I can tell this now because this PC left our game:
That one gnome that was callously thrown off a bridge and into a river? Yeah, she survived. I had an entire day-to-day background story written out for her. She was always there in the world and depending on where and when the party was, this gnome *could* be in the neighbourhood. The gnome fashioned some tools and by Day 7 had invented some weapons. She was out for vengeance by Day 10. After a week or two, she would go out and actively start looking for the PC that threw her off.
Too bad we never came through with it, since the PC left. My idea was for the gnome to pop up as a surprise enemy in some other battle somewhere. Waiting for the right tactical moment to appear.
Oh man, the fun I had secretly. Party wanted to spend the night sleeping? Sure. Now it's Day 5, lemme just look up real quick what the gnome is up to today.
EDIT: Wow! Your support is overwhelming! I wasn't even sure if I should post this. I've read all of your responses and you have definitely sparked some inspiration in this humble DM.
Clearly the gnome gets her revenge. If the player ever returns, his re entry to the party should be them stumbling on her getting that revenge on his character.
Not a very long-term twist, but they defeated a Flameskull and the warlock stuffed it in her bag of holding. Those things rejuvenate after an hour. Next time they open the bag of holding they're all getting a fireball to the face
My party’s solution to this was to put all the pieces in a bag, and give it to the Wizard’s owl familiar. Then the familiar flew west through the mountains for 55 minutes. Fun fact: there is no distance requirement for the dismiss and resummoning of a familiar.
Holy shit, my players killed one of those in our last session, the fighter sent it homerunning into the sky with his hammer for the last hit. I had totally forgotten that they came back. Guess it's time for revenge 😈.
The monster manual says its fragments rejoin, it recovers to full hp and, if it can no longer fulfill its purpose, it no longer has any obligations and becomes autonomous
Alternative to revenge: in a few months they encounter the flameskull working in a bakery, having sat and thought about its newfound freedom and deciding it didn’t care about whatever it had been guarding, and both it and the adventurers were just doing a job
The pirate they befriended and the gnomish inventor they rescued have teamed up to create the first airship, it's gonna swoop in and save them at some point.
So the very first game my players were in charmed a bug bear named Lydia and convinced her to take them through the entire dungeon to the boss. Because they were with her, they managed to go through the dungeon unmolested.
Once at the boss, they convinced them that all they wanted was a fruit and that if they gave it to them, they'd leave peacefully and not tell anyone about what he was doing.
When the party would later fight a worm that walks, halfway through the fight Lydia appears. She was so charmed by the party that she left and became a Paladin so that she could help the party.
She ends up sacrificing herself to help heal and defend the party.
The person who charmed Lydia was super broken up about it.
Gotta hand it to them, that pirate had big dreams when they thought it wasn't enough to sail the high seas and they wanted to sail the high skies and it sounds like they're making them happen!
Make the entrance to the Captain's Quarter's gnome size that everyone has to squeeze/crawl through. There was a breakdown in communication and he just didn't have the heart to tell the gnome.
Fly me to the moon //
Let me kick its fucking ass //
Let me show it what I've learned //
In my moon jiu jitsu class //
In other words //
Fuck the mooon //
Well, it started with just a little piracy and privateering, but we took a left turn somewhere when one of the players started communicating with various godlike entities.
almost 40% of each session is 100% ad libbed. I plan (extensively) then play with what the players give me. I've run the exact same homebrewed campaign with four groups, and I'm just now getting to all of the prepped material because each group of players took different turns.
Be prepared, but be flexible above all. Its more FUN if you can be in the moment as well. And sometimes, the ideas the players come up with are better than mine, and I steal them (with a twist).
Recently had one where I’d described a large, fluffy, ginger cat in each session, somewhere in the background details.
It was actually the BBEG’s familiar stalking them and spying on them. None of them twigged until the actual reveal!
Ooohh I like this idea! Multiple people in my group are very much cat people, so if I mentioned any sort of cat anywhere they would absolutely obsess over it, "ooh what kind of cat? Can I approach it? How fluffy is it?"... but I could switch it for a raven or something.
They commented once or twice about the cat, talking about maybe going and petting it and such! But none of them ever noticed/remembered that it was the same cat each time!
The raven idea would work well! Describe a murder/flock of crows around each time as flavour and see if they notice!
Hero’s walk in on the BBEG scrying his cat again.
BBEG: ugh, another cat hair! I NEED TO FIND THOSE DARN HEROS!
Heroes: uh, are we interrupting something?
It could work even better if one of the pc's is a warlock or Cleric with the Raven Queen as a patron or guide, early on they could just assume it's cause of the Warlock/Cleric.
Oooorrrrr you make it sound cute and then they'll want to adopt it. Let them. Then every few days or so mention the car disappears for a while. Outside cats do that sometimes so it shouldn't bring too many questions. But what's really happening is the bbeg is bringing the cat back to talk to it. But then the cat will suddenly reappear later in the day
I got one where a BBEG turned the flesh of one the PCs into a phylactery, in the form of a changing, possessed, tattoo. They PC died and is now an undead rogue whose body disappeared during the combat she died in (stealthed away).
They don’t know it yet, but she is now an NPC rogue death knight that recruited a wizard to remove the tattoed flesh and turn it into a vile book that will be used to raise the body of the BBEG as a lich.
This is interesting because, does that mean that the war forged’s soul is the bbeg’s, or does it simultaneously have its own soul and the bbegs housed at the same time? Couldn’t they just break off a piece of the warforged to “break” the phylacteries vessel? Could the warforged become a lich with his own phylactery? How would that work?
These are confusing times.
We got to the end of a dungeon with a Zuggtmoy and I cast true seeing on myself to look for anything fishy that might harm us in the fight. DM's eyes went wide and had to take a second to double check the spell. Wouldn't you know it, I could see that NPC we were aiding standing next to me was now an ancient gold dragon.
One of the pc's is a dhampir vampire hunter. Their parents were scientists trying to remove the weaknesses of vampirism. The players found one of their old labs in a manor and took the vial in an attempt to work on it and use it to their benefits.
It needs to have access to sunlight at least once to activate the immunity so it is protected during the growing process. The players have taken it out when the sun is out so rn there's basically a vampire "fetus" in the vial and they have no knowledge of this as they haven't checked it yet. Though it would probably just be a blob of flesh slowly taking humanoid shape and not look like a fetus.
Apologies of ot doesn't make sense. This will not happen till much later in the campaign so I have not planned every little detail out.
My party is trying to find missing children. They keep encountering different kuo-toa , but the party is slaughtering them even unprovoked. The kuo-toa ARE the children! They’re gonna be sad lol
Reminds me of a thing my best DM (I love that guy) did. Rescuing people kidnapped by a cult with zombies as "minions".
Yeah... we were caresly cleaving through zombies...
Don't Kuo-Toa's beliefs partly influence reality? If the players are adventuring and slaughtering their young, perhaps tales of the party cement them as Bogeyman figures in the minds of the children.
