I was thinking of two NPCs, a wizard who found herself trapped in the nine hells, specifically, Dis; after her experiments to create a new transportation spell went awry. There she met Dispater, who saw her as a convenient tool, with which he could draw out a suspected traitor. Dispater offered her his protection and promised to help her find her way back home. Although he played the kind, concerned and chivalric gentleman, he planned to use her for his ends and kept delaying delivering on his promise. Eventually, she fell in love with him. At least with the kind and chivalric knight in shining armour that Dispater was pretending to be and realising that he started using her passion for him to manipulate her into staying. In reality, he didn't care for her. He played the long game, appearing to be weakened and distracted by his love for a mortal, to create the circumstances in which the traitor would attempt to strike.
For a while, his tricks worked, and he even gave her a child in the process. Once the traitor was exposed and dealt with, however, he lost interest in her. He didn't have any need for her anymore, and so he offered to send her home, which she refused. She loved him and insisted that she was going to stay, that this was her home now, with him and their child. He couldn't have that, however. She had served a purpose, but having a mortal, and worse, a child around, could prove to be an actual weakness. So against her wishes, he sent them both back to the material plane, along with a hellcat that he instructed to make sure that the woman never found her way back to hell and that the child did not fall into the hands of his enemies.
The hellcat did its job; every time the woman attempted to recreate the spell the had sent her to hell in the first place, the hellcat disrupted it, and every time rumours started to spread about the child being hellspawn, the cat would kill and devour the instigators.
So, we have a Wizard trying to get back to hell, to be with the person she loves, who is constantly thwarted in her efforts by a hellcat, and a child whom the hellcat is guarding. The child is a toddler now, and people think that the woman is a terrible Wizard, when in actuality, it's not her fault that things keep going wrong for her, being that most of her efforts are focused on getting back to the city of Dis.
She knows that Dispater is an archdevil and that he is considered evil by most mortals, but she doesn't care. Devil or not, evil or not, he was kind to her, and he protected her; he gave her a child and kept his promise to her, even if it was against her will at the end. She loves him anyway and does think of Dis as being her home. She doesn't want to live on the material plane; she wants to go back "home" to be with the person she loves and her child's father.
Not at all. Lots of people fall in love with people who are bad for them.
I would ask around the table before I put it in a game, however. What you're describing sounds an awful lot like a domestic abuse situation. It could be a trigger for some people.
Love is not an intellectual pursuit. The heart trumps the mind here. I find it hard to believe Dispater would be unable to do something about a mortal's infatuation, but for story purposes... why not, I guess.
That said, as Xalthu notes it's a potentially sensitive subject. Tread carefully.
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Dispater is supposed to be as masterful a manipulator as there is. i could see it.
The flip that would be interesting is a Beauty and the Beast scenario where he starts to fall for her and is wracked with cognitive dissonance, taking it out on his minions. then realizes he's kidding himself, embraces his true nature and let's the woman go back to the PMP with his seed in her womb. He keeps up the façade when he visits her and the kid. You could go on for awhile...
As a story idea? I'm looking for a rooting interest. You've found a twist on a half-dozen "devil-child" stories and another half-dozen "immortal falls in love with a mortal" stories. Congratulations for that. But the twist you've found leaves everyone but the kid looking like a bit of a tool. I'm not cheering for this poor befuddled lady to trap herself in hell again, or for the deadbeat father and his paranoid search for traitors. And toddlers are just rolling little balls of id. They're not really characters at all. So what I'm looking at is a very sad story about one of those ladies who kept asking Charles Manson to marry them when he was in stir. All I want to do is shake my head sadly and get away quickly in case that degree of crazy is infectious.
As a D&D idea? Where does a random element like your PCs fit in? Maybe they need to protect the kid once its identity is revealed to the next group of traitors? Dispater may not have any emotional connection to the kid, but the traitors could do a lot of damage to him with the blood of his blood.
Maybe after the villagers hire the PCs to rid them of the hellcat, the REAL problem emerges; that the crazy wizard lady is going to warm up her broken transport spell again, and this time it's going to drag the whole country to Dis?
Maybe the angels hire the PCs to act as their version of the DCFS, and take the kid out of this toxic environment?
The real question is what is this story for? If it's a plot hook for an adventure, then it has potential as long as the players are comfortable playing out the scenario.
If it's an origin story for a PC, hard no.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
One thing to remember with backstories is that they should explain the character as a newbie adventurer to be usable in a level 1 campaign. For example, you shouldn't have a level 1 character with a history of leading armies, killing dragons or using high level magic. Sure if you are running a high level campaign then you can get more inventive with the power stories, but for the majority of characters it should be a story about their beginning not mid-way through their career.
