Trojan Catgirl
Welcome to The Handbook of Heroes #666. The occasion seemed like an auspicious time to bring Demon Queen back into the game. While it’s nice to see our voluptuous villainess back in play, certain pressing questions arise. For example, what ever became of the real Magus? Is she trapped in there with Demon Queen, or has our beloved catgirl left her soul in Albuquerque? And what exactly is Demon Queen’s plan here? Did she mean for this to happen, or is she just making the best of a weird situation? Will Antipaladin notice that peculiar red light? Will someone cast speak with animals on Patches the Unkicked? And what are The Evil Party going to do now that they’re down a frontline fighter? No doubt these questions will be answered many times over down in the comments. (Y’all do love some wild speculation.)
While we wait for these plot developments to develop, let’s take the opportunity to talk about traitor-in-our-midst scenarios. The Handbook offered one possible solution way back when, and we’ve also covered the old “what to do when you’re dominated” shtick. Today is a little different though. And to illustrate why, I’d like to return to our old pal Unassuming Drifter With A Mysterious Past.
As you may recall from UDWAMP’s last adventure, the character was an Alliance sleeper agent in a Firefly game. His arc culminated spectacularly when his brainwashing got activated by his blue-handed handlers. Our ship nearly got exploded thanks to this sabotage, and so began our climactic confrontation-with-the-true-enemy phase of the campaign.
While the result was a slam-dunk session and a satisfying reveal, I think the more instructive piece was the buildup. You see, UDWAMP was not subtle. Dude would evade questions about his past, display knowledge of secrets he could not have known, and then do a theatrical turn-to-audience with a knowing smile whenever he successfully changed the subject. That last bit is particularly important, because we let him change the subject.
You see, when you’ve got a boat full of shady characters with unsavory pasts, it doesn’t do to go prying. All manner of war crimes, secret vendettas, and bounties on your head that you forgot to mention might fall out. And that includes your own. While the instinct to dig deeper is natural (If your past hurts me, then it is too my business!) I want to encourage restraint. Constant suspicion of fellow PCs, Insight-checking them, and poking them with the investigation stick might save you a little trouble, but it can also cost you a lot of interesting drama. No doubt Patches will spend the next few session barking at Magus. But if I’m Antipaladin in that situation, I’ll probably chalk it up to cat/dog tensions and let the problem go. That might not be a smart move from the character’s perspective, but this is one moment of metagaming where I’m happy to let the player’s priorities take the lead. And ‘create cool story moments’ is right at the top of my priority list.
What about you other denizens of Handbook-World? Have you ever left PC-with-an-obvious-secret alone so that their thing could pay off? Or conversely, have you ever found yourself hinting at a mysterious past only to be frustrated by your self-absorbed fellow party members ignoring your obvious hook? When does a PC’s interest in survival trump your interest in creating a cool moment? Let’s hear all about your own traitor-in-our-midst, Magus-is-sus moments down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Thrice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
Aaaaaahh!!!
*gasp wheeze*
Aaaaaaughh!!!
The clues were there, but I so hoped… >_<;
Oh, poor Magus.
Come to think of it, poor Antipaladin and Patches!
By the way: great work on the art and animation.
The Handbook’s quality just keeps getting better and better. ^_^
Colin will have to level up the writing as well, now that animations are on the table – can’t have Laurel carry the team! Maybe the village of Brie is a good start. 😀
Will these animations be random/unscheduled appearances, a permanent feature of every comic, or reserved for special occasions? Will Druid/Eldritch Archer/Magus/Gestalt/Pug/Thief and others unlock tail/ear wiggles?
It could be a new business model: fund animation through patreon/kofi, and vote for which character is animated next!
Nothing to kick off a Monday like a steaming hot mug of insecurity! 😀
At least you get a free mug!
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71gj88ed5HL._AC_SX466_.jpg
In a Firefly game, keeping your nose out of the other guy’s past is half the point. (And watching the things he really OUGHT to have told you blow up in all your faces, is the other half!)
Book: I wasn’t born a shepherd, Mal.
Mal: You have to tell me about that sometime.
Book: No, I don’t.
I am really disapointed I never got a group together for that, how is it?
That was our way of thinking. Kinda makes me wonder if the rules change in other genres.
Well, let’s see. In genre and setting, our Steampunk game felt galaxies away from the Firefly ‘verse, but still we never pried too deeply into one another’s secrets. Partly this was because all those characters lived so deep in their own heads, that they were slow to even NOTICE others hiding the truth. When they did notice, there was the social barrier of pseudo-Victorian stiff-upper-lip reticence: “No, it has not escaped my notice that Fraulein Chesterfield’s associates are metabolically atypical — please, my good man, ‘undead’ is a term unworthy of the committed scientist — but I am certain that if she requires my thoughts on the matter, she will ask.” And finally, there was the practical matter that if you pry into another mad scientist’s secrets, they will pry into yours, and you might BOTH find yourself required to make one another vanish abruptly.
In practice, it ended up with this odd dynamic where OOC, the players not only knew one another’s secrets, but also enough other separate bits of knowledge about many npcs that at the table, we could piece together intriguing plot elements — that the team of ludicrous charlatans posing as time-traveling inventors really ARE time travelers, for instance — but no one character never had all the pieces of the puzzle, and it never occurred to them to compare notes on matters outside their own specific obsessions.
Let’s be real though: These fun “respecting the other fellow’s privacy” conventions are at least as much about the social layer as the game-world layer. If your buddy is setting up for a dramatic reveal, it can be poor form to try and shake those secrets loose early. If your hidden thing — whatever it may be — comes to light too soon, the anticlimax can feel a lot like a smug, “I knew what was in here!” at X-mas time. The delight of surprise is hard to achieve in the first place, so why go out of your way to spoil it?
oh it’s a genres thing. not finding out the dark secrets of your team mates is a sure way to die horribly (or worse) in both Shadowrun (‘no i don’t have any ties to the megacorp that hired us, trust me’) and Ravenloft setting (‘of course im not a man eating jackel’).
on the other hand, some games just upright ask for it (like that pathfinder ap where every1 start as a patient in a mental asylum. every1 start with some kind of madness\mental illness if i recall right)
I played that one:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/In_Search_of_Sanity
It’s an odd starting premise, but a fun one. And it’s an interesting example in this case. The module itself is designed to string you along, making the mystery of your identity (and your fellow party members’) the driving force for further exploration. In other words, the entire structure of the module is dedicated to not letting you know these secrets until the dramatically appropriate moment. It’s the same payoff that I look for when there’s a “rogue with a past” in my games, just baked into the plot rather than the individual character.