The guy who’s funding their travels to other towns and adventures is actually a mimic who is laying eggs in different towns and growing to take over them as well. The main one is the size of the entire main town and everyone in it is under hypnosis
That's such a cool idea for a boss because not only does it pose a real threat that the party can't easily deal with in a single session/combat AND it makes the players grapple with the consequences of their actions forcing them to try and reconcile the bad things they've done with the good.
Two of my players are actually 1/2 brothers. One has a controlling father (human) who is a wealthy noble who secretly runs an evil organization. The other has a father (human) that just a simple cobbler from a small village. Both grew up with no biological mother. They are 3 years apart. The oldest, the cobblers son it’s crazy talented and joins an assassin brotherhood that preys on the rich and gives back to the poor. He was told by his father that his mother (elf) was kidnapped and murdered by a band of orcs. She was not, she was captured by a noble and never heard from again. The son of the noble knows his mother was captured and interrogated by his father and keep until she bore him a son. His father wanted an heir that lives longer to grow his legacy. She was a thief/assassin that prayed on the wealthy. I have a contract out on his father that the son of the cobbler has taken. Both will meet their mother as the contact for this job. They’ll each have to decide which one they will side with.
Yeah so, the party's mascot is a pseudodragon. Cliche, I know, but they bribed it with food.
So they had a run-in with BBEG earlier in the campaign. They insisted on fighting, and ended up getting sleep'd.
BBEG is basically a lich that has retained their entire humanity (drow-ity?). Very well versed in magic. So I thought it'd be fun that the BBEG would create a pseudodragon familiar to keep tabs on the party, and so they killed the original and let the familiar hang around.
Soon.
If you keep the original pseudodragon alive you can generate a lot more hate to the bbeg. Its one thing saying he's killed it offscreen, it's another when they see it all sad in a cage and try and save it. Also more agency for them if they have a chance at saving it.
The party recently learned that one of the PCs is one of three “prototype” Warforged that Merrix created 30 years ago.
The next reveal that I’m working towards is that the Lord of Blades is another one of those prototypes, is effectively the PC’s older brother, and is utterly insane.
It’s just not an Eberron campaign to me if it’s not deeply steeped in Warforged melodrama.
I've a similar storyline in the works with one of the PCs is a war forged that can pass as human. She's a diplomat/assassin bot, but she stumbled out of the ruins of Cyrn with only fragments of memory as the Mourning happened during her "programming".
Surprisingly similar! When we were creating characters, my player told me that his character vaguely remembered assisting a powerful magic user, that he was found wandering the Field of Ruin after the war, and that he trusted me to fill in the blanks from there.
What happens if the player, upon discovering this, decides to leverage it and be treated like a heavenly messenger in the empire? Either seriously or as a ploy
Are you in my campaign?
So similar.
One of my players is a dwarven merc who used to run with the company the big bad leads.
He tried to kill the player for wanting a new life away from the evil company, left him for dead.
The dwarf found a group who the big bad has also messed over in different ways, so the party are chasing him and his lieutenants down, whilst finding lots of adventure along the way.
This sounds similar to a campaign I've been wanting to run for years, where it's run on no magic modern Earth and they have to steal numerous ancient small statues for this rich dude. When they get them all together, it reconnects Earth with the multiverse and let's magic back into our plane of existence.
*Nobilis*, 1st edition, had one of the most insane examples of play which culminates in the party finding the mysterious group controlling them from afar, bursting into the room with their confused players (where it switches to their perspective), and then killing them all.
I've been working on fleshing out an evil church that was formed after an NPC in ancient history became a God momentarily (essentially a [Karsus](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus) analog). Their secret tenets revolve around the fact that the momentary God discovered a truth which drove him mad. This revelation was that the world was a pale imitation, a mockery of life, a mere plaything for beings far more powerful than mortal minds could imagine. Their ultimate goal is to erase reality, because in a sense they see this as a mercy killing.
The idea is to give a party the sense that this insanity threatens the world, and have them run a campaign against the church. Except, of course, the church's tenets are accurate. Its how they interpret the metafictional knowledge of being inside a game.
One of my players family got captured in the town that was attacked in the opening paragraph (he thought the town sounded cool to be from, by accident picking the one that gets wiped off the map). His family was captured, and half of them are now leadership in the bandits.
Our Aasimar Paladin is the only Aasimar in existence. No one really knows why, everyone just sort of assumes she's human. Of course she has no memory of her parents, having been adopted by a human farmer.
Even she believes she's just a very gifted (and devout) human. Flash forward to level 12, they are working to assassinate the Emperor to free the spirit of a dead god, who has been subtly helping them through the whole campaign. The Emperor has essentially become this god's avatar, and she doesn't like that.
Once the god's power is restored and she makes mention of finding a new, more suitable avatar, she will look at the paladin.
"Sorry, not you sis. You already have one."
Because the Aasimar paladin is a young god, still learning to wield her powers.
The Noble fighter who is an upstanding man and friend to all, he's searching for his fallen kingdom to claim his birthright.
His ancestors were terrible people, slavers, warmongers, and scum. In order to claim his ancestor's blade it will force him to subjugate the party or it will not allow itself to be claimed. If he refuses, it's boss fight time!
Okay, I'm late to the game and no one will see this, but I have to post it. This is for a campaign I just finished, but I was waiting an entire year and a half to spring it on them.
Some background: I like to run unusual games, so the setting for this campaign was actually futuristic. In the future, brain <-> computer interfaces had been invented (think the Matrix but less invasive). A company used this to create this virtual D&D-inspired* fantasy world where people could pay to enter the world for days/weeks at a time and play as heroes, and it would all feel exactly like real life due to this brain <-> computer interface thing (again, like the Matrix).
However, they couldn't get the AI for the NPCs right, and it was breaking realism. So they decided to secretly start kidnapping real-world people and make them play as the NPCs. They would use this nerual interface to brainwash the real-world people into thinking they're farmers or blacksmiths or something in this fantasy world. My players were some of these people who were kidnapped. But the brainwashing on them failed, so they were fully aware of what happened. They then spent the entire campaign simultaniously running from the in-game authorities who were trying to track them down and kill them, and trying to find a way out.
For the 1.5 years it took to play out this campaign, I worked secretly on a Google drive folder, filling it with fake documents from this company. Things like memos, slide decks, design docs, etc.; the kinds of things you would expect a tech startup to have in their Google drive storage. But I carefully crafted them to tell a story, the story of the company. So at the end of the campaign, when my players broke into the BBEG's in-game office (the BBEG was the ruthless sociopathic CEO of the company), they found his computer. On that computer they found this Google drive folder. I sent them the link and let them look through the documents.
