Help me make my PCs regret promising favors

[Rusvul]

Hey all!

In my last session (5e, but the system isn't terribly relevant), a PC promised two favors to a malevolent outsider to whom they had lost some very important things in a game of cards. They attempted to win those things back, but ended up losing even more... and now they're on the hook to do whatever the outsider asks of them, or else. In essence, the party has gained a new, coercive-but-very-polite patron/non-optional side quest giver.

The outsider's modus operandi is to isolate people. He's somewhere between a devil and an unseelie fey in terms of his feel--kind and soft-spoken despite ultimately existing to cause suffering--but I don't like to strictly categorize outsiders. I'm having trouble thinking of suitable favors for him to ask of the party. Ideally. my criteria would be:

Seemingly very minor, innocuous request on the face of it. This outsider in particular is too refined to do something like order an assassination.
Doesn't take longer than a few sessions to complete (there's enough other balls in the air story-wise as it is)
Ultimately pretty morally dubious, possibly more difficult than it seems
The end result should be something ultimately negative. I want the PCs set off the first domino in a chain that ends in entirely avoidable isolation, mistrust, or other bad end.


Any thoughts? I want to be as evocative as I can with the favors in question, while still having them be fun to complete gameplay-wise. I'm also inclined to lean away from personal tragedy, since some of my players are sensitive to that kind of thing, but I still want to give the impression that my players are very much not doing good things in fulfilling the outsider's requests.

[Mastikator]

Some ideas

They have to carry an item that seem trivial at first, then proves to doom them in some way (like proves they were responsible for some terrible crime, even though they weren't)
Help out an NPC that later turns out to be a villain
They have to give over an item that later turns out to be a cure for an ailment they or someone they care about will be inflicted with
They have to spare a villain that they have defeated, and allow said villain to escape alive
They have to go to a location, away from their current place, where some event will take place, so they can't stop it (this needs HEAVY foreshadowing)

[gbaji]

I think the approach is maybe a bit ham-fisted (players don't tend to like to be coerced, so I tend to go for something more subtle than this), but it's a great opportunity to introduce some "favors" that will seem to be good things that the PCs maybe would want to do any way. But have them result in some sequence of unanticipated effects that causes some new problem they'll have to deal with later.

One thing to think about is "what does this NPC actually want?". Come up with a goal/motivation and then find ways to have the PCs ultimately help in achieving those things. But make the "favors" seem innocuous at the time. Trying these together after the fact can make the whole thing feel like a "grand plot", but that was generated just by something seemingly small and random. Use it to create something bigger than just "they have to do things they don't want to". Dunno. Depends on the setting and how you have things set up, but if you can pull this sort of thing off, it makes for really great adventures for the players.

I once had an NPC (who was also not a "good guy") provide the PCs with something they needed to gain entrance to an ancient mausoleum they needed to get into, and in return asked them to find and retrieve a specific box. Nothing else. Did I even have a plan for the box? Only very vaguely. And now that I remember this, I just realized that I never actually had the box (which was one of a set) actually come into play (they overheard someone on another plane negotiating for a box once too, so I did have a plan for this. Really!). Er. The point is that you can have them do a favor that seems completely innocuous at the time, and then have them wondering "what's in the box" (or equivalent) for some time.

Hmmm... Wonder if I've let this one stew long enough. They've probably forgotten about it (it's only been like 15 years or so).

I once also had an NPC that the players thought was a good guy, but was actually a changeling (he was a prince kidnapped as a child, and the party actually found and rescued him years later on an adventure, but of course, this was all according to a BBEG's long term plans). They had every reason to believe he was the young teen that had been kidnapped as a child, and they helped him adjust back to life. He returned the favor by becoming an ally in his kingdom, and providing information to them that helped them in various adventures, and generally was an occasional quest source as he helped them and they helped him. They never knew that he was actually working behind the scenes to create many of the conflicts that he and the party worked together to "solve", and that each solution was a small piece in a larger puzzle that gradually created certain conditions that he (his master) would use later to their advantage.