With that in mind having a wizard who has spent years or even decades with a powerful patron, and has spent her time playing with plane shifting magic (plane shift being a 7th level spell, so she would have had to be at least level 13), really seems overpowered if you are starting a fresh adventurer.
One thing to remember with backstories is that they should explain the character as a newbie adventurer to be usable in a level 1 campaign. For example, you shouldn't have a level 1 character with a history of leading armies, killing dragons or using high level magic. Sure if you are running a high level campaign then you can get more inventive with the power stories, but for the majority of characters it should be a story about their beginning not mid-way through their career.
With that in mind having a wizard who has spent years or even decades with a powerful patron, and has spent her time playing with plane shifting magic (plane shift being a 7th level spell, so she would have had to be at least level 13), really seems overpowered if you are starting a fresh adventurer.
just to clarify that it was for NPCs not actual players.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
To me it sounds like a cool idea, perhaps slightly cliche but it doesn’t have to be, it can develop as an original, interesting story, just bear in mind there’s absolutely no way this could have a happy end and don’t make this romantic at all - it’s a tragic story of a woman being in love with a fake persona of someone who treats her as nothing more than a tool, any “love” is completely one-sided. Also there’s lots of stories build on a similar premise already so don’t fall into the trap of replicating some fanfiction that you liked or someone else’s idea.
I'm going to be brutally honest: this seems way too complicated for the PCs to care about. And it seems like at best, they will be side characters in this Wizard's story, which nobody wants. Always, always, focus your plots on the players and the exciting events of the game that give them a shot at death or glory. Don't write long lore dumps, don't write overly important NPCs, and don't write a story that the players aren't at the center of with characters so powerful they can do nothing about them. This sounds like it could make a very cool short story, but a short story does not a good D&D game make.
(And honestly, a lot of players will cringe at a 50-shades "love story" like this, not unjustifiably so.)
I'm going to be brutally honest: this seems way too complicated for the PCs to care about. And it seems like at best, they will be side characters in this Wizard's story, which nobody wants. Always, always, focus your plots on the players and the exciting events of the game that give them a shot at death or glory. Don't write long lore dumps, don't write overly important NPCs, and don't write a story that the players aren't at the center of with characters so powerful they can do nothing about them. This sounds like it could make a very cool short story, but a short story does not a good D&D game make.
(And honestly, a lot of players will cringe at a 50-shades "love story" like this, not unjustifiably so.)
Have to agree on this one, I have pretty invested players who like lore and backstory but I think even they'd get half way through that origin story and think "Okay, is this actually going anywhere?". I suppose in part it will depend on what plot thread comes from this so you never know, but to me it seems like the objective is either 'Get deluded woman back to abusive relationship' or 'Help woman get over her demonic abuser" of which the first seems like an actively negative thing for a party of adventurers to do and the latter doesn't even sound like a job that is conducive to much actual 'adventuring'.
NPC or not, having a character that has an overly intricate and complicated backstory or is otherwise important for a plot without getting the PC involved and interested is dangerous, especially if the story is entirely NPC driven. Forcing information onto players and expecting them to be interested in highly unlikely and can be counteractive to the fun. It doesn't matter if it's an NPC talking about their backstory, an NPC talking about a PC's backstory, or a PC talking about their own backstory.
That said, I think the story could be interesting for some people and if there was some way to connect the player characters into that narrative then I think it can be a big thing especially if it is deeded at the beginning of the game and pays off at the end of the game.
As others have said I would make sure to let the players know that there is the heaviness behind the content especially if they are strangers. I'm sure I don't need to say this but I will anyway, some people don't want to interface with heavy content like that. For example, I don't enjoy narratives that glamorize the type of relationship between the two characters that you have created, but I know other people who are WAY TO INTO things like that, and I personally wouldn't want to play in the game if I knew that the narrative was about that. As long as the expectations of the game are set up in the beginning and if something does come up that bothers a player, you as a DM are willing to adjust the trajectory of the narrative to be more suitable for all the players then I don't see any problems with it.
NPC or not, having a character that has an overly intricate and complicated backstory or is otherwise important for a plot without getting the PC involved and interested is dangerous, especially if the story is entirely NPC driven. Forcing information onto players and expecting them to be interested in highly unlikely and can be counteractive to the fun.
My players get to know whatever comes up naturally during the game of NPCs' backstories. Doesn't mean the backstory and what I as DM know isn't a lot more complex and detailed.
As far as I can tell, TWForgeCleric is asking whether this backstory makes sense. I think that's a fair question, and a good one to ask yourself when creating NPCs and storylines. Dumb or unconvincing lore as backdrop for a campaign or storyline ruins immersion. You don't have to do a lore dump on your players every other session, but you do want to make sure that whatever they find or figure out is plausible.