So now Demon Queen is in Magus’ Hair
Evil is concentrated in the tail and kitty ears.
There’s only one thing that can save us:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dominate-hair
In one RuneQuest campaign that I played in, one of the players was converted/infected by chaos very early in the campaign. There were some hints along the way, but the rest of us could usually explain them away, which we did. The grand finale of the campaign would be the blessing of this new 7 mothers temple, which we helped pay and build. And everybody who was anybody in our province was there. And there we were ambushed by chaos creatures, and we, and everybody else were killed, by that character, and the chaos creatures that attacked us….
So here’s the million dollar question: Did you elect to explain these things away as players, or as PCs?
Both. We, as players, did not know that the character was turned to chaos. So for all of the other players it was just as big a reveal as for their characters….
I don’t think I’m the kind of gamer that would enjoy the classic “betrayed and murdered, game over” campaign. Caveats apply of course: length of campaign, the words “PVP is allowed and encouraged” in Session Zero, the dynamic at the table, etc. But in my mind, a fellow PC is different than a GM because they have no incentive to adhere to standard encounter design. With enough bribes to NPCs, downtime prep, and laissez faire GMing, killing the party becomes academic.
Even worse in my mind is the campaign where only one guy knows that they’re playing vs. the rest of the party. That feels more like a troll for its own sake than an honest battle of wits. I’d honestly struggle not to feel like someone had broken the social contract.
In either case though, we’ve set up for an fundamentally unfair contest.
So here’s the question: Did you guys have a fair shot at overcoming the betrayal? And more importantly, did the party at large enjoy the experience?
To answer the questions: Yes, we had enough reasons for distrust, but, as stated above, we (without prompting or hinting from the player involved) choose to disregard all the warning signs, or explain them away. And the final reveal was played in such a way that we (the rest of the players) were maybe not happy with it at that moment, but the whole campaign was just epic, and the end scene made that even more so. None of us would have wanted to miss it. Also, the character/player never actively plotted against us. It was usually more a taking advantage of situations that we created, and rolling with it.
So usually I would agree with your sentiment, about the unfair contest, but this was never played that way, and we were, and are, still in awe of the whole campaign, and quite happy with it.
Also, this “traitor” trope is a trope, for quite a few genres, so I do not see it as an inherently bad thing, but it surely is one that needs to be played very carefully to be able to succeed and not feel like you describe above. And, as usual, it also depends on who is in your group, and who the GM is.
I’ve been mulling this over for the past few days. I think that there’s a bit of a gap between “PC secrets” and “PC opposing the party.” The former might be a family curse, the horrible thing you did while under mind control, or your secret identity under that disguise. These things don’t (necessarily) hurt the party, and that’s where I feel confident in my “let it roll” stance. Betrayal is a lot harder, since the possibility of hurt feelings and upset campaigns makes it a high-risk play.
In that sense, the guy in your story was almost taking advantage of the social contract that I’m referencing here: let players keep their dramatic secrets.
It honestly makes me wonder if other rules apply to “this will hurt the party” scenarios.
“It honestly makes me wonder if other rules apply to “this will hurt the party” scenarios.”
Well, yes. One of them is: “If it’s good for the story, do it”. Note that this has a lot of potential for misuse, if people are not on the same page on what the story needs, or if it fits, but in our group, after the reveal, and with hindsight, and a proper explanation from both the GM and the player, this was just the best way for the story to end. No regrets, and the way all players behaved, and reflected on their part of it also very much played a part in it being epic, and not epic social disaster. Looking back on it, it could have been a social shitstorm, in another group, but within our group this was just right.
So yes, there are groups in which this would have blown up. And yes, there are rules that should be followed as much as possible, but there will always be groups that do not need all of the rules, or that can survive the breaking of some of them.
Also: “if it’s fun, do it”. And this was certainly fun, for some definition of fun! The fact that I try and defend the whole end is because it was an epic, cathartic and basically fun end for the whole campaign.
Nothing wrong with your epic finale. Sounds like it landed well with the group anyway.
I’m just out here noodling with idea of “surprise and delight” clashing with “shock and offend.” As you say, potential for misuse is tough when the rubric of “what’s good for the story” amounts to a judgement call.
Loving Patches’ expression, he looks so perturbed.
My 5e Paladin PC in one game was briefly replaced by their Rogue Niece who has stolen their armour and taken Actor to mimic said Paladin’s voice so she could see this adventuring life her Uncle had warned her off of. The Party was completely uninterested in what little hints I had poorly delivered, leading to a very dull experience and relief at the Paladin’s return.
That’s a bummer. But I do think this stuff benefits from an alliance with other players. The traditional choice is the GM (who how the power to craft a plot based on this biz), but pulling another player aside behind the scenes can also work: “Hey, could we do a thing were you discover my identity and promise to keep it secret for me?”
The longer I game, the more I think that “if you want it in the game, make it visible” is an important idea to keep in your back pocket.
A satisfying moment in a Dark Sun game a few years ago, where one of the party was secretly working for one of the Sorcerer Kings. And out of character, we all knew it… it’s not the kind of thing we would keep secret from other players. But it was a great deal of fun playing our own characters being totally oblivious… we’re all waiting for the sudden-but-inevitable-betrayal that we know is coming, but he was always careful, never giving the rest of the party any reason to be suspicious.
He didn’t get away with it, incidentally. He caught the party off guard when he attacked, grabbed the McGuffin and legged it, but from memory, there was some kind of guardian which slowed him down long enough for the rest of us to retaliate. Just the luck of the dice in it though… it could easily have gone his way.
This goes all the way back to the idea of “metagaming PVP” that we talked about back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/intra-party-romance
Out of curiosity: If there hadn’t been any hints, do you think you would have enjoyed the blindsided-by-betrayal moment?
Looks like Patches wasn’t destined to be a puppy forever! Time to train those bork attacks, gain a size category or two via spontaneous growth spurt (plus other animal companion advancements), and go on a binge-watch montage of Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes for tactical information.
Maybe some Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc as well, to train his evidence-gathering skills.