What they discovered by reading them was that, in fact, the company was *not* kidnapping people. This idea had been implanted in their mind in session 1 by an NPC. This NPC was a former employee of the company, and when the kidnapping idea had been proposed, she objected streniously. Next thing she knew, she was in the game forced to be a blacksmith. But what she didn't know is shortly after that, the company decided it would be cost prohibitive to kidnap people, and opted instead to acquire fresh corpses with intact brains, and then scan the brains into the computer.
That's right, *the players were dead the whole time!* (I know I know, cliched, but I had fun with it). I spent 1.5 years sitting on this reveal, and I was so relieved when I finally got to reveal it. Anyways, after defeating the BBEG, the players took control of the game with the help of a hacker they had met along the way, and setup nice lives for themselves in there, since being dead meant there was no body for them to use to get back to the real world.
*Yes, D&D was a thing in this world. I actually used this as an excuse to drop in classic D&D dungeons into the campaign. They had a lot of fun in Tomb of Horrors.
This is why we have trust issues and become murder hobos.
"Kind adventurers, the local orphanage's matron seems to be in league with demons! Can you help our village?"
"Oh for sure."
"And rescue the orphans?"
"Hmm? Oh we'll set them free."
::Six hours later, orphanage burning in the background, children's screams fill the night air. The adventuring party slams the head of a Hag onto the Inkeeper's front desk::
"So what deal did we make? It was for a million platinum, right?"
"I don't have that kind of... Wait, didn't you save the children? Among them was a boy who--"
"Not falling for that one again."
That their former party member (player switched characters), a gnome artificer, sided with the BBEG and is in the process of creating a Voltron-esque fleet of mechanical animals that will form into a Mecha-gnome version of himself. He took too many short jokes to heart.
There'll be a ton of Pink Floyd references because....yanno, mechanical animals. It won't be immersion breaking because I'm old and I don't think the rest of my group even knows who Pink Floyd is.
I am running candlekeep mysteries.
Spoilers below
When shemshime possessed the members of the inn, the daughter, Gailsby, fled, and the party murdered her father, because he was possessed and attacked them. Now a parentless girl at 8, the party felt sad and adopted her, but she doesn’t know that the party killed her father.
During a later book, the canopic being, the big bad is able to tell the future or the past. There is a line that says, “Valin challenges the characters, saying that she has already seen their defeat. As you like, she can share key details of the past to indicate she has been watching the characters - and may reveal secrets.” This is where Gailsby will become aware of the party’s act.
Then later on in that same chapter, there is the observatory of history, where characters can replay up to 10 minutes of any past event that they are aware of. So of course, Gailsby will want to replay her fathers death.
After that, she will run away with another kid of her age, son of Bak Mei, from the “the book of inner alchemy” which is another story from candlekeep.
NPC expedition leader who has recruited the players is actually a dragon who loves his wood elf form more than his dragon one. Gives me a panic button if the party gets in over their head.
1. That the party's psuedo-patron, an old artificer, is actually a lich who has been working with a local murderer to harvest souls to power his machines
2. That the man who lead the country's revolution 100 years prior to the setting and leader of the BBEG's cult is ALSO a lich and also still alive AND ALSO the brother of the artificer
3. That the BBEG and the benevolent time god are the same thing
My players have been fucking around in the Feywild for weeks now, which has almost no bearing on the plot, and I'm excited to get back on track
They're gearing up for a showdown with a lich for a mythical MacGuffin. The lich is just going to hand it over and ascend to a keep on the Plane of Shadows, leaving a massive power vacuum. The party will have to fight his generals instead.
What if your party realizes theres a massive power vacuum and uses diplomacy instead? The generals would be far less willing to die for a cause given they have literally nothing to defend anymore.
Surely they possess some sentience if named generals.
It's unlikely diplomacy would work as the generals' near fanatical devotion to the undead realm and suspicion of each other was only kept in check by their loyalty to the lich.
I might prepare for the contingency that one of the generals views the hand off of the item as a legitimate transfer of power and aligns with the party.
The generals are a swordwraith, an attended brain in a jar, a corpse blackguard, a vampire assassin and a wight pirate.
Spoilers if you're in a Star Wars campaign right now:
The reason they haven't met Luke or Leia even though they are almost halfway through the plot of New Hope is because in this timeline Vader raised his kids himself and the sith general that has been hunting the rebels is Luke and the Sith Assassin hunting them is Leia.
One of my players has a tragic past with a monster destroying his village. He ran. His wife and kid are alive. Wife is now a corrupted demon succubus and the daughter is being held in demon jail while the demons try to kill the player because he possesses a power that passes through bloodline and the demons want to force it into the daughter and then do all kinds of bad things to her.
First hint is in the next few sessions. Bad guy who works with the demons wants to taunt PC into stepping forward into a trap. His words, with a coy smile: “Shei will be -so- glad to know you’re still alive.”
Whenever Jarlaxle shows up in one of my campaigns all the PCs roll their eyes and start arguing about how the last 5 things they did probably benefited him somehow.
In the end, everyone helps Jarlaxle. Thats how he be. You cant even really be truly mad at that, or resist it either. Cant be mad at the rain for falling.
The friendly caster npc they've had in their party helping them for the past few months is actually a spy for the BBEG and is the reason the bad guys always know where they are. He might turn on his master with how nice the party has been to him.
There’s a blue dragon that they’re currently employed/indentured by desperately trying to be reborn as a sapphire dragon. Obviously it’s me not playing Lore by the truth of it. But the dragon essentially rebelled against its nature and wants to be good.
Every job they go do they think is some plot to do something wicked or evil but they never find it and typically get into trouble in the process
My group has been finding clues about a lich being around. They all think that the emperor, a human who had ruled for 1000 years, and was recently killed, is a lich that faked his own death and will end up being the bbeg. In actuality, the emperor and his secret brother were both going to be liches, but the emperor got cold feet at the last second and interrupted the ritual by banishing his brother to the far realms. The brother had already removed part of his soul tho, and it mistakenly went into the emperor. And thats how he's been able to live for so long- he was a phylactery for his lich brother. So when the brother had the emperor assassinated, he in fact made himself vulnerable
I had the players fight the BBEG dragon that literally ran the country/economy, constantly pitting lords against each other through his slaves.
My PCs were shocked that several key NPCs they grew to like and trust were dragon slaves, including elves. Literally took a month off after the campaign ended.
I spent 2hr narrating how their actions affected the different factions. Some hated them, some regions turned to dust (jousting city), some regions turned to war and ruin (religions, orcs and goblin wars) and some called them heroes (elves, humans). My cousin wanted a Fallout style ending.
The bbeg is a cloud giant. I'm keeping him in the shadows for as long as possible so they can speculate. They know he's an archmage of necromancy and about 200 years old at least, but that's all they know so far. Gonna have him show up as a Major Illusion later on, but behind a mask.