And these were subtle things. They once helped him take out an evil group of cultists in his home kingdom. Turned out it was one faction of evil cultists who were resisting his faction, so by eliminating them, the party helped him consolidate power for his secret identity (think Darth Sidious style work here). He also manufactured a rift between the military and the town guards (both members of the same war god cult, but with different jobs in the kingdom), then had the party mediate a solution when things came to a head, which resulted in both "sides" having to cede their authority to the crown directly (and taking oaths to that effect). Resolved the initial conflict, but put him in a position of being able to order the entire religion's followers in his kingdom to do whatever he wanted them to do (well, his sister who conveniently became Queen when their parents mysteriously died in a boating accident did, but he had magical control over her. Did I mention he was "evil"?).

Later, he used minions to manipulate correspondence between two other "evil" kingdoms who were coordinating an attack on the PCs kingdom away from a method that would have been far more damaging to their kingdom, but which caused the lesser of the two threats to be greater than it should have been. Timing should have been lesser kingdom begins border incursion in the south, drawing troops to fight and drive them off pretty easily, then much larger force hits from the north to great effect. He arranged for the timing to flip, which allowed the kingdom to (just barely) hold off the northern force, but didn't have much to deal with the southern one. This forced the PCs to reveal a "secret weapon" they had (and no, I didn't require them to do this, they just decided to), which was basically some alchemically created vapor based poison gas and delivery system (a launcher they'd acquired on a previous adventure on a war machine they'd captured and hidden for use "when needed"). The location they chose for the battlefield (ok, it was the only location they could guarantee to engage them) just happened to also be a large farmland they'd traveled through before (had some adventures helping out the owners, in fact). The result was victory over the enemy, but also caused poisoning of a large portion of the farmlands. Oops. Well, the kingdom the prince was now more or less ruling by proxy also is an island nation with historically small amount of farmland (require significant imports to feed their people). So he used this as social/political pressure to drive the need to use military force to "secure our food supply". Which, ironically, the PCs didn't actually have a lot of problem with since it largely involved his kingdom's military basically camping out in their southern enemy kingdoms lands, on a "peacekeeping humanitarian mission". If it kept the enemy guy at bay for a while, that seemed great.

Point being that each of these steps made sense, seemed "good", and in the short term benefited the PCs and their allies (in a couple cases, significantly). But the whole thing was basically a setup to control the "evil" cult on the island, then control, distract, and re-direct the efforts of the war cult people (keep them out of the way), while he was secretly setting up a foothold for his "master" on a remote portion of the island kingdom to use as a launching point to retake other lands in the area that had once been part of his domain (was basically a deity who'd been severely diminished in power/worship on the main continent and was trying to regain it). There were additional components to this whole thing, involving the ultimate real target kingdom and "strange things" going on there (and a convenient civil war, which the changeling prince didn't even cause, one of the PCs did many many years earlier). He was basically playing all the factions (including the party) against each other to keep them weak/distracted while he did was he was actually created to do.

That may be a bit more involved and long term than most GMs are willing to embark on, but you can use ideas like this to craft outcomes and changes to the world around the PCs via their own actions. By having these small "favors" result in secondary effects, you can play it off as though this outsider is super brilliant and maybe can see patterns of action/reaction better than mere mortals do, and thus predict said outcomes and effects (and manipulate them) in this way. Of course, at some point, the PCs will need to realize this and realize they've been manipulated into further this beings "evil agenda" and have to figure out how to stop it. But it puts the PCs in the position of being extremely invested in the outcome because they were at least partially involved/responsible in creating it in the first place.

Um. It goes without saying that you have to be extremely careful trying to pull something like this off. If the players figure it out, let them. Don't ever pressure or force them to do anything, or present them with situations where they have no choice. Otherwise, they'll resent the situation rather than enjoy it. But yeah, using evil NPCs in this manner can result in some extremely fun scenarios.

[Jay R]

I prefer to do things that will endanger the PCs without the players regretting it.

The evil outsider knows the PCs will be uncomfortable doing something evil. This means that they might not do it as well as some evil party who also owes him.

But he also has any number or rivals or enemies who are themselves evil. So his smartest move is to send the PCs after enemies that they will actually want to defeat. That is his most effective use of that asset.

[Delicious Taffy]

If the players figure it out, let them.
Emphasis mine. No matter what you end up doing, the players should be rewarded for working out exactly what's about to happen.

If they figure out that the maid they let out of the dungeon is secretly an automaton full of gunpowder, now they get to scramble to prevent her from blowing up the king's parade float.

If they catch on that the "rare fruit extract" the baker wanted is actually a potent form of zombie juice, now they get to have to find a way to keep the easily-offended senator from eating the pie he made with it.

