Selling your Soul

[Totally Guy]

I got a player to agree to selling his character's soul in last nights Burning Wheel game.

The big bad, an Orcish Warlord, Lady Herzog Gawrok, (and her loyal demon) had captured the player character Walord Drodush and wanted to throw him into the dungeon.

Drodush wants to kill Gawrok and take her place as the leader of the Orcish Horde.

But she only got to where she is by doing a deal with a demon. Once she's won her soul goes to the demon.

When Drodush protested that he could still be useful to Gawrok as a commander she thought about how he could also be useful to her by giving his soul to the demon instead. He was also a "great one" with the potential for leadership, so his soul is just as valuable.

Then we had a big debate over what role would be more useful, her risking Drodush's freedom, and him risking his soul.

Drodush spoke aggressively and cowed Gawrok's hand so she agreed he'd be more useful as a commander. But the demon gleaned his intention of usurping Gawrok. He told Drodush that whoever wins and controls the entire horde, it would not have been without his help, and that's whose soul he gets. Drodush could not disagree without compromising everything he'd ever worked for!

It was a pretty intense scene! And I had no idea of even involving souls until Drodush's player suggested he was still useful and I checked my notes and went with it.

But what does it mean? What does it do?

The player fully intends to betray the demon but now he's got another plate to keep spinning and another scheme to plot.

Has anyone else seen soul selling shenanigans in actual play? How did it feel?

[BadJuJu]

I had a character that was NG who was forced to sell his soul to save the whole party. Our DM had put us up against a white dragon that was...more devastating than he at first thought. It was seconds away from a TPK, and my goblin rogue/swashbuckler made the deal to prevent disaster.

[Totally Guy]

What was the implications of that? Did your guy change mechanically?

Did it change the tone of the game?

[valadil]

Has anyone else seen soul selling shenanigans in actual play? How did it feel?

No, but I'll get back to you after my next session. You've given me ideas.

For D&D, there's a lot of mechanical stuff that comes to mind. I'd probably stop communication magic from interacting with the player. I figure that goes to the soul instead of to the body, so if someone else owns your soul they receive all your Sendings. Raise Dead would get weird too. I might have whomever owns the soul try to Raise Dead a new copy of the player, leaving the PC as a walking golem of himself.

[GodGoblin]

I believe there is an official way to sell your soul, I think you get to choose yourself a handful of new feats ad the benefit but anything more than that I cant remember sadly.

Edit- Probably book of vile darkness actually

[Kira_the_5th]

Not in D&D, but in a World of Darkness game my group ran once, I was working with the GM to be the game's BBEG, as I was playing a demon masquerading as a mage. Trouble is, the party was a bit too trusting of me, and I ended up convincing all of them to sell their souls to me for more power halfway through the campaign. I could give them more magical power, increasing one of their spheres for next to nothing (other than the souls, of course) and once one person had it, the others just lined up so that they could get their cool new powers too. Trouble is, the game fell apart after about two months because try as we might, we could not find the ST's plot in the "wide open world" he made.

[Toofey]

That's freekin awesome.

[Glimbur]

A game I recently finished running featured a CE Dread Necromancer. He did things like Fell Animate Cloudkill on commoners and such with just enough discretion to get away with it. He married a pleasure devil (though he thought she was just a lady) and she made him a deal: if he kept on how he was living, he would end up in the Abyss, where they would use him as the lowest of low minions. If he wanted out, she could get him a guaranteed spot in Hell's class with upward mobility possibilities. He took the deal.

tl;dr I got a PC to sell his soul for nothing in return.

[Toofey]

eh, he got an agreement from a contract bound evil entity that when he died he would get a prime spot in their afterlife with a chance of gaining even more power than he would otherwise have. Even if he would have had a chance to gain this power in the CE afterlife, an agreement to start at a more comfortable status isn't nothing.

Also in the long run LE is way easier for everyone than CE

[dsmiles]

I frequently play evil characters, does that count?

[Geigan]

Whenever I play a warlock or a cleric in the same game as the other. We go on and on about what your eternal soul is worth. I model it like house buying. The cleric is renting, while the warlock bought a house. The cleric counters that the afterlife is like tax day. At least he doesn't have to pay property tax. Although the Warlock says if he stay alive he effectively dodges his taxes. The cleric does not approve of people who dodge their taxes. On and on...

Though they both agree that paladins have the worst landlords ever.

[Xefas]

But what does it mean? What does it do?

Well, I guess you have to decide what a soul does in your game world. Is it an animating force, and losing it means instant death? Is the soul not gone immediately, but rather, upon death, the soul will be sent to eternal torment instead of its rightful resting place? Is it the font of morality, and losing it means you no longer feel empathy? Perhaps, instead of a metaphorical monster, you become a literal monster; perhaps a demon - and perhaps that is where all demons come from.

