The Traitor Player Character

[KorvinStarmast]

Play it like a body switch episode. You are not playing Bob, you are playing Sarah playing Bob.

That is good advice for players. As a DM, if a player won't embrace that, the effort is already at risk.

[Boci]

So I guess IMO, there are two ways to do it right:
1) Make it clear from the start that PvP is on the table and the players shouldn't take everything at face value.

"Oh cool. My rogue stabs the wizard in their sleep and takes their stuff,"

Obviously I'm being glib here, but the issue is real: you're saying PvP is on the table, but only because of the betrayal you have planned. You don't want random backstabbing to occur, that will undermine the eventual betrayed, but technically you have given the go ahead when you said PvP was on the table for this game.

[icefractal]

"Oh cool. My rogue stabs the wizard in their sleep and takes their stuff,"

Obviously I'm being glib here, but the issue is real: you're saying PvP is on the table, but only because of the betrayal you have planned. You don't want random backstabbing to occur, that will undermine the betrayed, but technically you have given the go ahead when you PvP was on the table.

I mean, I'm not the one suggesting it? I don't really like PvP games, mainly because the amount of real-time spent on precautions is substantial and it encourages splitting the party a lot. Also, a lot of TTRPG systems that handle PvE just fine turn out to be insufficiently solid when it comes to PvP - consider all the restrictions / fixes that were necessary for the Test of Spite back in the day.

But if I was doing a PvP game, then yeah, stabbing other party members is a thing you can do. Usually the campaign premise is something that discourages immediately ganking the other PCs though.

[Slipjig]

"Oh cool. My rogue stabs the wizard in their sleep and takes their stuff,"

Ok, if that's what your players are like, then yes, it absolutely makes sense to have a hard "no PvP, or anything PvP-adjacent" rule. Along with a, "If the rest of the party tells me they no longer want to adventure with your character, it doesn't matter why, he immediately leaves the party and becomes an NPC".

[Boci]

Ok, if that's what your players are like, then yes, it absolutely makes sense to have a hard "no PvP, or anything PvP-adjacent" rule. Along with a, "If the rest of the party tells me they no longer want to adventure with your character, it doesn't matter why, he immediately leaves the party and becomes an NPC".

Most groups aren't. As I said, I was being glib with that comment, but in doing I was highlighting an important point. Basically:

1. Most groups don't do PvP
2. A lot of groups don't have a "no PvP" rule, they just don't do it
3. Introducing an explicit "PvP is okay" for a single game because you've decided one of the players will be a traitor runs the risk of others players beating you to your own plot twist (and therefor undermining it), because you explicitly allowed them to do it

[Vahnavoi]

@Boci: to which the solution remains: play this kind of game more than once.

"I stab the wizard in their sleep" is baby's first game kind of stuff. It works once, when the idea is novel to everybody. Second time, the wizard player may be prepared, or maybe the rogue player realizes they stabbed the wizard prematurely and it wasn't such a smart choice afterall.

[Boci]

@Boci: to which the solution remains: play this kind of game more than once.

"I stab the wizard in their sleep" is baby's first game kind of stuff. It works once, when the idea is novel to everybody. Second time, the wizard player may be prepared, or maybe the rogue player realizes they stabbed the wizard prematurely and it wasn't such a smart choice afterall.

Yeaah, like you CAN do that, no one is arguing against the possibility. But when your pitch includes "let's do this thing, but we'll have to do it minimum twice because we'll almost certainly the first time", some people might think not bothering is even better.

[Vahnavoi]

Those some people aren't thinking very far. It's quite common for a first try in anything worthwhile to fall short of expectations.

[Boci]

Those some people aren't thinking very far. It's quite common for a first try in anything worthwhile to fall short of expectations.

I'm not sure. Remember this isn't revolutionizing everything, you're playing a game you have presumably played before, except now PvP is on the table with the intention of one player eventually being outed as the traitor. I feel there are ways to add new elements and angels to a game you already play that will have a similarly substantial change yet carry a significantly lower f- up margin.