If the necklace they retrieved from the back yard of the old lady's childhood home is actually a bomb full of gaseous zombie juice, now they can find a way to try interrupting her lawn-related filibuster at the monthly town meeting.

And so on. It's way more fun if they're allowed to know what's coming via the power of deduction, like when Batman looks at the innocuous scrap of paisley cloth and remembers the otherwise-unassuming banker at that cocktail party was wearing a paisley tie, so all he can do is to hop in the Batmobile and hope he's not too late to prevent the banker from pouring boiling milk on the mayor's skull.

[Duff]

For real deviousness, have them do a specific task for a powerful local.
Who's a genuine good-guy, the PCs should now become suspicious of our local good-guy
But that service will also put the good-guy in the right place for something bad. Maybe set them up to take the fall for something else.

Eg, the local mayor is suspicious of the baron's adviser. The PCs do the favour and observe the Vizier's agent meet a known bad-guy.
The mayor confronts the Vizier in front of the baron. And the vizier is ready for her.
The mayor is dragged away in disgrace and the waters are nicely muddied for the PCs about who's good and evil

[gbaji]

Emphasis mine. No matter what you end up doing, the players should be rewarded for working out exactly what's about to happen.

Yeah. In that particular adventure/story-arc, they were on a completely unrelated adventure (I tend to drag out longer story arcs with bits of seemingly unrelated adventures that tie into something bigger over time, and the whole "changeling prince" thing developed in like 5 or 6 different adventures over a significant period of time). They were chasing after some evil folks with some other "grand evil scheme" and as part of the adventure travelled to an Oracle where they were granted three questions which would be completely accurately answered. As it also happens, the last adventure they'd been on related to the prince involved them investigating the main city in the (somewhat farther up the coast to the north) kingdom which was actually his ultimate target, where his god was already prepping things, creating corruption and demon spawns and other problems. They'd gotten a hint that "something is wrong", and an old god was trying to use these things to return to power there, but that was about it.

They asked their first two questions and got enough info to continue the adventure they were on. Could have maybe asked a third for more (basically, if they were smart they'd get enough info in two, but they had an extra just in case of silly mistakes on their part). They realized they basically had a "free" question, and one of the players more or less spontaneously suggested asking about what was going on with the demons, and the city, and all the other strange things that seemed related but they weren't quite sure how. The rest of the table agreed, so I provided them with what was basically a bombshell that this prince that they'd thought was their ally was actually behind pretty much all the odd things that had been happening (they didn't actually even realize that the stuff going on closer to home was connected at all with the demons and "returning to power ancient evil god" bit).

This didn't derail anything really, just made what was already planned to be the "final chapter" a lot easier. They were supposed to be contacted by the prince and asked to help with some "rebellious forces", which were actually a super secret organization that had broken away from the main powers centuries ago and basically operated as their own secret adventurers guild type thing (but maybe a bit "evil" ish?). Not "good guys", but definitely acting to prevent the most horrific bad things from happening to their own lands, so they were aware that "something" was going on, and were working to deal with it (and had almost prevented the whole "swap messages to manipulate the timing of the attacks" bit, but their assassin made the mistake of spending the night in the wrong Inn at the wrong time, which was also a side scenario the party was involved in). The plan was that one of the PCs was going to actually be sent by his god to help out this group (some gods were somewhat aware of what was going on, but limited in what they could do about it), and the main party would arrive there to "attack the rebel base" and discover one of them was actually a character of one of the players, then compare notes, and figure out something was up. Additionally, the local NPC high priest (also of a somewhat evil chaos cult, but on the "keep our kingdom from being used for greater evil" side of things) would approach them secretly and tell them the prince wasn't what he seemed (and had the info about where the real prince was, and had a secret operative already in the vicinity to help provide assistance). Armed with this info, they'd know what had happened, and where they needed to go next to find/rescue the real prince, and then force a confrontation with the false one. Again, as I'd planned the scenario.

