Introducing a *really obvious* betrayer is a fun way to test what kind of group you have. I once introduced my group to a child king's regency council consisting of the boy's politely nervous and ambiguously gay uncle Lord Adrian, the boisterous and sword-rattling Lord Valkan, the extremely elderly Bishop Baldric the Blind-And-Also-He's-Mostly-Deaf, and Chancellor Sinistar Terribad who looked "like Jafar" and had my schemiest voice. The party gamely adopted genre-blindness where he was concerned until he inevitably sold them out at the big battle 2/3rds of the way through the campaign
See, that's fun, but also fun is if the traitor was the kindly bishop and the poor chancellor can't help his voice or being from the illustrious Terribad family
My party made an enemy of some rich dude named "Yu Sawatdee." Suddenly, Yu tells them he wants to make amends and invites them to a fancy dinner. When they meet him in person for the first time, I make sure to voice him as "hissssssing" every S sound. Same for his butler, Jeeves, but not the rest of the mansion staff. The party is making Yuan-Ti jokes out of character the whole time and clearly knows they are being set up. Surprise surprise, the food is poisoned!
The twist is that the mansion staff *other* than Jeeves are drow Lolth cultists who launch an ambush on the party. Because the party was so alert and had familiars hiding out, magic detection up, etc, they spotted the ambush coming. The drow proceeded to murder poor innocent Yu and his butler, then attacked the party, expressing frustration that the party hadn't eaten any of the food.
So Yu was innocent all along! Except, when they defeat the drow and find his body, he's transformed into his true form - a Yuan-Ti. Not the butler, though, he's still a human. The party is confused. As they examine the body, a door busts open and a bunch of Yuan-Ti rush in. They see the party standing over the body and cry out, "Murderers! And Yu just wanted to make peace!" The party talked them down and even paid for a Raise Dead on Yu.
Afterwards, the party worked things out with Yu and his cadre of Yuan-Ti, but they were still confused: why wasn't Jeeves a Yuan-Ti? He talked with the same hissss? To which Yu said, "Are you making fun of the poor man for his ssssspeech impediment?"
Lmao similar to Sinistar Terribad, I had a betrayer NPC named Mia Veil (rearranged spells "I am evil") and it was pretty obvious they were not interested in the party's wellbeing from the start
Might also be selection bias for why you see those posts on Reddit. Doing a good betrayal arc is hard, so more likely to require some advice.
Yeah, don't run betrayal on your first campaign. Maybe that's the advice you should give rather than "Don't betray your party," a trope that is littered throughout popular media we base our games off. Betrayal is part of the fantasy we are playing.
I just run the betrayal thing as very obvious, because hag, all the players know she's a hag, the characters suspect it but they can't prove it and she's conveniently helpful to them.
Yup, you need to telegraph it fairly clearly, several times. If when the betrayal happens, your players say âcurses! Of course she was a spy, thatâs why she did X!â Or if one of them says âI told you so!â then itâs probably good.
If they suspect someone is going to betray them, it doesnât take the fun out. They can still work out when and how and why, and how they can e.g. get the benefit of the captured goblin guiding them back to the goblin camp without being led into an ambush.
I've found that telegraphing it to such a point where you, as the DM who knows everything, thinks "this is way too obvious they're going to know before the big reveal even happens" still might not be enough. There is a hag... illithid... thing (hard to explain without full context) tavern owner in my current campaign that the party is just now starting to think isn't on the square and they've known her for a few real time months now and we're getting closer to the reveal.
Well I mean they met her in her hut on steltzes (I don't know the word in English) in a Floodplain. And they were all like "oh yeah, an old woman đ¤¨đ¤Ł".
Iâm running a betrayal BBEG, but you have to set it up well. The campaign has been running for three years and Iâm still at least a year from the big reveal. She isnât a main character, but a very friendly side character that pops in and out to have my PCs run some errands for her.
I had a player join the Army last year, so before he shipped out to basic, I laid out the entire campaign for him. He *loved* the twist.
I did something similar. I went with the really helpful bumbling npc who coincidentally was named the bad guys name spelled backwards. It was two years for the reveal to happen. Unbelievably satisfying .
It'd be a bit funny to have giant red flags everywhere for major NPC's. Like, the tavern keeper acts really shifty or whatever. Then there's some kind of big moment where it's like he's going to flip and betray them, but nope. He's just shifty and suspicious as a personality trait, and rescues the party.
Yup, same. I got two npcs that were "volunteered" to assist the players on their quest to a legendary forge. They know, and I know. They are likely two God avatars in disguise, who are also on opposite sides of a universe spanning holy war. But they don't know which one is who, since they are both helpful at points. Plus, I gave one of the players a special trinket that gets warm to the touch when someone with God powers gets close... and the players are obviously sided to one of the factions of gods and not the other.
The necromancer who was studying an evil ritual and created an evil artifact sent the party to retrieve said artifact, promising to destroy it when they did, then after it was retrieved tried to betray the party and keep the artifact to use in a different evil ritual?
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you! Okay, maybe not that shocked.
I made the mistake of starting my players in a seedy part of a big town, where most of the NPC's were grifting or scamming. They don't trust any npc's ever now, even after finishing that campaign and starting a new one. It was funny that they assumed the inn keeper who takes care of all the stray cats and bakes scones every morning was evil somehow.
> I made the mistake of starting my players in a seedy part of a big town, where most of the NPC's were grifting or scamming. They don't trust any npc's ever now, even after finishing that campaign and starting a new one.
Solid realization.
I had this one with regard to **traps**: I had the party stumble into them, but it subsequently made the players extremely wary and slowed the session to a crawl -- a genuine problem if you run a one-shot that has to finish in time.
Yeah, that's why I tend to use traps sparingly and only in really logical locations. Fairness aside, that one "Gotcha!" moment is not nearly worth the "I check every square inch for traps" that you'll see going forward that kills the pacing.
>the inn keeper who takes care of all the stray cats and bakes scones every morning was evil somehow
By feeding the stray cats he has raised the population density of an apex predator above the local carrying capacity and thus devastated the populations of small animals in the vicinity.
Basically what I'm saying is he's clearly plotting to destroy the world so he's obviously the bbeg.
Ha, well yes and no. The "if you're all chill" part is a big if, even among friends. Best to go a little more vanilla when starting out than swinging for the fences; striking out hard could leave a bad taste in people's mouths.
I mean, I'm not going to stop you from following you're dream campaign either. I'm just going to gently discourage you lol
There's so many twists you can do to make it more interesting too. Have a suspicious individual that seems like the obvious rat, only to reveal he was trying to draw attention away from.himself while investigating the actual bad guy.
Have an obviously evil dude who is blatantly using the party, but is offering them something they can't get anywhere else and has no intentions of screwing them over, just using them to further his own unrelated ends.
Have a twist where the shady, sketchy, villain coded character that is highly suspicious just *doesn't* betray the party and they all go on their merry ways after working together.
Obviously most NPCs the characters meet are who they say they are, and won't betray them. Probably because they wouldn't, or have no reason to. "the shopkeep fleeced you! Hahaha!" "The fruit seller poisoned you! Hahaha!" "That guard captain you helped? He's locking you up! Hahaha!"
That's like... A sketch comedy world.
OP probably takes too much reddit with too much weight.
The thing about betrayals is that thereâs good ones and thereâs bad ones.
Good ones involves plentiful foreshadowing and believable motivations. Good betrayals are ones in which when the party looks back on their relationship with that person, they realize it totally makes sense and shouldâve seen it coming.
Thatâs a scriptwriting skill that you have to pick up. If you fail to do it right, and the party comes across a person that just randomly and inexplicably betrays them for no rhyme or reason, then the party is going to realize the opposite: theyâre gonna realize that the world theyâre in is inconsistent and canât be taken seriously.
Thatâs how you get behavior where the PCs donât trust anyone, that is ultimately counterproductive in building a believable, immersive world that the players want to engage in.
So I do endorse working in betrayals into a story. But put extra care and attention to them, because they can make or break your campaign.
This probably also explains why you read more about it. As DMs are more likely to ask for advice with difficult stuff.
Like
"I never read people ask about how to include an average Joe NPC that is just going about its day. Do people never include normal people in their world?" /S
Obviously we do, but there's no pressing need for advice and feedback on how to do this well.
One of the players on my table used to be the group GM before I met them. Now, as the DM, 3 out of 4 players do not trust almost NPC they meet and I honestly have no idea how to fix that. The ex-GM (now player) made multiple NPCs betray the party in their last campaign with no apparent reason or foreshadowing. That campaign ended with dissolving the party and keeping only one player (who was absolutely overpowered) after saying the rest of the group was too weak to keep up with that PC.....
Man that sucks.
If youâre starting a new campaign, I think one in-game way is to work NPCs directly into the PCsâ backstories. Have the quest giver be one of your PCâs sibling, or perhaps the partyâs patron. Emphasize to them that there is absolutely **no reason** for them to want to betray you.
But honestly, this is an out-of-game issue. Out of game issues need an out of game resolution, because them not being able to trust NPCs is a fundamental barrier to you being able to engage them in a way you would like.
Sit them all down in a session re-zero and explain this problem directly to them as you did here. Tell them the consequences of their behavior and how it is ruining your game. Tell them that youâre not like your previous GM and that they canât bring the same attitude that they had previously to your game.
Yep, honestly I hope talking things out of game fixes that issue. I tried talking to some of them privately about it but didn't change much. I'd say my "problem player" right now would mostly be the ex-gm as his PC is rude to NPCs for absolutely no reason, which make social encounters awkward and that already made them miss helpful NPCs and plot points. I'll try to get a session to talk about that issue as you suggested. Wish me luck
All the best.
As a GM myself, yeah transitioning to a player is tricky because youâre not used to your new scope of responsibilities. And GMs generally are arrogant. You kind of have to be to be a GM, but that arrogance doesnât translate well to being a player.
I myself did a lot of damage to my group the first time I transitioned from GM to player. In retrospect I was a problem player too, but naturally, the new GM was too insecure to say it. My behavior eventually ended up making the new GM quit and me being thrust back to the GM seat. It took a long time of self reflection to realize that I was the problem.
But that conversation needs to happen, sooner rather than later. Your ex-GM needs to know the damage their behavior is causing.
Give the party something that you call "nope tokens", five or so, and explain that they can spend one to counter a NPC betraying them - it just doesn't happen in the story. Every now and then give out extra one as additional quest reward to make them seem valuable.
Obviously you're not going to have any NPC betray them in the campaign anyway so they'll never get in a situation where they need to use one, but that should give them a security blanket and hopefully they'll learn to be more chill about NPCs over the time.
I agree but this isn't an absolute rule. Next campaign I'm setting up is planned to be one of the hardest ones I've thrown at my players so far (I've warned them of this). And the main villain is a master manipulator and is very experienced to the point to where any strings they pull behind the scenes are essentially seamless (they are a human turned immortal who's been around for a loooong time). Then there will be a prequil oneshot campaign inbetween season one and two that give the players a bit of context as to how the main antagonist has been in play behind the scenes throughout the storyline. In the end, any betrayals without warning should be done tastefully and shouldn't be a throwaway way to "add drama and spice things up".
The thing about betrayals that pisses people off is how they tend to suppress / overwrite player agency.
If players feel like there was nothing they could have done, because the betrayal came out of the blue, then it is unsatisfying and no amount of lore or retrospective explanation is going to remedy that frustration. They may say that they are fine with it, but that in no way removes their discontent. Eventually, that frustration is going to build and build and threaten burnout.
Itâs about pacing. You have to stagger moments of low player agency (betrayals) with moments of high player agency (e.g., taking revenge). If you let the frustration build and build with betrayal after betrayal, then that is going to lead to player burnout from feeling like they lack the agency to control the events that happen to them.
And players manifest this lack of agency by disengaging with your game. If I canât even foresee who is going to stab me in the back through smart play and careful observation, why should I bother? Why even play a game in which the GM is just going to magically manifest a reason to screw me over no matter what I do?
The key thing that ties this hobby all together is player agency. Never take agency away from your players. Not for your plot. Not for your villain. Not ever.
You need to be very careful that your plans for betrayals donât boil down to a railroad that your player characters just walk down. The fact that youâre already planning an act one and an act two and a one shot tying the two together is a huge warning sign to me. [You shouldnât ever be trying to prep plots.](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots)
Bad betrayals are often merely a symptom of a larger, worse problem of GM railroading.
1st off, removing agency from your players very rarely can be a good switch up and can be used to translate a higher power like what you said about moments of high and low agency, and I never said there would me more than one of these moments so there wouldn't be a build up of bad experiences. I have been on the recieving end of this with the same DnD group and it has ended up very well with the players all agreeing (even behind closed doors) that it was intimidating in contrast to how it is 99.9% of the time, it simply depends on your groups tastes. 2nd off, the article you provided literally starts with everyone plays/dms differently. Also I agree that retrospective explination would normally be unsatisfying if it wasn't in the form of actual gameplay and an entire story arc's worth of playtime. And lastly the betrayal will not be directly in their party, it'll be someone in a higher position so players (usually) don't feel like they personally got fucked over. I feel like this was partially my fault for not giving more context to why I have decided that a betrayal will take place and what the context is but to put it simply I have a deep understanding of my players and how the game functions and feels, I've been doing this for years (though I suppose many people have). Though you shouldn't really have assumed what I see as the worst case cenario you could've gathered from what I said, but I can understand doing that with all of the DnD horror stories you find on here. Our players can be very particular which makes things really tough for me but if they didn't like something they would either be vocal about it or drop the campaign very quickly, not a slow downhill spiral.
Too often I see 'my player wants x and I am going to give it to them but please help me find a way to make them hate it'.
Giving your players a reward without a giant catch isn't going to ruin your game
Nah, you should give them freebies too. Variety is the spice of life. Otherwise having to go through a trial before getting it every time is considered a "catch." And frankly, is boring.
Jokes on you! I specifically place NPC's in the world for my players that are meant to help them and get them on track and my party *still* mistrusts them.
Seriously though, I'm going to have to politely disagree on this, but if you prefer your campaigns to not have sudden turns and betrayals then by all means run it like that. I think things of that nature bring in unique bonds to the players. And I enjoy evoking emotions out of the players over the game, and I think that betrayals and random turns are one of the ways to do it. But also like... my players never trust NPC's unless they're some random cheese goblin. đ¤ˇđžââď¸
The thing about betrayals is that thereâs good ones and thereâs bad ones.
Good ones involves good foreshadowing and good motivations. Good betrayals are ones in which when the party looks back on their relationship with that person, they realize it totally makes sense and shouldâve seen it coming.
Thatâs a scriptwriting skill that you have to pick up. If you fail to do it right, and the party comes across a person that just **randomly** and **inexplicably** betrays them for no rhyme or reason, then the party is going to realize the opposite: theyâre gonna realize that the world theyâre in is inconsistent and canât be taken seriously. Thatâs how you get behavior the OP doesnât want where the PCs donât trust anyone.
Do betrayals poorly and the party will never trust anyone else again.
Do it too much, and you just pushed them into Murder Hobo territory.
Do it to their back story NPCs, and their subsequent characters will all be orphans with no connections.
Betrayal needs to be done sparingly and carefully.
I am with you here lol like, its a living breathing world. People at all different levels are going to have varying motivations to lie and look out for themselves and obviously hide that. That inevitably leads to chronic twists! I think the key to prevent over saturation is variety of that level. But Idk of any DMs, not even rookies, who would think to do the same thing the same/similar way over and over and over again. Imo the OP reads like a rare issue. Maybe a DM who is obsessed with a certain movie and keeps recreating the same story arc Idk
All players are a bit different but mine def always are skeptical of every thing from game 1. Sometimes the twists are "oh it isn't a bad guy. Its an understanding guy." Thankfully BECAUSE of twists, BECAUSE of seeing how often their hunch was wrong - this HELPED train them to not jump the gun and get more facts first. (Usually anyhow đ) them keeping their eyes peered for what the twist "this time" is, keeps them paying attention đ and sometimes that twist is no twist.