Personally, I think the "You no longer feel healthy positive emotions" would be the easiest to represent mechanically in Burning Wheel. Just make a Soulless trait.

[dsmiles]

Personally, I think the "You no longer feel healthy positive emotions" would be the easiest to represent mechanically in Burning Wheel. Just make a Soulless trait.

I think that may be dangerously close to a psychosis. Are there rules already in place in BW to cover that? If there are, the soulless trait may be a little redundant, mechanically (but not fluff-wise).

[Lorn]

Hm. Not D&D (or even P&P) but the way my (semi)regular LRP tends to do soul-selling is basically that when the character dies, the demon in question owns their soul at that point in the same manner a god might. As such, the character may have serious difficulty devoting themselves to a god after selling their soul - though, I'm not a ref, so I can't say precisely how much difficulty. And depending on the god and the power of the demon, the god might have something to say about it.

So, I could, for example, do the following, where Chris is a character and Bob a demon:

Chris: Hey Bob! Can I sell you my soul for AwesomeFlangeMajiks?
Bob: Sure! Here! Here is AwesomeFlangeMajiks!
Chris: Yay! Um. I still have my soul?
Bob: Yeah, well. I'll grab it off you when you stop using it, mmkay?
Chris: Wow. That's downright decent of you, Bob. You're awesome.

Chris now has a demon with a mark on his soul; he's not going to be easily made devoted to a god (meaning no miracles, at all, which is kind of a problem for priests) and potentially rather a lot of IC angst when he realises that he really, really doesn't know what happens to him after death.

Of course, there's a very specific reason for the whole "I will take my dues when you die." In the system in question, there are three types of damage: Normal, Magic and Spirit. Normal attacks the body, magic attacks the body, but spirit attacks the soul. What used to be possible was basically the following exchange:

Chris: Hey Bob! I want to be immune to magic.
Bob: Uh, OK. Sure. It'll cost you your soul, though.
Chris: Yeah, that's not a huge issue - thanks!
Bob: ... no worries, man. *take soul, give immunity*
Chris: Awesome! I am now immune to two thirds of the damage I can take! Screw you, Bob - I'm almost totally invincible! In fact, most higher level monsters can barely affect me!

Basically, you'd end up with a soulless guy running around, still totally himself (not 100% on the metaphysics, but it's possible in-system for people to survive minus a soul) but almost unkillable. Thus why the demon would then take the soul on death.

This kind of thing would be fairly simple to fluff even in a standard D&D 3.5 game - for example, miracle or magical compulsions (command, befriend etc) could be fluffed as targeting the soul. Anything that requires a will save, really. No soul = no effect, thus demon collects soul on death - instead of his side of the bargain strengthening the character even more, Bob is making it just as easy for the character to die.

Or, an alternative - no soul = no will save = automatic failure. Thus giving a soul-selling deal a serious, serious downside.

All depends on how into the RP your players are and how much a serious RP slap (ie, when you die a demon does in fact own your soul and can do whatever it wants with it) will affect gamers mostly in things for the crunch. Really does depend on the group a lot.

There's also the idea of introducing that person's soul as a later antagonist. Who says demons won't deal in souls with other demons? Or people?

Bob: Hey, BBEG! You know that group of guys who've been kicking your guys around, befouling your plans, all that kind of thing?
BBEG: ... who are you?
Bob: Well, I totally own one of their souls, and it'd be really funny if...
BBEG: Who are you...
Bob: ... if you were to buy it from me, maybe in exchange for something awesome you have, and then use it to fuel an Evil Arcane Ritual™ to nuke the rest of them.
BBEG: ... because yeah, I want to buy that, that'd be awesome, how much?

[Totally Guy]

Personally, I think the "You no longer feel healthy positive emotions" would be the easiest to represent mechanically in Burning Wheel. Just make a Soulless trait.

The whole group are orcs so they've already got Hatred filling thaty kind of angle. This guy is at 8, very close to 9.

I was thinking of using the Possessed trait to give him a new belief. Something like, "I will kill my entire horde of orcs by taking them to pointless battle after pointless battle."

I intend this next session to be the end of the campaign so that'd give a good foreshadowing of a tragic ending. They're orcs, they don't get to "live happily ever after".

I could also give a custom trait to have him to treat his Hatred as one higher for the purpose of having hate consume him. That puts him close to a different kind of tragedy. One where he goes crazy and goes on a killing spree.

[The Succubus]

Bob: Hey, BBEG! You know that group of guys who've been kicking your guys around, befouling your plans, all that kind of thing?
BBEG: ... who are you?
Bob: Well, I totally own one of their souls, and it'd be really funny if...
BBEG: Who are you...
Bob: ... if you were to buy it from me, maybe in exchange for something awesome you have, and then use it to fuel an Evil Arcane Ritual™ to nuke the rest of them.
BBEG: ... because yeah, I want to buy that, that'd be awesome, how much?