[Vahnavoi]

There aren't.

There genuinely aren't. The reason why is the reason why many of the oldest and most popular games are competitive: players playing against each other naturally creates permutations of the same game-like problems, to the extent a ruleset can support. Which, for non-trivial rulesets, is a lot.

This is less apparent with tabletop roleplaying games only because most tabletop roleplaying games cheat. How? By claiming to be co-operative, despite the fact that one player (typically the game master) is very obviously playing the opposition and doing the same things an opponent player would do in competitive game. Consider all the new elements a game master could add, and ask yourself: how many of them are just different ways to play the antagonists?

[Satinavian]

Those some people aren't thinking very far. It's quite common for a first try in anything worthwhile to fall short of expectations.

Sometimes that is the case.
However, first tries of things not worthwhile fall short even more often.

I am not particularly against PvP games in roleplaying games, but they tend to be very different. They generally have severely reduced or even completely missing outside opposition or challenges. And i would not ever want it to happen without explicite buy-in.

This is less apparent with tabletop roleplaying games only because most tabletop roleplaying games cheat. How? By claiming to be co-operative, despite the fact that one player (typically the game master) is very obviously playing the opposition and doing the same things an opponent player would do in competitive game. Consider all the new elements a game master could add, and ask yourself: how many of them are just different ways to play the antagonists?

No.
A GM generally doesn't compete with the players at all and doesn't try to win. Instead they tend to aim for players winning when using their powers and designing scenarios, NPCs and challenges.

The last game system i have seen that actually tried to make it a competitive game of players vs. GM is from ~15 years ago and never took off.

[gijoemike]

This was a couple of friends of mine. And this was 20+ years ago so it wasn't in 3.5, PF, 4th or 5th. But this was in D&D.

The group consisted of 5 players and one was playing a paladin. He was not a mole, this was a standard LG human paladin. The party treated that pally in character like total garbage. Lots on in character disrespect, constantly going around and behind their back to avoid breaking the oath. The paladin was the front line tank type character so every fight they were getting the fool kicked out of them. Comments of use that shield better, you're in armor why are you bleeding. The paladin was the punching bag and the butt of jokes for the party.

Around mid campaign said paladin found an intelligent holy sword. The classic pally weapon. The sword was useful in combat. The PCs as a group understand the sword is an intelligent holly weapon.

But it was cursed. It was a sword of temptation. It was trying to turn someone evil. It would comment about "you saved their lives, why don't they are least thank you." Don't you think you should have the courage to stand up for yourself and make sure your are treated properly." " How can they expect you to be there to constantly save them from their own mistakes. Why aren't they learning a lesson here?" Most of this was done in a side conversation with the player.

At some point the paladin starts to agree with the sword on certain aspects. But the paladin is still a loyal member of the party. Still the tank, still the butt of jokes.

In the final battle against some big bad. The paladin is guarding the wizard and the GM says in front of the party to the paladin. "Ok, its time." And the player agrees its time for a lesson in respect. Turns around and attacks the wizard. The paladin basically goes blackguard. Panic in the party. The party eventually kills the big bad and the not-paladin. But the fight was 5x more complicated. Several PCs died.


The story was amazing. The twist was epic. It came about nearly 1/2 through the campaign and it could have been avoided on the parties part. They drove the pally to blackguard over the course of the entire campaign. The betrayal was remembered over the big bad and story of the campaign.


Now this wasn't a mole in the party. This wasn't a PC working with the big bad at any point. The goals of the one PC and the Big bad somewhat aligned at a critical moment based on a cursed item.

[LibraryOgre]

The group consisted of 5 players and one was playing a paladin. He was not a mole, this was a standard LG human paladin. The party treated that pally in character like total garbage. Lots on in character disrespect, constantly going around and behind their back to avoid breaking the oath. The paladin was the front line tank type character so every fight they were getting the fool kicked out of them. Comments of use that shield better, you're in armor why are you bleeding. The paladin was the punching bag and the butt of jokes for the party.