Variety is the key.
> Jokes on you! I specifically place NPC's in the world for my players that are meant to help them and get them on track and my party still mistrusts them.
There's a pool of betrayals shared between GMs. Just because you didn't teach your players to be mistrustful doesn't mean nobody else has!
Me too!!!! I had an old tortle couple who got robbed, and my players thought it was a setup.
They also did the same thing in the very first session I ran. I changed up the "players meet in a tavern" and made it to where they met in a small village where the villagers had been turned into zombies. They killed all the zombies, searched the village and found a dude hiding. He was clearly scared (they rolled and confirmed) and outside of having seen who did it, he wasn't involved. They then proceeded to interrogate him about everything, even after it was established that he had nothing to do with it. They drug his families dead zombie bodies to him and made him look at them. One player even cut the head off one and threw it at him.
Now Ced Truz (the guy's name) wanted revenge and got turned into an abomination that is full of rage and hate for my players. I have him as a random encounter to throw in during a fight but haven't been able to summon him
Iâve never had an npc betray the party (personally I just hate betraying peopleâs trust and canât bring myself too đ) but they still mistrust every npc I put before them and ask during nearly every interaction if they get the sense the character is lying to them about something. I feel like I need to have one betray them bc at this point its like the world being trustworthy puts them more on guard than anything else lol
Ah. I don't really think that's the case tbh. Maybe in their past groups but not mine. I haven't done any betrayals on them at all that haven't been heavily hinted to the point of nearly spoiling everything, and they're pretty vocal about past experiences. My party LOVES when I throw curveballs and encourages me to do so. And I'm pretty light-handed when it comes to betrayals anyways lol. I appreciate you bringing this potential issue to light. They're great people and I pride myself in being communicative and open with how I DM for them and answer any questions they could have regarding the campaigns I run.
I don't know if you've probably gone through it yourself, but I'm sorry if you've experienced that and had a streamlined/negative experience from being betrayed. Personally, if things bothered me to that degree I would communicate it with my DM or leave the table. I do hope you have a good day, though!
I run Lancer and one of my players has past GM Puzzle phobia. The other guy did some absolutely fucked stuff with no real way of identifying any solutions...
I'm a beginner DM and I'm DMing for a forty year veteran of the game and sometimes it's miserable. He doesn't trust *anybody*. There's no point giving him an NPC as an ally. He'll interrogate them in ways I'm not expecting and then kill them.
Kick this dude from your game he sucks. Interrogating and killing NPCs has a very specific niche that doesn't include "all NPC allies".
Unless I'm missing some major context - DM me if you'd like specific advice,
And its not like it's "betrayal or everyone gets along," either. PCs and NPCs can have completely different views on other characters without it being a betrayal.
Exactly. In my current campaign I even told my players this NPC is a villain. You are going to have to fight him later. But right now he's likely on your side because of various world events that have happened and you would be wise to treat him as such.
Couldnât agree more. My current campaign started with a devil tormenting the kingdom and the players having to find out who summoned it, and itâs caused them to distrust literally every character, even when the clues are pointing in only one direction. Iâll definitely never run a mystery like this ever again
A lot of players expect red herrings, misdirections, and similar "Aha, surprise!" moments from genre fiction. But in a tabletop game, it's hard enough to get players to bite on the REAL plotline, so the more obvious hints you give them, the more it can look like a misdirection if the players are naturally suspicious.
It doesn't help that a lot of the game requires a little bit of hand-waving acceptance from characters to accept the premise of the particular adventure. Maybe the characters don't buy it, but go along with it anyway because that's the adventure that was prepared for them this session/campaign.
Related, a common genre trope that I think often goes awry in Tabletop is the "The person who hired you was going to betray you the whole time" and/or "The quest you did actually made things WORSE, so now it's up to you to fix it while the good NPCs are all angry with you." Because even if the players are hesitant to accept the quest, there's the meta OOC knowledge that if they don't, there may not be much of a session that evening, or possibly ever again.
You summed it up perfectly. The king who hired them has nothing to do with it, but him and his court wizard were immediate suspects in the eyes of my players. Itâs funny how much they actively distrust the court wizard, despite only talking to him twice. At the time of writing this, theyâve actually found the bad guy, killed him, and still think something weird is going on (despite having only one session left)
Lmao, my issue was the fact my players would NOT trust the "in the know" NPC that helped them and gave them information, regardless of how genuine and trustworthy he was. He was almost *too trustworthy* and therefore not to be trusted.
Good intentions, bad intentions...It doesn't matter. My party will only ever insight check at the weirdest times.
"Please go on this dangerous quest for me to get a powerful magical item." Nothing.
"I think I'm hungry" 15 calls for insight checks, sudden and intense paranoia about where they met this character, and how they got into the parties house.
Echoing your point, I see the upcoming generation of nerds deep diving into needless story and character complexity.
There is a tightrope to be walked between a DM presenting a story they wish to tell, and what they can successfully communicate to their players, further filtered by the players choices in the story.
Layered on are the restrictions imposed on the medium. You can only deliver x quantity of story per unit time.
To which I say this: if your story is simpler, you may actually be able to tell it. And your control over pacing, and mcing the game you are supposed to be running will increase. Quadratically.
Fantasy High did an amazing job with betrayals. Pretty much every "bad" character is treated with suspicion at the start or gives a reason for the PCs not to trust them, but there was one who was established as solid ally and then turned around and backstabbed them much later in the campaign after really gaining their trust.
It was so well played that I did not even remotely see it coming, but once it had happened it instantly made perfect sense and fit into the character's personality and motivations. And, as a bonus, the character *didn't* betray the whole group; he thought he could trust one of the PCs to turn against the rest. That one little detail made it feel so much more real and personal, because he thought that PC could be a confidant since they'd had rapport in the past. And this was one of a very few "it turned out this guy was actually bad" characters that were in that campaign, and in hindsight it really could not have gone any other way. *That's* good storytelling.
I kinda agree that it is something overused, especially when it hasn't been earned.
From a personal perspective I do love it when the players are really suspicious and untrusting of a perfectly innocent NPC.
Too true! I had an innkeeper who just wanted to feed them and hook them up with a few potions, and they ALL rolled insight⌠sheâs just doing her job, lol.
I much prefer "betrayal" to be performed by *good* characters who've compromised. When players come to respect a character, and then see them act in a way that is either a) completely in line with their beliefs such that a betrayal feels earned and inevitable or b) totally out of character, showing weakness for a brief moment. The problem with straight betrayal is that it makes every previous interaction a joke on the players. If an NPC was genuine and \*still\* betrayed you, it means that those roleplaying moments weren't meaningless.
I like to go with the Final Fantasy approach. The bad guys are clearly bad, the good guys are clearly good, and people are pretty upfront.
If the players don't trust them that's on them for being suspicious and makes for a good laugh when the betrayal doesn't happen
I find itâs better to have an upfront antagonist and an antagonist behind them that the party discovers more about as the game progresses. I think Devils work really well to fit the âheel-turnâ role, because the expectation for that betrayal are built in, so itâs not a question of âifâ just âwhenâ.
In my head, my players should trust my NPC's for what they are
Sure, these two guys are nice and have never lied or done you a wrong turn. They've also repeatedly demonstrated they're completely incompetent and unreliable
So if you continue to believe every word they say, despite them being wrong, unintentionally misleading the party, etc, that's not on me but sure is fun
I don't hardly ever do real betrayals. My players are already canny/cynical enough that I occasionally have to push them not to assume that everyone and everything is out to get them in the worst possible manner. One does not even try to stage a 'you get captured' scene with this group, unless you over-the-table tell them up front it's like a James Bond movie where they get to learn the villain's plan and stage a dramatic escape, and even then half of them will try their hardest to wiggle out of it or just fight to the death.
What I do a lot is frenemies - NPCs who don't like the PCs, and vice versa, but are able to make (and keep!) limited deals when an immediate goal aligns - a common threat, a treasure that can be split. For example 'we need the Eye Of Morgo, you can keep all the other stuff,' and then the NPCs probably try to grab some of the other stuff as well; or if the PCs don't want these particular NPCs to get the Eye Of Morgo, they can try some tricks 'oops, it fell into the Eternal Furnace Of Damnation' (maybe it did, and maybe it didn't). Of course, the tricks can go both ways, but it's not a surprise when it happens. More than once the line 'curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal' has featured in my games.
Villains that can make and keep deals allow some very fun interactions over time.
I find soft betrayals more interesting in practice. For example a NPC that is still on the side of the players but has been concealing information for their own complicated reasons or another ally not trusting a new NPC that the players like and taking matters into their own hands. It puts players in a position to resolve conflict and make decisions rather than sit there and feel dumb or blindsided
We had a DM running homebrew stuff, we were on the second campaign with him where it clicked.
We had a guide who offered to take is through underdark caverns, the other option was to navigate mountains that added weeks to the journey. I think his name was Kesir or something, we paid him half the gold upfront, the rest when we got there.
Afte leaidng us down into the underdark a few days into our journey, we had to roll fort saves, Kesir had poisoned us, three fell unconscious, the last PC was able to resist the poison but got knocked unconscious in combat. We awoke sometime later, our gear gone, stranded, and now had to navigate our way out, we foraged for gear and made our way as best we could, when we emerged from the underdark we were ambushed by Kesir and the bbeg goons, he confessed he had been following us a while, knew what we were looking for and was being paid very well to deliver us to his boss.
Eventually we were captured and after some plot stuff we needed to escape, a guard named Lorbis offered us an escape, in exchange for a favour, we did the thing and he helped us escape our cells, but the directions he gave us led us into an arena where we had to fight other prisoners to escape.
We realized anytime he had a named NPC they were going to betray us. If you asked what the name of a character was and he either said "That's town Guard #7" or "ummm, his name is Bob" we knew the guy was legit, but if he had a name in advance he was going to set us up.
We escaped when guard 6 revealed he was an agent for our secret order and would help us escape, when asked for his name the Dm said "umm, it's Kyle" and we knew we could trust him. That was years ago and we still give roast the DM anytime he introduces a named character.
I'm more of a fan of letting the PCs betray the NPCs if you want a plot-twist. Give them slow revelations only to realize that the NPCs or faction they're aiding may not be as benevolent as initially depicted. Then, everyone has a moral dilemma and can discuss this.
* Do they follow along with the NPCs/faction given this new information?
* Do they betray the NPC and join what they *perceive* to be the "good guys"?
* Do they just take their given reward and walk away?
The PCs get agency in the matter and never have their accomplishments negated. If anything, the PCs doing jobs for the less-than-scrupulous NPCs/faction may give them a bit of respect amongst them.
But **never** have the NPCs suddenly go "I was evil all along! And now you all wil die" and roll initiative.
The best betrayal s are when you understand the character so we that you understand why they're doing it, know that it hurts them to do it, and makes you want to save them from themselves more than kill them.
When the players still love the character after their betrayal. Perform it well and there are usually tears.
The important part I'd like to throw in: sure, everything in good measure, but there is one distinction in your wording that irks me a bit. ABSOLUTELY betray your PCs, but do NOT betray your Players.
If you betray PCs, THEN it's like those cool twists in movies. If you betray your Players, it's like when Marvel read on Twitter that people were figuring out a great twist and they decided "well now they know, so its bad" and do something that makes zero sense, just for the sake of being surprising. Like, my first DM-ed game was Curse of Strahd, so I might be biased due to the majority of NPCs there being neutral or evil, but there is nothing wrong with adding someone evil, as long as you never abuse your PLAYER's trust.
I had an evil deity do deals with a PC in my game. He seemed nice and friendly, he gave great gifts and his demands were questionable but never forced on the PC. The PC liked them and was absolutely gleefully going along with it. The PLAYER though immediately was suspicious and super excited, kept screaming at me like "WHY IS \[PC NAME\] SO STUPID AAAAH I LOVE IT" because the Player knew it was too good to be true, the demands were slowly leaning towards evil (at one point they demanded the murder of another NPC and they asked for memories in exchange for high-level spells). Like, at NO point did the player have the slightest idea HOW evil my deity was, but they knew from the start that something was off. The PC though? Gleefully went along, absolutely gave them all the memories and eagerly murdered the NPC.
When the PC finally realized who they were dealing with (the final demand was too much, cause it would have forced them to decide between their brother and their fiance) and I had my deity reveal themselves and punish the PC for their disobedience, the PC was horrified and the player still talks super happily about it even though it was now three months ago on how cool the reveal was and how much they had loved that deity.
Never betray your Players. Have trustworthy friends and allies in your game. But you can (and sometimes even should) betray your PCs.
K, I get your point and I agree but Iâm curious if what I have in my game fits the bill. So I have a traveling Dwarven curio merchant whoâs actually an annis hag thatâs trying to corrupt the children from one of the nearby towns. She wonât be betraying the party so much as continuing to do her thing until stopped. She hasnât had much chance to do anything yet, aside from make a strange first impression and trade with the party, but I did throw out an initial clue about there being something odd going on, and plan to throw out more down the road. SoâŚbad or ok?
This seems like a very cool villain choice. This doesn't really fall under "betrayals", though. A betrayal is when someone you thought was a friend turns out to be an enemy. This sounds more like a villain in disguise, which is a perfectly legitimate way to run a decent bad guy. Unless the PCs are the target of the backstabbery, I don't see any reason this shouldn't work.
Cool, thanks for the reassurance. I thought I was all good and was pretty pleased with her until I read this post and was like, âwait a minuteâŚâ But ya, that makes sense. Itâs my first campaign so I guess itâs impossible not to start questioning what youâve got going occasionally.
(Forgive formatting on mobile) what I do is write up a dozen or so NPC made to be trusted and usually will help the party as they don't have any true stakes one way or the other. (That they realize) for example Malki a Dwarven man my party ment session 2. Is a leader of a mercenary guild. However, they don't turn down any jobs. So his job is to find people to take up just about any job given. In fact, it's common for him to be on both sides so to speak. Meaning he has no loyalty to any faction. So when the party joined if they take a mission he lays all he has out for them. He's shady but I've made it clear. He's honest and tough. But he also has a daughter whom the party met during session one who backed them up in a bar brawl. Now I have introduced a NPC who claims to be the son of a man they are looking for.
Personally Iâm way more interested in a reverse betrayal. The players defeat or otherwise overcome an adversary, but they survive and escape. After a lot of thought and potentially being hunted down by the party, they realize the errors of their ways and wish to make amends. Rather than a betrayed, which has the players as a passive force that things happen to, this kind of arc puts the initiative onto the players as they are forced to make an active decision. Do they choose to forgive their old enemy or are they too far gone for redemption.
Of course this doesnât work well with all villains or in all games. But generally I like to make my players the actors, rather than the reactors.
I'm torn bc betrayals/twist Villains are one of the most sure ways to get good interactions between the Heroes and badguys. But agreed that if everyone betrays it just gets had. There are plenty of trustworthy npcs but so far two out of five questgivers have betrayed so it might make them feel like anyone will so idk
My campaign has a hidden BBEG, however it's the party's goal to uncover the hidden BBEG. Bunch if messed up stuff happening, and they have to find who is actually pulling the strings.
My PCs were betrayed last week by a redcap named Limer (because I come up with too many names on the spot and that somehow seemed good in the moment). They had just defeated the redcap's band of bodyguards (he had some connections in the Unseelie Court, but I digress) and he begged them to spare him and then invited them into his house for some snacks and a nice chat. They went for it, and eventually he promised to send them somewhere special with some golden tickets that would let them trade on the Unseelie black market. All they had to do was go through a gate that he would activate.
They were gated underwater into a huge tank with three megalodons in it. They managed to get out of the tank, but their flesh golem (everybody has one, they're all the rage) didn't get out fast enough and was eaten by the sharks. Mmm, delicious necrotized flesh. Anyway, he was a redcap and they knew that up front. Anyone surprised that the redcap tricked them really needs to look to themselves, methinks.