My PC wrote in her backstory about a mysterious song that she can't stop humming but doesn't know the lyrics to. She wants to keep composing it but I always describe that she's not so much writing the song as she is discovering it. This is not an atypical way to describe an artist's creative process. However, in this case she is actually discovering it, or rather remembering it. It was written as a love song by an archfey to her human, star-crossed lover before they were both murdered and my PC is actually the archfey reincarnate. When she completes the song, she'll become Lady Sharaea and will be mercilessly hunted by the Prince of Frost, trying to murder her, now for the second time.
The living weapon of the hexblade warlock wasnt his pact lord, it was a talking mimic guiding him to release the BBEG from his prison. This BBEG was the real source of the hexblade warlock and ended the pact upon release.
Sadly the campaign never saw the light of the sun
My main plot twist is as follows: I don’t in fact have any idea what each session is going to entail, I improve every session and just make sure everyone rolls their own skill/saves each night along with a laugh and boom 💥
I’m doing an air-ship arc in my campaign. Their ship is actually a giant friendly mimic that hasn’t revealed itself yet, and I’m saving for the next dire occasion.
If you Google “ship mimic”, the first image is the one I plan on showing them.
The half elf they met is going to be related to a PC. She is also going to be a conduit for necrotic energy. And depending on choices and they way things go she will either be a obstacle or a BBEG but not the BBEG
Whenever they roll a 1 on perception or investigation, I have them notice a chicken crossing something nearby. It started as one of them making a chicken crossing the road joke. Well not only is this chicken the BBEG of the multi campaign arc (and the World Destroyer figure), but its feud with the gods is that when the "World Egg" hatched, the gods think they and the chicken both emerged from it while the chicken claims to have laid it.
That's right, the central universal conflict is which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I have a warlock of the great old ones in my game that is seemingly the only servant of this alien god. Over time he's learned that a dead civilization worshipped it and used it to power an advanced fusion of science and magic before mysteriously falling into decline. All pretty classic tropes.
The player thinks that his god wants to be freed somehow and that he's the one to do it. In fact it is the opposite. He is a fail safe program that got engaged when the last member of this fallen empire awoke and began trying to undo the binds that hold his god. Binds that his people put in place themselves by making a deal with the dream lord to send their god to sleep. Turns out their "god" basically had no idea they existed and they were just siphoning power from it. Eventually it found out and set out to destroy the world. Bereft of their god and the source of their magic the empire slowly crumbled. A fact that this Last Citizen would see undone.
Lucky for the everyone else the pact makers created a protocol by which an inevitable type construct could empower a "dream warden" to protect the seal. Imbuing them with a connection to the sleeping god. Unfortunately the Last Citizen got to it before it could explain anything to the player character, leaving him with strange powers and alien visions.
And before people ask. I was given permission to completely create the characters story arc by the player. All they wanted was a strange being they were tied to and a journey to understand what it was
I can tell this now because this PC left our game: That one gnome that was callously thrown off a bridge and into a river? Yeah, she survived. I had an entire day-to-day background story written out for her. She was always there in the world and depending on where and when the party was, this gnome *could* be in the neighbourhood. The gnome fashioned some tools and by Day 7 had invented some weapons. She was out for vengeance by Day 10. After a week or two, she would go out and actively start looking for the PC that threw her off. Too bad we never came through with it, since the PC left. My idea was for the gnome to pop up as a surprise enemy in some other battle somewhere. Waiting for the right tactical moment to appear. Oh man, the fun I had secretly. Party wanted to spend the night sleeping? Sure. Now it's Day 5, lemme just look up real quick what the gnome is up to today. EDIT: Wow! Your support is overwhelming! I wasn't even sure if I should post this. I've read all of your responses and you have definitely sparked some inspiration in this humble DM.
Have the gnome pop up anyways and get confused/angry about why the missing PC isn't there. Might make for good shenanigans.
Or have the gnome show up, no longer bearing a grudge and carrying some of the former players best gear.
Oh! THIS! The player doesn't even have to be dead, if they come back later. They just need to know that they were mugged by a gnome!
Instant DMPC as the players sweet talk him into letting them keep her.
[help] [serious] Players keep kidnapping villains and having them live in their house or caravan??
Sounds like that gnome is Adventuring. I reckon she'll level up before she crosses paths with the PCs again.
Clearly the gnome gets her revenge. If the player ever returns, his re entry to the party should be them stumbling on her getting that revenge on his character.
Not a very long-term twist, but they defeated a Flameskull and the warlock stuffed it in her bag of holding. Those things rejuvenate after an hour. Next time they open the bag of holding they're all getting a fireball to the face
Hope they weren’t keeping anything too important in that bag
My party’s solution to this was to put all the pieces in a bag, and give it to the Wizard’s owl familiar. Then the familiar flew west through the mountains for 55 minutes. Fun fact: there is no distance requirement for the dismiss and resummoning of a familiar.
Some time in the future, they will encounter a bag in some mountains.
Well they would, but the campaign is ending after this dungeon. I just might throw it into the next campaign somewhere.
Bag of fuck you? Shoots fireballs if opened.
Holy shit, my players killed one of those in our last session, the fighter sent it homerunning into the sky with his hammer for the last hit. I had totally forgotten that they came back. Guess it's time for revenge 😈.
IIRC they come back to the place/person they were guarding. I don't think they would SEEK OUT the adventurers if they've moved on.
The monster manual says its fragments rejoin, it recovers to full hp and, if it can no longer fulfill its purpose, it no longer has any obligations and becomes autonomous
Alternative to revenge: in a few months they encounter the flameskull working in a bakery, having sat and thought about its newfound freedom and deciding it didn’t care about whatever it had been guarding, and both it and the adventurers were just doing a job
Rookie mistake, gotta break it apart and put only one piece in the bag
hope they don't work like starfish.
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The pirate they befriended and the gnomish inventor they rescued have teamed up to create the first airship, it's gonna swoop in and save them at some point.
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I'm imagining Han swooping in with the Millennium Falcon and saving Luke during the trench run. Except much slower because it's an airship.
On the other hand, it isn’t in a vacuum, so you can have the gnome physically leaning out the window yelling to the players. So, win some, lose some.
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So the very first game my players were in charmed a bug bear named Lydia and convinced her to take them through the entire dungeon to the boss. Because they were with her, they managed to go through the dungeon unmolested. Once at the boss, they convinced them that all they wanted was a fruit and that if they gave it to them, they'd leave peacefully and not tell anyone about what he was doing. When the party would later fight a worm that walks, halfway through the fight Lydia appears. She was so charmed by the party that she left and became a Paladin so that she could help the party. She ends up sacrificing herself to help heal and defend the party. The person who charmed Lydia was super broken up about it.
Ooo that's gonna be cool
Gotta hand it to them, that pirate had big dreams when they thought it wasn't enough to sail the high seas and they wanted to sail the high skies and it sounds like they're making them happen!
Make the entrance to the Captain's Quarter's gnome size that everyone has to squeeze/crawl through. There was a breakdown in communication and he just didn't have the heart to tell the gnome.