Only if he avoids the Scrappy episodes. Or uses him as an example of what NOT to do.
Scrappy wasn’t in Mystery Inc, apart from a gag that had Fred pull Daphne away from a statue of Scrappy in a museum, reminding her the gang had vowed “never to speak of it again”.
I floated this idea to Laurel a while ago.
“What if he’s been a dire wolf puppy this whole time? He could become Antipaladin’s mount!”
“Yeah, no. We’re not getting rid of the cute thing.”
Should have taken my own advice:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/adorabolical
Doesn’t mean he can’t occasionally become a large Dire Wolf through magic. He can do it to protect Antipaladin from danger.
Boob physics are well and dandy, but what cultured Magus fans want are ear & tail wiggle physics.
https://m.imgur.com/8MxOFP7
I’ve seen this character around, and I remember a couple of stand-alone animations a few years back. Did she get a full comic somewhere?
That’s Katia Managan, of the ‘Prequel’ comic (set in TES:Oblivion, before the events of the game). Her comic is kind of on a hiatus/slow on updates right now, but there’s plenty to binge through.
https://www.prequeladventure.com/2011/03/prequel-begin/
I demand peck flex from our beefy fighty bois….
Peggy approves!
https://c.tenor.com/zWbvPJtIMOcAAAAC/captain-america-peggy-carter.gif
Now we’ll have even greater expectations of the 666th comic in the other handbook.
Not to mention how this situation spills out into Magus’s existing relationship. I imagine Demon Queen wouldn’t be a fan of being restrained or bound.
You never know; DQ liked her slutty pirate costume, so maybe she doesn’t mind exploring some fetishes as well.
In hindsight this makes the previous ‘pillow fight’ comic doubly hilarious. Poor DQ getting brutalized in there.
We don’t know if DQ’s in the driver’s seat 24/7 yet.
Though I wouldn’t mind knowing she got clobbered.
Well let me put your mind at ease:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/practice
Now I’m trying to figure out what class would best fit Patches to level into, to stop this unfolding disaster, as any good boy should.
Mesmerist would help him save allies discreetly with hypnosis-implanted tricks (can’t say no to puppy-dog eyes) and debilitate DQs villainy with the stare feature or illusions.
The fact he was already a vessel for an otherworldly entity is a good argument for becoming a medium, gaining help from friendly ghosts (maybe even Magus herself, if she’s stuck in the afterlife).
He could become a direct cohort of Lumberjack Explosion – being far more capable than Gunslinger in obvious ways.
Since Patches can’t win in a straight fight and would want to keep his knowledge secret, he’d have to use brains and subtlety to defeat Magus, or at the very least, expose her. The investigator is the ideal choice, knowing their enemy and using their mastery in nearly every skill to reveal the trojan culprit, or expose her future crimes, without ever having to roll initiative.
Or he could pack on the racial Hit Dice and try to evolve into a more powerful creature.
Fear the wrath of the Dire Puppy!
According to Antipaladin, he’s a pure-bred hellhound. How true that is, is yet to be seen.
That puppy’s dynamite!
And this shouldn’t have been a suprise seeing how she’s a cat…
And yes, remember Tyr Thralltaker? Well as half the players and GM were yanks, “thrall” didn’t say anything to any of them but the GM and my fellow finns took a moment to rememder their nordic history. But suffice to say, asking GM how this area of Pathfinder world is going to react if I capture enemies alive and sell them during fourth or fifth session infront of americans made for some interesting reactions.
Joo… There’s a reason that Wizards is taking references to slavery out of their products.
https://gamerant.com/wizards-of-the-coast-trending-dungeons-and-dragons-lore-changes/
Yeah and a lot of us disagree with WotC’s slow slide to that side of the culture war…
Personally I’m fine with it. If it means D&D falls a bit down the totem that’s okay, “I hate D&D”* anyway, it might make more room on the pole for other game companies. Maybe even ones that have been //actually// progressive and inclusive since the ’80s.
.* “Levels and classes kid, levels and classes, that’s where they get ya.”
Yeah I get it, but when it comes to history and fantasy takes many cues from it, defeated enemies and the population of the land tended to have only couple fates, lucky ones would just have new master, unlucky ones… Well let’s not delve too far there.
To me how ever I feel like this is just trying to pretend nothing bad ever happens. Humanity has a lot of sins and many of those still persist despite best efforts. In fantasy land where multitude of sentient species can coexist and not try to remove other from existance 24/7, very unhuman behaviour, it’s fine to not include stuff that makes people uncomfortable. But historical or heavily inspired ones, yeah you are low on excuses as you could not have included said references to begin with.
TL;DR don’t put viking expies in your setting if you really don’t want to witness less than pleasant things.
It’s always tricky making the “historical accuracy” argument. Golarion and the Forgotten Realms both have identifiable historical inspirations, but 1) that doesn’t mean a fantasy world has to follow the precedent set by the real world, and 2) not all historical elements are worth putting in a product for a general audience.
To give one example, check out the torture rules under the Pf1e “heal” skill.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/heal/
Notice that they came from a third party publisher (paizo’s James Jacobs moonlighting at another press). It seems to me like that’s the marketspace where you can get away with this sort of niche, not-right-for-every-table offering.
So sure, you can include hot-button issues (torture in my example) in your games, but that strikes me as the kind of decision better left to an individual table than a core product.
It’s certainly possible to play “game of thrones fantasy” or “historical atrocities” fantasy, but I’m not sure that’s default D&D.
In any case, if you spring a hot button issue on a group of gamers, you’re going to get those “interesting reactions.” And slavery is certainly one of those issues to Americans.
Default DnD is, from my POV, rather kid friendly. Game of Thrones is not. And was the Linnorm kings source book in gouse or not from Paizo, because that gave an accurate description of Blood Eagle, a reqlly gruesome execution method and it’s intented use was to intimidate other captives.
Again if they had wanted to avoid that from the start they could have picked almost anything but vikings. Maybe hawaian culture but with twisting it to fit more icy enviroment. The history geek in me gets a shiver when ever something just gets shoehorned in the same slot over and over again. All empires are like Rome, Human kindoms like medieval europe, all norther sea peiple are raiders. Some creativity would be a nice change.