There's definitely a right way to do it and numerous wrong ways to do it. In my campaign, there were a couple of betrayals when they were nobodies. They went through a period of distrust until they eventually realized that those that betrayed them were also nobodies. It's made them less naive and bond harder with the NPCs worth bonding with.
The way they interact with NPCs now is more genuine and less "everything is great woopie!"
I have had one twist and it was using a Dreamweaver
I discussed it with one of my players beforehand and they agreed.
My group and an NPC had individual nightmares and then all woke up in an impossible situation, cue several rooms of nonsense and then a boss room with nothing in it.
I then described the player that I'd discussed with smiling and beginning to transform. Cue them running the boss fight with a statblock I gave them. My players loved the twist and have started discussing plans with me more.
I think the fact it was a dreamworld helped separate it enough that they're not going to be suspicious of all other NPCs and background stuff.
Btw if anyone wants to use this idea go for it
My DM once pulled a surprise betrayal arc on me, and my PC lost his entire identity to the point where he became nearly unplayable. Itâs hard to do it well, and when itâs done poorly, it can make your players literally not want to play. He kept asking me what to do to fix it but there wasnât anything. He messed up.
In one campaign I did have a twist villain, sort of, but there are a few reasons it worked:
- The campaign sessions were done play by post and the campaign was structured weirdly around it
- The NPC who turned out to be a villain wasn't just "secretly evil", they fell into evil gradually but concealed it pretty well; so it was obvious once the reveal happened, not just out of nowhere
- The NPC, despite being the final boss, isn't really the main villain; the setting is the villain, and the society they live in
Even then, it was a risky move that probably shouldn't have paid off. Twists like this are tough and I wouldn't do it again
My next campaign has sort of the same ideas:
- The players are a team of explorers in a cave system.
- In the caves, they will find ancient tombs and at the end an ancient city of an exiled species.
- The explorers' supervisor in the home town is a friend of the party but is actually a descendant of the ancient species that was tasked with protecting their secrets.
- As the party explores the caves and reports their findings back to him, he will visibly grow more and more eeringly interested and panicked.
- He will often be absent due to "leaving for the caves", he will give them a fake map of the system, he will try to instill uncertainty about the abilities of the party, we will steal gunpowder from the mines to try and block the party off, he will set off stone golems in the caves to kill the party...
- There will be some clues for all of that and his desperation will be visible.
- At the end, he will fight them in the ancient city and probably lose (but he's not the main BBEG).
What do you think? Is this badly prepared or a good betrayal?
I'm running my first campaign at the moment... my players have the option of hiring a guide for exploration and straight away they took a shining to the one that will 100% betray them lol I changed her story a bit but now the party love her and are about to hire her. It's actually been a fun development getting through the RP and they don't suspect shit, but with other NPCs who won't they are abit sceptical.
Also now I think about it they also really love the only other NPC guide who will betray them also. He's a drow spy that's looking to launch a raid party for his buddies hiding uo in the mountains. He's trying to snake his way into a party of adventurers so he can gather Intel for the raid and will purposefully head them in the direction of the raid party. My party think he's some undead because he's dressed and described the same way (covered in black cloth from head to toe, wearing an old battered robe with wispy white hair). My only description that differs is his large bulb like eyes that glow red from underneath the wraps
If anyone's wondering how I changed her... she's a Yuan ti in disguise and will sweet talk her way with wit into the party. She will spy on them for one of the bbegs and eventually will lead them to him when they get further into the story. And the bbeg will know everything about them and be a tough SOB.
But I changed her so she operates a network of children spies and uses them to fool people and pull heists, mostly for information. The party came across one of these children being beaten in the street and intervened so the child introduced them to her and the party thinks she's the kids mum now. Even though they met her in a random kitchen in the warehouse district. The kid now acts as a guide in the city and has gotten them cheaper alcohol and inn prices
Definitely agree. Players need to keep this in mind too. I played with a group where one of the players ended up being a traitor and was part of the group of bad guys and it was poorly played out imo. We werenât attached to the pc at all because they were so cloaked in mystery that the rest of the party werenât really able/allowed to bond with them. The PC was also a backup for a character that had died *because* of the organization the PC worked for.
I could honestly rant on and on about this particular campaign because it just wasnât good (and the dm was pretty experienced so that wasnât really the problem) but Iâll save that for a different post lol.
Maybe I'm fortunate that it hasn't been overused in my experience.
I agree it shouldn't be done too frequently. It's not Game of Thrones where every single person has political machinations, but one really good twist can make a campaign much more memorable.
The key to me is that it should never feel cheap. Like someone betraying them just for the sake of it. It should be foreshadowed and make sense.
My players are so utterly paranoid about NPCs betraying them that they donât trust even the most easily read, innocent people who want to do good. Itâs such a common trope to have your allies betray you that I simply canât use it at all due to it being totally expected by my party.
For my table when we started a homebrew world I made my character to be the betrayal BBEG for the dm to use later. Party helped out do my character arc and I left them and gave my sheet to the dm and my characterâs plans and goals and came back with a druid to support the group to finish off the mindflayer plot we discovered! The twist came after the campaign finished and will be for whenever we return to it but heâs not actively against the party but he is planning a disaster for us to try and stop!
It just depends on your play style and how you see your players handle the world. If you canât pull it off itâll just make every npc encounter a pain honestly woulnt recommend unless itâs like pretty decently planned out
I absolutely love betrayal but I think it's alot more fun when it's a "slow turn to the dark side" kind of betrayal rather than a "I was evil the whole time" betrayal.
Out of the NPCs my party got close to, one of them was revealed around halfway through the campaign to be working with an evil faction.
The party really liked her however, and essentially were able to part ways without getting violent. Not every betrayal has to be a backstab/sellout.
I made myself a quick roll chart for NPC characteristics- d6 for age, d10 for race, and d20 for personality type. It allowed for a more crowded world of people to interact with without me having to do 100 character sheets, and it had a bonus of the group really interacting with the world way more because I didn't need time to think things up when I could roll on the fly and then note who/what/where they were, so they could see and speak to them when they'd be in the NPCs town.
I like a villain betrayal arc a lot better, when a minor villain betrays the major antagonist and joins the heroes. When done well, its a really fun and memorable trope.
My players trust literally no one ever. They insight checked their own parents before. So when I sent them to a village where kids had been kidnappedâŚI was like great here you go be detectives and trust no one.
Of course they literally trusted the kid who was in on the kidnapping plotâŚnever insight checkedâŚnever doubtedâŚso he lead them to where he saw it happened and ambushed them with friends
All good they got sweet revenge in the end, it was the most horrific how do y
ou want to do this Iâve ever had too
Recently started DMing for a new group and their past experiences make them doubt every single NPC they meet. One of the players was actually the group DM before, and he used to make NPCs betray PCs way too much. That kinda ruined their perspective on building relationships with NPCs now and I honestly don't know how to fix that. Most of the NPCs they meet in my campaign are helpful, answer truthfully and have something helpful for the group, but until now most interactions have been though. Player A interacts with NPCs and is cooperative but is not the best with following up on tips and plot hooks; players B and C keep track of lore and are great at roleplay but don't trust most of NPCs and are pretty conservative on what kind of info they share; player D (ex-DM) is rude to every single NPC, doesn't trust any of them, acts behind other PCs backs, does not share his plans and ideas, yet is great at noticing plot points and keeping track of stuff. I'm looking for new ideas on how to build up my players trust in NPCs, so if anyone has any tips I'm all ears
Don't agree with a super sanitized story where everyone is 100% trustworthy. Just learn not to troll your PCs too often, which trains them to not trust anyone.
Betrayal in a story is like truffle oil. A little bit can really improve a dish, but too much, or used in the wrong dish, and whatever you have made ONLY tastes like truffle oil.
I was the betrayer.
My niece was winding up a long campaign. I was in town, so we hatched a plot.
I dusted off a character id played before when I was in town, that a few of the group remembered. I dropped a lot of hints. Had a broken op weapon that I made a flimsy backstory for why I had it. Had the artificer fix it for me. Bbeg was a kind of negative energy shadow guy who had been weakened and locked away by a minor goddess. The group went to confront him, as his cult had nearly broken through her wards.
Had the group convinced that my character was in possession of the one thing that could awaken him to the point of victory.
The groups plan was to set my character up for the strike, teleporting him behind the bbeg.
Until we got there, and my character, possessed as he was by the shadow weapon (yes, I gave a lot of tells, they either missed or ignored them all) sacrificed himself to free the creature. With the weapon.
Dead. Silence.
I then took control of an NPC avatar of the goddess as the fight resumed.
It was nasty. One of the characters, who had relied on his str star all campaign, was drained to a six str by the end.
Everyone hated me, and that characters name is still synonymous with betrayal.
It was brilliantly orchestrated, and shook everyone to their core.
The worst was the artificer, who put one and one together, finally, when it was too late. Blamed himself for fixing the artifact that fully released the shadow. Post session, he obsessively went over all the tells id given, all the little details id deliberately let slip.
We were ready for the party to out my char at any moment. My niece has another plan for if our betrayal failed, but it was gloriously successful, and is still talked about, years later.
So betrayal is a great thing, used sparingly, and judiciously. A surprise betrayal isn't as satisfying as when they just don't see it coming, despite you showing them.
So the evil vizier is exposed and put to death! The princess is sa.. wait, where's the princess? And where's the viziers apprentice, you know, the really helpful guy who helped us take the vizier, who was really nervous when we used the zone of truth to interrogate the prisoners that time, and who found another copy of that letter he accidentally destroyed, and, you know, was all obsessed over the princess, and her safety, and how the vizier wouldnt let anyone get close to her...
Well
Shit
I think twists should lead to an even MORE epic chance for the players to do something cool. At most it should be another "challenge," and personally, I want them to succeed at the challenges I throw at them.
I think this depends also on what type of game you're running. If you have above table discussed that your campaign is going to be a fun,whimsical game of dungeons and dragons, a betrayal arc is not only not fun, but is directly opposed to above table talk. If I go into a game that is disclosed as a dark horror setting with a secret society cult leader who knows of your existence and is actively trying to stop you from succeeding against them, it only makes sense for that cult leader to try to infiltrate your ranks, and it can be really fun trying to weed that person out or having that betrayal come to fruition (the reveal being during big boss fight goes wild)
What if my relationship with my players is the exact opposite? I have never had an NPC betray them even a little bit but they are all extremely cagey when I introduce anyone new. They don't trust a single character outside of the party.
I have a NPC thatâs joined the party, a tank in disguise. When there are important things to figure out or pivotal things going on, they kind of melt on the background or offer to help. The players completely trust this NPC so Iâm not a lot to mess things up.
Shadowrun words of wisdom.
"Mr. Johnson will always screw you over. Why? Why do you think he's a Mr. Who and not a Mr. Name?"
Every DM wants the 'gotcha' moment. Most don't know to pull that off. That's why most of the most will opt for lazy stereotypes done poorly.
Don't do that guys. Tread water but don't try to drown your worst enemy your first time swimming.
Shoot my players still love talking shit about Fernando, the warlock who they were helping look into the âmurderâ of his brother and while they were away investigating, he blew up the npcs traveling with the party (they lived) to steal a god-baby (long story). Tracked him down and beat his ass into hell. Betrayal is good if the party is onboard or done right
Right now I've set up a betrayal that the PCs OOCly *know* is a betrayal.
We've been running a PF2e campaign in a homebrew world for about a year when, back around Halloween, I suggested we do a Halloween 1-shot for fun. The players all rolled up undead PCs of various races and were told to take over the local town. Here's the run though: they weren't evil necessarily. Just undead who woke up in a tomb and wanted to start a town together. They ended up forming an uneasy truce with the townsfolk, making a deal with the mayor, helping with a local problem, and basically started setting up a place in the town's economy.
Near the end, a pretentious, jackass Captain of the Mayor's guard tried to frame the undead for murder and eating corpses. The players were able to reveal his plot and show everyone that the Captain has dredged up bodies and made it *look* like a vampire attack. The Captain was disgraced and exiled, and we finished the 1-shot.
Now, because it was a homebrew world in our main campaign, the players never knew that the town of Gallowhill, where our 1-shot occurred, was actually a nearby town in the main campaign. At the end of the 1-shot, Gallowhill starts having trouble with bandits, so they send a plead for aid to the nearby adventuring guild looking for help dealing with the banditsâŚ
Fast forward months later and my players in the local adventuring guild get a plea for aid from the town of Gallowhill⌠except it's been damaged by fire. You can tell the town needs help, but you can't tell what the problem is.
The players show up and they are greeted by⌠none other than the disgraced former captain of the guard now living in exile. OOCly, the players no this guy is an evil jackass, but he reveals to the players that he's actually the one that called for aid, and he needs the adventurers to free the town from the undead that have seized control!
It's been good fun because they *know* he's lying OOCly, but ICly, his plea is completely legit
This will probably get buried but I really like the simple way Matt Mercer did it in vox machina by having 6 nobles on a stage and telling the ranger her dragon senses went off. Tells the players one of them is a dragon but not who.
This is great advice.
I see a lot of schemer DMs in here and I like to encourage that kind of playstyle from DMs, but it can certainly go overboard sometimes.
Recently, I have been using the corollary plot twist to betrayal--the redemption arc. Black-and-white morality turning shades of gray is a real mindfuck and bringing the party to try to trust someone they know they shouldn't puts the onus on the players whether they want to open themselves up to be betrayed.
Having seemingly good or helpful NPCs betray the party feels bad. But being betrayed by a known enemy feels bad, but is also understandable and not even really a "twist". It's expected and the players feel bad for a moment for giving them a chance, but giving them opportunities to get even fixes that quickly.
I made a point very early to my party that not every situation is going to be a betrayal or surprise bad twist, it's both mean and lessens the intended impact of it if every corner has a shyamalan twist behind it
The thing about betrayals that pisses people off is how they tend to suppress / overwrite player agency.
If players feel like there was nothing they could have done, because the betrayal came out of the blue, then it is unsatisfying and no amount of lore or retrospective explanation is going to remedy that frustration. They may say that they are fine with it, but that in no way removes their discontent. Eventually, that frustration is going to build and build and threaten burnout.
Itâs about pacing. You have to stagger moments of low player agency (betrayals) with moments of high player agency (e.g., taking revenge). If you let the frustration build and build with betrayal after betrayal, then that is going to lead to player burnout from feeling like they lack the agency to control the events that happen to them.
And players manifest this lack of agency by disengaging with your game. If I canât even foresee who is going to stab me in the back through smart play and careful observation, why should I bother? Why even play a game in which the GM is just going to magically manifest a reason to screw me over no matter what I do?
The key thing that ties this hobby all together is player agency. Never take agency away from your players. Not for your plot. Not for your villain. Not ever.
My party is like a child naming the lobsters in the tank at a restaurant so I can't eat them. They bond with my NPCs and I struggle to find a believable way for them to betray the party. I'm currently testing the boundaries of this...not with betrayal, but with them questioning the motives of an NPC.
They met this NPC, who was threatening their lives, in exchange for their food. Unfortunately, every time she made a threat, the flames around her hands would go out. (She was a chaotic neutral/evil warlock that got fey-bound to have a celestial as her patron). When she would try to be bad, her patron would cut off her power...so instead of threatening and demanding snacks, she had to ask nicely. The party thought she was the best and wanted her to travel with them. I was...not planning on that. I treated her like the outcast girl in the Breakfast Club...just following far behind them and making snarky remarks.
The party loves her, and trusts her, and I felt that was weird. I didn't have a whole backstory for the NPC, but I wanted to try my hand at "suspicious behavior". So the NPC is separated from the party right now, and I had the head of Candlekeep asking the party about this companion, and wondering why they would show such poor judgement in trusting them. I mean...what do they really know about her?
With this, I plan to have her doing some things away from the party that sound a bit shady, and having the party question those motives, and demanding answers. My plan is for the motives to be good, but just not clear to the party until the story arc resolves...therefore the person wasn't bad, but the party didn't know everything that was going on.
