I’m doing quite a lengthy campaign and one of my players stated, when asked about what they like in a game, ”I like suffering”. Sooo, I got the idea to do something that would really make them suffer, as per request. I would like ideas on a nice quest/short to medium length story arc that would seriously wrap the players in a missunderstanding that would cause reprecussions. Being blamed for a crime, being misslead to kill someone innocent etc. Something that they would perhaps have to roleplay out of? I’m running out of ideas, so if someone happens to have an idea I could steal, that would be marvelous.
I designed an encounter for my group this week where a guy is found dragging a body off the road and into the bushes. Both have some goodies prominently seen on their person. The full story is that they were both in a fight with an undead (leaving no body to support his story) and one died in the battle. The other is trying to bring the body back to their secret cave (Bronze Shrine location from Sleeping Dragon’s Wake. The party is traveling past there this week.) for honored burial. If my party gets all justice-y and stops this “murderer” from getting away with hiding the body by killing him and looting both their stuff, they will have to come back to the Shrine location down the road when the quest comes up, only this time with easily identifiable stolen goods (I’m giving the Scaly Eye unique daggers), and having killed one of the Scaly Eye themselves. What could have been a simple ‘make-a-friend, be-shown-around-the-cave’ quest would then become a ‘each of these swashbucklers and this bronze dragon sees us as enemies and wants revenge’ quest.
So we’ll see if they get murder-hobo-y, or give this body-dragger a chance to make his case and then believe him. One path leads to complication and suffering, one to easy street.
Oh man, my monk has suffered like crazy in our campaign! The DM has done things like:
Put my family in danger
When I arrived at the family home, it was burnt to a crisp with no sign of the family at all
Monk's brother was a bad guy all along, working with Orcus, and sent the party to The Abyss
When we arrived back in the prime material plane, we were halfway across the world from where we were
Eventually find his family "by accident" looking for a different NPC
Later on, we're looking for an NPC we've had since fairly early on in the game.
Messages and letters aren't getting responses
Find a safehouse where she would have been, it's burnt to the ground
Find her "Bag of Instant Messaging" in the rubble, well half of it anyway
She can't be scryed upon
We can reach her with the Dream spell, but she doesn't know exactly where she is
Basically my DM wants to do the narrative equivalent to the old "You gotta be quicker than that" commercial with the old man with the dollar on the fishing pole, taking it away just as the person reaches for it. We never get to solve the problem/win on the first attempt.
What about a groundhog day? They go through a series of events and just when they think they have made it, they are all knocked out and wake up at the beginning of the day. Make it a long session, with them getting knocked out at the end of the session and begin by describing them waking up in the exact same way that they woke up at the beginning of the session, and then end for the night.
Also if you can get hold of a countdown clock and set it for whatever your average session length is (say 3 hrs) then whatever happens as soon as that 3 hrs hits and the clock is blinking zeros if they rest (short or long) or get knocked out) just have them wake at the beginning of the day! It's up to you to plan what the get out of the day clause is, do they have to defeat someone in the timeframe, do they have to save someone, make friends etc etc etc
A new lord comes into power in the town. Suddenly his soldiers are everywhere and no one knows why. Not starting anything, just being watchful and ominous. Then the PCs hear the soldiers are on the lookout for someone, orders to arrest on sight. The target is a young girl - everyone in town likes her, parents died tragically, just about the time the new lord came to power. The PCs either find the girl first and she asks them to get her out of town undetected, OR the girl gets arrested and the PCs (hopefully heroically) decide to free her.
Something something in the middle (just brainstorming here) and the PCs eventually learn the new lord is in fact a pretty good guy. The girl is secretly member of a pretty nasty cult, sacrificed her own parents, up to her elbows in pretty awful stuff. Now the PCs have to go track her down and fix their mistake.
What level? Some lowbies assassinated a giant in a castle full of giants and then I asked them how they planned to dispose of the body. That livened up a dull Sunday afternoon.
Make them think. This is one of the best ways to torture your players. Don't just make characters or places from their backgrounds suffer, but make them have some internal struggle. Players hate critical thinking, and they will love it if they find a good solution:
Example, in my Eberron campaign, the Mourning was caused by an evil lich that was trying to stop a demon overlord from breaking free, but only because she wanted to become the queen of death, which can't happen if everyone is already dead, she needs worshipers. So, Lich did a terrible thing for good reasons that turn out to be selfish. What do the players do if they learn this? They can't tell anyone, or the war starts again, and the overlord is set free and destroys the world. They can't be sitting ducks about this, because then the lich becomes too powerful and starts warping the world how she wants it to be. They can't kill the lich, she's immortal and cannot be defeated. They can't kill the Overlord, it will just return.
There is no good solution for this situation. You can use something similar in your games, and if the players miraculously find a way to save the world or themselves, they will feel so glad and giddy from their accomplishments that they will love how much you made them suffer.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
It of course depends a lot on your style of play and the PC's, but here's my 5 cents.