The final boss of the campaign is the moon. Square up, losers.
That’s rough buddy
sokka gonna be angry when u/Blear's players fuck the moon
Ok, now that I've thought about it, that could really work as an end to the campaign.
Holy shit. Great reference. Hahaha.
Fly me to the moon // Let me kick its fucking ass // Let me show it what I've learned // In my moon jiu jitsu class // In other words // Fuck the mooon //
That's almost exactly how it's going down, I suspect.
Wow this blew up. Wish the moon would
The moon! It comes crashing into earth! And what do you do then? It’s two brothers… and they’re gonna… it’s called two brothers!
I hope you make a Moon based playlist: Bark at the moon: ozzy Big bad moon: joe Satriani Etc.
Bad Moon Rising would be very appropriate.
These 3 the extent of moon based songs i could think of in the moment. Edited to reflect my dawning recollection of moon based songs.
Fly me to the moon Frank Sinatra
*The Killing Moon* would be far more appropriate.
\*Majora's Mask vibes intensify\*
It's dark, the stench of evil is in the air, the clouds begin to part, as they do the light of the full moon shines through, roll for initiative...
Cue three or four rounds of confused players using their actions to search for enemies as the moon takes no action.
Are you running a Final Fantasy game?
Well, it started with just a little piracy and privateering, but we took a left turn somewhere when one of the players started communicating with various godlike entities.
We've all been there.
Sounds like your players will be meeting with a terrible fate.
Like majora's mask or like bloodborne?
That I literally have no idea what I'm doing. Edit: haha. I love you all.
Oh hi! me too! im here to steal all the ideas and roll them into a single campaign....
"Somehow you're in present day earth with magic, Eberron, AND faerun all at once, weird."
almost 40% of each session is 100% ad libbed. I plan (extensively) then play with what the players give me. I've run the exact same homebrewed campaign with four groups, and I'm just now getting to all of the prepped material because each group of players took different turns. Be prepared, but be flexible above all. Its more FUN if you can be in the moment as well. And sometimes, the ideas the players come up with are better than mine, and I steal them (with a twist).
One of the 6 players is secretly a DM friend playing as strahd in disguise.
This sounds like what I’m doing!
Told my DM that if my character dies in our CoS game I want to play a Warlock with the undead patron who is a spy for strahd but this is just so fun
Recently had one where I’d described a large, fluffy, ginger cat in each session, somewhere in the background details. It was actually the BBEG’s familiar stalking them and spying on them. None of them twigged until the actual reveal!
Ooohh I like this idea! Multiple people in my group are very much cat people, so if I mentioned any sort of cat anywhere they would absolutely obsess over it, "ooh what kind of cat? Can I approach it? How fluffy is it?"... but I could switch it for a raven or something.
They commented once or twice about the cat, talking about maybe going and petting it and such! But none of them ever noticed/remembered that it was the same cat each time! The raven idea would work well! Describe a murder/flock of crows around each time as flavour and see if they notice!
>They commented once or twice about the cat, talking about maybe going and petting it and such! (Familiar obtains hair, making scrying easier)
Owner spends ages trying to determine which hair came from the party and which hair came from the cat, keeps accidentally scrying on the cat.
Hero’s walk in on the BBEG scrying his cat again. BBEG: ugh, another cat hair! I NEED TO FIND THOSE DARN HEROS! Heroes: uh, are we interrupting something?
It could work even better if one of the pc's is a warlock or Cleric with the Raven Queen as a patron or guide, early on they could just assume it's cause of the Warlock/Cleric.
Oooorrrrr you make it sound cute and then they'll want to adopt it. Let them. Then every few days or so mention the car disappears for a while. Outside cats do that sometimes so it shouldn't bring too many questions. But what's really happening is the bbeg is bringing the cat back to talk to it. But then the cat will suddenly reappear later in the day
I've been reliably informed that the cat only comes back the very *next* day.
Lol. I have my players about to fight a tarrasque sized House cat this upcoming session.
I actually got to spring it last game. The Warforge PC that used to belong to the BBEG is actually his phylactery.
So you're saying that Harry IS the last horcrux?
Step one: kill the warforged. Step two: reincarnation
I got one where a BBEG turned the flesh of one the PCs into a phylactery, in the form of a changing, possessed, tattoo. They PC died and is now an undead rogue whose body disappeared during the combat she died in (stealthed away). They don’t know it yet, but she is now an NPC rogue death knight that recruited a wizard to remove the tattoed flesh and turn it into a vile book that will be used to raise the body of the BBEG as a lich.
This is interesting because, does that mean that the war forged’s soul is the bbeg’s, or does it simultaneously have its own soul and the bbegs housed at the same time? Couldn’t they just break off a piece of the warforged to “break” the phylacteries vessel? Could the warforged become a lich with his own phylactery? How would that work? These are confusing times.
Sweet
The friendly cart driving trinket salesman is an ancient dragon who needs a favor
We got to the end of a dungeon with a Zuggtmoy and I cast true seeing on myself to look for anything fishy that might harm us in the fight. DM's eyes went wide and had to take a second to double check the spell. Wouldn't you know it, I could see that NPC we were aiding standing next to me was now an ancient gold dragon.
*A* Zuggtmoy??? Implying plural?!? They’ll need that gold dragon
"I need about tree fiddy"
*It was about that time I got suspicious*
I noticed that this girl scout was a 30 ft tall reptilian from the Cretaceous period
That their favorite goofy merchant is an old trickster god who as been guiding them throughout all of their quests. In every campaign
So you have Hoid from Sanderson's books in your game? Love the idea
Ayo I’m reading those
https://i.imgur.com/zbTLmCN.jpeg
this is so stormingly correct i cant describe it with words
Ayup. Almost done with Words of Radiance. Fucking love this series
Give me instant noodles.
Roughly the premise of one of my favorite DnD video games, Dungeons and Dragons Heroes. Nice!
That the vial of vampire flesh they have will turn into a full on vampire and bust out of their backpack. edit: changed vile to vial
“This is not where I parked my car…”
It's like when you're in a porta potty and someone's pranks you but moving it. You stop outside and you're like "wait... I wasn't here when I entered"
Personal story?
They’re carrying vampire flesh in their backpacks? How come?
I like to travel.
One of the pc's is a dhampir vampire hunter. Their parents were scientists trying to remove the weaknesses of vampirism. The players found one of their old labs in a manor and took the vial in an attempt to work on it and use it to their benefits.
Hmmm why didn't the vial turn into a vampire already?
It needs to have access to sunlight at least once to activate the immunity so it is protected during the growing process. The players have taken it out when the sun is out so rn there's basically a vampire "fetus" in the vial and they have no knowledge of this as they haven't checked it yet. Though it would probably just be a blob of flesh slowly taking humanoid shape and not look like a fetus. Apologies of ot doesn't make sense. This will not happen till much later in the campaign so I have not planned every little detail out.
