Will giving a player conflicting interests with the party cause too much conflict

[Jervis]

Ryuko (Character name not user name) i know you're on this site, if you're reading this then please click off, this is a massive plot spoiler. Same goes for mendes if you're on here. I also ask that you not tell anyone else in the group i posted this.

Ok sorry for the vague title i think that top disclaimer explains why i was. System is a heavily homebrewed BESM 4e for what that matters but that isn't that big of a deal for reasons you'll see. Anyway. Long story short a newish player to the group took a flaw that makes them obey a demon that's a preverbal devil on their shoulder that gives them orders once or twice a session. Usually its just something like "steal that shiny thing" or "try and get that guy to sell his firstborn". If they disobey that demon then most of their power goes poof until they make amends. All good, nice way to add conflict and throw a stone to get the plot moving, and he got some decent benefits for that so it's been a fair trade on his end so far.

Now here's where the heavy spoilers come in. You see a old villain from the beginning of the campaign possessed a NPC after the villain died. To use common fantasy terms he's basically a Lich who turned a character they all like into a phylactery and took their body as a replacement. Pretty soon he's going to reveal himself to the party and leverage this and some other things the party care about that I've been building up for a while to get them to travel with him to the underworld to get his body back and return the NPC's free will. Now this is the difficult part, partially to get him to not try and use his soul magic to try and separate them, which wouldn't work anyway in this context but still, and partially to create drama I've put into this NPC's backstory that he has a deal with a demon who has ownership over the demon this character made a deal with. Long story short, the PC's patron is going to order him to make sure they can't successfully force the "Lich" out before he gets his body back and help the "Lich" whenever possible. This character also made a equally binding deal to help the party whenever possible but this trumps that deal.

I'm worried that this might come across as overly "that GM"ish. I don't want to come across as more of a cut throat GM that i usually do but this sounds like a fun way to create conflict. And again to be clear the player took said flaw knowing it could bit them in the neck at some point. But i wanted to get advice on how to handle this and if people thought this was a bad idea.

[Batcathat]

How well it'd work probably depends almost entirely on what your players are like. It's certainly risky, but I could see it working with the right kind of players. Is the idea that the newish player's character is forced to turn against the party until they figure out a way to get free (while still keeping their powers) or is it more of a PvP until one of them is dead type thing?

I'd say you probably shouldn't try this unless you're pretty sure it'll land well with your players. One option is talking to them about it OOC, of course, but that would naturally ruin some of the suspense.

Also, I think you might get more responses if you ask to have this thread moved to the general roleplaying forum, I don't think this subforum gets much traffic and your question isn't really tied to your system anyway.

[Telok]

If I got it right: Player character A has a demon pact for power, evil npc B wants to use the party for a quest, evil npc B has a demon pact with a demon that is the boss of character A's demon, you want character A to not shortcut the quest and not zorch evil npc B. Optional - character A may be required at some point to back evil npc B against the party as a result of the pact.

This seems mostly an issue with how its sold to the players, as all the fiction bits (as I understand them) seem to line up nicely. Now, personally I tend to run more "9-to-5 working day" type demons who map more to dysfunctional office workers than to "evil for the lulz" type demons. At least for most of the organized pact maker demons. So this would offer me an opportunity to show some of the office drama & corporate hierarchy in demon society to the players, who might then be able to leverage a bit of it for themselves.

So I'd open with character A's demon saying something like "Oh, him. Yeah, orders from corporate, we gotta help this one... Oh he's got a line from my bosses' boss, so its standing orders that we have to help. It sucks but thats what it is." Then eventually let on that if they can pull of npc B getting a partisl success or failing after a certain point, while still "helping" npc B, that there would be some vague political advantage in demon-land for the faction of chatacter A's demon.

[Jervis]

If I got it right: Player character A has a demon pact for power, evil npc B wants to use the party for a quest, evil npc B has a demon pact with a demon that is the boss of character A's demon, you want character A to not shortcut the quest and not zorch evil npc B. Optional - character A may be required at some point to back evil npc B against the party as a result of the pact.

This seems mostly an issue with how its sold to the players, as all the fiction bits (as I understand them) seem to line up nicely. Now, personally I tend to run more "9-to-5 working day" type demons who map more to dysfunctional office workers than to "evil for the lulz" type demons. At least for most of the organized pact maker demons. So this would offer me an opportunity to show some of the office drama & corporate hierarchy in demon society to the players, who might then be able to leverage a bit of it for themselves.

So I'd open with character A's demon saying something like "Oh, him. Yeah, orders from corporate, we gotta help this one... Oh he's got a line from my bosses' boss, so its standing orders that we have to help. It sucks but thats what it is." Then eventually let on that if they can pull of npc B getting a partisl success or failing after a certain point, while still "helping" npc B, that there would be some vague political advantage in demon-land for the faction of chatacter A's demon.

That’s more or less what i’m doing. I’m trying to show some of the demon politics with this and setting up a bit of a mystery. Namely what he gave to a high ranking demon to get the equivalent of a blank check where every demon under that demon has to help him. If he’s smart he should be able to get out of it on a technicality at some point. At most he might end up having to turn on the party if they decide to attack him before a certain thing happens that will nullify the deal.

Also how do I request a move to a different forum?

How well it'd work probably depends almost entirely on what your players are like. It's certainly risky, but I could see it working with the right kind of players. Is the idea that the newish player's character is forced to turn against the party until they figure out a way to get free (while still keeping their powers) or is it more of a PvP until one of them is dead type thing?

I'd say you probably shouldn't try this unless you're pretty sure it'll land well with your players. One option is talking to them about it OOC, of course, but that would naturally ruin some of the suspense.

Also, I think you might get more responses if you ask to have this thread moved to the general roleplaying forum, I don't think this subforum gets much traffic and your question isn't really tied to your system anyway.

It’s more the first one. He’ll basically need to help the bad guy secretly while staying with the party until the A: the bad guy moves onto the next part of his plan at which point the deal won’t mater or B: he figures out a way out of the deal with legalese.

[Duff]

Depends a bit on the delivery and a lot on the players.
Doing this with/to a new player adds to the risk - More chance the table will think of the player as That Guy, makes it harder for the player to read the room and manage or recover from fallout.
If the player is new to RPGs, not just your table, they are likely to find it even harder to get that balance right
And if they're new to both (ie, not an old friend who recently joined gaming) then even harder.

If your table is up for a bit of PvP and are ok with the GM pulling treachery out of anywhere and everywhere at times, then it might be a good plot

[Jervis]

Depends a bit on the delivery and a lot on the players.
Doing this with/to a new player adds to the risk - More chance the table will think of the player as That Guy, makes it harder for the player to read the room and manage or recover from fallout.
If the player is new to RPGs, not just your table, they are likely to find it even harder to get that balance right
And if they're new to both (ie, not an old friend who recently joined gaming) then even harder.

If your table is up for a bit of PvP and are ok with the GM pulling treachery out of anywhere and everywhere at times, then it might be a good plot

Something I should clarify with him being “new”. We’ve played with him before, he’s actually the guy that introduced me to my favorite RPG, Call of Cthulhu. But he fell out of RPGs for a while and recently joined this campaign so I was trying to create some plot intrigue since his character was intentionally made to be a little shady.