What was your best plot twist

[quozaxx]

(Transferred from another post)

 

What was your best plot twist? Intreage us.

 

Quozaxx

[Nolgroth]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

I'm not sure which was my "best" plot twist, but I've done a couple in my time.

1. In a Shadowrun campaign, I had the bad guy Control Thoughts (or whatever the spell was called) on one of the player characters. When he joined his friends for a meeting of the minds, he opened up with a semi-auto shotgun on the rest of the team. The team burned lots of karma to keep alive.
   
2. In my Gemini Ascendant campaign, the two human characters (both pilots) learned that they are somehow connected to a super-soldier project, though the exact details are still a little vague. The set-up on this was beautiful and one of the players admitted he didn't even see it coming.
   
3. I dropped a big plot twist in the game (also Gemini Ascendant) at one point, but I'm not sure how many of the characters got it.
   
4. One final twist, though more of a humorous distraction, I introduced an NPC in our very first game named Hank. Hank is a janitor that was caught up in a space station disaster with the characters. The next time they see him is on another space station; that had another huge event. I think Hank will run for the nearest escape pod if he ever sees the group again. The best part is that they feel the same way I'd bet.

So there are some plot twists for you.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

Probably when the players gradually discovered the NPC hero they had been working with for several months, and with whom one PC had become romantically involved, was the brother of another PC. At separate times, that left two players at a complete loss for words.

[teh bunneh]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

In a fantasy campaign I ran, the Undead kept popping up, all over the place. The heroes fought necromancers, vampires, mummies, you name it. They realized something big was going on -- some uber-necromancer was obviously up to no good. I was dropping clues left and right, and eventually the heroes found the necromancer behind it all. They finally managed to confront him in his lair... where they found he had been imprisoned for the better part of a year.

 

The necromancer told them that the *real* bad guy was a very powerful liche, and that he had been trying to stop the liche (who had imprisoned him for his trouble). All the clues the heroes had found leading to the necromancer? He himself had left them in the hopes that the heroes would free him, so together they could stop the liche!

 

My players were floored.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

My personal favorite plot twist is one related to official Champions Universe characters, which Steve Long liked so much he asked to include it as a plot seed in The Dragon Mandarin PDF.

 

 

The PCs suddenly found themselves in the middle of a battle between high-tech robots and Oriental supernatural monsters, and had to stop them while protecting innocent bystanders. After the battle they were contacted by the great Chinese sorceror Dr. Yin Wu, who informed them that arch CU villain Dr. Destroyer had learned that Yin Wu knows the secret of the alchemical Pill of Immortality, and was trying to force it from the sorceror. To prevent more innocent deaths, and the prospect of an immortal Destroyer, the PCs agreed to help Yin Wu stop him.

 

This ultimately led the heroes to China to help protect Dr. Yin Wu's castle from Dr. Destroyer, who had invaded China to get to him, taking on the Chinese military and superheroes. That's when the PCs learned that Yin Wu himself leaked knowledge of the Pill of Immortality to Destroyer. While the defenders of China were preoccupied with him, Yin Wu attempted to overthrow the government and declare himself Emperor. The heroes had to prevent Dr. Yin Wu's coup, and then convince Dr. Destroyer that he'd been tricked so he'd call off his invasion.

 

[Thrakazog]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

In a fantasy campaign I ran, the Undead kept popping up, all over the place. The heroes fought necromancers, vampires, mummies, you name it. They realized something big was going on -- some uber-necromancer was obviously up to no good. I was dropping clues left and right, and eventually the heroes found the necromancer behind it all. They finally managed to confront him in his lair... where they found he had been imprisoned for the better part of a year.

 

The necromancer told them that the *real* bad guy was a very powerful liche, and that he had been trying to stop the liche (who had imprisoned him for his trouble). All the clues the heroes had found leading to the necromancer? He himself had left them in the hopes that the heroes would free him, so together they could stop the liche!

 

My players were floored.

 

And they believed him? My group would likely have killed him or at least left him imprisoned until the lich was dealt with. It's the only way to be sure.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

One I had, that almost made me look prescient - Spoilers for the anopholes/Horror World 4t ed.

 

 

I was running the Challenge out of Time Adventure from Champions presents. Of beings pulled out of thier normal time that they had to fight was Thor. Thor attacked on of the heroes (the strongest supermage on the planet) calling him a coward, talking about attacking him from behind.

 

Running this, I had a very distinctive look and feel for the SFX when something moved through time.

 

This flummoxed all the players (and characters).

 

So they do the adventure, end up in the deep past, then return to the present, and it was Horror world from Champs 3-d.

 

First twist. No one expected that.

 

So they are getting the sanity blasted out of them, and acting all strangely - and they were getting transformed to "crazy" - and the kind of crazy I told the mages player that was happening to him was that he was turning into a shoot first ask question later blow em up kind of guy.

 

So they find their way back to the 30's when the Queen of the Anopholes came through, and they have a dimensional portal in front of them, but no real clear view on the other side. The mage does his detect otherworldly being to see if the queen had come through.

I responded with "yes, an other dimensional entity of great power is through the portal, as far as you can tell"

So, playing up his crazy, he leaps in and attacks with everything he has.