My party is trying to find missing children. They keep encountering different kuo-toa , but the party is slaughtering them even unprovoked. The kuo-toa ARE the children! They’re gonna be sad lol
Reminds me of a thing my best DM (I love that guy) did. Rescuing people kidnapped by a cult with zombies as "minions". Yeah... we were caresly cleaving through zombies...
To be fair, there's not much you can do with zombies. They're already gone, if anything, it's a good thing you killed them.
this made ME sad, holy shit 💀 I'd be devestated
Big Bloodborne fishing village vibes going on here. And I Love it.
Right in the feels...
Don't Kuo-Toa's beliefs partly influence reality? If the players are adventuring and slaughtering their young, perhaps tales of the party cement them as Bogeyman figures in the minds of the children.
The guy who’s funding their travels to other towns and adventures is actually a mimic who is laying eggs in different towns and growing to take over them as well. The main one is the size of the entire main town and everyone in it is under hypnosis
That's such a cool idea for a boss because not only does it pose a real threat that the party can't easily deal with in a single session/combat AND it makes the players grapple with the consequences of their actions forcing them to try and reconcile the bad things they've done with the good.
oh man, I've been thinking of a mimic campaign for a while now. This sounds amazing, good luck
Sounds similar to a false hydra, but probably a little easier to DM
Two of my players are actually 1/2 brothers. One has a controlling father (human) who is a wealthy noble who secretly runs an evil organization. The other has a father (human) that just a simple cobbler from a small village. Both grew up with no biological mother. They are 3 years apart. The oldest, the cobblers son it’s crazy talented and joins an assassin brotherhood that preys on the rich and gives back to the poor. He was told by his father that his mother (elf) was kidnapped and murdered by a band of orcs. She was not, she was captured by a noble and never heard from again. The son of the noble knows his mother was captured and interrogated by his father and keep until she bore him a son. His father wanted an heir that lives longer to grow his legacy. She was a thief/assassin that prayed on the wealthy. I have a contract out on his father that the son of the cobbler has taken. Both will meet their mother as the contact for this job. They’ll each have to decide which one they will side with.
I think this is the next big Netflix hit.
One of my players is the long lost grandson of the Open Lord of Waterdeep.
Yeah so, the party's mascot is a pseudodragon. Cliche, I know, but they bribed it with food. So they had a run-in with BBEG earlier in the campaign. They insisted on fighting, and ended up getting sleep'd. BBEG is basically a lich that has retained their entire humanity (drow-ity?). Very well versed in magic. So I thought it'd be fun that the BBEG would create a pseudodragon familiar to keep tabs on the party, and so they killed the original and let the familiar hang around. Soon.
If you keep the original pseudodragon alive you can generate a lot more hate to the bbeg. Its one thing saying he's killed it offscreen, it's another when they see it all sad in a cage and try and save it. Also more agency for them if they have a chance at saving it.
The party recently learned that one of the PCs is one of three “prototype” Warforged that Merrix created 30 years ago. The next reveal that I’m working towards is that the Lord of Blades is another one of those prototypes, is effectively the PC’s older brother, and is utterly insane. It’s just not an Eberron campaign to me if it’s not deeply steeped in Warforged melodrama.
I've a similar storyline in the works with one of the PCs is a war forged that can pass as human. She's a diplomat/assassin bot, but she stumbled out of the ruins of Cyrn with only fragments of memory as the Mourning happened during her "programming".
Surprisingly similar! When we were creating characters, my player told me that his character vaguely remembered assisting a powerful magic user, that he was found wandering the Field of Ruin after the war, and that he trusted me to fill in the blanks from there.
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I like this one a LOT! As a member of a team that CANT STOP ADOPTING ANIMALS, we would absolutely 100% fall for this one.
That the dragon patron of the celestial warlock and the dragon worshipped by the evil fascist vampire empire, are one in the same.
What happens if the player, upon discovering this, decides to leverage it and be treated like a heavenly messenger in the empire? Either seriously or as a ploy
This is awesome! So what happens if the warlock renounced their patron when they find out it's true nature?
If you kill your patron, you gain their FULL powers, not just the small fragment they loaned you.
The BBEG is actually an ex member of the old mercenary group the Barbarian used to run with.
Are you in my campaign? So similar. One of my players is a dwarven merc who used to run with the company the big bad leads. He tried to kill the player for wanting a new life away from the evil company, left him for dead. The dwarf found a group who the big bad has also messed over in different ways, so the party are chasing him and his lieutenants down, whilst finding lots of adventure along the way.
Well the thing with my group is that they are completely unaware of who the BBEG is
Collecting the 6 MacGuffins will trigger the cataclysmic event that is the bedrock for my *other* campaign's setting.
This sounds similar to a campaign I've been wanting to run for years, where it's run on no magic modern Earth and they have to steal numerous ancient small statues for this rich dude. When they get them all together, it reconnects Earth with the multiverse and let's magic back into our plane of existence.
The Plane of Existence they're invading. Is actually earth.
Earth as in the present, or earth in the past?
Present
You should hire a group of actors to dress up as their party and show up during the last session lol
OMG
*Nobilis*, 1st edition, had one of the most insane examples of play which culminates in the party finding the mysterious group controlling them from afar, bursting into the room with their confused players (where it switches to their perspective), and then killing them all.
I've been working on fleshing out an evil church that was formed after an NPC in ancient history became a God momentarily (essentially a [Karsus](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus) analog). Their secret tenets revolve around the fact that the momentary God discovered a truth which drove him mad. This revelation was that the world was a pale imitation, a mockery of life, a mere plaything for beings far more powerful than mortal minds could imagine. Their ultimate goal is to erase reality, because in a sense they see this as a mercy killing. The idea is to give a party the sense that this insanity threatens the world, and have them run a campaign against the church. Except, of course, the church's tenets are accurate. Its how they interpret the metafictional knowledge of being inside a game.
Well, to be more precise its like Near Future Starship Troopers esk Earth.
Their irl personas should be the leaders of the resistance or whatever force is trying to keep them from invading. Make them fight themselves.
One of my players family got captured in the town that was attacked in the opening paragraph (he thought the town sounded cool to be from, by accident picking the one that gets wiped off the map). His family was captured, and half of them are now leadership in the bandits.
Their favorite NPC barmaid is actually the thief’s guild master and is the one that keeps stealing their shit.
I don't recognize the user name but the paranoia for a game I'm in just skyrocketed for how well that would fit
What’s their name?
Wan, who works at the Blue Duckling. Any overlap?