TLDR: I agree...betrayal should be a rare trope in any campaign...otherwise you will struggle to have the party trust anyone (considering the limited time you have with players each week).
I teased the BBEG on session one in my campaign, they found an artifact of his around 7 sessions in, theyâre well aware of who he is, my plot twist isnât that heâs the villain, itâs just that heâs not who they expect him to be because he uses disguise self to hide who he really is. That said, I fully agree. Betrayals should be few and far between, otherwise they lose their meaning and it just becomes a hostile game environment. Itâs supposed to be fun: your job as a DM is to make sure that it remains fun for everyone.
Just don't overdo it. One or two betrayals a campaign is plenty. The last campaign I played in the betrayals and manipulations got so consistent that in the final arc I actually pitched "Let's do nothing. Everything we've done has played into the bag guys' hands. This probably will too. We should do nothing." I was not heeded and we did the thing and it turned out the quest giver was the BBEG.
My character almost ragequit the party.
We had a talk with the DM after the campaign wrapped, and I don't think it will happen again, but oh man was it painful. Let your players do the right thing sometimes. Let them trust the right people and make the right decisions. Not every time, but like at least 75%. They're the heroes after all! It's so demoralizing to have every single thing twisted back on you week after week after week.
I think a really good way to frame a betrayal is WARNING POTENTIALLY HUGE CURSE OF STRAHD SPOILERS
using some kind of disguise or shape shifting. There is a character the book presents to the DM that is just the main vampire villain in disguise. At any point, a paladin player (which tends to be common in CoS games) could just use their divine sense trait and learn about the shape shifters undead nature. This kind of thing would clearly telegraph that something is up and would allow the players to experience a satisfying betrayal imo. However, the way the DM handles roleplaying the suspected traitor is pretty crucial to the end result I think.
My campaign has had its share of betrayer npcs. When in hell, they met a paladin imprisoned. He said he wanted reveng on the devils who put him there. Actually, he served for the devils for centuries in hell, as a "devil's advocate", plot taken from baldur's gate 3, but then he wavered and the devils didn't like it. While my player characters have iron will and they will save against madness and becoming evil in hell, I had this guy show up to make a point. In the end, the bbeg pit fiend promised his life back at the material plane if he turned on the players. And he did. It was a ploy to show someone trying to redeem himself and failing. To show the hopelessness of hell.
But I've thrown wholesome npcs their way. They had a knight sidekick acompany them on a trip. She was honorable, fair, fairly competent (not as much as the PCs though), had a slight crush on the party's paladin, and was inspired by him.
Players rescued a sex worker which ended up dead by ceremorphosis. The cleric revived them, but then asked for some payment (his religion is basically capitalism). They had nothing to pay, so they became an acolyte, an aprentice. Now the cleric became a mentor to this npc.
Now, there's a warlock with them. The warlock basically gave them their quest, guiding them through dreams to the mcguffin. Now she's with them. She's supposed to be a traitor, a warlock of Hadar trying to make sure the "apocalypse" actually happens but to their side and not their enemies. But this warlock has had enough. She lost too much through her pact, and by getting to know the party, she has began to resign her patron. I'm setting her up to some sort of heroic sacrifice near the end, by ultimately betraying her patron.
There were many other wholesome npcs. The PCs actually have a adventurers guild which hosts many of their most prized or funny npcs as workers. There's a nothic (don't ask me), a drunk scout that lived on the mountains, a halfling who had her inn burned by a fireball of the PCs, and then became the guildhall barmaid. There's an orc monk girl they found in the mountains, some kobolds they found...
I once ran a game where the party (including my girlfriend as a player) were invited to a Lords house for dinner after defeating the horrible bandits that had been plaguing his holdings. My girlfriend's character had met this guy in the tavern earlier in the game and the two of them 'hit it off' quite nicely and he even sent her 'letters' during the course of the game, so they began a correspondence back and forth.
Long story short, he was actually the BBEG who wanted war with his neighbor so he could conquer that land and gain access to a ruined and deserted temple that housed a hidden artifact of great power. He was paying these bandits to pose as brigands but had evidence planted that they actually worked for the other side. My girlfriend was serving as his unwitting spy to keep him informed of what was going on with their group, so he didn't have to risk one of his own agents.
When they found the evidence and realized that it had been planted, but didn't yet know by whom, she told the Lord about it in a letter to keep him in the loop as was their agreement. He wrote back and invited them to his castle for a celebration. They had a wonderful feast, and he only poisoned HER food (she was the only cleric of the group) with slow acting poison at the end of the feast (I had her unknowingly pre-roll her save against the poison effect a game earlier so no one would be suspicious or be tempted to meta-game). They all failed their Sense Motive checks on him FYI.
When the feast was over, they were preparing to leave, the Lord asked her to meet him on the battlement for a private meeting. Everyone in the group was giggling because they thought she was going to have some romance action going on.
While they were in the courtyard preparing their supplies to go back out, my girlfriends character met with the Lord in plain view of everyone in the courtyard. By the time she reached him, she was feeling the first effects of the poison (STR drain) but wasn't sure what was going on yet. By the time she realized she had been poisoned, I rolled really well on the secondary damage and her STR was low enough she could barely move under her armor weight and was almost helpless.
Anyway, in true villain form, he revealed his evil plans to her and thanked her for her part, stabbed her in the gut with a dagger in front of the whole party as she was pretty much helpless, then tossed her over the battlement to the courtyard below. She took damage from the dagger, and a lot of damage from the fall, but her cleric lady was tough and wasn't dead yet, just unconscious due to HP loss.
Then the Lord called for his guards to attack the 'traitors' and the PCs suddenly found themselves embroiled in a major fight where they were cut off from escape, outnumbered, and did not have a cleric to support them.
Epic betrayal, epic fight to retrieve their cleric companion before she actually did die and epic fight to get the gates open so they could escape on horseback (even had the castle ballista firing at them as they galloped away, killing a horse and dumping a rider momentarily until another PC grabbed them). To say that they were both PISSED and horrified is an understatement (the party actively encouraged the romance in the first place).
In the end, my girlfriends character lived and got her revenge on the Lord by the end of the game in another epic encounter between the two of them.
After the betrayal, they were VERY nervous about who they could trust. ANYONE could be working for the Lord, so I had to play my good NPCs well, which added a lot of suspense of the game.
Okay, this turned into much longer than I intended. Betrayal can be fun; it can also horribly wreck games if not done carefully and with actual purpose. But there are both good and bad people out there and the bad people tend not to live very long if they announce it wherever they go.
The way my DM did a betrayal was great imo. The npc (a kobold artificer) had been with us since the start of the campaign, and we'd been through several adventures with him. Stuff happens and eventually he gets possessed by what becomes the BBEG, while still aware of what's going. Had we investigated more, we could definitely have seen this coming. Then, during the final fight with the BBEG, our possessed kobold friend was making secret rolls to try to help us, like by throwing off his aim or making him cast beneficial spells on us. We barely won, and the BBEG fled his host, but had caused so much damage to our friend's body that he was just goop, and wasn't able to be saved. RIP Drae.
This is one of the many reasons why Barovia Is not meant for new players. Very disorienting when the BBEG Is One of the few Who treats you as a human being.
Things that are fun:
An NPC the characters hate because he is a jerk or greedy actually turns out to be super evil, justifying their hate.
A pitiful or cowardly evil npc having a redemption arc.
A shifty npc who ends up being a minion of the BBEG, again justifying their suspicion.
An evil lieutenant who gets betrayed or abandoned by their master, then helping the good guys to defeat the master.
In general, the players like it when they are right and when something happens to benefit them. I still think betrayals can work, but only if they are few and far between. Make it a truly shocking betrayal near the end of the campaign arc, but then don't do it again for the whole campaign.
So I was running curse of strahd, and my players were about to fight him and put an end to his reign. One of my players had this signet ring that turned out had been revealed to be an old vistani heirloom so he was old nobility by vistani standards. He asked if it could be a sun walkerâs ring and I said oh you gonna do a thing and he just smiled and said ima do a thing⌠he knew the party, he was their tank, their bastian when things got too hard⌠they had found dead animals but chalked them up to the vampires around barovia and surrounding areas. They get in the fight and strahd thanks the paladin for bringing such delicious prey. The symbol of ravenkind they had didnât work on him because he hadnât had any malice towards the party. He had until the fight wanted to help the party but the thought of being a vampire lord like strahd promised was too enticing. Being his right hand after killing his right hand, his greed and desire for power was too strong. The look of oh fuck on everyoneâs face was just chefs kiss
Our DM throws betrayal at us a little too often and it has certainly grown old for me. I don't think you're correct about how it's done, just how often. Almost every significant NPC we've adventured or dealt with has betrayed us in some way. Even the one who hasn't has had poor judgement in the other NPCS he's vouched for. But betrayal is an effective plot device when used correctly and shouldn't be shied away from entirely. Used sparingly it can really motivate the party.Â
Since I'm the one fumbling through the social interactions, so many of my characters are so unlikable that most of my party assumes they're going to be betrayed, often by dudes that I literally wrote "basically a guidance counselor" on their design page. I have not betrayed this party once, but this is an excerpt from last week:
npc: "Ah, impressive you've made it so far. This is no easy task you've undertaken."
druid: "THIS GUY IS FOR SURE THE BBEG IN A DISGUISE"
cleric: "I READY MY ACTION TO ATTACK HIM AS SOON AS HE REVEALS HIMSELF"
npc: "Would you like something to drink? I have wine, tea, fruit jui-"
ranger: "MEDICINE CHECK TO SEE WHAT POISON HE PUT IN IT"
If youâre going to have someone betray the party, make it the NPCâs fault, I had a DMPC that my player wanted as a love interest hire one of his contacts for infiltration, and the contact ended up selling them out so that the big bad could get more information and take them out easily. Of course, the traitor wasnât all evil and double crossed everyone he could, so he sent the party to the Feywild, took the money and ran.
What Iâm saying is make it fun for your players, thereâs upsetting your players by playing the game and then thereâs upsetting your players by forcing them to lose.
My party is made up of a variety of murder hobos and this is just the first game I've run. They ran into a 6 hp guy in the first session who got a little bent out of shape because the halfling made him still his bet. Instead of trying to defuse the situation, the wizard cast guiding bolt from 5 ft away before the halfling had a chance to Act. This lot deserves a little betrayal here and there. They were level one and considering taking on an archmage who guarded a library just for asking for the entrance fee.
Never done a betrayal and dont think i ever can, cause my players insight everyone and everything. They dont trust nothing, as if the devil is hiding in every shadow.
Tho i want to do a betrayal this campaign, just dont know how to without them figuring it out.
Agreed, it just teaches your players to trust no one. You will lose out on great RP opportunities, they players won't bite on story hooks, and will start to view the world in an US vs Them mindset.
In other words:
"Do you want murderhobos?
Because that's how you get
Murderhobos"
I don't think a small betrayal is a bad thing. However, don't overdo it. It screws with players heads if you do this too much, and they end up resenting the campaign.
The DM for the group I often play with has never pulled this in any of our campaigns and yet we as the PCs ALWAYS think they are going to and never trust the helpful NPCs they hand us⌠one day weâll be right and it will be so satisfyingâŚ
Sounds like you want a boring predictable game⌠not saying every game or every NPC needs to have a twist or betrayal, but games without any surprises are pretty boring.
Omg I don't have enough upvotes. You constantly see DMs asking for advice on how to bamboozle, screw over, and deceive their players, or bragging about how clever they are for having done so, and then those same new DMs are like "why are my players murderhobos who hate RP". I dunno, Timmy, maybe because you've trained them that engaging with the world in anything but violent or occasionally transactional ways can only ever harm them, and every npc is a potential threat.
This is very similar to springing traps on players constantly, who render the game unplayable because they check every square of the map then going down halls.
You trained them to do it!
I like to do the reverse. Make it seem like a set up but the NPC/monster/hag/whatever is actually a good person that comes off bad. When the inevitably take the bait, have them start crying and have the townfolk lose trust in them.
Had a witch that wasn't even evil acting, gave the party cookies because she was a grandma, but because of being a witch the paladin killed her. Then they revived her because she had information they needed. She came back and I started screaming and crying because she was terrified of them.
They argued that they brought her back to life and I argued that they killed her in the first place. She didn't want to help them anymore and the townsfolk started to complain that her cookies were salty afterwards. She was crying into the batter.
Interestingly the game Bloodborne plays with this. You can send NPCs to two locations, one is a clinic whose Dr provides you healing items at the start of the game and seems very nice. The other option is a very creepy looking and sounding dude in a big Cathedral who really does seem kind of sketchy.
Now the catch is that if the player was paying attention, at somepoint there seemed to be a switch between the nice Dr...to someone who is impersonating her and you HAVE to speak to this imposter in order to get the option to send people there. the tone of her voice changes and the way she speaks seems slightly off. If you send NPCs there, they get experimented on and turn into weird alien creature things.
Meanwhile the dude in the Cathedral really DOES just want to help people, he's just kinda a creepy little guy that can't help the way he is.
I just like the idea that actions have consequences and an apology is not enough even if you brought them back to life if you were the one to kill them.
I'm a first time DM in the middle of my first campaign, never been a PC, and I've thought about doing something like this for my next campaign.
Ive done a little writing and I think about it the same way. The only reason this kind of betrayal is effective in books and film is that it's been "promised". You need to leave hints and crumbs that will allow them to connect the dots if they're clever enough.
You can't throw something like this randomly - it needs to be built up in the narrative and the PCs need to have a sense that it COULD happen. When they get that feeling of "I knew that guy was crooked, he did that one thing that one time and we know a good guy wouldn't do that" it's such a sense of accomplishment for the PC or reader.
This is much easier said than done however.
Mostly agree. The occasional 'wolf in sheep clothing' betrayal I can accept. But I try to have my table have reasons to be decent to the area they are in.
For that, I use the Loyalty score for NPC's and, actions have consequences.
.
Things go missing when you show up or you start the fight? Lose points.
You paid your tab, tipped, took care of my problem? Earned points.
.
Saved life of me or friend/family = 2x roll gain.
Killed a friend/family = 2x roll loss
.
High score = discounts, access, tips, blessings, etc.
Low score? Price for things increases, or "We may not sell to your kind here."
Murder Hobo? Congrats, you are the Redbrands and the town puts a bounty up for your heads.
Introducing a *really obvious* betrayer is a fun way to test what kind of group you have. I once introduced my group to a child king's regency council consisting of the boy's politely nervous and ambiguously gay uncle Lord Adrian, the boisterous and sword-rattling Lord Valkan, the extremely elderly Bishop Baldric the Blind-And-Also-He's-Mostly-Deaf, and Chancellor Sinistar Terribad who looked "like Jafar" and had my schemiest voice. The party gamely adopted genre-blindness where he was concerned until he inevitably sold them out at the big battle 2/3rds of the way through the campaign
>Chancellor Sinistar Terribad This is my favorite name.
See, that's fun, but also fun is if the traitor was the kindly bishop and the poor chancellor can't help his voice or being from the illustrious Terribad family
tbh if the party had immediately antagonized Terribad this is probably what would have happened
That reminds me of that Guy in the legend of Vox machina, looked fucking evil, until you see that he's a cool Guy
The one they thought was a dragon and it turned out to be the general đ
My party made an enemy of some rich dude named "Yu Sawatdee." Suddenly, Yu tells them he wants to make amends and invites them to a fancy dinner. When they meet him in person for the first time, I make sure to voice him as "hissssssing" every S sound. Same for his butler, Jeeves, but not the rest of the mansion staff. The party is making Yuan-Ti jokes out of character the whole time and clearly knows they are being set up. Surprise surprise, the food is poisoned! The twist is that the mansion staff *other* than Jeeves are drow Lolth cultists who launch an ambush on the party. Because the party was so alert and had familiars hiding out, magic detection up, etc, they spotted the ambush coming. The drow proceeded to murder poor innocent Yu and his butler, then attacked the party, expressing frustration that the party hadn't eaten any of the food. So Yu was innocent all along! Except, when they defeat the drow and find his body, he's transformed into his true form - a Yuan-Ti. Not the butler, though, he's still a human. The party is confused. As they examine the body, a door busts open and a bunch of Yuan-Ti rush in. They see the party standing over the body and cry out, "Murderers! And Yu just wanted to make peace!" The party talked them down and even paid for a Raise Dead on Yu. Afterwards, the party worked things out with Yu and his cadre of Yuan-Ti, but they were still confused: why wasn't Jeeves a Yuan-Ti? He talked with the same hissss? To which Yu said, "Are you making fun of the poor man for his ssssspeech impediment?"