Suffering for the player (not only their character) is all about set-up. You need to introduce someone or something that the players actually starts to care about. Then let the forget about it for a little before you take it away. If you remember in GoT, Arya and the Hounds lodges at a peasant and his little daughter. A season later (or something), the Hound returns, and the peasant and his daughter is both dead. That is suffering. Have the players help someone, someone really innocent and helpless, wait for a little while, then kill them. The harder it feels for you, the harder it will be for the players. It depends quite a lot on how dark you want to go, but having children the players care about starve to death, is cruel, and would hurt most of us. Animals and pets are also a good way to get to players. Have a cute puppy start to follow them, play it up, have them care about him, then have a guard shoot it with a crossbow. That should hurt. Be warned however, this could also get some players really angry (because it hurts).
Thanks to all for the great ideas!!! I think I will do the same as LeviRocks has mentioned! I have one situation where they need dragons blood to cure a massive illness or die themselves, but in doing so they leave behind a nest of young dragons to die. I liked the idea by Zyonchaos as well!! I’m going to use it in combo with a mystery they have to solve to find the person resposible
Thanks to all for the great ideas!!! I think I will do the same as LeviRocks has mentioned! I have one situation where they need dragons blood to cure a massive illness or die themselves, but in doing so they leave behind a nest of young dragons to die. I liked the idea by Zyonchaos as well!! I’m going to use it in combo with a mystery they have to solve to find the person resposible
Just be prepared for them to try and adopt the young dragons and raise them!
Thanks to all for the great ideas!!! I think I will do the same as LeviRocks has mentioned! I have one situation where they need dragons blood to cure a massive illness or die themselves, but in doing so they leave behind a nest of young dragons to die. I liked the idea by Zyonchaos as well!! I’m going to use it in combo with a mystery they have to solve to find the person resposible
Just be prepared for them to try and adopt the young dragons and raise them!
Oh boy, with my type of luck they will try it. Maybe I’ll put eggs that would exlusively need a dragon to tend for or something. But they will probably be like we still want to save them, so I shall prepare
Thanks to all for the great ideas!!! I think I will do the same as LeviRocks has mentioned! I have one situation where they need dragons blood to cure a massive illness or die themselves, but in doing so they leave behind a nest of young dragons to die. I liked the idea by Zyonchaos as well!! I’m going to use it in combo with a mystery they have to solve to find the person resposible
Just be prepared for them to try and adopt the young dragons and raise them!
Oh boy, with my type of luck they will try it. Maybe I’ll put eggs that would exlusively need a dragon to tend for or something. But they will probably be like we still want to save them, so I shall prepare
What color dragons? In Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and other campaign setting lore chromatic dragons are born evil, and will eventually leave their "adoptive parents" to do anything they want.
I'm glad you liked my idea. I've found it the most effective way to make players think, not only give them a problem that only affects them, but the whole world or a whole village. Maybe the dragons were eating a certain species in the region that will now have very large numbers because the dragons are dead, and this causes a massive outbreak of these creatures (goblins, kobolds, harpies, anything less powerful than the dragons) and they have to save the village from a problem they caused.
Every action has unforeseen consequences, and this will help challenge your players more.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I’m doing quite a lengthy campaign and one of my players stated, when asked about what they like in a game, ”I like suffering”. Sooo, I got the idea to do something that would really make them suffer, as per request. I would like ideas on a nice quest/short to medium length story arc that would seriously wrap the players in a missunderstanding that would cause reprecussions. Being blamed for a crime, being misslead to kill someone innocent etc. Something that they would perhaps have to roleplay out of?
I’m running out of ideas, so if someone happens to have an idea I could steal, that would be marvelous.
I designed an encounter for my group this week where a guy is found dragging a body off the road and into the bushes. Both have some goodies prominently seen on their person. The full story is that they were both in a fight with an undead (leaving no body to support his story) and one died in the battle. The other is trying to bring the body back to their secret cave (Bronze Shrine location from Sleeping Dragon’s Wake. The party is traveling past there this week.) for honored burial. If my party gets all justice-y and stops this “murderer” from getting away with hiding the body by killing him and looting both their stuff, they will have to come back to the Shrine location down the road when the quest comes up, only this time with easily identifiable stolen goods (I’m giving the Scaly Eye unique daggers), and having killed one of the Scaly Eye themselves. What could have been a simple ‘make-a-friend, be-shown-around-the-cave’ quest would then become a ‘each of these swashbucklers and this bronze dragon sees us as enemies and wants revenge’ quest.
So we’ll see if they get murder-hobo-y, or give this body-dragger a chance to make his case and then believe him. One path leads to complication and suffering, one to easy street.
Feel free to riff on that idea.