But to be honest I didn’t do that just to get a rise, I just thought it would be a nice extra flavour. We don’t have same cultural shame over slavery over here, because Finns were just as likely to be victims as perpetrators. Heck in 17th century Poland we were an equal curse to our swedish masters, thanks to all the PRB during the wars. On thebother hand the aftermath of Great Norther war is called “Iso viha” great hate, due to all cossacks running around now mostly defenceless country side.
Let me put it like this: not all cultural touchstones need to be part of the same “inspired by” package.
Let’s go to the hot-button issue in gaming right now. The use of rape as a wartime weapon of intimidation (similar to the use of Blood Eagle in your example) has been documented in major wars throughout human history. I don’t want it included in a table of “ways to quell the captives” options in my Pathfinder products.
The real bitch of this problem is that different people have different thresholds for sensitive topics. Drawing the line is an exercise in judgement calls, and publishers seem to be taking a “better safe than sorry” approach right now. As an adventure designer myself…
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=colin+stricklin&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
…I can sympathize. For example, in this one…
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/182305/B24-Young-Minds
…My publisher and I had a long conversation about how young to make the students in the school. Violence against children is a major turn-off for some folks, and trying to be sensitive to that is just good business. So in that sense, I suppose my own take on the issue is that a GM can always add the ultra-violence back in. A niche developer has room to include it as part of their edgy brand identity. But I don’t know that a major industry player has the right mix of incentives to include that kind of content. When you’re targeting general audiences (especially in D&D type games) it makes sense to shoot for the largest audience possible.
“When you’re targeting general audiences (especially in D&D type games) it makes sense to shoot for the largest audience possible.”
It’s debatable whether it’s a large audience or a niche audience whose voice has been amplified and often not even actually in the market for the product.
Though, I’ll note, a lot of the changes to D&D in this direction seem to coming from within, not from pressure from without, so I’ve never bought the “chasing a target audience” line when it comes to D&D’s recent alignment in the culture war. Which on one hand I respect, I always prefer changes to come from within.
Oh no, Demon Queen played all her cards right. Now people won’t expect the Evil-Detecting Dog to be angry at a Demon, since the Demon is Disguised as a cat.
They might be confused with why the cat isn’t being very cat-like, though, and hissing at the dog.
Plus, Bounty Hunter might figure out something’s up with her girlfriend she’s intimately familiar with (then again, she did slip a few obvious things before).
That diabolical…
\*checks SRD*
…abyssal genius!
betcha Anti-paladin get a very fast hint once he see her kick Patches.
(come on, it’s all set up to it right there in the ‘are you evil enough?’ interview)
Traitors-in-the-midst? For whatever reasons, my party always has at least one (and it’s not me, I swear!). Currently, in the two games I’m running, we have 3, probably more haha.
In my Curse of Strahd game, we have a 7ft tall jet black tiefling shadow sorceress who goes by the name of Lamia. She’s very malificent in her vibes, and in a brief OoC scene the rest of the party witnessed, the players saw her invite… something… in to possess her pet squirrel, which went full exorcist on them. The party absolutely assumes the worst, but they’re all champs at separating player and character knowledge, so there’s much OoC hemming and hawing and statements like “My character sees no reason not to trust Lamia, so we blithely continue on!”.
The best part is, Lamia is actually trying to protect the soul of an innocent the party killed early on. Souls without bodies get corrupted in Ravenloft, and so she’s stuffed him inside the squirrel until she can find a way to resurrect him.
Why is she doing this, despite her all death-and-edgy aesthetic? The party thinks she’s a necromancer, but she’s actually a psychopomp. Not all good guys are nice.
The actual double agent is the party’s lovably Irish human bard. He is legitimately a good person and is the moral compass for the party, but is also a secret warlock… one who sold his soul to the devil to become the world’s best violinist. You know “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”? This character is what happens if the song had a slightly different ending…
In another campaign entirely, we have a tiefling bard played by one of our most quiet players. The bard is adorable, plays a ukulele, wears cat ears, the works. Is also working with the antagonists of the campaign to become a Type 5 demoness and has already sacrificed like 10 people without the party noticing. It’s been a wild ride so far and while there’s definitely some hints that the bard is remarkably unconcerned about friendly fire or other such bothersome issues, I think the party is going to be very surprised when the bard becomes the secret final boss fight.
Are you the GM in these situations, or are you guys doing the “we all know out-of-character” thing?
I’m the DM, and we all cleared it ahead of time that betrayals will probably happen. That said, no one knows the specifics in this case.
I assume you’re going in for the whole note-passing, private-messages-between-sessions thing. How far are you wiling to go to collude with players? Will you plan sessions around their proposed schemes, or is it all strictly about what they can manage in-game?
I definitely collaborate with players outside of the game, which helps keep things really secret. To keep things flowing, we have outside game actions in a “probable-but-not-fixed” timeline, where the player and I plot out what happens if other PCs don’t interrupt the plan. This can cause a bit of narrative dissonance, but has the added benefit of enabling me to drop clues about what the treacherous player is up to while in game with the rest of the party.
I don’t plan entire sessions around the traitor’s actions, but I do add scenes. Mysterious murders, cryptic disappearances, and the like.
If the PCs foil the traitor’s plans, the pertinent out of session stuff is declared non-canon and we free form from there.
It’s a lot of work but great fun!
These GM techniques make a big difference. They allow you to mitigate some of the bad blood that could arise, channeling antagonism into moments that are fun for the whole party. I think that’s worth a little narrative dissonance.
“Currently, in the two games I’m running, we have 3, probably more haha.”
If more than half the party is traitors… are they really “traitors” or are they just living up to the standards of the party?
Oh I DM for groups of 8. Two different groups, 8 people each. Yes, I’m insane.
Clearly the real traitors are whoever pulled the strings of all those “traitors”…
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-07-19
Hahahaha brilliant!
Ooh! That’s certainly a twist (and, in retrospect, explains why you were being so ominous in the comments last week).
I’ve been running and playing Mutants and Masterminds lately, having drifted away from D&D to the point where the only D&D-ish things I’m interested in these days are three of my favorite webcomics. M&M, I find, is great for backstories coming into the game!
We had a whole thing recently where one of our heroes, Salem, was being hunted by superpowered Vatican inquisitors. It was the kind of story where you let the player who is connected to what’s going on take the reins in terms of when she reveals things. Eventually we got the reveal, and it was pretty satisfying to learn how in addition to being a member of the team, she’s also the guardian of the veil, and responsible for keeping the supernatural out of our world, and the mundanes out of the supernatural.