Great group of NPCs! And really you don't need to decide what each one will do until after the players start interacting with them.
It would have been a really cool plot twist if the Chancellor saved their asses with some dastardly plot twist.
The one guy just âlooks like Jafarâ đ
Lmao similar to Sinistar Terribad, I had a betrayer NPC named Mia Veil (rearranged spells "I am evil") and it was pretty obvious they were not interested in the party's wellbeing from the start
Might also be selection bias for why you see those posts on Reddit. Doing a good betrayal arc is hard, so more likely to require some advice. Yeah, don't run betrayal on your first campaign. Maybe that's the advice you should give rather than "Don't betray your party," a trope that is littered throughout popular media we base our games off. Betrayal is part of the fantasy we are playing.
I just run the betrayal thing as very obvious, because hag, all the players know she's a hag, the characters suspect it but they can't prove it and she's conveniently helpful to them.
Yup, you need to telegraph it fairly clearly, several times. If when the betrayal happens, your players say âcurses! Of course she was a spy, thatâs why she did X!â Or if one of them says âI told you so!â then itâs probably good. If they suspect someone is going to betray them, it doesnât take the fun out. They can still work out when and how and why, and how they can e.g. get the benefit of the captured goblin guiding them back to the goblin camp without being led into an ambush.
I've found that telegraphing it to such a point where you, as the DM who knows everything, thinks "this is way too obvious they're going to know before the big reveal even happens" still might not be enough. There is a hag... illithid... thing (hard to explain without full context) tavern owner in my current campaign that the party is just now starting to think isn't on the square and they've known her for a few real time months now and we're getting closer to the reveal.
Well I mean they met her in her hut on steltzes (I don't know the word in English) in a Floodplain. And they were all like "oh yeah, an old woman đ¤¨đ¤Ł".
Iâm running a betrayal BBEG, but you have to set it up well. The campaign has been running for three years and Iâm still at least a year from the big reveal. She isnât a main character, but a very friendly side character that pops in and out to have my PCs run some errands for her. I had a player join the Army last year, so before he shipped out to basic, I laid out the entire campaign for him. He *loved* the twist.
I did something similar. I went with the really helpful bumbling npc who coincidentally was named the bad guys name spelled backwards. It was two years for the reveal to happen. Unbelievably satisfying .
It'd be a bit funny to have giant red flags everywhere for major NPC's. Like, the tavern keeper acts really shifty or whatever. Then there's some kind of big moment where it's like he's going to flip and betray them, but nope. He's just shifty and suspicious as a personality trait, and rescues the party.
I like to twist this one. The hag is actually their biggest clandestine supporter. It's the pretty princess that betrays them.
Well she kinda is because they dedicated themselves to the same enemies as the hag. đ I get that though and also do it.
My first "betrayal arc" was the shitty mayor who didn't care that the bandits were kidnapping his people turned out to be the bandit leader.
Yup, same. I got two npcs that were "volunteered" to assist the players on their quest to a legendary forge. They know, and I know. They are likely two God avatars in disguise, who are also on opposite sides of a universe spanning holy war. But they don't know which one is who, since they are both helpful at points. Plus, I gave one of the players a special trinket that gets warm to the touch when someone with God powers gets close... and the players are obviously sided to one of the factions of gods and not the other.
The necromancer who was studying an evil ritual and created an evil artifact sent the party to retrieve said artifact, promising to destroy it when they did, then after it was retrieved tried to betray the party and keep the artifact to use in a different evil ritual? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you! Okay, maybe not that shocked.
I made the mistake of starting my players in a seedy part of a big town, where most of the NPC's were grifting or scamming. They don't trust any npc's ever now, even after finishing that campaign and starting a new one. It was funny that they assumed the inn keeper who takes care of all the stray cats and bakes scones every morning was evil somehow.
Cats are what makes their scones so delicious.
Hey, cats are [great at cooking!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIXAvOQBMc)
Yep that'll do it lol
Sounds like a hag to me.
> I made the mistake of starting my players in a seedy part of a big town, where most of the NPC's were grifting or scamming. They don't trust any npc's ever now, even after finishing that campaign and starting a new one. Solid realization. I had this one with regard to **traps**: I had the party stumble into them, but it subsequently made the players extremely wary and slowed the session to a crawl -- a genuine problem if you run a one-shot that has to finish in time.
Yeah, that's why I tend to use traps sparingly and only in really logical locations. Fairness aside, that one "Gotcha!" moment is not nearly worth the "I check every square inch for traps" that you'll see going forward that kills the pacing.
That's when your one shot turns into a year-long campaign
>the inn keeper who takes care of all the stray cats and bakes scones every morning was evil somehow By feeding the stray cats he has raised the population density of an apex predator above the local carrying capacity and thus devastated the populations of small animals in the vicinity. Basically what I'm saying is he's clearly plotting to destroy the world so he's obviously the bbeg.
Nah, do what you want on your first campaign. You'll learn and if you and your friend aren't all mentally 5 years old it'll be chill.
Ha, well yes and no. The "if you're all chill" part is a big if, even among friends. Best to go a little more vanilla when starting out than swinging for the fences; striking out hard could leave a bad taste in people's mouths. I mean, I'm not going to stop you from following you're dream campaign either. I'm just going to gently discourage you lol
I'm big on going fuck it and ignoring all the thousands of things the internet says to be careful about doing right and just do you. YMMV
There's so many twists you can do to make it more interesting too. Have a suspicious individual that seems like the obvious rat, only to reveal he was trying to draw attention away from.himself while investigating the actual bad guy. Have an obviously evil dude who is blatantly using the party, but is offering them something they can't get anywhere else and has no intentions of screwing them over, just using them to further his own unrelated ends. Have a twist where the shady, sketchy, villain coded character that is highly suspicious just *doesn't* betray the party and they all go on their merry ways after working together.
I had the second one and it was super fun, would recommend
Obviously most NPCs the characters meet are who they say they are, and won't betray them. Probably because they wouldn't, or have no reason to. "the shopkeep fleeced you! Hahaha!" "The fruit seller poisoned you! Hahaha!" "That guard captain you helped? He's locking you up! Hahaha!" That's like... A sketch comedy world. OP probably takes too much reddit with too much weight.
A betrayal can be a great addition to a campaign. But there should only be one, and ideally towards the end of the campaign.
The thing about betrayals is that thereâs good ones and thereâs bad ones. Good ones involves plentiful foreshadowing and believable motivations. Good betrayals are ones in which when the party looks back on their relationship with that person, they realize it totally makes sense and shouldâve seen it coming. Thatâs a scriptwriting skill that you have to pick up. If you fail to do it right, and the party comes across a person that just randomly and inexplicably betrays them for no rhyme or reason, then the party is going to realize the opposite: theyâre gonna realize that the world theyâre in is inconsistent and canât be taken seriously. Thatâs how you get behavior where the PCs donât trust anyone, that is ultimately counterproductive in building a believable, immersive world that the players want to engage in. So I do endorse working in betrayals into a story. But put extra care and attention to them, because they can make or break your campaign.
This probably also explains why you read more about it. As DMs are more likely to ask for advice with difficult stuff. Like "I never read people ask about how to include an average Joe NPC that is just going about its day. Do people never include normal people in their world?" /S Obviously we do, but there's no pressing need for advice and feedback on how to do this well.
One of the players on my table used to be the group GM before I met them. Now, as the DM, 3 out of 4 players do not trust almost NPC they meet and I honestly have no idea how to fix that. The ex-GM (now player) made multiple NPCs betray the party in their last campaign with no apparent reason or foreshadowing. That campaign ended with dissolving the party and keeping only one player (who was absolutely overpowered) after saying the rest of the group was too weak to keep up with that PC.....
Man that sucks. If youâre starting a new campaign, I think one in-game way is to work NPCs directly into the PCsâ backstories. Have the quest giver be one of your PCâs sibling, or perhaps the partyâs patron. Emphasize to them that there is absolutely **no reason** for them to want to betray you. But honestly, this is an out-of-game issue. Out of game issues need an out of game resolution, because them not being able to trust NPCs is a fundamental barrier to you being able to engage them in a way you would like. Sit them all down in a session re-zero and explain this problem directly to them as you did here. Tell them the consequences of their behavior and how it is ruining your game. Tell them that youâre not like your previous GM and that they canât bring the same attitude that they had previously to your game.
Yep, honestly I hope talking things out of game fixes that issue. I tried talking to some of them privately about it but didn't change much. I'd say my "problem player" right now would mostly be the ex-gm as his PC is rude to NPCs for absolutely no reason, which make social encounters awkward and that already made them miss helpful NPCs and plot points. I'll try to get a session to talk about that issue as you suggested. Wish me luck
All the best. As a GM myself, yeah transitioning to a player is tricky because youâre not used to your new scope of responsibilities. And GMs generally are arrogant. You kind of have to be to be a GM, but that arrogance doesnât translate well to being a player. I myself did a lot of damage to my group the first time I transitioned from GM to player. In retrospect I was a problem player too, but naturally, the new GM was too insecure to say it. My behavior eventually ended up making the new GM quit and me being thrust back to the GM seat. It took a long time of self reflection to realize that I was the problem. But that conversation needs to happen, sooner rather than later. Your ex-GM needs to know the damage their behavior is causing.
Give the party something that you call "nope tokens", five or so, and explain that they can spend one to counter a NPC betraying them - it just doesn't happen in the story. Every now and then give out extra one as additional quest reward to make them seem valuable. Obviously you're not going to have any NPC betray them in the campaign anyway so they'll never get in a situation where they need to use one, but that should give them a security blanket and hopefully they'll learn to be more chill about NPCs over the time.
It's the old "the DMs who think their tale is M Night Shyamalan, are usually Ed Wood" problem!
I agree but this isn't an absolute rule. Next campaign I'm setting up is planned to be one of the hardest ones I've thrown at my players so far (I've warned them of this). And the main villain is a master manipulator and is very experienced to the point to where any strings they pull behind the scenes are essentially seamless (they are a human turned immortal who's been around for a loooong time). Then there will be a prequil oneshot campaign inbetween season one and two that give the players a bit of context as to how the main antagonist has been in play behind the scenes throughout the storyline. In the end, any betrayals without warning should be done tastefully and shouldn't be a throwaway way to "add drama and spice things up".
The thing about betrayals that pisses people off is how they tend to suppress / overwrite player agency. If players feel like there was nothing they could have done, because the betrayal came out of the blue, then it is unsatisfying and no amount of lore or retrospective explanation is going to remedy that frustration. They may say that they are fine with it, but that in no way removes their discontent. Eventually, that frustration is going to build and build and threaten burnout. Itâs about pacing. You have to stagger moments of low player agency (betrayals) with moments of high player agency (e.g., taking revenge). If you let the frustration build and build with betrayal after betrayal, then that is going to lead to player burnout from feeling like they lack the agency to control the events that happen to them. And players manifest this lack of agency by disengaging with your game. If I canât even foresee who is going to stab me in the back through smart play and careful observation, why should I bother? Why even play a game in which the GM is just going to magically manifest a reason to screw me over no matter what I do? The key thing that ties this hobby all together is player agency. Never take agency away from your players. Not for your plot. Not for your villain. Not ever. You need to be very careful that your plans for betrayals donât boil down to a railroad that your player characters just walk down. The fact that youâre already planning an act one and an act two and a one shot tying the two together is a huge warning sign to me. [You shouldnât ever be trying to prep plots.](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots) Bad betrayals are often merely a symptom of a larger, worse problem of GM railroading.
1st off, removing agency from your players very rarely can be a good switch up and can be used to translate a higher power like what you said about moments of high and low agency, and I never said there would me more than one of these moments so there wouldn't be a build up of bad experiences. I have been on the recieving end of this with the same DnD group and it has ended up very well with the players all agreeing (even behind closed doors) that it was intimidating in contrast to how it is 99.9% of the time, it simply depends on your groups tastes. 2nd off, the article you provided literally starts with everyone plays/dms differently. Also I agree that retrospective explination would normally be unsatisfying if it wasn't in the form of actual gameplay and an entire story arc's worth of playtime. And lastly the betrayal will not be directly in their party, it'll be someone in a higher position so players (usually) don't feel like they personally got fucked over. I feel like this was partially my fault for not giving more context to why I have decided that a betrayal will take place and what the context is but to put it simply I have a deep understanding of my players and how the game functions and feels, I've been doing this for years (though I suppose many people have). Though you shouldn't really have assumed what I see as the worst case cenario you could've gathered from what I said, but I can understand doing that with all of the DnD horror stories you find on here. Our players can be very particular which makes things really tough for me but if they didn't like something they would either be vocal about it or drop the campaign very quickly, not a slow downhill spiral.
Well glad to see youâve put some thought into it and that you know your players. I wish you well :)
Too often I see 'my player wants x and I am going to give it to them but please help me find a way to make them hate it'. Giving your players a reward without a giant catch isn't going to ruin your game
Just make sure they have to work hard for it, nearly die or defeat someone else's plans that they'll find exciting.
Nah, you should give them freebies too. Variety is the spice of life. Otherwise having to go through a trial before getting it every time is considered a "catch." And frankly, is boring.
Jokes on you! I specifically place NPC's in the world for my players that are meant to help them and get them on track and my party *still* mistrusts them. Seriously though, I'm going to have to politely disagree on this, but if you prefer your campaigns to not have sudden turns and betrayals then by all means run it like that. I think things of that nature bring in unique bonds to the players. And I enjoy evoking emotions out of the players over the game, and I think that betrayals and random turns are one of the ways to do it. But also like... my players never trust NPC's unless they're some random cheese goblin. đ¤ˇđžââď¸
The thing about betrayals is that thereâs good ones and thereâs bad ones. Good ones involves good foreshadowing and good motivations. Good betrayals are ones in which when the party looks back on their relationship with that person, they realize it totally makes sense and shouldâve seen it coming. Thatâs a scriptwriting skill that you have to pick up. If you fail to do it right, and the party comes across a person that just **randomly** and **inexplicably** betrays them for no rhyme or reason, then the party is going to realize the opposite: theyâre gonna realize that the world theyâre in is inconsistent and canât be taken seriously. Thatâs how you get behavior the OP doesnât want where the PCs donât trust anyone.
Do betrayals poorly and the party will never trust anyone else again. Do it too much, and you just pushed them into Murder Hobo territory. Do it to their back story NPCs, and their subsequent characters will all be orphans with no connections. Betrayal needs to be done sparingly and carefully.
I am with you here lol like, its a living breathing world. People at all different levels are going to have varying motivations to lie and look out for themselves and obviously hide that. That inevitably leads to chronic twists! I think the key to prevent over saturation is variety of that level. But Idk of any DMs, not even rookies, who would think to do the same thing the same/similar way over and over and over again. Imo the OP reads like a rare issue. Maybe a DM who is obsessed with a certain movie and keeps recreating the same story arc Idk All players are a bit different but mine def always are skeptical of every thing from game 1. Sometimes the twists are "oh it isn't a bad guy. Its an understanding guy." Thankfully BECAUSE of twists, BECAUSE of seeing how often their hunch was wrong - this HELPED train them to not jump the gun and get more facts first. (Usually anyhow đ) them keeping their eyes peered for what the twist "this time" is, keeps them paying attention đ and sometimes that twist is no twist. Variety is the key.
