Wednesday, August 10, 2016

RPG a Day - Day 10

The topic for today: What is the largest in-game surprise you have experienced?

This answer only technically applies, but it was still a surprise, so I'm going to run with it.

I ran a Dresden Files campaign for my group a few years ago. During the course of the adventure, my players came into conflict with Bob. If you asked what Bob's High Concept was, his character sheet would read "Evil Hillbilly Psychomancer." Bob was a bad man; the details as to how are unimportant.

What ended up being the big surprise to me was how much the players connected with him. Oh, not in a good way, mind you. They wanted to kill him. They were pretty clear about this. The party's warden had a great deal of enthusiasm for cutting Bob's head off.

I'm not entirely certain what it was that set them off on Bob. Perhaps his exaggerated drawl combined with the arrogance that accompanies power landed just right. Maybe it was his eagerness to hurt innocents just to get their attention.

Either way, Bob ended up being a big surprise for me in that game. My one regret was that his role ended up being very small in the game overall. Had I been thinking, I'd have capitalized on their fixation with him and given him a larger role in the game.
Y'all minds belong to me, now.

1 comment:

Larry said...

To be fair, that was a legit call on Findlay's part. There's only one punishment for breaking one of the Laws and there weren't any mitigating circumstances to put Bob in any sort of good light either.