Now my new rookie hero, the snake girl Nagini, seems to be coming into focus, which is going to mean lots of hero worship of the rest of the team (and especially the team’s one other mutant), and eventually the build-up to how she was rejected from hero school because her mutations made it impossible to keep up a secret identity (it’s hard to hide ophidian eyes, a forked tongue, patches of scales on your face, green hair, a tail, and a hissing speech impediment), and how attempting to be a hero anyways got her parents killed. (On the plus side, all the difficulties of being a mutant in a world prejudiced against mutants are earning Nagini hero points faster than the rest of the heroes combined!)
Her poor boyfriend is going to get held hostage a lot.
I’m a cryptic son of a bitch!
These are my favorite kinds of secrets. The ones that don’t put you in immediate conflict with the party, but do make sense to keep hidden. All the drama of the big reveal without risking the hard feelings of a betrayal.
I may have told this story before, but some time ago there was a PC who got Dominated by a vampire off-screen (she was doing secret backstory things and got ambushed on the street). The PC mostly served as a conduit for the vampire to get information (it didn’t help that the PC’s player was unable to attend most of the dominated sessions), but she did eventually forge some evidence to “find” and lure the party into a trap, where her domination was revealed. It probably helped that that PC had done a number of things behind everyone’s back as a result of her secret backstory of being raised by an evil cult that had a good public reputation (this included resurrecting someone the party had killed with Reincarnate and introducing them as “a new friend”), so the other players were used to her being very secretive. I recently had my players fill out some end-of-year surveys, and one other player listed the revelation that the cult was bad and in the PC’s backstory as the most memorable moment in the campaign.
Also in that campaign is a “not Evil, but definitely not Good” PC who is always engaged in schemes. He secretly worships Urgathoa, the goddess of undeath, plague and gluttony, but mostly focused on the gluttony part. He stole a dead boss’s corpse and turned her into a reanimated skeleton, which he then put clothes and a mask on and introduced to the party as “Urga, my longtime, loyal, horribly disfigured and mute friend I never mentioned before now who never eats in public and hardly ever sleeps”. That deception lasted an impressively long time. Recently, he has begun a quest to find immortality through undeath, which he plans to do (interpreting an oracle’s advice) by finding the body of another boss they killed, resurrecting her and learning her necromantic secrets. The player has acknowledged that she will almost certainly screw him over once she’s alive again (and that’s probably true), but it is both in-character and the most interesting option.
The only time I’ve encountered a PC actually betraying the party was another character from the player who made the Dominated PC above. That entire campaign was built around each PC having secrets in their backstory that no other players knew, and the main villains, a collection of telepathic extradimensional fungi, were constantly sending us messages via physical notes the DM handed out in full view of everyone. The PC decided to side with the fungoids because they had brought back a friend of hers, but in the end they proved JUST barely too controlling/threatening and she switched back to the party. Which is good, because my character totally would have cut her in half otherwise.
Seems like you’re the kind of table that enjoys a bit of intraparty intrigue. So let me ask you this: Have you ever run into any hurt feelings out-of-game for the in-game secret keeping? Or has player maturity held up under pressure?
Fortunately, we’ve usually taken it very well. It helps that our kind of backstabbing is usually either hilarious, harmless or plot advancing, rather than the vindictive or petty “Rogue steals from the party” type of thing. The closest thing towards hurt feelings that I have seen came from a pair of players who love needling each other, and insisting they feel great dislike for each other when they are actually friends. One player’s PC has the psychometry occult skill unlock, allowing her to get visions of an object’s past. Early in the campaign, she used it on a strange diary/ritual book the party found and got a vision… that basically confirmed their deductions about how the previous owner died. This vision, like most of them, was delivered by me in a separate voice chat (because I find it fun for players to have to remember and restate things when they share with the party). The player returns and begins talking about the horrific and vital vision she got, but it’s so horrible that she can’t tell anyone the details. The other player was already interested in this book, so he gets REALLY interested in this vision, even as the other PC insists she is keeping it from him for his own protection. The ignorant player not only continued to bother her about this vision, but he engaged in a whole series of behind-the-scenes schemes to find out the truth, including multiple times where he would announce he was casually drinking something, tell me and only me that it was actually an extract of Detect Thoughts, and then steer the conversation towards the vision in an attempt to wrench the truth from her brain. It never quite worked, but it did send the party into fits of paranoia as I had them (sometimes covertly, sometimes not) roll Will saves for no perceivable reason in the middle of supposedly safe settings. A full real-life YEAR went by before the psychometry player finally admitted to the other player that the vision merely told her something the party already knew and she’d just been messing with him, and MAN, I have never heard a cry of anguish quite like that. Even then, I don’t think the ignorant player was actually mad, and their relationship has seemed fine since.
Interestingly, the psychometry PC was the same one Dominated by the vampire, and so it was a very real possibility that the ignorant PC would use Detect Thoughts on her during that time. In that case, I planned for him to discover that she was receiving the vampire’s telepathic commands – but he’d have no way to tell the others without revealing he’d been spying on everyone. Unfortunately, the psychometry player had to miss a couple of sessions in that time, so it never came up.
Amagus…
Amagus amongus?
It’s the little things that make people comment for the first time… 😛
Yes, first time…
*shifty eyes*
Well this isn’t good, but it’s a really great shading transition with the animation.
Laurel leveled up and picked new spells. That’s the only explanation!
Our current party has a CG happy-go-lucky halfling fighter with a complex origin that mainly translates into one rank in Craft (textiles) and an overwhelming fear/hatred of bees. While the silly swashbuckler’s rants and antics have been a source of merriment at the table, I (as DM) had prepared some revelations that would expand the backstory into something more epic (but not fully *tragic*).
What I didn’t count on were the PCs’ complete dearth of ranks in Knowledge (religion), PCs focusing solely on their own interests, and the player in question RPing and fully leaning into the halfling’s Wisdom of 5.
Abandoned temple with a faded painting that uncannily resembles your party member? “Hunh. That’s weird.” (Illusionist begins tallying the sale value of loot, subtracting expenses, and dividing by four; Wizard continues puzzling over new-found spells; Fighter wonders what’s through *that* door.)