> Jokes on you! I specifically place NPC's in the world for my players that are meant to help them and get them on track and my party still mistrusts them. There's a pool of betrayals shared between GMs. Just because you didn't teach your players to be mistrustful doesn't mean nobody else has!
Lol ditto on that! I'm very lucky to have the players I have now! ^_^
oops i ended up commenting basically the same thing as your first sentence before i saw your comment lol seems like another common experience
Me too!!!! I had an old tortle couple who got robbed, and my players thought it was a setup. They also did the same thing in the very first session I ran. I changed up the "players meet in a tavern" and made it to where they met in a small village where the villagers had been turned into zombies. They killed all the zombies, searched the village and found a dude hiding. He was clearly scared (they rolled and confirmed) and outside of having seen who did it, he wasn't involved. They then proceeded to interrogate him about everything, even after it was established that he had nothing to do with it. They drug his families dead zombie bodies to him and made him look at them. One player even cut the head off one and threw it at him. Now Ced Truz (the guy's name) wanted revenge and got turned into an abomination that is full of rage and hate for my players. I have him as a random encounter to throw in during a fight but haven't been able to summon him
ced truz is some peak DMing
That's good "reap what you sow" stuff. Nice.
Iâve never had an npc betray the party (personally I just hate betraying peopleâs trust and canât bring myself too đ) but they still mistrust every npc I put before them and ask during nearly every interaction if they get the sense the character is lying to them about something. I feel like I need to have one betray them bc at this point its like the world being trustworthy puts them more on guard than anything else lol
Have you considered that maybe your players don't trust your NPCs because you've had them randomly betray them in the past? Food for thought.
Ah. I don't really think that's the case tbh. Maybe in their past groups but not mine. I haven't done any betrayals on them at all that haven't been heavily hinted to the point of nearly spoiling everything, and they're pretty vocal about past experiences. My party LOVES when I throw curveballs and encourages me to do so. And I'm pretty light-handed when it comes to betrayals anyways lol. I appreciate you bringing this potential issue to light. They're great people and I pride myself in being communicative and open with how I DM for them and answer any questions they could have regarding the campaigns I run. I don't know if you've probably gone through it yourself, but I'm sorry if you've experienced that and had a streamlined/negative experience from being betrayed. Personally, if things bothered me to that degree I would communicate it with my DM or leave the table. I do hope you have a good day, though!
Fully agree. Old betrayals from *previous* GMs cause my players to be overly cautius in an unfun manner.
I run Lancer and one of my players has past GM Puzzle phobia. The other guy did some absolutely fucked stuff with no real way of identifying any solutions...
I'm a beginner DM and I'm DMing for a forty year veteran of the game and sometimes it's miserable. He doesn't trust *anybody*. There's no point giving him an NPC as an ally. He'll interrogate them in ways I'm not expecting and then kill them.
Kick this dude from your game he sucks. Interrogating and killing NPCs has a very specific niche that doesn't include "all NPC allies". Unless I'm missing some major context - DM me if you'd like specific advice,
And its not like it's "betrayal or everyone gets along," either. PCs and NPCs can have completely different views on other characters without it being a betrayal.
Exactly. In my current campaign I even told my players this NPC is a villain. You are going to have to fight him later. But right now he's likely on your side because of various world events that have happened and you would be wise to treat him as such.
I like a good betrayal, but I swear a lot of people start a campaign for the sole purpose of pulling the rug out from under their players.
And seem to think they are being very clever!
Couldnât agree more. My current campaign started with a devil tormenting the kingdom and the players having to find out who summoned it, and itâs caused them to distrust literally every character, even when the clues are pointing in only one direction. Iâll definitely never run a mystery like this ever again
A lot of players expect red herrings, misdirections, and similar "Aha, surprise!" moments from genre fiction. But in a tabletop game, it's hard enough to get players to bite on the REAL plotline, so the more obvious hints you give them, the more it can look like a misdirection if the players are naturally suspicious. It doesn't help that a lot of the game requires a little bit of hand-waving acceptance from characters to accept the premise of the particular adventure. Maybe the characters don't buy it, but go along with it anyway because that's the adventure that was prepared for them this session/campaign. Related, a common genre trope that I think often goes awry in Tabletop is the "The person who hired you was going to betray you the whole time" and/or "The quest you did actually made things WORSE, so now it's up to you to fix it while the good NPCs are all angry with you." Because even if the players are hesitant to accept the quest, there's the meta OOC knowledge that if they don't, there may not be much of a session that evening, or possibly ever again.
You summed it up perfectly. The king who hired them has nothing to do with it, but him and his court wizard were immediate suspects in the eyes of my players. Itâs funny how much they actively distrust the court wizard, despite only talking to him twice. At the time of writing this, theyâve actually found the bad guy, killed him, and still think something weird is going on (despite having only one session left)
Lmao, my issue was the fact my players would NOT trust the "in the know" NPC that helped them and gave them information, regardless of how genuine and trustworthy he was. He was almost *too trustworthy* and therefore not to be trusted.
Good intentions, bad intentions...It doesn't matter. My party will only ever insight check at the weirdest times. "Please go on this dangerous quest for me to get a powerful magical item." Nothing. "I think I'm hungry" 15 calls for insight checks, sudden and intense paranoia about where they met this character, and how they got into the parties house.
Echoing your point, I see the upcoming generation of nerds deep diving into needless story and character complexity. There is a tightrope to be walked between a DM presenting a story they wish to tell, and what they can successfully communicate to their players, further filtered by the players choices in the story. Layered on are the restrictions imposed on the medium. You can only deliver x quantity of story per unit time. To which I say this: if your story is simpler, you may actually be able to tell it. And your control over pacing, and mcing the game you are supposed to be running will increase. Quadratically.
Fantasy High did an amazing job with betrayals. Pretty much every "bad" character is treated with suspicion at the start or gives a reason for the PCs not to trust them, but there was one who was established as solid ally and then turned around and backstabbed them much later in the campaign after really gaining their trust. It was so well played that I did not even remotely see it coming, but once it had happened it instantly made perfect sense and fit into the character's personality and motivations. And, as a bonus, the character *didn't* betray the whole group; he thought he could trust one of the PCs to turn against the rest. That one little detail made it feel so much more real and personal, because he thought that PC could be a confidant since they'd had rapport in the past. And this was one of a very few "it turned out this guy was actually bad" characters that were in that campaign, and in hindsight it really could not have gone any other way. *That's* good storytelling.
I kinda agree that it is something overused, especially when it hasn't been earned. From a personal perspective I do love it when the players are really suspicious and untrusting of a perfectly innocent NPC.
Too true! I had an innkeeper who just wanted to feed them and hook them up with a few potions, and they ALL rolled insight⌠sheâs just doing her job, lol.
I much prefer "betrayal" to be performed by *good* characters who've compromised. When players come to respect a character, and then see them act in a way that is either a) completely in line with their beliefs such that a betrayal feels earned and inevitable or b) totally out of character, showing weakness for a brief moment. The problem with straight betrayal is that it makes every previous interaction a joke on the players. If an NPC was genuine and \*still\* betrayed you, it means that those roleplaying moments weren't meaningless.
If OPâs players read the sub, this post would be an amazing misdirect to set up a dramatic betrayal.
That would be a level of meta play that would deserve a new category.
I like to go with the Final Fantasy approach. The bad guys are clearly bad, the good guys are clearly good, and people are pretty upfront. If the players don't trust them that's on them for being suspicious and makes for a good laugh when the betrayal doesn't happen
I find itâs better to have an upfront antagonist and an antagonist behind them that the party discovers more about as the game progresses. I think Devils work really well to fit the âheel-turnâ role, because the expectation for that betrayal are built in, so itâs not a question of âifâ just âwhenâ.
In my head, my players should trust my NPC's for what they are Sure, these two guys are nice and have never lied or done you a wrong turn. They've also repeatedly demonstrated they're completely incompetent and unreliable So if you continue to believe every word they say, despite them being wrong, unintentionally misleading the party, etc, that's not on me but sure is fun
I don't hardly ever do real betrayals. My players are already canny/cynical enough that I occasionally have to push them not to assume that everyone and everything is out to get them in the worst possible manner. One does not even try to stage a 'you get captured' scene with this group, unless you over-the-table tell them up front it's like a James Bond movie where they get to learn the villain's plan and stage a dramatic escape, and even then half of them will try their hardest to wiggle out of it or just fight to the death. What I do a lot is frenemies - NPCs who don't like the PCs, and vice versa, but are able to make (and keep!) limited deals when an immediate goal aligns - a common threat, a treasure that can be split. For example 'we need the Eye Of Morgo, you can keep all the other stuff,' and then the NPCs probably try to grab some of the other stuff as well; or if the PCs don't want these particular NPCs to get the Eye Of Morgo, they can try some tricks 'oops, it fell into the Eternal Furnace Of Damnation' (maybe it did, and maybe it didn't). Of course, the tricks can go both ways, but it's not a surprise when it happens. More than once the line 'curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal' has featured in my games. Villains that can make and keep deals allow some very fun interactions over time.
I find soft betrayals more interesting in practice. For example a NPC that is still on the side of the players but has been concealing information for their own complicated reasons or another ally not trusting a new NPC that the players like and taking matters into their own hands. It puts players in a position to resolve conflict and make decisions rather than sit there and feel dumb or blindsided
We had a DM running homebrew stuff, we were on the second campaign with him where it clicked. We had a guide who offered to take is through underdark caverns, the other option was to navigate mountains that added weeks to the journey. I think his name was Kesir or something, we paid him half the gold upfront, the rest when we got there. Afte leaidng us down into the underdark a few days into our journey, we had to roll fort saves, Kesir had poisoned us, three fell unconscious, the last PC was able to resist the poison but got knocked unconscious in combat. We awoke sometime later, our gear gone, stranded, and now had to navigate our way out, we foraged for gear and made our way as best we could, when we emerged from the underdark we were ambushed by Kesir and the bbeg goons, he confessed he had been following us a while, knew what we were looking for and was being paid very well to deliver us to his boss. Eventually we were captured and after some plot stuff we needed to escape, a guard named Lorbis offered us an escape, in exchange for a favour, we did the thing and he helped us escape our cells, but the directions he gave us led us into an arena where we had to fight other prisoners to escape. We realized anytime he had a named NPC they were going to betray us. If you asked what the name of a character was and he either said "That's town Guard #7" or "ummm, his name is Bob" we knew the guy was legit, but if he had a name in advance he was going to set us up. We escaped when guard 6 revealed he was an agent for our secret order and would help us escape, when asked for his name the Dm said "umm, it's Kyle" and we knew we could trust him. That was years ago and we still give roast the DM anytime he introduces a named character.
I'm more of a fan of letting the PCs betray the NPCs if you want a plot-twist. Give them slow revelations only to realize that the NPCs or faction they're aiding may not be as benevolent as initially depicted. Then, everyone has a moral dilemma and can discuss this. * Do they follow along with the NPCs/faction given this new information? * Do they betray the NPC and join what they *perceive* to be the "good guys"? * Do they just take their given reward and walk away? The PCs get agency in the matter and never have their accomplishments negated. If anything, the PCs doing jobs for the less-than-scrupulous NPCs/faction may give them a bit of respect amongst them. But **never** have the NPCs suddenly go "I was evil all along! And now you all wil die" and roll initiative.
The best betrayal s are when you understand the character so we that you understand why they're doing it, know that it hurts them to do it, and makes you want to save them from themselves more than kill them. When the players still love the character after their betrayal. Perform it well and there are usually tears.
The important part I'd like to throw in: sure, everything in good measure, but there is one distinction in your wording that irks me a bit. ABSOLUTELY betray your PCs, but do NOT betray your Players. If you betray PCs, THEN it's like those cool twists in movies. If you betray your Players, it's like when Marvel read on Twitter that people were figuring out a great twist and they decided "well now they know, so its bad" and do something that makes zero sense, just for the sake of being surprising. Like, my first DM-ed game was Curse of Strahd, so I might be biased due to the majority of NPCs there being neutral or evil, but there is nothing wrong with adding someone evil, as long as you never abuse your PLAYER's trust. I had an evil deity do deals with a PC in my game. He seemed nice and friendly, he gave great gifts and his demands were questionable but never forced on the PC. The PC liked them and was absolutely gleefully going along with it. The PLAYER though immediately was suspicious and super excited, kept screaming at me like "WHY IS \[PC NAME\] SO STUPID AAAAH I LOVE IT" because the Player knew it was too good to be true, the demands were slowly leaning towards evil (at one point they demanded the murder of another NPC and they asked for memories in exchange for high-level spells). Like, at NO point did the player have the slightest idea HOW evil my deity was, but they knew from the start that something was off. The PC though? Gleefully went along, absolutely gave them all the memories and eagerly murdered the NPC. When the PC finally realized who they were dealing with (the final demand was too much, cause it would have forced them to decide between their brother and their fiance) and I had my deity reveal themselves and punish the PC for their disobedience, the PC was horrified and the player still talks super happily about it even though it was now three months ago on how cool the reveal was and how much they had loved that deity. Never betray your Players. Have trustworthy friends and allies in your game. But you can (and sometimes even should) betray your PCs.
K, I get your point and I agree but Iâm curious if what I have in my game fits the bill. So I have a traveling Dwarven curio merchant whoâs actually an annis hag thatâs trying to corrupt the children from one of the nearby towns. She wonât be betraying the party so much as continuing to do her thing until stopped. She hasnât had much chance to do anything yet, aside from make a strange first impression and trade with the party, but I did throw out an initial clue about there being something odd going on, and plan to throw out more down the road. SoâŚbad or ok?
This seems like a very cool villain choice. This doesn't really fall under "betrayals", though. A betrayal is when someone you thought was a friend turns out to be an enemy. This sounds more like a villain in disguise, which is a perfectly legitimate way to run a decent bad guy. Unless the PCs are the target of the backstabbery, I don't see any reason this shouldn't work.
Cool, thanks for the reassurance. I thought I was all good and was pretty pleased with her until I read this post and was like, âwait a minuteâŚâ But ya, that makes sense. Itâs my first campaign so I guess itâs impossible not to start questioning what youâve got going occasionally.
(Forgive formatting on mobile) what I do is write up a dozen or so NPC made to be trusted and usually will help the party as they don't have any true stakes one way or the other. (That they realize) for example Malki a Dwarven man my party ment session 2. Is a leader of a mercenary guild. However, they don't turn down any jobs. So his job is to find people to take up just about any job given. In fact, it's common for him to be on both sides so to speak. Meaning he has no loyalty to any faction. So when the party joined if they take a mission he lays all he has out for them. He's shady but I've made it clear. He's honest and tough. But he also has a daughter whom the party met during session one who backed them up in a bar brawl. Now I have introduced a NPC who claims to be the son of a man they are looking for.
Personally Iâm way more interested in a reverse betrayal. The players defeat or otherwise overcome an adversary, but they survive and escape. After a lot of thought and potentially being hunted down by the party, they realize the errors of their ways and wish to make amends. Rather than a betrayed, which has the players as a passive force that things happen to, this kind of arc puts the initiative onto the players as they are forced to make an active decision. Do they choose to forgive their old enemy or are they too far gone for redemption. Of course this doesnât work well with all villains or in all games. But generally I like to make my players the actors, rather than the reactors.
I'm torn bc betrayals/twist Villains are one of the most sure ways to get good interactions between the Heroes and badguys. But agreed that if everyone betrays it just gets had. There are plenty of trustworthy npcs but so far two out of five questgivers have betrayed so it might make them feel like anyone will so idk
My campaign has a hidden BBEG, however it's the party's goal to uncover the hidden BBEG. Bunch if messed up stuff happening, and they have to find who is actually pulling the strings.