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My comment was more in response to the person above me than the prompt presented by TWForgeCleric. The idea sounds as plausible as anything else and I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
Could a human fall in love with a devil? Yes. It's been done many, many times to the point that it is a tropes. Could it be interesting in a game? Maybe, but it's still a trope and quite a clichéd one. You could at least change it so that it's a man falling in love with a female devil.
And as pangurjan said, this version has quite the domestic abuse element to it which is a big red flag.
If you bought Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, it specifically has Tasha falling in love with Demon Prince Grazzt. This is a retelling of a Greyhawk storyline from long ago.
I think about pg 100 or so they have a picture.
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Hi,
I was thinking of two NPCs, a wizard who found herself trapped in the nine hells, specifically, Dis; after her experiments to create a new transportation spell went awry. There she met Dispater, who saw her as a convenient tool, with which he could draw out a suspected traitor. Dispater offered her his protection and promised to help her find her way back home. Although he played the kind, concerned and chivalric gentleman, he planned to use her for his ends and kept delaying delivering on his promise. Eventually, she fell in love with him. At least with the kind and chivalric knight in shining armour that Dispater was pretending to be and realising that he started using her passion for him to manipulate her into staying. In reality, he didn't care for her. He played the long game, appearing to be weakened and distracted by his love for a mortal, to create the circumstances in which the traitor would attempt to strike.
For a while, his tricks worked, and he even gave her a child in the process. Once the traitor was exposed and dealt with, however, he lost interest in her. He didn't have any need for her anymore, and so he offered to send her home, which she refused. She loved him and insisted that she was going to stay, that this was her home now, with him and their child. He couldn't have that, however. She had served a purpose, but having a mortal, and worse, a child around, could prove to be an actual weakness. So against her wishes, he sent them both back to the material plane, along with a hellcat that he instructed to make sure that the woman never found her way back to hell and that the child did not fall into the hands of his enemies.
The hellcat did its job; every time the woman attempted to recreate the spell the had sent her to hell in the first place, the hellcat disrupted it, and every time rumours started to spread about the child being hellspawn, the cat would kill and devour the instigators.
So, we have a Wizard trying to get back to hell, to be with the person she loves, who is constantly thwarted in her efforts by a hellcat, and a child whom the hellcat is guarding. The child is a toddler now, and people think that the woman is a terrible Wizard, when in actuality, it's not her fault that things keep going wrong for her, being that most of her efforts are focused on getting back to the city of Dis.
She knows that Dispater is an archdevil and that he is considered evil by most mortals, but she doesn't care. Devil or not, evil or not, he was kind to her, and he protected her; he gave her a child and kept his promise to her, even if it was against her will at the end. She loves him anyway and does think of Dis as being her home. She doesn't want to live on the material plane; she wants to go back "home" to be with the person she loves and her child's father.
Does that sound like an utterly stupid idea?
Thanks.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Honestly? This story sounds like the beginning of a bad Harry Potter fanfic.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Not at all. Lots of people fall in love with people who are bad for them.
I would ask around the table before I put it in a game, however. What you're describing sounds an awful lot like a domestic abuse situation. It could be a trigger for some people.
Love is not an intellectual pursuit. The heart trumps the mind here. I find it hard to believe Dispater would be unable to do something about a mortal's infatuation, but for story purposes... why not, I guess.
That said, as Xalthu notes it's a potentially sensitive subject. Tread carefully.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Dispater is supposed to be as masterful a manipulator as there is. i could see it.
The flip that would be interesting is a Beauty and the Beast scenario where he starts to fall for her and is wracked with cognitive dissonance, taking it out on his minions. then realizes he's kidding himself, embraces his true nature and let's the woman go back to the PMP with his seed in her womb. He keeps up the façade when he visits her and the kid. You could go on for awhile...
As a story idea? I'm looking for a rooting interest. You've found a twist on a half-dozen "devil-child" stories and another half-dozen "immortal falls in love with a mortal" stories. Congratulations for that. But the twist you've found leaves everyone but the kid looking like a bit of a tool. I'm not cheering for this poor befuddled lady to trap herself in hell again, or for the deadbeat father and his paranoid search for traitors. And toddlers are just rolling little balls of id. They're not really characters at all. So what I'm looking at is a very sad story about one of those ladies who kept asking Charles Manson to marry them when he was in stir. All I want to do is shake my head sadly and get away quickly in case that degree of crazy is infectious.
As a D&D idea? Where does a random element like your PCs fit in? Maybe they need to protect the kid once its identity is revealed to the next group of traitors? Dispater may not have any emotional connection to the kid, but the traitors could do a lot of damage to him with the blood of his blood.
Maybe after the villagers hire the PCs to rid them of the hellcat, the REAL problem emerges; that the crazy wizard lady is going to warm up her broken transport spell again, and this time it's going to drag the whole country to Dis?
Maybe the angels hire the PCs to act as their version of the DCFS, and take the kid out of this toxic environment?