“Have you ever found yourself hinting at a mysterious past only to be frustrated but your self-absorbed fellow party members ignoring your obvious hook?”
You betcha!
Swear to Gygax dude, that’s not on you. “It’s what my character would do,” only takes you so far. At some point you’ve got to play ball and bite the plot-hook. It’s part of being a good player.
Eldritch Knight’s body language last-comic is a lot more ominous.
Who’s Eldritch Knight?
Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!
I knooowwwww!
“Constant suspicion of fellow PCs, Insight-checking them, and poking them with the investigation stick might save you a little trouble, but it can also cost you a lot of interesting drama.”
In my old age I’m about done with “drama for drama’s sake”. Now a well done betrayal is a well done betrayal, but just not telling people things so it’ll cause pathos/drama later? Nope!
“If your past hurts me, then it is too my business!”
110% this. If my character’s past is going to be a problem, I’ll drop that lore immediately on the team. Let’s get it out there so everyone else can be on the look out for my past sneaking up on us.
Now, that doesn’t mean my current “inevitable betrayal” character, a Shadow Elf “Messenger” for the Twilight House (“vaguely not-the-good-guys” Shadow Elf clan), who is ‘secretly’ (it’s an open secret) an Assassin will //actually admit// to being an assassin. They’re a Messenger (actual title of their station) who ‘just happens to be very good at murdering people in sneaky and not so sneaky ways’.
So while they’ve never said “Hey, by the way I’m an assassin”, it’s pretty obvious that they’re with the Assassins Guild (though I’ll admit a few of my fellow Players are kinda dim and might not realize the implications of things I’ve actually said).
“Or conversely, have you ever found yourself hinting at a mysterious past only to be frustrated but your self-absorbed fellow party members ignoring your obvious hook?”
Yeah, that almost never works out so I stopped dropping those hints a long, long time ago. Like back in the early 90s long time ago.
“When does a PC’s interest in survival trump your interest in creating a cool moment?”
Depends. I really think I need to start adding “Do you want to die in a blaze of glory?” line to the Player Social Contract just so we all know where we stand.
Now as for “sudden and inevitable” betrayals… I think I’ve told this story here before, but back in 91 we were in an AD&D campaign, and I came in a few sessions late. The Group had attempted to steal a major MacGuffin from a ruined temple before a group of Drow could steal it, and the Party was just a little unable to stop them, one Drow soldier escaped with the MacGuffin and the chase was on. They were being harassed and interfered with by a third party. The GM was keen on introducing an NPC “betrayer/antagonist” but didn’t want them to be immediately turned on by the Party so they offered the Character to me, I said, “Sure, but let me make a few changes…”
So I took their Drow Priest “Necromancer Drizt Clone” and made him into a her, swapped a few stats around, instead of being a “frontline fighting and smiting Cleric/secondary MU-Necromancer” she became a “Primary MU-Necromancer/second string Buffing-Necromantic Cleric”.
And the first thing I told the party, when she revealed herself as being the one who’d been chasing/harassing them, was “I will help you to retrieve the MacGuffin from the other Drow Clan as they intend to use it to summon Lolth from the Abyss and destroy the world because they are idiots, but then I will take it to be enshrined in my Temple in [Drow City Name With Too Many Apostrophes]”.
Of course ‘my clan’ also meant to use it to summon Lolth back from the Abyss, but not to destroy the world because we weren’t idiots… but I never said that sentence out loud.
The Party laughed and agreed to the partnership, largely because they had no way to actually get to me having fallen into a trap and were quite thoroughly, if temporarily, stuck and they knew every moment they dithered the “Evil” Drow soldier was getting further away, and likely meant to immediately betray me. However, the Paladin swore an Oath to work together until the McGuffin was secured from the other Drow, so I released the Party from the trap and we joined forces.
And yes, I was expecting “betrayal” when we finally secured the MacGuffin, but little by little the group, foolishly, came to trust my (N)PC. So when we finally caught the Drow soldier, murdered the hell out him, and retrieved the MacGuffin the Party was honestly shocked when I immediately betrayed them and fled with the Macguffin through territory we’d already traveled through… where I had been secretly turning whole graveyards into uncontrolled Undead. Being a Necromantic Wizard/Cleric was easy-peasy for me to pass through. Not so much for the group, who had a Paladin who felt it was their fault all those poor unfortunates had been undeaded.
You’re ‘done with drama for drama’s sake,’ but your counterexample is, “I tricked the party into trusting me, betrayed them, and then gave the paladin an existential crisis.” It would appear that your drow priestess is taking my side of the argument. :/
Or are you saying that, since the party were foolish to trust you, that they should have beaten you about the face and head with a zone of truth spell, and that not doing so was poor play on their part?
That was also [checks notes and sighs deeply about ‘where has the time gone’] 30 years ago. I’m an oldster now, a grognard of not he last generation, but the first generation of rpgers (or maybe properly the second, I started gaming in ’82, so 6 years after the grognards started complaining that “all those new ‘funny voice’ tactical miniatures games” were taking over the scene).
Back then? Back then that level shenanigans would fly with me, I was all up ins the Coterie on Coterie infighting, intra-party backstabbery, etc. ‘Pure Drama For Drama Sake’ was a-okay, as long as the group was okay with it.
Now? Not so much. Also, the Priestess was very upfront about the inevitable betrayal, she never swore any oaths, and even the oath extracted from the Paladin, //under duress//, left the rest of the Party with an out for turning on her once the McGuffin was secured from the Idiot Clan of Drow.
I will grant you, this was in the hay days of Drizt, where all the advice from on high was to allow “Good Drow who are trying to redeem the race” and my character was super-dupery nice and helpful whenever the Party was around or if there was anyone who might be able to “rat her out”… but again, was pretty straight up on the “I will betray” front. And the Party was just fine with it after it went down (they never cuaght my now thoroughly ‘N’ NPC, btu they did kick int eh temple’s doors and stop the ritual and save the world from the Queen of the Demon Web Pits from having a summer home under Faerûn)… not like the “not quite drama for drama sake” that occurred 10 years later that has more rather cemented my current philosophy…
/segue into another story time by the oldtimer…
So there we were, 3e had just dropped and our GM wanted to run “Night Below” (which don’t do this without heavily modifying it, it’s chock full up with artifact grade magitonium items, but it’s still a fun romp with them). I’ll try to avoid spoilers… so anyway… I made an Elven Rogue who went DEX-INT-CHA-everything else, and at the outset I put 90% of my skill points into Social Skills and Lockpicking. So anyway… I had a pretty decent Use Magic Device check, so every time we found a magic item, instead of wasting precious resources getting it identified, they’d hand to my Rogue and say “Figure it out”, cue ’embarrasedLydia.jpg’.