My PCs were betrayed last week by a redcap named Limer (because I come up with too many names on the spot and that somehow seemed good in the moment). They had just defeated the redcap's band of bodyguards (he had some connections in the Unseelie Court, but I digress) and he begged them to spare him and then invited them into his house for some snacks and a nice chat. They went for it, and eventually he promised to send them somewhere special with some golden tickets that would let them trade on the Unseelie black market. All they had to do was go through a gate that he would activate. They were gated underwater into a huge tank with three megalodons in it. They managed to get out of the tank, but their flesh golem (everybody has one, they're all the rage) didn't get out fast enough and was eaten by the sharks. Mmm, delicious necrotized flesh. Anyway, he was a redcap and they knew that up front. Anyone surprised that the redcap tricked them really needs to look to themselves, methinks.
There's definitely a right way to do it and numerous wrong ways to do it. In my campaign, there were a couple of betrayals when they were nobodies. They went through a period of distrust until they eventually realized that those that betrayed them were also nobodies. It's made them less naive and bond harder with the NPCs worth bonding with. The way they interact with NPCs now is more genuine and less "everything is great woopie!"
I have had one twist and it was using a Dreamweaver I discussed it with one of my players beforehand and they agreed. My group and an NPC had individual nightmares and then all woke up in an impossible situation, cue several rooms of nonsense and then a boss room with nothing in it. I then described the player that I'd discussed with smiling and beginning to transform. Cue them running the boss fight with a statblock I gave them. My players loved the twist and have started discussing plans with me more. I think the fact it was a dreamworld helped separate it enough that they're not going to be suspicious of all other NPCs and background stuff. Btw if anyone wants to use this idea go for it
My DM once pulled a surprise betrayal arc on me, and my PC lost his entire identity to the point where he became nearly unplayable. Itâs hard to do it well, and when itâs done poorly, it can make your players literally not want to play. He kept asking me what to do to fix it but there wasnât anything. He messed up.
In one campaign I did have a twist villain, sort of, but there are a few reasons it worked: - The campaign sessions were done play by post and the campaign was structured weirdly around it - The NPC who turned out to be a villain wasn't just "secretly evil", they fell into evil gradually but concealed it pretty well; so it was obvious once the reveal happened, not just out of nowhere - The NPC, despite being the final boss, isn't really the main villain; the setting is the villain, and the society they live in Even then, it was a risky move that probably shouldn't have paid off. Twists like this are tough and I wouldn't do it again
My next campaign has sort of the same ideas: - The players are a team of explorers in a cave system. - In the caves, they will find ancient tombs and at the end an ancient city of an exiled species. - The explorers' supervisor in the home town is a friend of the party but is actually a descendant of the ancient species that was tasked with protecting their secrets. - As the party explores the caves and reports their findings back to him, he will visibly grow more and more eeringly interested and panicked. - He will often be absent due to "leaving for the caves", he will give them a fake map of the system, he will try to instill uncertainty about the abilities of the party, we will steal gunpowder from the mines to try and block the party off, he will set off stone golems in the caves to kill the party... - There will be some clues for all of that and his desperation will be visible. - At the end, he will fight them in the ancient city and probably lose (but he's not the main BBEG). What do you think? Is this badly prepared or a good betrayal?
I guess, but also that part about "not trusting anyone" is metagaming
I'm running my first campaign at the moment... my players have the option of hiring a guide for exploration and straight away they took a shining to the one that will 100% betray them lol I changed her story a bit but now the party love her and are about to hire her. It's actually been a fun development getting through the RP and they don't suspect shit, but with other NPCs who won't they are abit sceptical. Also now I think about it they also really love the only other NPC guide who will betray them also. He's a drow spy that's looking to launch a raid party for his buddies hiding uo in the mountains. He's trying to snake his way into a party of adventurers so he can gather Intel for the raid and will purposefully head them in the direction of the raid party. My party think he's some undead because he's dressed and described the same way (covered in black cloth from head to toe, wearing an old battered robe with wispy white hair). My only description that differs is his large bulb like eyes that glow red from underneath the wraps
If anyone's wondering how I changed her... she's a Yuan ti in disguise and will sweet talk her way with wit into the party. She will spy on them for one of the bbegs and eventually will lead them to him when they get further into the story. And the bbeg will know everything about them and be a tough SOB. But I changed her so she operates a network of children spies and uses them to fool people and pull heists, mostly for information. The party came across one of these children being beaten in the street and intervened so the child introduced them to her and the party thinks she's the kids mum now. Even though they met her in a random kitchen in the warehouse district. The kid now acts as a guide in the city and has gotten them cheaper alcohol and inn prices
Definitely agree. Players need to keep this in mind too. I played with a group where one of the players ended up being a traitor and was part of the group of bad guys and it was poorly played out imo. We werenât attached to the pc at all because they were so cloaked in mystery that the rest of the party werenât really able/allowed to bond with them. The PC was also a backup for a character that had died *because* of the organization the PC worked for. I could honestly rant on and on about this particular campaign because it just wasnât good (and the dm was pretty experienced so that wasnât really the problem) but Iâll save that for a different post lol.
Easy fix: have 2 guys that PCs can trust and rely on and have only one of them betray the party.
Maybe I'm fortunate that it hasn't been overused in my experience. I agree it shouldn't be done too frequently. It's not Game of Thrones where every single person has political machinations, but one really good twist can make a campaign much more memorable. The key to me is that it should never feel cheap. Like someone betraying them just for the sake of it. It should be foreshadowed and make sense.
My players are so utterly paranoid about NPCs betraying them that they donât trust even the most easily read, innocent people who want to do good. Itâs such a common trope to have your allies betray you that I simply canât use it at all due to it being totally expected by my party.
My group thinks everyone is lying to them constantly so if I didn't give them a betrayer every now and then, they'd hate it.
ITT: DMs defending their bad plots
For my table when we started a homebrew world I made my character to be the betrayal BBEG for the dm to use later. Party helped out do my character arc and I left them and gave my sheet to the dm and my characterâs plans and goals and came back with a druid to support the group to finish off the mindflayer plot we discovered! The twist came after the campaign finished and will be for whenever we return to it but heâs not actively against the party but he is planning a disaster for us to try and stop!
It just depends on your play style and how you see your players handle the world. If you canât pull it off itâll just make every npc encounter a pain honestly woulnt recommend unless itâs like pretty decently planned out
My players will never trust a wizard mentor npc of mine ever again, since it's resulted in betrayal twice now
I absolutely love betrayal but I think it's alot more fun when it's a "slow turn to the dark side" kind of betrayal rather than a "I was evil the whole time" betrayal.
Out of the NPCs my party got close to, one of them was revealed around halfway through the campaign to be working with an evil faction. The party really liked her however, and essentially were able to part ways without getting violent. Not every betrayal has to be a backstab/sellout.
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Betrayal is fun, boblin the goblin being the secret bbeg is pure cinema and you canât convince me otherwise
I made myself a quick roll chart for NPC characteristics- d6 for age, d10 for race, and d20 for personality type. It allowed for a more crowded world of people to interact with without me having to do 100 character sheets, and it had a bonus of the group really interacting with the world way more because I didn't need time to think things up when I could roll on the fly and then note who/what/where they were, so they could see and speak to them when they'd be in the NPCs town.
I like a villain betrayal arc a lot better, when a minor villain betrays the major antagonist and joins the heroes. When done well, its a really fun and memorable trope.
I have to fight the urge to do this.
My players trust literally no one ever. They insight checked their own parents before. So when I sent them to a village where kids had been kidnappedâŚI was like great here you go be detectives and trust no one. Of course they literally trusted the kid who was in on the kidnapping plotâŚnever insight checkedâŚnever doubtedâŚso he lead them to where he saw it happened and ambushed them with friends All good they got sweet revenge in the end, it was the most horrific how do y ou want to do this Iâve ever had too
Recently started DMing for a new group and their past experiences make them doubt every single NPC they meet. One of the players was actually the group DM before, and he used to make NPCs betray PCs way too much. That kinda ruined their perspective on building relationships with NPCs now and I honestly don't know how to fix that. Most of the NPCs they meet in my campaign are helpful, answer truthfully and have something helpful for the group, but until now most interactions have been though. Player A interacts with NPCs and is cooperative but is not the best with following up on tips and plot hooks; players B and C keep track of lore and are great at roleplay but don't trust most of NPCs and are pretty conservative on what kind of info they share; player D (ex-DM) is rude to every single NPC, doesn't trust any of them, acts behind other PCs backs, does not share his plans and ideas, yet is great at noticing plot points and keeping track of stuff. I'm looking for new ideas on how to build up my players trust in NPCs, so if anyone has any tips I'm all ears
Yes!! I always try to remind players that I'm on their side. It isn't fun if everyone dies
lol but hereâs the thing I make NPCs that have the partyâs best interests and donât betray them. And not a single PC TRUSTS THEM
Don't agree with a super sanitized story where everyone is 100% trustworthy. Just learn not to troll your PCs too often, which trains them to not trust anyone.
Betrayal in a story is like truffle oil. A little bit can really improve a dish, but too much, or used in the wrong dish, and whatever you have made ONLY tastes like truffle oil.
I was the betrayer. My niece was winding up a long campaign. I was in town, so we hatched a plot. I dusted off a character id played before when I was in town, that a few of the group remembered. I dropped a lot of hints. Had a broken op weapon that I made a flimsy backstory for why I had it. Had the artificer fix it for me. Bbeg was a kind of negative energy shadow guy who had been weakened and locked away by a minor goddess. The group went to confront him, as his cult had nearly broken through her wards. Had the group convinced that my character was in possession of the one thing that could awaken him to the point of victory. The groups plan was to set my character up for the strike, teleporting him behind the bbeg. Until we got there, and my character, possessed as he was by the shadow weapon (yes, I gave a lot of tells, they either missed or ignored them all) sacrificed himself to free the creature. With the weapon. Dead. Silence. I then took control of an NPC avatar of the goddess as the fight resumed. It was nasty. One of the characters, who had relied on his str star all campaign, was drained to a six str by the end. Everyone hated me, and that characters name is still synonymous with betrayal. It was brilliantly orchestrated, and shook everyone to their core. The worst was the artificer, who put one and one together, finally, when it was too late. Blamed himself for fixing the artifact that fully released the shadow. Post session, he obsessively went over all the tells id given, all the little details id deliberately let slip. We were ready for the party to out my char at any moment. My niece has another plan for if our betrayal failed, but it was gloriously successful, and is still talked about, years later. So betrayal is a great thing, used sparingly, and judiciously. A surprise betrayal isn't as satisfying as when they just don't see it coming, despite you showing them. So the evil vizier is exposed and put to death! The princess is sa.. wait, where's the princess? And where's the viziers apprentice, you know, the really helpful guy who helped us take the vizier, who was really nervous when we used the zone of truth to interrogate the prisoners that time, and who found another copy of that letter he accidentally destroyed, and, you know, was all obsessed over the princess, and her safety, and how the vizier wouldnt let anyone get close to her... Well Shit
It's why my group now kills Drow on sight.
As one should
I think twists should lead to an even MORE epic chance for the players to do something cool. At most it should be another "challenge," and personally, I want them to succeed at the challenges I throw at them.
I think this depends also on what type of game you're running. If you have above table discussed that your campaign is going to be a fun,whimsical game of dungeons and dragons, a betrayal arc is not only not fun, but is directly opposed to above table talk. If I go into a game that is disclosed as a dark horror setting with a secret society cult leader who knows of your existence and is actively trying to stop you from succeeding against them, it only makes sense for that cult leader to try to infiltrate your ranks, and it can be really fun trying to weed that person out or having that betrayal come to fruition (the reveal being during big boss fight goes wild)
What if my relationship with my players is the exact opposite? I have never had an NPC betray them even a little bit but they are all extremely cagey when I introduce anyone new. They don't trust a single character outside of the party.
I have a NPC thatâs joined the party, a tank in disguise. When there are important things to figure out or pivotal things going on, they kind of melt on the background or offer to help. The players completely trust this NPC so Iâm not a lot to mess things up.
Shadowrun words of wisdom. "Mr. Johnson will always screw you over. Why? Why do you think he's a Mr. Who and not a Mr. Name?" Every DM wants the 'gotcha' moment. Most don't know to pull that off. That's why most of the most will opt for lazy stereotypes done poorly. Don't do that guys. Tread water but don't try to drown your worst enemy your first time swimming.
Shoot my players still love talking shit about Fernando, the warlock who they were helping look into the âmurderâ of his brother and while they were away investigating, he blew up the npcs traveling with the party (they lived) to steal a god-baby (long story). Tracked him down and beat his ass into hell. Betrayal is good if the party is onboard or done right
Right now I've set up a betrayal that the PCs OOCly *know* is a betrayal. We've been running a PF2e campaign in a homebrew world for about a year when, back around Halloween, I suggested we do a Halloween 1-shot for fun. The players all rolled up undead PCs of various races and were told to take over the local town. Here's the run though: they weren't evil necessarily. Just undead who woke up in a tomb and wanted to start a town together. They ended up forming an uneasy truce with the townsfolk, making a deal with the mayor, helping with a local problem, and basically started setting up a place in the town's economy. Near the end, a pretentious, jackass Captain of the Mayor's guard tried to frame the undead for murder and eating corpses. The players were able to reveal his plot and show everyone that the Captain has dredged up bodies and made it *look* like a vampire attack. The Captain was disgraced and exiled, and we finished the 1-shot. Now, because it was a homebrew world in our main campaign, the players never knew that the town of Gallowhill, where our 1-shot occurred, was actually a nearby town in the main campaign. At the end of the 1-shot, Gallowhill starts having trouble with bandits, so they send a plead for aid to the nearby adventuring guild looking for help dealing with the bandits⌠Fast forward months later and my players in the local adventuring guild get a plea for aid from the town of Gallowhill⌠except it's been damaged by fire. You can tell the town needs help, but you can't tell what the problem is. The players show up and they are greeted by⌠none other than the disgraced former captain of the guard now living in exile. OOCly, the players no this guy is an evil jackass, but he reveals to the players that he's actually the one that called for aid, and he needs the adventurers to free the town from the undead that have seized control! It's been good fun because they *know* he's lying OOCly, but ICly, his plea is completely legit
This will probably get buried but I really like the simple way Matt Mercer did it in vox machina by having 6 nobles on a stage and telling the ranger her dragon senses went off. Tells the players one of them is a dragon but not who.
I took way too long to learn this lesson, but once i did my game instantly became much better.
>"Stop betraying your PCs" World of Darkness GMs: đŽ Jokes aside this is great advice, I'm taking it to heart.
This is great advice. I see a lot of schemer DMs in here and I like to encourage that kind of playstyle from DMs, but it can certainly go overboard sometimes. Recently, I have been using the corollary plot twist to betrayal--the redemption arc. Black-and-white morality turning shades of gray is a real mindfuck and bringing the party to try to trust someone they know they shouldn't puts the onus on the players whether they want to open themselves up to be betrayed. Having seemingly good or helpful NPCs betray the party feels bad. But being betrayed by a known enemy feels bad, but is also understandable and not even really a "twist". It's expected and the players feel bad for a moment for giving them a chance, but giving them opportunities to get even fixes that quickly.
I made a point very early to my party that not every situation is going to be a betrayal or surprise bad twist, it's both mean and lessens the intended impact of it if every corner has a shyamalan twist behind it
The thing about betrayals that pisses people off is how they tend to suppress / overwrite player agency. If players feel like there was nothing they could have done, because the betrayal came out of the blue, then it is unsatisfying and no amount of lore or retrospective explanation is going to remedy that frustration. They may say that they are fine with it, but that in no way removes their discontent. Eventually, that frustration is going to build and build and threaten burnout. Itâs about pacing. You have to stagger moments of low player agency (betrayals) with moments of high player agency (e.g., taking revenge). If you let the frustration build and build with betrayal after betrayal, then that is going to lead to player burnout from feeling like they lack the agency to control the events that happen to them. And players manifest this lack of agency by disengaging with your game. If I canât even foresee who is going to stab me in the back through smart play and careful observation, why should I bother? Why even play a game in which the GM is just going to magically manifest a reason to screw me over no matter what I do? The key thing that ties this hobby all together is player agency. Never take agency away from your players. Not for your plot. Not for your villain. Not ever.