Bob: Well, it's a bit battered and bruised but how does your soul sound?
BBEG: Great, it's not as if I was using it much anyway.
<One plane shift later>
Bob: Hey PC guys, guess what I have as today's special offer!


Demon Bob's Extra-planar Exchange and Mart - owning your soul since the dawn of creation.

[BlackestOfMages]

Bob: Well, it's a bit battered and bruised but how does your soul sound?
BBEG: Great, it's not as if I was using it much anyway.
<One plane shift later>
Bob: Hey PC guys, guess what I have as today's special offer!


Demon Bob's Extra-planar Exchange and Mart - owning your soul since the dawn of creation.

win. so much win
now I just need to figure out how to set a signiature...

[willy101]

Every game i've played, atleast with DnD rules, the idea of selling ones soul has been the same.

Devils and demons use souls for two things, currency and creating new devils and demons. so when a devil or demon buys your soul, he dosen't take it from you at this very moment, he takes it upon your death, until then it should funtion normally.

Upon your death you will find yourself in the great inbetween, the place you go before you go where you're supposed to go, like Roy on the clouds with his father. here noramlly a agent of your deity finds you and brings you to the place where you belong, but if your soul belongs to a demon or devil, instead said devil or his underling, will come to get you, and you get to either be transformed into the lowest form of devil or demon, possibly a stronger demon if you are a person of great power. else the devil/demon will simply take your soul and crush it into a sort of gem that will forever suffer as it is traded around in hekk or the abyss.

the price you sell your soul for determines how long you have to live yet, if its a really big thing likely the devil will demand that he gets to kill you and take your soul with in a certain amount of time.

in the old tales of selling your souls to demons, you got a wish and then 10 years later you soul was damned to hell for all of time.

[Jay R]

Your soul is your self. In a very real sense, you don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body.

A body with no soul in it is a dead body.

In fantasy terms, such as Faust, one sells ones soul, to be claimed at death, for improved abilities or wealth or whatever during your lifetime. But what the demon will eventually get is you, and there won't be any you left to betray him.

That, of course, assumes that what something means in English is what it means in D&D. You can, of course, invent something entirely different, but if you do, why call it a soul?

[Kroozer101]

My rogue sold his soul. The DM now uses me as the demon's pawn: I have to run whatever errands he needs, at the moment he needs them, on pain of excruciating death.

[NNescio]

The Fiendish Codex II of 3.5e has actual rules for soul-selling, and damned souls can actually contest the terms of their contract after death with literal rules-lawyering.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

A few campaigns ago, I ran a game where devils were the main baddies. Around level 6 or so, the pyromaniac blaster sorcerer noticed he was becoming more and more useless, since their enemies were starting to adapt to the party and getting fire immunity or high resistance was easy. He was just starting to consider changing his focus when he happened upon a staff dropped by their enemies. These enemies had no other items whatsoever, but he didn't find that suspicious at all.

A few days later, it started talking to him. "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a staff of wealth and taste." It offered to power his spells with hellfire to ignore resistance and immunity to start with, no strings attached. Every few weeks in-game, it'd have another chat, offering him more benefits in exchange for a tiny drawback--one fewer cantrip per day, for instance, or -1 HP. The character started accepting these more and more readily while the player just kept giving me death glares, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Eventually, the deal came to something like "get a Holocaust Disciple as a cohort for free [when he would need another level to pick that up with Leadership] and change from chaotic good to chaotic neutral," the character snapping it up and the player facepalming, and from there he quickly spiraled down. He never actually betrayed the party, though he came close, and when he revealed all this to pull the party out of danger one time, the other players had had no idea, IC or OOC. Their expressions made it all worthwhile.

[blazingshadow]

isn't the consequence of selling your soul to a demon or another person to become a vampire or some other undead? i kind of remember something about myths about zombies and vampires being a byproduct of selling your soul to a voodoo wizard and/or the devil

[GodGoblin]

isn't the consequence of selling your soul to a demon or another person to become a vampire or some other undead? i kind of remember something about myths about zombies and vampires being a byproduct of selling your soul to a voodoo wizard and/or the devil

I dont think thats the ruling in D&D but itis however a very interesting take on intelligent undead, hmm ideas!

[Geigan]

isn't the consequence of selling your soul to a demon or another person to become a vampire or some other undead? i kind of remember something about myths about zombies and vampires being a byproduct of selling your soul to a voodoo wizard and/or the devil

Well that's interesting in that it combines fiends and Undead which are oddly separate in most cases. Ideas indeed.+=???