Had a friend in a similar situation... the party was consistently horrible to his goody-two-shoes character (I think it was a cleric of Lathander), who was trying to take responsibility for the sins of his father (a cleric of Cyric)... and, eventually, the character broke, joined Cyric, and became the big bad of the game.

[Flyfly]

No.
A GM generally doesn't compete with the players at all and doesn't try to win. Instead they tend to aim for players winning when using their powers and designing scenarios, NPCs and challenges.

I am not the person you are responding to, but I think there is more to this idea that may seem on the surface.

The stuff about GM is wrong-ish, and I won't get into there, but I think there is inherent level of competition between the non-GM players.

It comes in different forms, but players compete, they do so even when they don't really actively try to. It might look normal most of the time, but the moment one PC gets a cool powerful weapon or a blessing that makes them notably stronger than everyone else? Quite a few people actually get spiteful about that. Even in an explicitly no-PvP games, where calculating who did most damage makes little to no sense and where PCs obviously do cooperate, where a boon to your ally is objectively a boon to your side! Yet they still clearly feel a some sense of competition towards each other.

This comes in different forms, too. Doesn't have to be about cool combat stuff or even mechanics - some people get upset if one character is more plot relevant than others.

All of this are things I've seen in actual play both as a player and as a GM! It is absolutely a thing. I guess it's something about human nature or something like that.

As a particularly "fun" real story about this stuff: I've seen a PC who was extremely anti-God. Once our party helped a minor goddess, and she came down to grant us blessing for our help. Well, that PC told her to shove it and walked away! GM then told us that everyone but that PC got blessing's power. Player of that PC was so pissed about this that she quit the game, specifically because she couldn't live with thinking she is lagging behind everyone else.

[Slipjig]

This comes in different forms, too. Doesn't have to be about cool combat stuff or even mechanics - some people get upset if one character is more plot relevant than others.

This one I kind of understand. It's one thing if a single session foregrounds a particular character. It's not even necessarily a problem if one character is central to the plot overall (Rightful Heir, Rogue Trader, Chosen One, etc). Where it quickly DOES become a problem is if all the important NPCs only want to talk to that one character, and if all the plot-altering decisions get made by that one character. It's pretty crappy to get a few sessions into a new campaign only to realize that Jon Snow and Danerys are in the party, but you're stuck playing Hot-Pie.

I don't have much sympathy for your anti-deity player, though. Somebody showed up and offered her a nice thing, and she made a big deal out of refusing it, so it makes sense she didn't get the benefit. Choices NEED to have consequences, or else what's the point of making them? I'm playing in a campaign right now where we've got some boons from unknown powers going on, and while other players have been slinging theirs around willy-nilly, it's become a character point for me that I mostly avoid using mine because I don't trust the entity that gave them to us. I'm quite underpowered vs the rest of the party as a result, but I'm okay with that because I recognize it's a result of my own choices.

[Pex]

Had a friend in a similar situation... the party was consistently horrible to his goody-two-shoes character (I think it was a cleric of Lathander), who was trying to take responsibility for the sins of his father (a cleric of Cyric)... and, eventually, the character broke, joined Cyric, and became the big bad of the game.

I just quit the game. If you can't respect my character you're not respecting me. I won't play.

Done it.

[Boci]

I just quit the game. If you can't respect my character you're not respecting me. I won't play.

Done it.

We don't know if this was with or without the player's consent. But yeah without its a sh***y thing to do even if it ultimately turned out well story-wise.

[Lacco]

I have seen the attempt once by my former GM (it was almost 20 years ago), but I pulled it off exactly once.

In this case, we had a weekend game, where we hired a cottage and played from Friday to Sunday.

Six players: 2 long-time regular players, 2 semi-regular players (joined whenever they could, played the same character as usually) and two very irregular players (played only few times, did not have a regular character).