In this case, they already knew the prince was an evil fake, and already knew who he was really working for, and therefore knew where the real prince was likely being held. They just followed along, grinned and nodded as folks told them stuff they mostly already knew (but filled in some additional useful details), and were able to avoid any pitfalls along the way. And since they already knew where they would likely be headed, they were able to plan ahead and prep for that specific location and send just the right people for the job. We play a stable of characters, so you might choose different characters if you think the adventure is "track down and assault a rebel stronghold in a nearby known kingdom" versus "trek across this other land full of <completely different bad guys with different spells/abilities> infiltrate ancient city of <evil deity and his minions>, rescue the prince and return". So yeah, while the structure of the adventure went more or less the same, the exact methods they used, and capabilities they had in the final confrontation were significantly to their advantage. It also allowed them to complete the full adventure faster (they were already prepped for the longer trip to rescue the prince), than it might otherwise have taken. Which in turn made the clean-up/resolution better (were able to fully prevent the staging of bad guys on the island kingdom before it really began).

And, probably the most important part, the players felt fully ahead of the curve instead of following and playing catch up in the adventure. Which is precisely what should happen if/when the PCs have "noodled out" something ahead of time. I didn't change anything from "the plan" for the scenario, because it was basically the prince attempting to manipulate them into taking out (or at least putting a damper on) one of the last remaining power structures in his kingdom that he didn't control and might be able to hinder his evil plans. But since they knew about him, they were much more easily able to just play along and avoid helping him, while making it look like they were really trying to, and actually gain allies and assistance along the way. Worked out great.

I'll also point out that this sort of thing works well if you plan out NPC goals and create actions/reactions based on those goals rather than trying to just script out adventures. Then, if the players gain additional information, or noodle something out, or just plain do something unexpected, it never actually causes any problems, since the "adventure" isn't (or shouldn't be) dependent on any specific actions by the players, but is a constant back and forth between the PCs and the NPCs in the setting. You just adjust what the NPCs do in response to the PCs actions, and keep going. Flexibility is the key here.

So I guess, tying it back to the thread itself, the point here is (as I mentioned earlier) to decide what the NPCs goals and motivations are, then decide what that NPC would want the players to do to assist in those goals. The favors should not just be "mess with the PCs", since that's maybe not actually going to benefit the NPC. It should be something the NPC actually wants (and maybe needs the PCs to do instead of just doing it himself). And yeah, making it less obvious is helpful since if it's too obvious the players will balk at the proposed favor (yeah, you can force it in this situation, but players have an amazing ability to sabotage things like this) *and* they'll more easily know exactly what the evil NPC is up to. If you make it a bit more circuitous then the players will likely go along more easily, will be less likely to be looking for a way to block the favors effects after the fact, and more "surprised" maybe when they later discover how this minor seeming favor they did, actually facilitated something completely unexpected that cropped up later. Dunno. That's just how I tend to approach adventure creation. I allow things that happened before to guide what I do next, so this sort of thing just comes naturally to me.

[Slipjig]

He asks the players to serve as bodyguards for someone REALLY obnoxious on a night out. The person isn't so bad that The Forces of Good will hunt him down, but maybe some people who have legitimate gripes show up wanting to kick his ass. Alternately. He asks them to bodyguard HIM at a fey/infernal ball.

He asks them to babysit his new level one Warlock by letting her Sidekick for the PCs for a while. The new Warlock is drunk on her newfound power and/or extremely edgelord-y.

He asks the PCs to carry a locked box with them until he asks for it back, and he warns them not to let it out of their sight and DEFINITELY not to carry it into any temples, put it into any extra-dimensional spaces, and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES open it. The box only contains a few pounds of completely ordinary sand, and he's just messing with the PCs (but if they open the box, they've failed the favor). Alternately, the box is bait to lure out one of his enemies, and said enemies try to snatch the box. For extra fun, have the people trying to snatch the box clearly be Good Guys, meaning that the party should be reluctant to employ lethal force against them.

On the other hand, feel free to ask them to do some things that seem pretty awful on the surface, because gambling away unspecified favors to a devil/fey is a SUPREMELY foolish thing to do. But don't be super-precise in the language, and then let the players try to figure out a way to fulfill the letter of the law while twisting the intent into something less harmful.

[MoiMagnus]

Ask them to deliver an important letter to a NPC A that trust the PCs.
The letter contains (forged) proofs that another friendly NPC B did something very wrong, something that A always feared B would do.
Let them watch the domino falls apart as those NPCs tear each others because of wrongful accusation and their relation is fundamentally broken.
(It can even unfold in a civil war of some kind)
In the best case scenario, the PCs get blamed for being the causing all this mess, and "I didn't knew" is not accepted as a good enough answer.

Or if you don't want to deal with false informations, you can just find in your plot "What is the worse information that a particularly impulsive NPC could get that would cause the most damage ?". You can even play with self-fulfilling prophecies there.