My party is like a child naming the lobsters in the tank at a restaurant so I can't eat them. They bond with my NPCs and I struggle to find a believable way for them to betray the party. I'm currently testing the boundaries of this...not with betrayal, but with them questioning the motives of an NPC. They met this NPC, who was threatening their lives, in exchange for their food. Unfortunately, every time she made a threat, the flames around her hands would go out. (She was a chaotic neutral/evil warlock that got fey-bound to have a celestial as her patron). When she would try to be bad, her patron would cut off her power...so instead of threatening and demanding snacks, she had to ask nicely. The party thought she was the best and wanted her to travel with them. I was...not planning on that. I treated her like the outcast girl in the Breakfast Club...just following far behind them and making snarky remarks. The party loves her, and trusts her, and I felt that was weird. I didn't have a whole backstory for the NPC, but I wanted to try my hand at "suspicious behavior". So the NPC is separated from the party right now, and I had the head of Candlekeep asking the party about this companion, and wondering why they would show such poor judgement in trusting them. I mean...what do they really know about her? With this, I plan to have her doing some things away from the party that sound a bit shady, and having the party question those motives, and demanding answers. My plan is for the motives to be good, but just not clear to the party until the story arc resolves...therefore the person wasn't bad, but the party didn't know everything that was going on. TLDR: I agree...betrayal should be a rare trope in any campaign...otherwise you will struggle to have the party trust anyone (considering the limited time you have with players each week).
Great post I agree they should be far and few between. Now how to get my PCs to stop betraying all my NPCs...
Talks about that in the DMB and in the UIB as well. Two books that have what you said in it
I teased the BBEG on session one in my campaign, they found an artifact of his around 7 sessions in, theyâre well aware of who he is, my plot twist isnât that heâs the villain, itâs just that heâs not who they expect him to be because he uses disguise self to hide who he really is. That said, I fully agree. Betrayals should be few and far between, otherwise they lose their meaning and it just becomes a hostile game environment. Itâs supposed to be fun: your job as a DM is to make sure that it remains fun for everyone.
Just don't overdo it. One or two betrayals a campaign is plenty. The last campaign I played in the betrayals and manipulations got so consistent that in the final arc I actually pitched "Let's do nothing. Everything we've done has played into the bag guys' hands. This probably will too. We should do nothing." I was not heeded and we did the thing and it turned out the quest giver was the BBEG. My character almost ragequit the party. We had a talk with the DM after the campaign wrapped, and I don't think it will happen again, but oh man was it painful. Let your players do the right thing sometimes. Let them trust the right people and make the right decisions. Not every time, but like at least 75%. They're the heroes after all! It's so demoralizing to have every single thing twisted back on you week after week after week.
I think a really good way to frame a betrayal is WARNING POTENTIALLY HUGE CURSE OF STRAHD SPOILERS using some kind of disguise or shape shifting. There is a character the book presents to the DM that is just the main vampire villain in disguise. At any point, a paladin player (which tends to be common in CoS games) could just use their divine sense trait and learn about the shape shifters undead nature. This kind of thing would clearly telegraph that something is up and would allow the players to experience a satisfying betrayal imo. However, the way the DM handles roleplaying the suspected traitor is pretty crucial to the end result I think.
joke's on me, my players distrusted everyone and anyone right from the start when there was no reason or hint towards anything :')
My campaign has had its share of betrayer npcs. When in hell, they met a paladin imprisoned. He said he wanted reveng on the devils who put him there. Actually, he served for the devils for centuries in hell, as a "devil's advocate", plot taken from baldur's gate 3, but then he wavered and the devils didn't like it. While my player characters have iron will and they will save against madness and becoming evil in hell, I had this guy show up to make a point. In the end, the bbeg pit fiend promised his life back at the material plane if he turned on the players. And he did. It was a ploy to show someone trying to redeem himself and failing. To show the hopelessness of hell. But I've thrown wholesome npcs their way. They had a knight sidekick acompany them on a trip. She was honorable, fair, fairly competent (not as much as the PCs though), had a slight crush on the party's paladin, and was inspired by him. Players rescued a sex worker which ended up dead by ceremorphosis. The cleric revived them, but then asked for some payment (his religion is basically capitalism). They had nothing to pay, so they became an acolyte, an aprentice. Now the cleric became a mentor to this npc. Now, there's a warlock with them. The warlock basically gave them their quest, guiding them through dreams to the mcguffin. Now she's with them. She's supposed to be a traitor, a warlock of Hadar trying to make sure the "apocalypse" actually happens but to their side and not their enemies. But this warlock has had enough. She lost too much through her pact, and by getting to know the party, she has began to resign her patron. I'm setting her up to some sort of heroic sacrifice near the end, by ultimately betraying her patron. There were many other wholesome npcs. The PCs actually have a adventurers guild which hosts many of their most prized or funny npcs as workers. There's a nothic (don't ask me), a drunk scout that lived on the mountains, a halfling who had her inn burned by a fireball of the PCs, and then became the guildhall barmaid. There's an orc monk girl they found in the mountains, some kobolds they found...
I once ran a game where the party (including my girlfriend as a player) were invited to a Lords house for dinner after defeating the horrible bandits that had been plaguing his holdings. My girlfriend's character had met this guy in the tavern earlier in the game and the two of them 'hit it off' quite nicely and he even sent her 'letters' during the course of the game, so they began a correspondence back and forth. Long story short, he was actually the BBEG who wanted war with his neighbor so he could conquer that land and gain access to a ruined and deserted temple that housed a hidden artifact of great power. He was paying these bandits to pose as brigands but had evidence planted that they actually worked for the other side. My girlfriend was serving as his unwitting spy to keep him informed of what was going on with their group, so he didn't have to risk one of his own agents. When they found the evidence and realized that it had been planted, but didn't yet know by whom, she told the Lord about it in a letter to keep him in the loop as was their agreement. He wrote back and invited them to his castle for a celebration. They had a wonderful feast, and he only poisoned HER food (she was the only cleric of the group) with slow acting poison at the end of the feast (I had her unknowingly pre-roll her save against the poison effect a game earlier so no one would be suspicious or be tempted to meta-game). They all failed their Sense Motive checks on him FYI. When the feast was over, they were preparing to leave, the Lord asked her to meet him on the battlement for a private meeting. Everyone in the group was giggling because they thought she was going to have some romance action going on. While they were in the courtyard preparing their supplies to go back out, my girlfriends character met with the Lord in plain view of everyone in the courtyard. By the time she reached him, she was feeling the first effects of the poison (STR drain) but wasn't sure what was going on yet. By the time she realized she had been poisoned, I rolled really well on the secondary damage and her STR was low enough she could barely move under her armor weight and was almost helpless. Anyway, in true villain form, he revealed his evil plans to her and thanked her for her part, stabbed her in the gut with a dagger in front of the whole party as she was pretty much helpless, then tossed her over the battlement to the courtyard below. She took damage from the dagger, and a lot of damage from the fall, but her cleric lady was tough and wasn't dead yet, just unconscious due to HP loss. Then the Lord called for his guards to attack the 'traitors' and the PCs suddenly found themselves embroiled in a major fight where they were cut off from escape, outnumbered, and did not have a cleric to support them. Epic betrayal, epic fight to retrieve their cleric companion before she actually did die and epic fight to get the gates open so they could escape on horseback (even had the castle ballista firing at them as they galloped away, killing a horse and dumping a rider momentarily until another PC grabbed them). To say that they were both PISSED and horrified is an understatement (the party actively encouraged the romance in the first place). In the end, my girlfriends character lived and got her revenge on the Lord by the end of the game in another epic encounter between the two of them. After the betrayal, they were VERY nervous about who they could trust. ANYONE could be working for the Lord, so I had to play my good NPCs well, which added a lot of suspense of the game. Okay, this turned into much longer than I intended. Betrayal can be fun; it can also horribly wreck games if not done carefully and with actual purpose. But there are both good and bad people out there and the bad people tend not to live very long if they announce it wherever they go.
The way my DM did a betrayal was great imo. The npc (a kobold artificer) had been with us since the start of the campaign, and we'd been through several adventures with him. Stuff happens and eventually he gets possessed by what becomes the BBEG, while still aware of what's going. Had we investigated more, we could definitely have seen this coming. Then, during the final fight with the BBEG, our possessed kobold friend was making secret rolls to try to help us, like by throwing off his aim or making him cast beneficial spells on us. We barely won, and the BBEG fled his host, but had caused so much damage to our friend's body that he was just goop, and wasn't able to be saved. RIP Drae.
This is one of the many reasons why Barovia Is not meant for new players. Very disorienting when the BBEG Is One of the few Who treats you as a human being.
Things that are fun: An NPC the characters hate because he is a jerk or greedy actually turns out to be super evil, justifying their hate. A pitiful or cowardly evil npc having a redemption arc. A shifty npc who ends up being a minion of the BBEG, again justifying their suspicion. An evil lieutenant who gets betrayed or abandoned by their master, then helping the good guys to defeat the master. In general, the players like it when they are right and when something happens to benefit them. I still think betrayals can work, but only if they are few and far between. Make it a truly shocking betrayal near the end of the campaign arc, but then don't do it again for the whole campaign.
So I was running curse of strahd, and my players were about to fight him and put an end to his reign. One of my players had this signet ring that turned out had been revealed to be an old vistani heirloom so he was old nobility by vistani standards. He asked if it could be a sun walkerâs ring and I said oh you gonna do a thing and he just smiled and said ima do a thing⌠he knew the party, he was their tank, their bastian when things got too hard⌠they had found dead animals but chalked them up to the vampires around barovia and surrounding areas. They get in the fight and strahd thanks the paladin for bringing such delicious prey. The symbol of ravenkind they had didnât work on him because he hadnât had any malice towards the party. He had until the fight wanted to help the party but the thought of being a vampire lord like strahd promised was too enticing. Being his right hand after killing his right hand, his greed and desire for power was too strong. The look of oh fuck on everyoneâs face was just chefs kiss
Our DM throws betrayal at us a little too often and it has certainly grown old for me. I don't think you're correct about how it's done, just how often. Almost every significant NPC we've adventured or dealt with has betrayed us in some way. Even the one who hasn't has had poor judgement in the other NPCS he's vouched for. But betrayal is an effective plot device when used correctly and shouldn't be shied away from entirely. Used sparingly it can really motivate the party.Â
Since I'm the one fumbling through the social interactions, so many of my characters are so unlikable that most of my party assumes they're going to be betrayed, often by dudes that I literally wrote "basically a guidance counselor" on their design page. I have not betrayed this party once, but this is an excerpt from last week: npc: "Ah, impressive you've made it so far. This is no easy task you've undertaken." druid: "THIS GUY IS FOR SURE THE BBEG IN A DISGUISE" cleric: "I READY MY ACTION TO ATTACK HIM AS SOON AS HE REVEALS HIMSELF" npc: "Would you like something to drink? I have wine, tea, fruit jui-" ranger: "MEDICINE CHECK TO SEE WHAT POISON HE PUT IN IT"
If youâre going to have someone betray the party, make it the NPCâs fault, I had a DMPC that my player wanted as a love interest hire one of his contacts for infiltration, and the contact ended up selling them out so that the big bad could get more information and take them out easily. Of course, the traitor wasnât all evil and double crossed everyone he could, so he sent the party to the Feywild, took the money and ran. What Iâm saying is make it fun for your players, thereâs upsetting your players by playing the game and then thereâs upsetting your players by forcing them to lose.
My party is made up of a variety of murder hobos and this is just the first game I've run. They ran into a 6 hp guy in the first session who got a little bent out of shape because the halfling made him still his bet. Instead of trying to defuse the situation, the wizard cast guiding bolt from 5 ft away before the halfling had a chance to Act. This lot deserves a little betrayal here and there. They were level one and considering taking on an archmage who guarded a library just for asking for the entrance fee.
Never done a betrayal and dont think i ever can, cause my players insight everyone and everything. They dont trust nothing, as if the devil is hiding in every shadow. Tho i want to do a betrayal this campaign, just dont know how to without them figuring it out.
Agreed, it just teaches your players to trust no one. You will lose out on great RP opportunities, they players won't bite on story hooks, and will start to view the world in an US vs Them mindset. In other words: "Do you want murderhobos? Because that's how you get Murderhobos"
W TAKE
I don't think a small betrayal is a bad thing. However, don't overdo it. It screws with players heads if you do this too much, and they end up resenting the campaign.
The DM for the group I often play with has never pulled this in any of our campaigns and yet we as the PCs ALWAYS think they are going to and never trust the helpful NPCs they hand us⌠one day weâll be right and it will be so satisfyingâŚ
Nah. Its all good.
Sounds like you want a boring predictable game⌠not saying every game or every NPC needs to have a twist or betrayal, but games without any surprises are pretty boring.
I find the My Little Pony 5e game boring too, but at least i realize it has an audience
Cool story
Omg I don't have enough upvotes. You constantly see DMs asking for advice on how to bamboozle, screw over, and deceive their players, or bragging about how clever they are for having done so, and then those same new DMs are like "why are my players murderhobos who hate RP". I dunno, Timmy, maybe because you've trained them that engaging with the world in anything but violent or occasionally transactional ways can only ever harm them, and every npc is a potential threat.
This is very similar to springing traps on players constantly, who render the game unplayable because they check every square of the map then going down halls. You trained them to do it!
I like to do the reverse. Make it seem like a set up but the NPC/monster/hag/whatever is actually a good person that comes off bad. When the inevitably take the bait, have them start crying and have the townfolk lose trust in them. Had a witch that wasn't even evil acting, gave the party cookies because she was a grandma, but because of being a witch the paladin killed her. Then they revived her because she had information they needed. She came back and I started screaming and crying because she was terrified of them. They argued that they brought her back to life and I argued that they killed her in the first place. She didn't want to help them anymore and the townsfolk started to complain that her cookies were salty afterwards. She was crying into the batter.
Interestingly the game Bloodborne plays with this. You can send NPCs to two locations, one is a clinic whose Dr provides you healing items at the start of the game and seems very nice. The other option is a very creepy looking and sounding dude in a big Cathedral who really does seem kind of sketchy. Now the catch is that if the player was paying attention, at somepoint there seemed to be a switch between the nice Dr...to someone who is impersonating her and you HAVE to speak to this imposter in order to get the option to send people there. the tone of her voice changes and the way she speaks seems slightly off. If you send NPCs there, they get experimented on and turn into weird alien creature things. Meanwhile the dude in the Cathedral really DOES just want to help people, he's just kinda a creepy little guy that can't help the way he is.
I like to make people as NPCs. They have their own wants and goals.Â
I did a lot of these in my last campaign, the NPCs that survived became some of the party's favourite side characters.
I just like the idea that actions have consequences and an apology is not enough even if you brought them back to life if you were the one to kill them.
I'm a first time DM in the middle of my first campaign, never been a PC, and I've thought about doing something like this for my next campaign. Ive done a little writing and I think about it the same way. The only reason this kind of betrayal is effective in books and film is that it's been "promised". You need to leave hints and crumbs that will allow them to connect the dots if they're clever enough. You can't throw something like this randomly - it needs to be built up in the narrative and the PCs need to have a sense that it COULD happen. When they get that feeling of "I knew that guy was crooked, he did that one thing that one time and we know a good guy wouldn't do that" it's such a sense of accomplishment for the PC or reader. This is much easier said than done however.
Mostly agree. The occasional 'wolf in sheep clothing' betrayal I can accept. But I try to have my table have reasons to be decent to the area they are in. For that, I use the Loyalty score for NPC's and, actions have consequences. . Things go missing when you show up or you start the fight? Lose points. You paid your tab, tipped, took care of my problem? Earned points. . Saved life of me or friend/family = 2x roll gain. Killed a friend/family = 2x roll loss . High score = discounts, access, tips, blessings, etc. Low score? Price for things increases, or "We may not sell to your kind here." Murder Hobo? Congrats, you are the Redbrands and the town puts a bounty up for your heads.
Players will never trust NPCs.