The PCs were investigating an assassins guild - Nighthawks (name stolen from R.E. Feist's books) - and arrived to a new city, where they suspected their activity. Three of the regulars played their own characters, who hunted these nighthawks (and were hunted by them), one of the players wanted to try something new so they built a new char, and the last two built new characters for this specific game.

All three new characters were introduced via a street fight - with nighthawks - they were assisted by the party, went drinking together, found out their goal is similar.

The plot was relatively simple: usual MO of this guild was to 'haunt' a building, make all folk disappear, turn it into a hideout. So the players made a beeline to nearest 'haunted' building.

I think everybody sees where this is going to end.

The two irregulars' characters were nighthawks. And were planted to guide the player characters right into the trap. I agreed this with them, gave them some clues to drop, some shady stuff to do to make the party realize this potentially ahead of the time, even had other PCs prepared to step in. We have a big 'no PvP unless both players agree to it' rule, but the ladies who played the assassins agreed to dying in the end of the game because they found the idea of skulking fascinating.

They did drop most of the clues (e.g. using wrong lingo, saying the wrong stuff, knowing things they should not know), and two players became really suspicious of them (one was the resident puzzle-gal, the other was the one with the innocent new character), but they did not unmask them until the end.

During the big reveal, jaws were dropped and the resulting combat was enjoyed by both sides. I enjoyed the fact I do not have to manage all the characters, the 'nighthawks' enjoyed their dramatic reveal and subsequent death, the players enjoyed the suspense and hacking them to bloody pieces.

It worked, but mainly because I knew my players and knew what they will enjoy. Would not do this with other party unless we agreed upon it from the beginning.

Also, the reveal was not a 'I backstab him' style - it was basically the assassins leading them into a trap, being all 'we'll be in the back, watching out for enemies' and then stepping into the room, all decked up in black with blades ready to a fight, making it more complicated (having to fight on two fronts).

[Zanos]

I just quit the game. If you can't respect my character you're not respecting me. I won't play.

Done it.

I also probably wouldn't continue to play in the game where I was the groups butt-monkey and not enjoying it. At the same time, a LG pure knight of all goodness selling out to the ultimate evil to get revenge for mean comments from 4 people means he probably never should have been a Paladin to begin with.

[KorvinStarmast]

In this case, we had a weekend game, where we hired a cottage and played from Friday to Sunday.
.

I also probably wouldn't continue to play in the game where I was the groups butt-monkey and not enjoying it. At the same time, a LG pure knight of all goodness selling out to the ultimate evil to get revenge for mean comments from 4 people means he probably never should have been a Paladin to begin with.

Suggest you review the story a second time.

There's a cursed item involved. How to play with those takes a bit of doing.
My Fighter is still using his cursed +1 sword of vengeance.
He just turned level 17.
I always roll the d20 to see if I made the wisdom save when I've been hit/injured.
I sometimes make it, I sometimes don't.
The other players still - all have played this game through multiple editions - have not bothered to pay attention to what's going on.
Now and again, I pursue or go after someone who hurt me. Other times I don't.
The other players frequently either tried to call me back or joined in to kill it.

We are in the Underdark and running into some rather nasty stuff.
Next Sunday's game, I wonder how much trouble I will get us into.

Not betraying a party, no, but leaning into the cursed sword thing. DM and I keep a dialogue open (discord) to make sure I'm keeping that in mind and not forgetting that I am wielding a cursed weapon.
(If the cleric player would clue up he could solve the whole thing with a single remove curse spell. But he's too busy trying to 'help the DM be a DM', and get in everyone else's business, and keeps missing the clues staring him in the face).

[Boci]

Suggest you review the story a second time.

Zanos is responding to Pex, who was responding to this tweet:

Had a friend in a similar situation... the party was consistently horrible to his goody-two-shoes character (I think it was a cleric of Lathander), who was trying to take responsibility for the sins of his father (a cleric of Cyric)... and, eventually, the character broke, joined Cyric, and became the big bad of the game.