[Notafish]

Given that there are already a lot of "balls in the air", what if the outsider has plans that intersect with the main plot. This could be an opportunity to complicate an encounter or a dungeon by giving the players extra restrictions (make sure a certain fated enemy footsoldier survives an encounter with the party; force a time limit on an exploration because the outsider needs them to be security at an ally's part in 2 days' time).

[Duff]

On the other hand, feel free to ask them to do some things that seem pretty awful on the surface, because gambling away unspecified favors to a devil/fey is a SUPREMELY foolish thing to do. But don't be super-precise in the language, and then let the players try to figure out a way to fulfill the letter of the law while twisting the intent into something less harmful.

That could be a really fun idea. The Entity seems like it might be the type to find that funny

[KorvinStarmast]

I want to be as evocative as I can with the favors in question, while still having them be fun to complete gameplay-wise. I'm also inclined to lean away from personal tragedy, since some of my players are sensitive to that kind of thing, but I still want to give the impression that my players are very much not doing good things in fulfilling the outsider's requests.
What level are the PCs? That informs the scale of favors and complications. A level 2 party has a different threshold than a level 6 party.

[KineticDiplomat]

Help out some star crossed lovers. You know the type; young, impetuous, of sufficient standing or power that anyone cares, and of course deeply offensive to the elders of their faction. You can tailor what help looks like to need.

If asked, the Outsider will admit that the elders involved have vexed him, and that this is a petty revenge of his that will also help some internecine balances of power break the direction he'd prefer.

The lovers themselves have been making use of the Outsider to pursue their romance, and now here come the promised helpers...who they are thrilled to know are on the side of Right and Love, and are happy to reward.

The favor is performed. Rewards are given. Huzzah. All is well.

Only its not.

Either:

A) The hinted at offense was DEEPLY personal to the Outsider, and he is now going to break the lives of everyone who ever loved or cared for our young paramours. Because he, for all intents and purposes, has control of them by means mystical or mundane. Contracts, devils, manipulation, pick your poison.

B) It turns out at least one of these two lovers was very important in the prophecy sort of way. And they now have a new shadow patron. That will be coming back later in the campaign. Bonus points if you little mermaid it and the other one is betrayed, abused, and eventually commits suicide over the mistake but the Outside still owns the target.

[Segev]

Let's say that one of the PCs' ongoing quests involves confronting some recurring bad guys. The first favor is simply to pass along some information that the fey knows will be of interest to one of those bad guys. The fey even notes that, if the PCs manage to get the target NPC to pay anything for the information, the fey only wants a 10% cut of anything fungible, or a single vote in how any favors offered are used. (This is to surreptitiously note that the fey doesn't care if they SELL the info or give it away.) If asked why he doesn't do it, himself, the infernal faerie will admit that the person he wants them to tell it to would not act the same, knowing this info came from him. So they're not to let on where they got the info. Or, if they must, they're to only admit that they got it as part of a hard-won bargain with him, and that he expressly didn't want to tell the target, himself. All true, of course: he wants the party to tell the target.

This information may even lead the target NPC to back off of the immediate confrontation. However, it also provokes further anger towards another NPC, and drives that rift to be bigger, possibly resulting in that other NPC being killed, or at least isolating both from each other. This may or may not strengthen the bad guy side in unexpected ways, but the key point here is that it's a little-cost thing to the PCs, but they're helping make an enemy's life worse.

Starting with something like that is a good way to make them more accepting of the faerie's requests in the future.

[Sapphire Guard]

You could have a tournament where Outsiders gamble with each other via representatives, where the champions are both competitor and stakes, a cross between Casino Royale and Mortal Combat. The party represents their Fey at this tournament, if they lose, they may end up owing a favour to someone else instead, but if they win, they have put other people in thrall to their master.

Alternatively, they have to gamble at a dangerous terrestrial casino, backed by (dangerous faction). Along the way, they fleece relative innocents out of their money (people who now can't pay very important debts, etc), and end up betting against the house and have to fight their way out. The fey makes sure they are lucky (overly lucky), but that draws hostile attention from the staff and patrons. Win or lose, they make a bunch of enemies and lose trustworthiness in the locality (and the spoils mostly go to their master, although they might get to keep a few things.)

[wilphe]

Don't rush to call it in and have them stew:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTtpWgrhS78