg the king, who does not necessarily need to go outside the palace grounds or come into direct and close contact with unsuspecting people).


You want to run a session (down the line) where the players will trigger a coup (that they'll organize to varying measure of success during the sessions leading up to the big one), exploit the confusion, sneak into the palace and secure victory from within by cutting the snake's head? Sounds very exciting. As a player, I would be incredibly excited at the prospect of these sessions. Here is the thing though. If all goes well, the revelation that doppelgangers/oblexes were behind the whole thing all this time, would make me go ''meh''. I know that cause I played a similar scenario (shapeshifting fiend of some sort, that posed as a noble). My favorite way of winning against such foes, would definitely include in some way exposing them to some degree. Of course, as a DM, you cannot control what your players will uncover, but make sure you throw them enough (but not necessarily many or obvious) clues, so that if they dont manage to find out what's going on, you will be able to point out how they could have known. And you are not doing this to cover your butt. You are doing this cause it will be consolation for the players. Or at least it would be for me, as a player. Knowing how I (partially) failed is far better than not knowing how it would even be possible to (partially) succeed. Twists can be nice only when you unravel them or when they fool you. Not so much if they are just thrusted upon you.


The players want to convince the mobster to help them with the coup. How about if the players need to convince the mobster in order for the coup to have a much better chance of being successful? If that happened to be the reality of things, you can use this to motivate the players to carry on their current path, that is to keep trying at securing having the mobster at their side when the coup happens. This means, that since the mobster's son is now dead, the party has to start looking for the daughter. Why could this be important? For a few reasons:

1) You can justify the daughter of the mobster knowing/suspecting things about the doppelgangers, since they have imprisoned her. So, she could be the one to tell the pc's more stuff about what's going on (you decide how much). This ties to what I was telling you in the spoiler above.

2) Influencing the pc's on the path of trying to find (/free) the mobster's daughter, presents a very nice opportunity for utilizing the fake warlock. The fake warlock's task is to make sure that the pc's wont secure the mobster's power, which essentially translates that the pc's wont find the daughter. This makes sense if you consider that the swap (and the killing of the actual warlock) happened during the duel in which the mobster's son died. So it was done by a doppelganger (could be the one who offered the bribe) who was already watching out for the mobster's son (more accurately, trying to make sure that the mobster's son wont do anything that will endanger the plan). Now all players but the warlock try to find clues about the daughter's whereabouts, while the warlock's player tries to misdirect them but without the other players and/or their characters getting too suspicious about it. You give the warlock player something to do, and that something sounds very interesting to me at least (working against the party, but subtly; misdirect, not just mindless pvp combat). If you like the idea of something like that, check to see what your warlock player thinks about it. Most importantly, you set limits to the adversarial pc. Misdirect but dont kill, cause that might draw attention. Direct confrontation only as a last resort (see below).

3) Have you thought how you would like to introduce your player's new character? If your player is in agreement, one idea is to use the mobster's daughter (should the other players manage to find her whereabouts and free her) as your player's new character. This is good for a couple of reasons. It's easy to justify that the daughter wants to ally with the pc's and help them bring down the doppelgangers (she is helping the ones who helped her against those who hurt her), so it makes sense easily. Also because it's a good way to justify the transition from the fake warlock to the new character. If the fake warlock is assigned to keep the mobster under control, then however subtle their efforts against the pc's were till then, they'll eventually have to step up to direct confrontation if the pc's are one step away from freeing the imprisoned daughter. So if at such a stage, if the pc's are successful, one character exits (fake warlock dies at the hands of the pc's, or just flees) just before the new one enters (daughter is freed by the pc's).

[magnusruud]

I'm a bit confused. Why are you expecting the players to ruin it?

For the rest, I'd suggest that the Oblexes/Dopplegangers would know the coup is coming thanks to their spying, their plan is to fake the death of their current personas and steal the identity of the coup's leaders.

Fake Warlock could be tasked into tricking the PCs to go down in the prison where the banker's daughter (and the real warlock) is kept, only for it to turn into an ambush with for goal to capture the PCs so they can be replaced as well.

Just a bad joke about the fact that they seem to find plotholes, that I should have seen but didn't, like it was their job. They don't mean to, but it happens anyway.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll take them to mind.

[magnusruud]

I think you need to step back and fill in some big picture details. What is the goal of the dopplegangers/oblexes? Why did they take over the kingdom in this way? That would affect their response regarding an attempted coup. If they've replaced the banker's daughter and not him, then they would likely have knowledge of a coup attempt forming, if not an exact timetable. And now that they've replaced the PC warlock, then they would know when the coup is about to take place.