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/webproj/211_fall_2018/Scott_Chaddon_Jr/Scott_Chaddon_Jr/Images/UseMagicDevice.png
There was a particular magic item that you had to be of a race no one in the group was, a class no one in the group was, and an alignment that no one in the group was to activate, so after everyone had given it a shake to try to get it to do what we’d seen it used to do, I took it the next day and whispered sweet nothings to it and CONvinced the device I was that race-class-alignment combo by rolling a Nat 20 on my UMD.
This also triggered the secondary effect of a Dominate from the campaign’s BBEG, and Rogues with middling WIS are not very good at WILL saves. Suffice to say for two weeks my Rogue was the BBEG’s ‘butt boy’†. This mostly entailed the Beeb keeping tabs on us, but at the end of the two weeks Beep sent an assassination squad which was able to infiltrate our keep because I’d lowered all the defenses and then went to sleep as the Dominate lapsed‡.
Suffice to say we did wipe out the assassins, even though I had to do so after being “surprise” attacked in mine own bed (the assassins went after me and the Wizard first), barely surviving, and having to start fighting them off with just my Touch AC, amazing good looks, and witty repertoire as in preparation for this assassination attempt I’d locked all my gear in a chest and thrown the key in the Dwarven Fighter’s forge (luckily I kept spare crappier lockpicks in my old crappier gear in the armory in from before the Dominate).
About a week later as we were deciding what to sell, what to keep, etc from all the loot we gathered in the last month (it was a big trek to a city large enough to divest most of these magical items) I told the party we should just destroy the “dominate” item because “It’s useless, you have to be ‘Race-Class-Alignment’ to use it and even then it’s a (lie) one use per week item, I mean someone might find it valuable, but it’s pretty worthless, also it has a side-effect that makes you smell like [Race] all day after you use it…”
So the Party destroyed it without ever even questioning my character at all… fast-forward to the campaign’s end… We’re chatting about the campaign, what went right, wrong, what could stand some changes, what worked in 3e, what didn’t, were the 3.5 changes good, etc, and the GM just out of ‘nowhere’ says “[evileeyore] I’m surprised you never told anyone your Character was Dominated for two weeks right before that assassination attempt (that almost caused a Party wipe and almost killed Wizard) which almost succeeded because your PC basically set everything up for the assassins.”
Cue complete silence in the group. The Human Wizard (who’d almost died, and did eventually die in the climactic finish, because of my character’s occasional antics*) was furious. He really went off demanding to know why I didn’t at least tell them OOC that my Pc was Dominated.
My response, “[My Character] couldn’t tell anyone during the Dominate, so what good would it have done for me to do so OOC? What, would you have prepared knowing [My Character] was Dominated?”
Wizard, “Well… no.. but…”
Me, “Afterwards [My Character] was super embarrassed, but as no one had died (completely, see *) he didn’t think it was necessary to tell anyone, and a few weeks later we did, at my Character’s insistence, institute Dominate protocols ‘just in case one of get’s Dominated without anyone knowing about it’, which you argued against because [Wizard] was under a Paranoia effect, as I recall.”
Wzd, “Yeah, but why didn’t you tell us OOCly afterwards?”
Me, “Because there were still lingering things and stuff [My Character] had set up under the BBEG’s orders that he spent the next 6 months undoing in secret with Dwarf Fighter’s help.”
Dwarf Fighter, “What? I thought we were doing that in secret because Wizard and Druid hated those guys?”
Wizard, “I did totally hate those guys…”
Gnome Druid, “I never hated those guys.”
Dwarf, “But [My Character] said…. hey… how much was your Character lying about during the whole campaign?”
Me, “Eh, maybe 25% of the stuff he was doing had ulterior motives or was secretly actually accomplishing other goals than what I claimed. I mean… you guys all stepped backed when the Duke asked for volunteers to run the Barony and I was playing a con-man…”
Anyway, seeing how upset the Wizard’s Player was that I’d held stuff back OOC (because secretly I didn’t trust another Player in particular to keep it separated) and from another group falling out over OOC betrayals[1], I’d came to the conclusion that sort of shens was just a no go anymore.
.† The GM actually asked if I wanted to have him NPC the character, or give me a list of things I had to do, or what? I suggested that as long as I wasn’t doing something that was against the BBEG’s wishes, just let me play, and then when everything is done hand me a list of all “secret bullshit” my Character got up where no one was watching, not that I can’t keep the info separate, I just figured “can’t do anything about it anyway, let’s have fun afterwards figuring out to fix it or not, whateves”. GM made rolls to see if my PC got away with all “the secret bs”, and then right before the ambush handed me a list of everything I did. We’d just sat down at the table to start the session when I got to the bottom of the list (we all had some level of ‘equipment buying’ list passing around from the GM, so him occasionally handing me a few extra notes during the last few weeks was not a thing) and looked up with a “WTF mate?” look on my face as he said “Surprise Ambush While You’re Sleeping MFers!” (Okay not really he asked for Listen checks which I made but no one else did, so everyone awoke to my Rogue screaming “ASSASSINS!” as the Wizard was getting shanked).
.‡ GM did have “Make another Will Roll” at the bottom of the list of stuff my Character had done, this was a “Being forced to do something against your nature” roll and I did manage to pass it (and then made the Listen check to awaken just as a pair of Assassins slipped into my Character’s room). So my Character didn’t go try to use the Dominate Item again, just as the Dominate was lapsing… which is why he then hastily lowered the Keep’s defenses and set everything up for us to be “assassinated” at the last minute, which is why the assassins weren’t completely prepared, they were last minute schlubs the BBEG could muster without preparation. Also I suspect the GM was giving us an easier time of it…
.* During the entire campaign there were a series of “not on purpose-running gags” where in my Rogue would “accidentally/on purpose” almost kill the Wizard, and we developed a ‘funny’ (completely) IC antagonism towards each other (mostly one sided from the Wizard, but I’d retaliate by accidentally almost killing weeks later, etc). It started with my Rogue deliberately triggering REF save traps that would (very much) accidentally catch the Wizard flatfooted in their area (the inet was to kill the enemy, which it sometimes did), then up to accidentally catching him in the area of spells I’d trigger from wands, staves, artifacts, etc… culminating in the climactic fight with my Character accidentally tripping 10 Circles of Death that everyone but the Wizard and Penultimate-BBEG saved against…
So Wizard might have actually still have been a bit frosty about that when we did our post-campaign chew the fat session.
