Uh-oh. Looks like our resident catgirl is neck deep in self-incrimination. One can only hope that she lawyers up before Inquisitor feels obliged to show her Mercy

Any dang way, it’s been a good long while since we talked about PVP. Dramatic irony, sneaky note passing, and Chevy Chase are all relevant to the conversation. Hurt feelings and misaligned expectations can be a real risk here, which is why my personal taste runs to jolly cooperation. Happily, with a little prep work and a smidge of player maturity, pitting players against one another can yield some truly memorable gaming moments. 

Is it time for another tale from the table? Does a Reaver have radiation sickness?

So no shit there we were, a scrappy boat full of Browncoat sympathizers out on the edge of the The Verse. We’d had a few run-ins with the Alliance in recent sessions, and so we’d decided to lie low while the heat died down. That mostly meant floating in low-power mode out near the Rim, far away from the government dignitaries we’d impersonated, robbed, and roundly mocked. Since space is a big place, we figured that they wouldn’t have much chance to track us down, send avenging assassins, and shoot us about the face and head until such time and we expired.

Apparently they were extra special pissed off at us though. They decided to activate their sleeper agent.

“As you sleep,” says our GM, “You begin to dream. You are a knight clad in silver armor, and you are walking through a dark cave. You are very quiet though, and so the troll does not wake at your approach.”

“Um,” says the ship’s mechanic. “I’m pretty sure Joss Whedon didn’t write trolls into this setting.”

“What do you care?” says the GM. “You’re asleep. Besides, this is a one-on-one dream sequence with Unassuming Drifter With A Mysterious Past. May we continue?”

“Whatever,” says the mechanic.

“So there’s a troll in front of me?” says UDWAMP. “Great. I brain the ugly brute with the butt of my sword. I don’t want him waking up.”

“Go ahead and roll damage. I’ll even give you a bonus for the surprise. And… oof. That’s a hell of a hit!”

The GM was grinning a shit-eating GM grin at this point. We should have known. “Hey Mechanic!” he says. “You’re no longer asleep in the engine room. You’re unconscious and dying.”

“I’M WHAT?”

“Alright. Now that the troll is out of commission, you notice its fabulous treasure. There’s a huge magical device thrumming with power at the back of the troll cave. The only problem is that it’s far too big for you to carry alone.”

“Hmmm,” says UDWAMP. “I break off the most valuable piece, and I stuff it into my bags.”

“Pilot?” says the GM. “You wake from your doze to see a bank of urgent lights flashing on your console. Looks like there’s something very, very wrong with the ship’s engine.”

“Oh shit! I get on the coms and tell everyone to wake up!”

“UDWAMP? You hear the distant cries of a war horn. The goblins know you’re here! Your only hope is to get back to your noble steed and escape before they can swarm you.”

You probably get the point. What followed was a run-and-gun from the engine room to the ship’s lone shuttle. The mind-whammied sleeper agent kept shouting about goblins and fireballs, while the rest of us were desperately trying to capture him alive and prevent him from setting off not-rated-for-spacecraft hand grenades. It was one of the most memorable moments of the campaign, and it would not have been possible without some well-orchestrated player/GM collusion.

We eventually KO’d the sleeper agent, got his mind right, and set about finding his blue-handed handlers. It was a fun adventure, but nothing was quite so dramatic as that moment of “we’ve got to fight one of our own.”

And so, as we move into our daily discussion, what do you say we share our most successful PVP escapades? Did you plot out a betrayal with your GM? Was it one faction of PCs against another? Or is the phrase ‘successful PVP’ a contradiction in terms? Tell us all about your own players versus player adventures down in the comments!

 

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