So how they react will depend on why they took over to begin with. This is replacement plot is too elaborate and widespread (meaning how many important figures have been replaced) to not have a bigger goal in mind. If it's important to the duplicates to remain in charge, then replacing the leaders of the coup and/or whomever is placed in charge of the kingdom when the dust settles would be a priority.

It is a bit lacking in the big picture department. It's just that whenever I went out of my way to make one, the players completely ignored it. Two of them are mostly interested in battles and two got a bit lost in expressing how random and silly their characters are and the last one is the one now wanting to change character because they feel the one they play now is to serious to be a good fit for the party.

[magnusruud]

Oblexes are more obvious and somewhat limiting in how you can use them. I'd go primarily with doppelgangers, and maybe use one oblex for targets that risk less discovery (eg the king, who does not necessarily need to go outside the palace grounds or come into direct and close contact with unsuspecting people).


You want to run a session (down the line) where the players will trigger a coup (that they'll organize to varying measure of success during the sessions leading up to the big one), exploit the confusion, sneak into the palace and secure victory from within by cutting the snake's head? Sounds very exciting. As a player, I would be incredibly excited at the prospect of these sessions. Here is the thing though. If all goes well, the revelation that doppelgangers/oblexes were behind the whole thing all this time, would make me go ''meh''. I know that cause I played a similar scenario (shapeshifting fiend of some sort, that posed as a noble). My favorite way of winning against such foes, would definitely include in some way exposing them to some degree. Of course, as a DM, you cannot control what your players will uncover, but make sure you throw them enough (but not necessarily many or obvious) clues, so that if they dont manage to find out what's going on, you will be able to point out how they could have known. And you are not doing this to cover your butt. You are doing this cause it will be consolation for the players. Or at least it would be for me, as a player. Knowing how I (partially) failed is far better than not knowing how it would even be possible to (partially) succeed. Twists can be nice only when you unravel them or when they fool you. Not so much if they are just thrusted upon you.


The players want to convince the mobster to help them with the coup. How about if the players need to convince the mobster in order for the coup to have a much better chance of being successful? If that happened to be the reality of things, you can use this to motivate the players to carry on their current path, that is to keep trying at securing having the mobster at their side when the coup happens. This means, that since the mobster's son is now dead, the party has to start looking for the daughter. Why could this be important? For a few reasons:

1) You can justify the daughter of the mobster knowing/suspecting things about the doppelgangers, since they have imprisoned her. So, she could be the one to tell the pc's more stuff about what's going on (you decide how much). This ties to what I was telling you in the spoiler above.

2) Influencing the pc's on the path of trying to find (/free) the mobster's daughter, presents a very nice opportunity for utilizing the fake warlock. The fake warlock's task is to make sure that the pc's wont secure the mobster's power, which essentially translates that the pc's wont find the daughter. This makes sense if you consider that the swap (and the killing of the actual warlock) happened during the duel in which the mobster's son died. So it was done by a doppelganger (could be the one who offered the bribe) who was already watching out for the mobster's son (more accurately, trying to make sure that the mobster's son wont do anything that will endanger the plan). Now all players but the warlock try to find clues about the daughter's whereabouts, while the warlock's player tries to misdirect them but without the other players and/or their characters getting too suspicious about it. You give the warlock player something to do, and that something sounds very interesting to me at least (working against the party, but subtly; misdirect, not just mindless pvp combat). If you like the idea of something like that, check to see what your warlock player thinks about it. Most importantly, you set limits to the adversarial pc. Misdirect but dont kill, cause that might draw attention. Direct confrontation only as a last resort (see below).

3) Have you thought how you would like to introduce your player's new character? If your player is in agreement, one idea is to use the mobster's daughter (should the other players manage to find her whereabouts and free her) as your player's new character. This is good for a couple of reasons. It's easy to justify that the daughter wants to ally with the pc's and help them bring down the doppelgangers (she is helping the ones who helped her against those who hurt her), so it makes sense easily. Also because it's a good way to justify the transition from the fake warlock to the new character. If the fake warlock is assigned to keep the mobster under control, then however subtle their efforts against the pc's were till then, they'll eventually have to step up to direct confrontation if the pc's are one step away from freeing the imprisoned daughter. So if at such a stage, if the pc's are successful, one character exits (fake warlock dies at the hands of the pc's, or just flees) just before the new one enters (daughter is freed by the pc's).

Wow, lots of good suggestions that I can work with here. Thanks!