[Seto]

I've done it once. One of my players knew from the start of the campaign that he wanted to switch characters around level 5 or 6, so we planned a corruption arc that would lead his early-game character to turn to evil, fight the party and escape, joining Dagon's cult. We played it as a gradual corruption, Lovecraft-style, where he was subjugated over time by an evil item (like a One Ring situation) and started getting increasingly callous, reclusive, going out at night, then started losing his hair, going for swims in the dirty harbor waters and get bulging eyes.

So, there were hints, but the player was good at avoiding questions from fellow PCs, turning their suspicions to other villains, and I was careful to keep the adventure pressing enough so that they didn't have time to investigate him unless they decided that it was a priority and they needed to take the time. They didn't. The player ended up taking the item and fleeing to the sea, knocking out another PC that stood in his way.

The twist felt very satisfying to me and to him, and the other players agreed that it was a great roleplaying moment. However, I can tell they got paranoid and keep wondering if I'm gonna spring something like that again. In a way, I took advantage of the implicit social contract according to which it's a team game, so other PCs aren't a danger to you no matter how weird they may look, and I broke some trust, which had durable consequences on the players' approach to the game and to other characters. I don't regret it per se, because it was a very dramatic session that everyone will remember (and the betrayal didn't lead to any PC deaths), but I think I wouldn't do it again without careful consideration and OOC talk.

[kyoryu]

Almost any kind of "reveal" setup that reaches OOC should be avoided. This includes the nature of the campaign, and can include NPC reveals if the game is presented in such a way that "buying into the NPC" is part of the meta assumption of the game. These type of reveals end up involving dishonesty on a player level rather than a character level, and while they can work, they rarely do and it's incredibly easy for it to explode horrifically.

This qualifies. For this to happen, multiple dishonesties have to occur:

1. The GM has to be dishonest about the nature of the campaign - "sure, it's cooperative!" But it's not. Even without an explicit statement, that's the implicit assumption.
2. The player is lying, as a player about the nature of their character.

These things just aren't true if the party knows, up front that there's PvP elements to the game. But that's not the setup that's being discussed.

But it's even worse I think. Because there's an implicit social contract involved in cooperative games, namely "the party stays together but doesn't do too much that would cause the party to split". So not only is the "traitor" being dishonest, but the party has a social obligation to keep them in the group even if the behavior might raise suspicion due to the implicit social contract of the game. Get what I'm saying here? The setup leans on the assumptions of the game to enable the traitor to get away with it. And that is certainly fodder for increased levels of resentment.

Sure, someone is going to tell about a game where it got pulled off well and people thought it was great. But there will be dozens of other stories where it tanked. And due to the fact that when it tanks it will generally result in hurt feelings, I'd have to highly recommend that you just avoid, avoid, avoid.

[Pex]

I've done it once. One of my players knew from the start of the campaign that he wanted to switch characters around level 5 or 6, so we planned a corruption arc that would lead his early-game character to turn to evil, fight the party and escape, joining Dagon's cult. We played it as a gradual corruption, Lovecraft-style, where he was subjugated over time by an evil item (like a One Ring situation) and started getting increasingly callous, reclusive, going out at night, then started losing his hair, going for swims in the dirty harbor waters and get bulging eyes.

So, there were hints, but the player was good at avoiding questions from fellow PCs, turning their suspicions to other villains, and I was careful to keep the adventure pressing enough so that they didn't have time to investigate him unless they decided that it was a priority and they needed to take the time. They didn't. The player ended up taking the item and fleeing to the sea, knocking out another PC that stood in his way.

The twist felt very satisfying to me and to him, and the other players agreed that it was a great roleplaying moment. However, I can tell they got paranoid and keep wondering if I'm gonna spring something like that again. In a way, I took advantage of the implicit social contract according to which it's a team game, so other PCs aren't a danger to you no matter how weird they may look, and I broke some trust, which had durable consequences on the players' approach to the game and to other characters. I don't regret it per se, because it was a very dramatic session that everyone will remember (and the betrayal didn't lead to any PC deaths), but I think I wouldn't do it again without careful consideration and OOC talk.