.1 V-LARP in the Camarilla, my group decided to make a “super-secret-secret-squirrel” Coterie and swore Out-Of-Character not betray one another, but if we had to IC’ly betray one or all of the group, to at least warn each other OOC. So when one of us (not me) betrayed the whole group, both IC and OOCLy, there were some words said. I still don;t trust the Player, even away from game…
So, suffice to say, had some fall out from “inevitable betrayals”, from not divulging entirely, etc, and as Danny Glover’s Murtaugh says, “I’m too old for this shit”.
Better leave the jiggle physics of Succubus for the animated series. Will it be on netflix? When it’s get aired? The Handbook of Erotic Fantasy shorts will be on the same platform or on HBO for the content? 😀
Adventures of Vox Machina took our time slot. Check for us next season though.
I don’t like Vox Machina, i like the Handbook 🙂
Write to your congressman!
He say he doesn’t like Vox machina either 😛
Honestly I’m kind of allergic to NOT doing this with pcs. I as a GM always try to incorporate player backstory into the campaign, and as a player I try to leave several hooks in my backstory that the GM can choose to incorporate if they want to.
That of course raises the question: Do you ever prod your GM to include those elements, and is it irritating when they don’t?
I tend to offer suggestions for how to implement them but I don’t really get upset if they don’t get implemented. Adding stuff on the fly to a campaign can be a lot of work and could conflict with existing plans, so I try to be understanding.
I guess the “art of the character hook” is worth discussing. If you’re only going to be satisfied when the GM turns the plot towards your home country and the usurpation plot on the far side of the world, you’ve probably set yourself up for failure. But by the same token, receiving zero attention for your “my invisible supernatural entity of choice sometimes visits me in person” seems like a missed chance on the GM’s part.
In both cases, I think that taking the time to discuss character trajectories outside of session-time can be a big help.
Oh yeah, definitely. It’s all down to how the campaign is going / is planned to go. My groups tend to do pre-existing APs, so the more out-there stuff tends to be harder to do, but we do our best.
You know?
I don’t feel as much sorry for “Magus” in Practice (https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/practice) anymore…
Possibly. But I can imagine Demon Queen lurking in Magus’s skull, taking full control whenever she needs to shape events or relish some evil payoff…but leaving Magus at the wheel for the miserable moments like that training session.
Runs the risk of Magus noticing all those vexing glitches in the matrix…but on the other hand, Magus.
Yes… yes… More baseless speculation. MOOOORRE!
I tried having a shared backstory with another player that my gruff and gritty mute ranger was actually a nobleman rejecting such a lifestyle. We worked out this past together I told them all my secrets and then they decided not to.
I hated it I so rarely get to have secrets.
In another game I’m playing a character who has amnesia and resets every time he sleeps. He hase a notebook to maintain his memories and one of the players off the cuff said “What if his whole character is 50 first dates? Nah that would be silly” So close to guessing my secret but he shot himself down.
Not to what? NOT TO WHAT!?
I’m guessing that they did nothing with the plot hook?
They decided to not use that character so they knew all my secrets but they were a different character.
I remember one time that a player wanted to play a skeleton who didn’t realize he was undead. I thought that was a really fun concept, and looked forward to seeing how he played it!
Not a minute after he joined the party, he loudly remarked upon how weird it was that he was still alive after being stuck in a spider web that long. Within five, the party convinced him to take off his helmet and pointed out that his head was literally a skull, which had no effect on him. I was deeply disappointed.
I don’t buy my player’s argument that his character wouldn’t know what not to say, since he didn’t realize he had anything to hide. That’s completely unrelated to the criticism I have of a character being 100% aware of something but 0% aware of its very, very obvious implications.
What a wasted concept! You’ve got to let that shit linger for at least a little while. Build the party’s trust, get them to like you, etc.
I guess as a GM you could have put some ancient manuscript in the party cleric’s hands. “Undead only become evil when they realize their state. Keep the ghost from discovering its past, and it will carry on as if alive.” That way the party has a premise that it can buy into.
Still, it’s weird that the player would give up their whole shtick so easily.
I think I know that schtick!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h46Bb1WwLmU
Something something something Durkon Thundershield
As for my initial reaction to this information: https://youtu.be/5oVjWHW8MxY?t=31
Link ded. I think you meant this bit?
https://youtu.be/3F1d3QWsyk0?t=31
Correct!
“But if I’m Antipaladin in that situation, I’ll probably chalk it up to cat/dog tensions and let the problem go. That might not be a smart move from the character’s perspective, but this is one moment of metagaming where I’m happy to let the player’s priorities take the lead. And ‘create cool story moments’ is right at the top of my priority list.”
Actually, AP’s in a rare position where the opposite would work just as well. Since he’s an outsider in the group, he has the perfect justification not to share his suspicions with the other party members. Instead, he can start his own secret schemes, and now he’s keeping secrets from Magus (and probably the rest of the party) and the dance of “they can’t know, but do they suspect?” is now going both ways. Macarena to tango, if you will.
Sure sure. But just to be clear, Antipaladin does not know what’s going on with his former boss at the moment.
Who knows how it’ll play out though?
An yes. My least favourite trope of all time. That has literally caused me to stop watching/reading things because of how much it upsets me. Once more mine old enemy rears its head.
Something about this trope just makes me feel awful. Like just plain ‘ruins my day’ level bad. As a GM I never use it. As a player I hate to see it.
What, the “traitor in the party” biz? Is it the bad blood between players that bugs you, or more the idea of betrayal seems like cheap drama?
No, betrayal via mind control/possession/becoming evil. It’s not an RPG-specific thing, just something I’ve always hated.
How about betrayal via body-swap?
I mean, it’s about the emotions for me. It’ll depend entirely on how the plot plays out. But I’m invested enough to keep reading rather than dropping. This just might end up being a part of the archive I skip over when going back through the comics in the future.