Oh man, my monk has suffered like crazy in our campaign! The DM has done things like:
Later on, we're looking for an NPC we've had since fairly early on in the game.
Basically my DM wants to do the narrative equivalent to the old "You gotta be quicker than that" commercial with the old man with the dollar on the fishing pole, taking it away just as the person reaches for it. We never get to solve the problem/win on the first attempt.
What about a groundhog day?
They go through a series of events and just when they think they have made it, they are all knocked out and wake up at the beginning of the day.
Make it a long session, with them getting knocked out at the end of the session and begin by describing them waking up in the exact same way that they woke up at the beginning of the session, and then end for the night.
Also if you can get hold of a countdown clock and set it for whatever your average session length is (say 3 hrs) then whatever happens as soon as that 3 hrs hits and the clock is blinking zeros if they rest (short or long) or get knocked out) just have them wake at the beginning of the day!
It's up to you to plan what the get out of the day clause is, do they have to defeat someone in the timeframe, do they have to save someone, make friends etc etc etc
From Within Chaos Comes Order!
A new lord comes into power in the town. Suddenly his soldiers are everywhere and no one knows why. Not starting anything, just being watchful and ominous. Then the PCs hear the soldiers are on the lookout for someone, orders to arrest on sight. The target is a young girl - everyone in town likes her, parents died tragically, just about the time the new lord came to power. The PCs either find the girl first and she asks them to get her out of town undetected, OR the girl gets arrested and the PCs (hopefully heroically) decide to free her.
Something something in the middle (just brainstorming here) and the PCs eventually learn the new lord is in fact a pretty good guy. The girl is secretly member of a pretty nasty cult, sacrificed her own parents, up to her elbows in pretty awful stuff. Now the PCs have to go track her down and fix their mistake.
What level? Some lowbies assassinated a giant in a castle full of giants and then I asked them how they planned to dispose of the body. That livened up a dull Sunday afternoon.
Make them think. This is one of the best ways to torture your players. Don't just make characters or places from their backgrounds suffer, but make them have some internal struggle. Players hate critical thinking, and they will love it if they find a good solution:
Example, in my Eberron campaign, the Mourning was caused by an evil lich that was trying to stop a demon overlord from breaking free, but only because she wanted to become the queen of death, which can't happen if everyone is already dead, she needs worshipers. So, Lich did a terrible thing for good reasons that turn out to be selfish. What do the players do if they learn this? They can't tell anyone, or the war starts again, and the overlord is set free and destroys the world. They can't be sitting ducks about this, because then the lich becomes too powerful and starts warping the world how she wants it to be. They can't kill the lich, she's immortal and cannot be defeated. They can't kill the Overlord, it will just return.
There is no good solution for this situation. You can use something similar in your games, and if the players miraculously find a way to save the world or themselves, they will feel so glad and giddy from their accomplishments that they will love how much you made them suffer.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
It of course depends a lot on your style of play and the PC's, but here's my 5 cents.
Suffering for the player (not only their character) is all about set-up. You need to introduce someone or something that the players actually starts to care about. Then let the forget about it for a little before you take it away. If you remember in GoT, Arya and the Hounds lodges at a peasant and his little daughter. A season later (or something), the Hound returns, and the peasant and his daughter is both dead. That is suffering. Have the players help someone, someone really innocent and helpless, wait for a little while, then kill them. The harder it feels for you, the harder it will be for the players. It depends quite a lot on how dark you want to go, but having children the players care about starve to death, is cruel, and would hurt most of us. Animals and pets are also a good way to get to players. Have a cute puppy start to follow them, play it up, have them care about him, then have a guard shoot it with a crossbow. That should hurt. Be warned however, this could also get some players really angry (because it hurts).
Ludo ergo sum!
Thanks to all for the great ideas!!! I think I will do the same as LeviRocks has mentioned! I have one situation where they need dragons blood to cure a massive illness or die themselves, but in doing so they leave behind a nest of young dragons to die. I liked the idea by Zyonchaos as well!! I’m going to use it in combo with a mystery they have to solve to find the person resposible
Just be prepared for them to try and adopt the young dragons and raise them!
From Within Chaos Comes Order!
Oh boy, with my type of luck they will try it. Maybe I’ll put eggs that would exlusively need a dragon to tend for or something. But they will probably be like we still want to save them, so I shall prepare
What color dragons? In Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and other campaign setting lore chromatic dragons are born evil, and will eventually leave their "adoptive parents" to do anything they want.
I'm glad you liked my idea. I've found it the most effective way to make players think, not only give them a problem that only affects them, but the whole world or a whole village. Maybe the dragons were eating a certain species in the region that will now have very large numbers because the dragons are dead, and this causes a massive outbreak of these creatures (goblins, kobolds, harpies, anything less powerful than the dragons) and they have to save the village from a problem they caused.
Every action has unforeseen consequences, and this will help challenge your players more.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms