Anyone want to share some epic or funny plot twists?
Did the DM plan it or did it happen due to your party’s actions?
I’d love to read all your crazy stories!
Here’s one from a recent campaign I am in.
My party was tasked with finding and getting rid of a sorcerer cult. (The kingdom hated all sorcerers and warlocks)
We find said cult and begin to kill them and or shove them in a cursed bag of holding. Next thing we know, we find out that the cult was actually good. They tried to feed poor people by stealing food from the army.
I actually played through this twice. The first time, my party ended up helping the sorcerers. We made a deal with them saying that if they only take food from the kingdom we were at war with, they could continue practicing their magic and not have to hide anymore. This was not what the DM had planned.
The second time I played this, my party basically murdered half the cult, found out they weren’t evil, and proceeded to murder the rest of them. This was partly what the DM had planned. However, those actions came back to bite us in the next session.
First of all, that's a really neat twist! I have always liked the "YOU are actually working for the "bad guys" twists, and that is pretty close to it :)
Second, I am planning a twist on a Tomb of Annihilation game that I am running. My party has a Grung Rogue that started the campaign with a magical item he found in a cave near his original Grung tribal village, a necklace with a skull on it, with a reddish crystal growing out one of the eyes. It heals him when he kills enemies. He uses it CONSTANTLY, and it is basically one of his main features.
Tomb of Annihilation's villain (minor spoilers ahead for ToA) is a lich. After defeating him, you are taken to a reward room that is a library. I am planning to put a Book of Vile Darkness in the library, and when someone reads it, they find an entry on the necklace, saying that is is a cursed item that will slowly corrupt the user's soul, making them Chaotic Evil eventually. That should be fun to figure out what they are going to do with it lol
Another large plot twist was also about that Grung Rogue. I had a villain that was vastly more powerful than the party, and they had to negotiate a way out from her presence before she killed them. She was pretty indifferent, and could be easily bribed, but for fun I said "She offers to take a slave from your group in return for your safe passage" and the Rogue was like "Yes. Absolutely." and brought in his 2 very nice and sweet NPC jungle guides that were keeping them from being lost. He cast Sleep, knocking both of them unconscious, and offered them as slaves, to which she accepted. My friends Rogue SOLD MY NPCS INTO SLAVERY because it felt like the easiest way out... that was unexpected lol. Say goodbye to any of the NPCs character development!
The PCs were finishing their rest in a camp in the wilderness one morning, and just as they finished breakfast, one of them was suddenly holding a baby.
It was the prince who had gone missing 20 years earlier when the court wizard cast a wish to keep him safe.
So we were fighting a big climactic baddie, who was in secret actually a bigger BBEG as an alter ego. But unexpectedly due to a bit of luck, we accidentally exposed the deception going on. Leading to the death of the campaigns intended end baddie way earlier than expected, with the dark fey queen allied with the party sacrificing herself to give the party a fighting chance.
This has lead to interesting consequences, from affecting my rogue's projected character arc estimations by getting revenge on the one who ruined her life a lot earlier and making her question how hollow the vengeance had actually felt. To all of the little minions and schemes the BBEG had cooking suddenly having their strings cut. Which could lead to problems down the line. So while killing the BBEG was a 'good' thing in the short and long term, there are still some messy consequences of her sudden death.
Both the DM's story plans and character arcs were turned on their head and the fallout's going to be interesting to see going forward.
I was a Dungeon master for this group, and in my campaign plan there was going be this big murder mystery at a party that the PCs are invited to but before that could happen a player burned down the mansion where the party was happening. There never was a murder mystery because every one knew it was the PC who had burned down the house killing everyone inside.
The PCs were finishing their rest in a camp in the wilderness one morning, and just as they finished breakfast, one of them was suddenly holding a baby.
It was the prince who had gone missing 20 years earlier when the court wizard cast a wish to keep him safe.
I’m still pretty proud of that one.
I am 100% stealing the idea of the party being involved in someone else's Wish. That's utterly genius!
This was near the end of my last campaign during the fight with the bbeg and his minions. The cleric had the spell command (which i changed to be simple commands instead of a one word command just to give it some extra stuff to use it with) and for this whole game he never used it, it got to the point where other players were telling him to switch to a new spell. Nobody knew why until that fight where he forced the bbeg who failed his wisdom save to "go kill yourself" which was great cuz that bbeg had wiped out his home village in response to the party interfering with his plans
It was a great twist from the usually mild mannered cleric who always tried to achieve peace diplomatically as that was his first action
I made a murder mystery side quest in one of my games, where an idiotic “master detective” “helped” the party by accusing random people and just being stupid. My dad however accused him of murder, despite knowing he was innocent, and then went to the lock up to comfort and befriend him! But I got my revenge, they found him the next day brutally stabbed in the cell! He lived but My dad felt super guilty and it was a nice RP moment.
My party are resurrecting a failed rebellion against the Sorcerer King who they have learned is butchering civilians to steal their souls and bind them to his Warforged soldiers.
One of the PCs is a Warforged who has "awakened" (kinda like Star Wars droids who break their programming and become self-aware). He still remembers almost nothing of his past life but will eventually learn that he is/was the former leader of the Rebellion. What he then chooses to do wth that knowledge is up to him.
well, I haven't done it yet(I'm the dm for this one), but an NPC that the players like, is a silly, goofy street magician that is traveling with them, but for some reason, this abnormally tall, finely dressed, masked man is stalking them and attacking them, wherever they go... well the street magician is a changeling/shapeshifter thing with DID (dissociative identity disorder) who doesn't even know he's a changeling/shapeshifter thing, and he is a new personality kinda like a Steven Grant and Marc Spector thing. the reveal is gonna be some kind of ball or something where the NPC is suddenly going to transform and begin butchering the members of the ball thing. (I designed the masked man to fight like a "shapeshifter" would, transforming body parts to attack and dodge attacks kinda like alien in "the thing")
The reverse escort mission. The party has to escort an NPC somewhere for most of the campaign. When the party is on the verge of a TPK, the NPC is revealed to be a badass capable of taking care of herself and saving the party. Not a DMPC because her level is lower than the party's average, and she follows the same character creation rules. It's just that she's a variant human fighter with the defense fighting style and the medium armor master feat. I min-maxed her so that she had the highest possible AC at 1st level with only the normal starting equipment. Basically, the party has been escorting a tank without realising it.
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Age: 33 | Sex: Male | Languages: French and English | Roles: DM and Player
For the Muppets campaign I've been doing for a while, I have a plan for an EPIC final boss. The main antagonists of the story so far has been Bellatrix, a powerful illusioner who's goals are beyond the party's current understanding, and Beauregard, her assistant who doesn't really understand Bellatrix's plan either, but follows her just the same. The final dungeon is the Imploding Core, a spacially-unstable fortress where the boss is Beauregard in his final stand. He guards the portal to the VOID, where Bellatrix is preparing a ritual to become a goddess.
After defeating or convincing Beauregard, all that's left is to face Bellatrix in one grand showdown. Unfortunately, Bellatrix completed the ritual during the fight with Beauregard, and now has transformed into a being of near-godlike power: BELLATRIX, ANGEL OF DEATH! The fight with her, no surprise, is the hardest in the game. During the fight, we see the universe unraveling more and more, and Bellatrix shows no mercy: Summoning rifts, lasers, Chaos orbs, crystal swords, everything she can throw at the party, she will.
At the very end of the fight, Bellatrix loses her powers in an explosion of chaotic energy (reducing everyone to 1 hp), and she gives up.
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Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
Not epic per se, but did result in a somewhat funny moment in passing. Our group is currently playing Rime of the Frostmaiden, and the first time our party arrived at Caer Konig, we wandered into the Northern Lights Inn and struck up a conversation with the Shorard sisters who own the place. They tell the party about how down on their luck they've been and much ill fortune the inn has been suffering through.
Cue my character, a half-elf Sorcerer charlatan, who, at the time, had a dislike for both humans and elves, sees an opportunity to swindle some humans, sidles up and pulls out one of the 10 vials of coloured water the charlatan gets and manages to convince the sisters that it is in-fact a potion of good fortune, that requires a few more components to be put into action, namely to bury the vial at a crossroads at the next full moon and mutter a few nonsense words in incantation, and it will bring them good fortune! I succeed on the deception roll, and take their money without giving a second thought, as the party had planned on not returning.
Cut to a few sessions later and as the party was travelling from Bryn Shander to Easthaven, who did we happen to see at the crossroads, off to the side, digging a hole? Yep, the Shorard sisters burring the vial of useless water. It turned out like that Umbrella Academy meme of when they saw each other in the car:
It was a pretty funny call back moment our DM inserted that kept it light but also reminded us our actions do have consequences.
Not epic per se, but did result in a somewhat funny moment in passing. Our group is currently playing Rime of the Frostmaiden, and the first time our party arrived at Caer Konig, we wandered into the Northern Lights Inn and struck up a conversation with the Shorard sisters who own the place. They tell the party about how down on their luck they've been and much ill fortune the inn has been suffering through.
Cue my character, a half-elf Sorcerer charlatan, who, at the time, had a dislike for both humans and elves, sees an opportunity to swindle some humans, sidles up and pulls out one of the 10 vials of coloured water the charlatan gets and manages to convince the sisters that it is in-fact a potion of good fortune, that requires a few more components to be put into action, namely to bury the vial at a crossroads at the next full moon and mutter a few nonsense words in incantation, and it will bring them good fortune! I succeed on the deception roll, and take their money without giving a second thought, as the party had planned on not returning.
Cut to a few sessions later and as the party was travelling from Bryn Shander to Easthaven, who did we happen to see at the crossroads, off to the side, digging a hole? Yep, the Shorard sisters burring the vial of useless water. It turned out like that Umbrella Academy meme of when they saw each other in the car:
It was a pretty funny call back moment our DM inserted that kept it light but also reminded us our actions do have consequences.
That's great! I love it when DMs do things like that.
My players invaded the castle of the mysterious hidden lord on the behest of a rogueish group who wanted to take the lord down. When they finally slogged through all of the traps and climbed to the top of the tallest tower they discovered that Kobolt the Kobold, a former party member who’d retired, was the hidden lord! And then they discovered that the hidden lord was actually a changeling pretending to be Kobolt, who had in fact impersonated several of their allies in the past! The only thing that gave away his identity was that he always had one golden eye. There was a cool aha! moment when my players remembered all the NPCs that they’d seen with a golden eye.
My players got me back almost immediately, though. They decided to spare the hidden lord, which I didn’t think they would do, and we ended the session with an agreement of alliance. I prepped for the alliance and the consequences. However, the next session, my players immediately made a plan with the rogue group to isolate and kill the hidden lord when he was in one of his disguises! It turned out they were just concerned about their resources and had never been intending to spare him.
My players invaded the castle of the mysterious hidden lord on the behest of a rogueish group who wanted to take the lord down. When they finally slogged through all of the traps and climbed to the top of the tallest tower they discovered that Kobolt the Kobold, a former party member who’d retired, was the hidden lord! And then they discovered that the hidden lord was actually a changeling pretending to be Kobolt, who had in fact impersonated several of their allies in the past! The only thing that gave away his identity was that he always had one golden eye. There was a cool aha! moment when my players remembered all the NPCs that they’d seen with a golden eye.
My players got me back almost immediately, though. They decided to spare the hidden lord, which I didn’t think they would do, and we ended the session with an agreement of alliance. I prepped for the alliance and the consequences. However, the next session, my players immediately made a plan with the rogue group to isolate and kill the hidden lord when he was in one of his disguises! It turned out they were just concerned about their resources and had never been intending to spare him.
Gotta love the unpredictability of players!
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Anyone want to share some epic or funny plot twists?
Did the DM plan it or did it happen due to your party’s actions?
I’d love to read all your crazy stories!
Here’s one from a recent campaign I am in.
My party was tasked with finding and getting rid of a sorcerer cult. (The kingdom hated all sorcerers and warlocks)
We find said cult and begin to kill them and or shove them in a cursed bag of holding. Next thing we know, we find out that the cult was actually good. They tried to feed poor people by stealing food from the army.
I actually played through this twice. The first time, my party ended up helping the sorcerers. We made a deal with them saying that if they only take food from the kingdom we were at war with, they could continue practicing their magic and not have to hide anymore. This was not what the DM had planned.
The second time I played this, my party basically murdered half the cult, found out they weren’t evil, and proceeded to murder the rest of them. This was partly what the DM had planned. However, those actions came back to bite us in the next session.
First of all, that's a really neat twist! I have always liked the "YOU are actually working for the "bad guys" twists, and that is pretty close to it :)
Second, I am planning a twist on a Tomb of Annihilation game that I am running. My party has a Grung Rogue that started the campaign with a magical item he found in a cave near his original Grung tribal village, a necklace with a skull on it, with a reddish crystal growing out one of the eyes. It heals him when he kills enemies. He uses it CONSTANTLY, and it is basically one of his main features.
Tomb of Annihilation's villain (minor spoilers ahead for ToA) is a lich. After defeating him, you are taken to a reward room that is a library. I am planning to put a Book of Vile Darkness in the library, and when someone reads it, they find an entry on the necklace, saying that is is a cursed item that will slowly corrupt the user's soul, making them Chaotic Evil eventually. That should be fun to figure out what they are going to do with it lol
Another large plot twist was also about that Grung Rogue. I had a villain that was vastly more powerful than the party, and they had to negotiate a way out from her presence before she killed them. She was pretty indifferent, and could be easily bribed, but for fun I said "She offers to take a slave from your group in return for your safe passage" and the Rogue was like "Yes. Absolutely." and brought in his 2 very nice and sweet NPC jungle guides that were keeping them from being lost. He cast Sleep, knocking both of them unconscious, and offered them as slaves, to which she accepted. My friends Rogue SOLD MY NPCS INTO SLAVERY because it felt like the easiest way out... that was unexpected lol. Say goodbye to any of the NPCs character development!
The PCs were finishing their rest in a camp in the wilderness one morning, and just as they finished breakfast, one of them was suddenly holding a baby.
It was the prince who had gone missing 20 years earlier when the court wizard cast a wish to keep him safe.
I’m still pretty proud of that one.
(About the above post)
Ok, that’s actually genius. Hats off to you 👏
What am I supposed to do with a signature?
Egg
So we were fighting a big climactic baddie, who was in secret actually a bigger BBEG as an alter ego. But unexpectedly due to a bit of luck, we accidentally exposed the deception going on. Leading to the death of the campaigns intended end baddie way earlier than expected, with the dark fey queen allied with the party sacrificing herself to give the party a fighting chance.
This has lead to interesting consequences, from affecting my rogue's projected character arc estimations by getting revenge on the one who ruined her life a lot earlier and making her question how hollow the vengeance had actually felt. To all of the little minions and schemes the BBEG had cooking suddenly having their strings cut. Which could lead to problems down the line. So while killing the BBEG was a 'good' thing in the short and long term, there are still some messy consequences of her sudden death.
Both the DM's story plans and character arcs were turned on their head and the fallout's going to be interesting to see going forward.
I was a Dungeon master for this group, and in my campaign plan there was going be this big murder mystery at a party that the PCs are invited to but before that could happen a player burned down the mansion where the party was happening. There never was a murder mystery because every one knew it was the PC who had burned down the house killing everyone inside.
I am 100% stealing the idea of the party being involved in someone else's Wish. That's utterly genius!
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This was near the end of my last campaign during the fight with the bbeg and his minions. The cleric had the spell command (which i changed to be simple commands instead of a one word command just to give it some extra stuff to use it with) and for this whole game he never used it, it got to the point where other players were telling him to switch to a new spell. Nobody knew why until that fight where he forced the bbeg who failed his wisdom save to "go kill yourself" which was great cuz that bbeg had wiped out his home village in response to the party interfering with his plans
It was a great twist from the usually mild mannered cleric who always tried to achieve peace diplomatically as that was his first action
I made a murder mystery side quest in one of my games, where an idiotic “master detective” “helped” the party by accusing random people and just being stupid. My dad however accused him of murder, despite knowing he was innocent, and then went to the lock up to comfort and befriend him! But I got my revenge, they found him the next day brutally stabbed in the cell! He lived but My dad felt super guilty and it was a nice RP moment.
My party are resurrecting a failed rebellion against the Sorcerer King who they have learned is butchering civilians to steal their souls and bind them to his Warforged soldiers.
One of the PCs is a Warforged who has "awakened" (kinda like Star Wars droids who break their programming and become self-aware). He still remembers almost nothing of his past life but will eventually learn that he is/was the former leader of the Rebellion. What he then chooses to do wth that knowledge is up to him.
that is actually really cool!
well, I haven't done it yet(I'm the dm for this one), but an NPC that the players like, is a silly, goofy street magician that is traveling with them, but for some reason, this abnormally tall, finely dressed, masked man is stalking them and attacking them, wherever they go... well the street magician is a changeling/shapeshifter thing with DID (dissociative identity disorder) who doesn't even know he's a changeling/shapeshifter thing, and he is a new personality kinda like a Steven Grant and Marc Spector thing. the reveal is gonna be some kind of ball or something where the NPC is suddenly going to transform and begin butchering the members of the ball thing. (I designed the masked man to fight like a "shapeshifter" would, transforming body parts to attack and dodge attacks kinda like alien in "the thing")
Those are all super cool!
The reverse escort mission. The party has to escort an NPC somewhere for most of the campaign. When the party is on the verge of a TPK, the NPC is revealed to be a badass capable of taking care of herself and saving the party. Not a DMPC because her level is lower than the party's average, and she follows the same character creation rules. It's just that she's a variant human fighter with the defense fighting style and the medium armor master feat. I min-maxed her so that she had the highest possible AC at 1st level with only the normal starting equipment. Basically, the party has been escorting a tank without realising it.
Age: 33 | Sex: Male | Languages: French and English | Roles: DM and Player
For the Muppets campaign I've been doing for a while, I have a plan for an EPIC final boss. The main antagonists of the story so far has been Bellatrix, a powerful illusioner who's goals are beyond the party's current understanding, and Beauregard, her assistant who doesn't really understand Bellatrix's plan either, but follows her just the same. The final dungeon is the Imploding Core, a spacially-unstable fortress where the boss is Beauregard in his final stand. He guards the portal to the VOID, where Bellatrix is preparing a ritual to become a goddess.
After defeating or convincing Beauregard, all that's left is to face Bellatrix in one grand showdown. Unfortunately, Bellatrix completed the ritual during the fight with Beauregard, and now has transformed into a being of near-godlike power: BELLATRIX, ANGEL OF DEATH! The fight with her, no surprise, is the hardest in the game. During the fight, we see the universe unraveling more and more, and Bellatrix shows no mercy: Summoning rifts, lasers, Chaos orbs, crystal swords, everything she can throw at the party, she will.
At the very end of the fight, Bellatrix loses her powers in an explosion of chaotic energy (reducing everyone to 1 hp), and she gives up.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
Not epic per se, but did result in a somewhat funny moment in passing. Our group is currently playing Rime of the Frostmaiden, and the first time our party arrived at Caer Konig, we wandered into the Northern Lights Inn and struck up a conversation with the Shorard sisters who own the place. They tell the party about how down on their luck they've been and much ill fortune the inn has been suffering through.
Cue my character, a half-elf Sorcerer charlatan, who, at the time, had a dislike for both humans and elves, sees an opportunity to swindle some humans, sidles up and pulls out one of the 10 vials of coloured water the charlatan gets and manages to convince the sisters that it is in-fact a potion of good fortune, that requires a few more components to be put into action, namely to bury the vial at a crossroads at the next full moon and mutter a few nonsense words in incantation, and it will bring them good fortune! I succeed on the deception roll, and take their money without giving a second thought, as the party had planned on not returning.
Cut to a few sessions later and as the party was travelling from Bryn Shander to Easthaven, who did we happen to see at the crossroads, off to the side, digging a hole? Yep, the Shorard sisters burring the vial of useless water. It turned out like that Umbrella Academy meme of when they saw each other in the car:
It was a pretty funny call back moment our DM inserted that kept it light but also reminded us our actions do have consequences.
That's great! I love it when DMs do things like that.
My players invaded the castle of the mysterious hidden lord on the behest of a rogueish group who wanted to take the lord down. When they finally slogged through all of the traps and climbed to the top of the tallest tower they discovered that Kobolt the Kobold, a former party member who’d retired, was the hidden lord! And then they discovered that the hidden lord was actually a changeling pretending to be Kobolt, who had in fact impersonated several of their allies in the past! The only thing that gave away his identity was that he always had one golden eye. There was a cool aha! moment when my players remembered all the NPCs that they’d seen with a golden eye.
My players got me back almost immediately, though. They decided to spare the hidden lord, which I didn’t think they would do, and we ended the session with an agreement of alliance. I prepped for the alliance and the consequences. However, the next session, my players immediately made a plan with the rogue group to isolate and kill the hidden lord when he was in one of his disguises! It turned out they were just concerned about their resources and had never been intending to spare him.
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
Gotta love the unpredictability of players!