The real question is what is this story for? If it's a plot hook for an adventure, then it has potential as long as the players are comfortable playing out the scenario.
If it's an origin story for a PC, hard no.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
One thing to remember with backstories is that they should explain the character as a newbie adventurer to be usable in a level 1 campaign. For example, you shouldn't have a level 1 character with a history of leading armies, killing dragons or using high level magic. Sure if you are running a high level campaign then you can get more inventive with the power stories, but for the majority of characters it should be a story about their beginning not mid-way through their career.
With that in mind having a wizard who has spent years or even decades with a powerful patron, and has spent her time playing with plane shifting magic (plane shift being a 7th level spell, so she would have had to be at least level 13), really seems overpowered if you are starting a fresh adventurer.
just to clarify that it was for NPCs not actual players.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
To me it sounds like a cool idea, perhaps slightly cliche but it doesn’t have to be, it can develop as an original, interesting story, just bear in mind there’s absolutely no way this could have a happy end and don’t make this romantic at all - it’s a tragic story of a woman being in love with a fake persona of someone who treats her as nothing more than a tool, any “love” is completely one-sided. Also there’s lots of stories build on a similar premise already so don’t fall into the trap of replicating some fanfiction that you liked or someone else’s idea.
Sounds interesting. If I were a player, I want to pet the cute widdle kitty cat and smother it with love!
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I'm going to be brutally honest: this seems way too complicated for the PCs to care about. And it seems like at best, they will be side characters in this Wizard's story, which nobody wants. Always, always, focus your plots on the players and the exciting events of the game that give them a shot at death or glory. Don't write long lore dumps, don't write overly important NPCs, and don't write a story that the players aren't at the center of with characters so powerful they can do nothing about them. This sounds like it could make a very cool short story, but a short story does not a good D&D game make.
(And honestly, a lot of players will cringe at a 50-shades "love story" like this, not unjustifiably so.)
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Have to agree on this one, I have pretty invested players who like lore and backstory but I think even they'd get half way through that origin story and think "Okay, is this actually going anywhere?". I suppose in part it will depend on what plot thread comes from this so you never know, but to me it seems like the objective is either 'Get deluded woman back to abusive relationship' or 'Help woman get over her demonic abuser" of which the first seems like an actively negative thing for a party of adventurers to do and the latter doesn't even sound like a job that is conducive to much actual 'adventuring'.
OP stated and restated that this is an NPC scenario...
NPC or not, having a character that has an overly intricate and complicated backstory or is otherwise important for a plot without getting the PC involved and interested is dangerous, especially if the story is entirely NPC driven. Forcing information onto players and expecting them to be interested in highly unlikely and can be counteractive to the fun. It doesn't matter if it's an NPC talking about their backstory, an NPC talking about a PC's backstory, or a PC talking about their own backstory.
That said, I think the story could be interesting for some people and if there was some way to connect the player characters into that narrative then I think it can be a big thing especially if it is deeded at the beginning of the game and pays off at the end of the game.
As others have said I would make sure to let the players know that there is the heaviness behind the content especially if they are strangers. I'm sure I don't need to say this but I will anyway, some people don't want to interface with heavy content like that. For example, I don't enjoy narratives that glamorize the type of relationship between the two characters that you have created, but I know other people who are WAY TO INTO things like that, and I personally wouldn't want to play in the game if I knew that the narrative was about that. As long as the expectations of the game are set up in the beginning and if something does come up that bothers a player, you as a DM are willing to adjust the trajectory of the narrative to be more suitable for all the players then I don't see any problems with it.
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"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
My players get to know whatever comes up naturally during the game of NPCs' backstories. Doesn't mean the backstory and what I as DM know isn't a lot more complex and detailed.
As far as I can tell, TWForgeCleric is asking whether this backstory makes sense. I think that's a fair question, and a good one to ask yourself when creating NPCs and storylines. Dumb or unconvincing lore as backdrop for a campaign or storyline ruins immersion. You don't have to do a lore dump on your players every other session, but you do want to make sure that whatever they find or figure out is plausible.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
My comment was more in response to the person above me than the prompt presented by TWForgeCleric. The idea sounds as plausible as anything else and I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
Buyers Guide for D&D Beyond - Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You - How/What is Toggled Content?
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"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
Could a human fall in love with a devil? Yes. It's been done many, many times to the point that it is a tropes. Could it be interesting in a game? Maybe, but it's still a trope and quite a clichéd one. You could at least change it so that it's a man falling in love with a female devil.
And as pangurjan said, this version has quite the domestic abuse element to it which is a big red flag.
If you bought Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, it specifically has Tasha falling in love with Demon Prince Grazzt. This is a retelling of a Greyhawk storyline from long ago.
I think about pg 100 or so they have a picture.