Players lost trust in the DM and the game suffers. Players may not react as I would by quitting, but they will be affected. Every NPC lies and betrays? You get murder hobos. Every captured prisoner questioned and released comes back with reinforcements? Every bad guy dies every battle no one escapes. All prisoners are killed. A trap is sprung because the DM emphasizes the player did not say he checked the ceiling when searching for traps? Players will take 30 minutes describing in every detail everything they do in every room search, trap search, walking down a hallway, etc.

Same thing. If you don't want disruptive/annoying players as a DM don't make them one to play the game. Sure, sometimes it is all on the player's initiative choosing to be disruptive for his own jollies. It's the DM's job not to enable it. If the player quits, win-win.

[Jay R]

From my "Rules for Players" document:

8. The basic unit of D&D isn’t the PC; it’s the party. Fit in with the party. Support the party’s goals, and defend your allies.

a. Don’t betray the party; they know where you sleep.
b. You can have personal goals and secrets, but don’t let them get in the party’s way. [Yes, this also applies to the paladin.]
c. Yes, you decide what your character is. Decide to have one that makes the game better for everyone, not one that hurts the game for other players.

9. It’s all right to have secrets from the party. It’s not all right to have secrets that will hurt the party.

a. If your character’s goals would hurt the party, then your goals for the game will hurt your friends. Just don’t.

---

Reminder: these are rules for how I want to play, as a reminder to me. I am not dictating how others must play. The document includes:

These rules are written for myself, for the way I play games. I am not saying that anybody else “should” play a game this way. These rules exist to help me be consistent, effective, and immersive.

Anybody else is free to use them as guidelines, to modify them, to use some but not others, or to ignore them altogether, as seems best to you. Not everybody agrees on how to play a game, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[Errorname]

My thinking with this is that you might want to reveal that traitor before the shoe fully drops? Get that dramatic irony going, both so that the character interactions are tinged with the foreknowledge "these characters will be enemies soon" but also just so that the players can calibrate expectations ahead of time.

[Lacco]

But it's even worse I think. Because there's an implicit social contract involved in cooperative games, namely "the party stays together but doesn't do too much that would cause the party to split". So not only is the "traitor" being dishonest, but the party has a social obligation to keep them in the group even if the behavior might raise suspicion due to the implicit social contract of the game. Get what I'm saying here? The setup leans on the assumptions of the game to enable the traitor to get away with it. And that is certainly fodder for increased levels of resentment.

Sure, someone is going to tell about a game where it got pulled off well and people thought it was great. But there will be dozens of other stories where it tanked. And due to the fact that when it tanks it will generally result in hurt feelings, I'd have to highly recommend that you just avoid, avoid, avoid.

I'd say that you hit the nail on the head: it all depends on the social contract for the group.

If the group is fine with PvP and betrayal, this may be fun for them and they may do it all the time.

If the group is narrative-high drama-focused, they may find it a requirement for these kinds of scenes to occur.

For most groups though, I would not do it.

Where I can imagine it works, is with a group that the GM knows, where he knows the players and knows how they will react, where the circumstances are aligned (e.g. in my case - a mix of players that play regularly and players with new characters) and high trust between the GM and players.

I mean the level of trust where player says "That sounds great!" when the GM says "How about a destiny for your character that states how they die?", because they know the GM will not attempt to kill them just to fulfill it and will give them chance to avoid the destiny, but even if they fail, the story will be epic. The trust level of 'okay, GM, create a character and give me an empty sheet, I have amnesia and will have to find out everything about my character!" knowing they will not be unhappy about the result.

It requires high trust, certain type of player, and careful planning on side of the GM.

I would not try it out with a new group or randomly assembled group of players.

Yes, there is always the player that comes into the game with a potentially disruptive-but-cool character idea. The role of GM is to open discussion and find out if everybody is fine with it, and if not, scrap the idea, however cool it is.

[gbaji]

In my experience PC traitors/betrayals work in inverse relation to the degree to which the players care about the long term play and development of the characters they are running.

In short or one shot games? Work great. Obviously, in a lot of the tabletop games (like werewolf) that's the entire point. But in an RPG? If the players actually want to continue playing these characters for a length of time, growing and building them in the game setting? Generally does not work well at all.

Some game systems and themes can still work, but generally where the betrayals are less of a fatal nature, and where the goals are more social or political. So V:tM can work, while a classic high fantasy RPG will not. It's one thing for a PC to "double cross" the rest of the group, by arranging for their patron to gain the credit/advantage/whatever of their efforts rather than what was agreed upon (but otherwise still completed whatever group objectives were present) versus the PC "double cross" consisting of joining the bbeg and killing the rest of the party and/or sacrificing them to their true evil deity they've been secretly working for all along. Obvious exception for a game like paranoia, where literally everyone is working for a secret society with their own agenda, everyone is secretly the enemy of the computer (probably including the computer too!), and everyone is also more or less disposable anyway (they give you 6 clones for a reason!).

So yeah. You *can* pull this off in a more classic type of game, but IMO it really has to lean more towards the social and away from the "I just murderhobo'd my party" style. There's a difference between competition and conflict, and that difference is critically important in the game systems/themes/settings where the PC party is assumed to need to work together for some greater common objective for the game to be a success at all.

As several people have previously stated, there is an inherent social contract among the players that they will suspend their character's potentially natural distrust in the pursuit of that assumption. Otherwise, a lot of party makeups would normally be extremely unlikely to ever form and work together in the first place. But, having accepted that contract, the GM reallly has to enforce it. Once it's broken, players will simply not trust the other players at the table (or the GM), and they will play their characters accordingly. And the game will almost certainly suffer as a result. Most of those types of games absolutely rely on the PCs having complete trust in each other and know that when it's really important and lives are on the line (which may be every day for many groups), they can trust that their party members with their lives.

Once that's not there, well... it's not there. And as a GM, you will find that you simply can't run certain types of adventures anymore, because the players will not trust the other PCs not to backstab them, so they cannot cooperate in any way that will put their lives at risk, and that's often somewhat required for success in many scenarios.


Yeah. It's just a bad idea. You can play around with this in terms of having PCs dominated or otherwise controlled in some way, but I've found that even that needs to be done carefully. Players just don't like this. They play the game to play their characters, so even if such powers exist in the game, they should rarely actually be used on PCs. And if done, it should be really short term. I ran an adventure recently, where the PCs were assaulting a powerful vampire wizard's tower. They had to fight their way through a number of obstacles to get to where the main bad guy and his main minions were, and by the time they got there he had managed to dominate two of them in the confusion and chaos of the various fights (and stumbling their way through dark corridors, being ambushed out of the shadows, other spell attacks, etc). It worked out ok, but mainly acted as a means to remove a couple character from the main fight for a while (vamp master had to be super careful who he dominated, since the party also had a pretty powerful wizard with them who could have detected the magic). And yeah, one of the players really leaned into it, while I could tell the other was not so happy (and was actively doing dumb things that were ineffective, and drew attention to his characters condition as a result). So mixed results even then.

I've also used such spells just as a storyboard element to something else going on. Whole party is dominated by super powerful wizard lich, and are forced to stand and watch while he engages in his evil magic ritual thing (monologuing the whole time, naturally!). But unbeknownst to the big bad, the party had previously switched a key component to said ritual, and things went poorly for him. And the party regained control once he expired (all part of the plan, sorta!), and then had a grand melee against his powerful minions who were kinda upset about the whole thing.

I also ran an scenario where the entire party was actually replaced by ghouls. Well, technically they weren't, but the main character the quest was focused on thought the ghouls were her fellow party members (was a dreamlands adventure, so weird things happen). So the players were actually playing the ghouls, without knowing it, and the one player was playing her character thinking the ghouls were her friends, while evading a group of evil monsters hunting them (which was the actual party, trying to rescue their friend, but I was playing them). Probably the greatest single moment in my GMing career was when the main PC hesitated to enter a particular entryway, and one of the other PCs grabbed her arm to pull her in (they were instructed to get here there at all costs, since... you know... they're the ghouls and are actually evil), and I said something like "her clawed fingers are really digging into the skin of your arm as she tries to pull you through". You could hear a pin drop, as the words sunk in, followed by one player saying "wait. My clawed fingers? What!!!?". Then the "evil monsters" showed up for one last attempt to rescue her, the main PC became fully aware of the dream, and I handed her a note detailing what was going on (which resulted in her now not wanting to go with her "friends"), and swapped the minis around so that the players were now playing their actual characters, and I played the ghouls, and we resolved the final fight. Probably the best short scenario I've ever run, and the players loved it.


Um... Even those kind of events only work if the players have trust in the GM though. Trust that is built up by *not* setting up things in ways that cause them to fail and or die as a result of merely trusting someone that the game expects them to trust in order to work in the first place. So yeah... strong recommendation not to do this except under very very very specific circumstances. In most games it will damage the game itself if you do this.

[oxybe]

Kind of crazy idea I had, I'm wondering if anyone here has ever played in a game where this has been done. Plays like a normal game except the DM and one of the players has secretly agreed that the player's character is secretly working for the arch-nemesis of the campaign. The campaign plays normally through the early levels, with the traitor earnestly befriending and working with the party to accomplish goals, and then late in the campaign at a critical moment, he turns and reveals he's an enemy. It goes to combat and the party has to defeat their former ally. The player who played the traitor, assuming the traitor dies, knows from the start that his time as a member of the campaign ends once his character dies.

I dunno, it seems like it would be a crazy twist that would be well-remembered, but also I think there's a good chance the rest of the players would quit and never play with that DM or the traitor player again.

I was in a game like that, but it was also done as a one-shot, with my trusted group of near-20 years and we all had secret agendas.

We were playing the Aliens TTRPG module Chariot of the Gods

Spoiler: spoiler for the module

Show

One of the pre-gen characters ends up being a synth and their main goal is to make sure none of the specimens get into the hands of Weyland-Yutani and kill everyone they can who knows of the specimens.

I got that character and on multiple occasions nearly got outed as a synth, taking enough damage to be hurt, but not enough that my would would betray my non-human lineage. Ended up going axe-murder-y on the party as they tried to escape amid my attempts to kill them/stop them from escaping and eventually "winning" by destroying the ship's deck and leaving it open to the vacuum of space, before going into a torpor-like sleep until/if my creators decide to rescue me.

It was a lot of fun, but it's not something I would throw at any given group at random. We were familiar with the world of aliens and how it exemplifies a cutthroat capitalist mindset where betrayal is very possible and death comes quick. We weren't explicitly expecting a traitor, but knowing the setting and that every pre-gen character had their own hidden agenda, we didn't put it off the table. It was also a one-shot so it's not like we had attachments to these characters.

It was like playing a round of Werewolf or Among Us: no hard feelings because it was just a couple sessions and then we went back to our regular game.

One player doing the long-con to undermine the party in a proper campaign? That might leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth, esp if we're not playing an explicitly evil or gray and darker-gray shades of morality campaign. In a traditional D&D game where you're all expected to be heroic or at least decent folk? That's just being "that guy" at the table for most groups.

[SpyOne]

I've never played in such a campaign, but once when my brother talked me into joining his D&D campaign, my character came to the party's camp while their leader was doing some scouting.
When he returned he yelled at them for how unquestioningly they had accepted this stranger into the group, including "you think if Bill wanted to insert a ninja into the party he wouldn't get his brother to play it?"

Actually the only prep he had given me was some tips on how to make fun of the characters' names.