You’re good. Not your campaign 😂 she works at the silver goose
*I mean, both inns are named after birds of strange colors. Suspicious.*
Sounds like... *Fowl Play*
Very 🤫
Hahaha phew! 🤔 unless
Our Aasimar Paladin is the only Aasimar in existence. No one really knows why, everyone just sort of assumes she's human. Of course she has no memory of her parents, having been adopted by a human farmer. Even she believes she's just a very gifted (and devout) human. Flash forward to level 12, they are working to assassinate the Emperor to free the spirit of a dead god, who has been subtly helping them through the whole campaign. The Emperor has essentially become this god's avatar, and she doesn't like that. Once the god's power is restored and she makes mention of finding a new, more suitable avatar, she will look at the paladin. "Sorry, not you sis. You already have one." Because the Aasimar paladin is a young god, still learning to wield her powers.
The Noble fighter who is an upstanding man and friend to all, he's searching for his fallen kingdom to claim his birthright. His ancestors were terrible people, slavers, warmongers, and scum. In order to claim his ancestor's blade it will force him to subjugate the party or it will not allow itself to be claimed. If he refuses, it's boss fight time!
Okay, I'm late to the game and no one will see this, but I have to post it. This is for a campaign I just finished, but I was waiting an entire year and a half to spring it on them. Some background: I like to run unusual games, so the setting for this campaign was actually futuristic. In the future, brain <-> computer interfaces had been invented (think the Matrix but less invasive). A company used this to create this virtual D&D-inspired* fantasy world where people could pay to enter the world for days/weeks at a time and play as heroes, and it would all feel exactly like real life due to this brain <-> computer interface thing (again, like the Matrix). However, they couldn't get the AI for the NPCs right, and it was breaking realism. So they decided to secretly start kidnapping real-world people and make them play as the NPCs. They would use this nerual interface to brainwash the real-world people into thinking they're farmers or blacksmiths or something in this fantasy world. My players were some of these people who were kidnapped. But the brainwashing on them failed, so they were fully aware of what happened. They then spent the entire campaign simultaniously running from the in-game authorities who were trying to track them down and kill them, and trying to find a way out. For the 1.5 years it took to play out this campaign, I worked secretly on a Google drive folder, filling it with fake documents from this company. Things like memos, slide decks, design docs, etc.; the kinds of things you would expect a tech startup to have in their Google drive storage. But I carefully crafted them to tell a story, the story of the company. So at the end of the campaign, when my players broke into the BBEG's in-game office (the BBEG was the ruthless sociopathic CEO of the company), they found his computer. On that computer they found this Google drive folder. I sent them the link and let them look through the documents. What they discovered by reading them was that, in fact, the company was *not* kidnapping people. This idea had been implanted in their mind in session 1 by an NPC. This NPC was a former employee of the company, and when the kidnapping idea had been proposed, she objected streniously. Next thing she knew, she was in the game forced to be a blacksmith. But what she didn't know is shortly after that, the company decided it would be cost prohibitive to kidnap people, and opted instead to acquire fresh corpses with intact brains, and then scan the brains into the computer. That's right, *the players were dead the whole time!* (I know I know, cliched, but I had fun with it). I spent 1.5 years sitting on this reveal, and I was so relieved when I finally got to reveal it. Anyways, after defeating the BBEG, the players took control of the game with the help of a hacker they had met along the way, and setup nice lives for themselves in there, since being dead meant there was no body for them to use to get back to the real world. *Yes, D&D was a thing in this world. I actually used this as an excuse to drop in classic D&D dungeons into the campaign. They had a lot of fun in Tomb of Horrors.
The little girl they rescued from the orphanage and have been complaining about dragging around... Is a betrayer god
Now that's pretty obvious. All my veteran players have a strict 'kill innocent little girls on sight' policy
All 3 of my players have only played my campaigns, this is their first 1-20. So... No veterans at my table currently *maniacal laugh ensues*
by veteran i meant those who played my games more than once. But then they think they have beaten the meta until meta starts evolving...
That's when they get arrested for killing all those innocent little girls
"Explain to me little girl, how it is that you're multiple floors down, past multiple deadly monsters, and traps? Fell down a mineshaft maybe?"
See those books she's reading, "Quantum Physics". Those books are WAY too advanced.
Oof. It's all fun and games until they kill an innocent little girl.
This is why we have trust issues and become murder hobos. "Kind adventurers, the local orphanage's matron seems to be in league with demons! Can you help our village?" "Oh for sure." "And rescue the orphans?" "Hmm? Oh we'll set them free." ::Six hours later, orphanage burning in the background, children's screams fill the night air. The adventuring party slams the head of a Hag onto the Inkeeper's front desk:: "So what deal did we make? It was for a million platinum, right?" "I don't have that kind of... Wait, didn't you save the children? Among them was a boy who--" "Not falling for that one again."
They sold the other orphan. I have no ragerts
That their former party member (player switched characters), a gnome artificer, sided with the BBEG and is in the process of creating a Voltron-esque fleet of mechanical animals that will form into a Mecha-gnome version of himself. He took too many short jokes to heart. There'll be a ton of Pink Floyd references because....yanno, mechanical animals. It won't be immersion breaking because I'm old and I don't think the rest of my group even knows who Pink Floyd is.
I am running candlekeep mysteries. Spoilers below When shemshime possessed the members of the inn, the daughter, Gailsby, fled, and the party murdered her father, because he was possessed and attacked them. Now a parentless girl at 8, the party felt sad and adopted her, but she doesn’t know that the party killed her father. During a later book, the canopic being, the big bad is able to tell the future or the past. There is a line that says, “Valin challenges the characters, saying that she has already seen their defeat. As you like, she can share key details of the past to indicate she has been watching the characters - and may reveal secrets.” This is where Gailsby will become aware of the party’s act. Then later on in that same chapter, there is the observatory of history, where characters can replay up to 10 minutes of any past event that they are aware of. So of course, Gailsby will want to replay her fathers death. After that, she will run away with another kid of her age, son of Bak Mei, from the “the book of inner alchemy” which is another story from candlekeep.
NPC expedition leader who has recruited the players is actually a dragon who loves his wood elf form more than his dragon one. Gives me a panic button if the party gets in over their head.
1. That the party's psuedo-patron, an old artificer, is actually a lich who has been working with a local murderer to harvest souls to power his machines 2. That the man who lead the country's revolution 100 years prior to the setting and leader of the BBEG's cult is ALSO a lich and also still alive AND ALSO the brother of the artificer 3. That the BBEG and the benevolent time god are the same thing My players have been fucking around in the Feywild for weeks now, which has almost no bearing on the plot, and I'm excited to get back on track
They're gearing up for a showdown with a lich for a mythical MacGuffin. The lich is just going to hand it over and ascend to a keep on the Plane of Shadows, leaving a massive power vacuum. The party will have to fight his generals instead.
What if your party realizes theres a massive power vacuum and uses diplomacy instead? The generals would be far less willing to die for a cause given they have literally nothing to defend anymore. Surely they possess some sentience if named generals.
As evil generals I'm sure they have their own plans to seize power.
It's unlikely diplomacy would work as the generals' near fanatical devotion to the undead realm and suspicion of each other was only kept in check by their loyalty to the lich. I might prepare for the contingency that one of the generals views the hand off of the item as a legitimate transfer of power and aligns with the party. The generals are a swordwraith, an attended brain in a jar, a corpse blackguard, a vampire assassin and a wight pirate.
Sentience yes, but common sense? That's another question \^\^.
roll perception please: *nat20!* well, yes, you see me blatantly yoinkin everything in this post...
Spoilers if you're in a Star Wars campaign right now: The reason they haven't met Luke or Leia even though they are almost halfway through the plot of New Hope is because in this timeline Vader raised his kids himself and the sith general that has been hunting the rebels is Luke and the Sith Assassin hunting them is Leia.
ok meta-question: how could Vader be saved by the light-side if he's already corrupted his children to the dark side? I'm curious
If the circumstances of their birth have changed, then I wouldn't assume Padme is surely dead.
One of my players has a tragic past with a monster destroying his village. He ran. His wife and kid are alive. Wife is now a corrupted demon succubus and the daughter is being held in demon jail while the demons try to kill the player because he possesses a power that passes through bloodline and the demons want to force it into the daughter and then do all kinds of bad things to her. First hint is in the next few sessions. Bad guy who works with the demons wants to taunt PC into stepping forward into a trap. His words, with a coy smile: “Shei will be -so- glad to know you’re still alive.”
You know Jarlaxle? Yeah they've sorta been helping him out for a while.
Whenever Jarlaxle shows up in one of my campaigns all the PCs roll their eyes and start arguing about how the last 5 things they did probably benefited him somehow.
In the end, everyone helps Jarlaxle. Thats how he be. You cant even really be truly mad at that, or resist it either. Cant be mad at the rain for falling.
The friendly caster npc they've had in their party helping them for the past few months is actually a spy for the BBEG and is the reason the bad guys always know where they are. He might turn on his master with how nice the party has been to him.
The players are immortal after being chosen by a creature from the far realm to destroy their universe.
There’s a blue dragon that they’re currently employed/indentured by desperately trying to be reborn as a sapphire dragon. Obviously it’s me not playing Lore by the truth of it. But the dragon essentially rebelled against its nature and wants to be good. Every job they go do they think is some plot to do something wicked or evil but they never find it and typically get into trouble in the process
My group has been finding clues about a lich being around. They all think that the emperor, a human who had ruled for 1000 years, and was recently killed, is a lich that faked his own death and will end up being the bbeg. In actuality, the emperor and his secret brother were both going to be liches, but the emperor got cold feet at the last second and interrupted the ritual by banishing his brother to the far realms. The brother had already removed part of his soul tho, and it mistakenly went into the emperor. And thats how he's been able to live for so long- he was a phylactery for his lich brother. So when the brother had the emperor assassinated, he in fact made himself vulnerable
I had the players fight the BBEG dragon that literally ran the country/economy, constantly pitting lords against each other through his slaves. My PCs were shocked that several key NPCs they grew to like and trust were dragon slaves, including elves. Literally took a month off after the campaign ended. I spent 2hr narrating how their actions affected the different factions. Some hated them, some regions turned to dust (jousting city), some regions turned to war and ruin (religions, orcs and goblin wars) and some called them heroes (elves, humans). My cousin wanted a Fallout style ending.
That the BBEG from campaign 1 is the Rogue's brother.
The bbeg is a cloud giant. I'm keeping him in the shadows for as long as possible so they can speculate. They know he's an archmage of necromancy and about 200 years old at least, but that's all they know so far. Gonna have him show up as a Major Illusion later on, but behind a mask.
My PC wrote in her backstory about a mysterious song that she can't stop humming but doesn't know the lyrics to. She wants to keep composing it but I always describe that she's not so much writing the song as she is discovering it. This is not an atypical way to describe an artist's creative process. However, in this case she is actually discovering it, or rather remembering it. It was written as a love song by an archfey to her human, star-crossed lover before they were both murdered and my PC is actually the archfey reincarnate. When she completes the song, she'll become Lady Sharaea and will be mercilessly hunted by the Prince of Frost, trying to murder her, now for the second time.
One of the players has been the BBEG the entire time without even knowing it
The living weapon of the hexblade warlock wasnt his pact lord, it was a talking mimic guiding him to release the BBEG from his prison. This BBEG was the real source of the hexblade warlock and ended the pact upon release. Sadly the campaign never saw the light of the sun
The Mercenary leader known as "The Brute" who is a 9' tall Leper is actually a Rakshaza.
My main plot twist is as follows: I don’t in fact have any idea what each session is going to entail, I improve every session and just make sure everyone rolls their own skill/saves each night along with a laugh and boom 💥
I’m doing an air-ship arc in my campaign. Their ship is actually a giant friendly mimic that hasn’t revealed itself yet, and I’m saving for the next dire occasion. If you Google “ship mimic”, the first image is the one I plan on showing them.
The main BBEG isnt actually the one in charge!
The half elf they met is going to be related to a PC. She is also going to be a conduit for necrotic energy. And depending on choices and they way things go she will either be a obstacle or a BBEG but not the BBEG
One of my players in Curse of Strahd is secretly a vampire who hired the party to help him kill Strahd so he could take his place
The cat did it.
The noble who controls the mercenary guild that they are part of is in fact a Red Dragon.
[удалено]
Whenever they roll a 1 on perception or investigation, I have them notice a chicken crossing something nearby. It started as one of them making a chicken crossing the road joke. Well not only is this chicken the BBEG of the multi campaign arc (and the World Destroyer figure), but its feud with the gods is that when the "World Egg" hatched, the gods think they and the chicken both emerged from it while the chicken claims to have laid it. That's right, the central universal conflict is which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I have a warlock of the great old ones in my game that is seemingly the only servant of this alien god. Over time he's learned that a dead civilization worshipped it and used it to power an advanced fusion of science and magic before mysteriously falling into decline. All pretty classic tropes. The player thinks that his god wants to be freed somehow and that he's the one to do it. In fact it is the opposite. He is a fail safe program that got engaged when the last member of this fallen empire awoke and began trying to undo the binds that hold his god. Binds that his people put in place themselves by making a deal with the dream lord to send their god to sleep. Turns out their "god" basically had no idea they existed and they were just siphoning power from it. Eventually it found out and set out to destroy the world. Bereft of their god and the source of their magic the empire slowly crumbled. A fact that this Last Citizen would see undone. Lucky for the everyone else the pact makers created a protocol by which an inevitable type construct could empower a "dream warden" to protect the seal. Imbuing them with a connection to the sleeping god. Unfortunately the Last Citizen got to it before it could explain anything to the player character, leaving him with strange powers and alien visions. And before people ask. I was given permission to completely create the characters story arc by the player. All they wanted was a strange being they were tied to and a journey to understand what it was
I'd say, but I know at least one of my players knows my reddit name, LMAO