 

It's Thor. From Behind.

The rest of the group show up, and Thor gets all angry about how he is protecting their world, and they attack him. Then he dissapears in midsentence with the Timeshift SFX.

 

They all realized that I had set up this bit months ago running the start of the time shift adventure. And everyone was really curious on how I knew it would be the mage that did the attacking.

 

Big ol' second twist - and one of my proudest GM moments ever.

[nexus]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

The best twist I ever had was almost completely unintentional. Two characters in my New Sentinels campaign were very similiar: Spider themed powers, mysterious pasts (one had amnesia, the other was a foundling). The campaign was divided into a one "street level" group or a more traditional team of city defenders. I ran a lengthy subplot with Spider Queen and Black widow investigating an ongoing war between an spider/insect worshipping cult and DEMON. Over the course of it the characters grew very close, eventually becoming lovers....

 

and found out at tne end they were sisters...

[Korvar]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

My favourite one was when Cyberpunk and Shadowrun had both just come out in the U.K. Everyone in my group said they liked the Cyberpunk background (specifically, they thought the magic of Shadowrun was too silly), but preferred the Shadowrun supplements (specifically the Seattle city book, Sprawl Sites, Ares Catalog and so forth).

 

So, says I, I shall run Shadowrun without the magic. A pure Cyberpunk background, but using the Seattle Sourcebook etc. etc. I claimed Metahumans were too integrated into the setting to remove, but they would become genetic mutations caused by toxic waste and the VITAS plague. Definitely no magic.

 

I then took one of the players aside and asked him what kind of Mage he wanted to play...

 

Unfortunately, the game ended just as the plot twist came up, and the Street Samurai was trying to work out how the Azteknology troubleshooter's ornate bracelet was able to throw charged balls of plasma. But it was still rather cool

[teh bunneh]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

And they believed him? My group would likely have killed him or at least left him imprisoned until the lich was dealt with. It's the only way to be sure.

 

That was the point where all the clues and plothooks I had left for them suddenly fell into place, and they realized that the necromancer was (a) not the big bad guy, and ( the big bad guy was powerful enough that they needed the necromancer's help to take him.

 

But they certainly weren't happy with him.

[Comic]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

Twist?

 

When the GM revealed that the 25-pt mystery disadvantage one of the players took was "Split Personality - alter ego is a master villain".

 

So all those sessions the GM asked that player to help him out by co-GMing and running the villain.. were really the player playing his character. Without knowing it.

[Tech]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

My best plot twist was in a ROBOTECH rpg game. A new member was added to the squadron and was equally competent to the other characters. At one point while the aliens are attacking the players in their fighters with missiles, they had to dodge additional missile attacks. One one planet where occasional strange things happened to them and their fighters (sudden power losses, weapon systems locking up, etc), the newest member suddenly has a complete loss of weapon systems and ends up firing all his missiles at the entire squadron. The guy even helps them out and wins over not only the player characters trust but the players as well.

 

One real year later and near the end of this particular series for the players, they players are shocked to find out their newest member, who had joined and been on their squadron for so long, has actually been a mole and spy for a real jerk and enemy of their squadron. Using that confusion, he is able to defeat two (or was it three?) of the squadron fighters in combat before the rest of the squadron is forced to destroy his fighter.

 

I still savor this well thought-out, carefully unveiled plot as GM.

[Frenchman]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

My most memorable one would have to be when I was running a fantasy game - had a player playing a 'unique' race, he'd never met anyone like himself before. So While the party is traveling through the mountains, he gets separated from the group and finds... a city filled with people like him. They treat him well, tell him about some 'prophecy' that he is to 'fulfill,' and he kills a 'vicious' beast. They give him a suit of chain mail and several potions with the warning that no-one should drink more than one, and that he'd know when to use them. Over the course of the campaign they contacted him (secretly - they were a very secretive race - thats why no-one else had ever heard of them) and had him do little things, make small changes to the parties plans.

Well, it actually turned out he was fooled by a handfull of dopplegangers in service to Oozeroth - god of Slime and Betrayal. The 'beast' was a party member that had been captured and shapechanged (don't listen to its lies, they said) who nevertheless managed to meet back up after the blizzard...

The potions would slowly (after months of pain) kill anyone who drank them and they'd turn into an undead slime. Only the character in question actually drank one, and he was nearing the final stages when the final battle against Oozeroth's minions occurred.

The armor would entangle the character with a certain command - used several times, but he thought it was a spell. And those little things he did? They were setting up traps, dropping off supplies for his enemies, and diverting the party towards the more dangerous route. It finally dawned on him during the final battle, when one of the doppelgangers turns into what he had thought was his uncle, that he's been a dupe the whole game...he was really pissed at first, but admits it was a great story.

 

In revenge (or so I insist upon believing) when he ran a FF-style game, the party found a wounded owl. We had a small child NPC with us, Ben - who everyone was very attached to. Ben insisted on us keeping the owl, so my priest healed it and it became a member of the party. Surprise, surprise, it turned out to be extremely smart and fast, and we used Spotter (the owl's name) as a messanger and scout. For the next two years (real time) of the game. We discover that the earring Ben wears is a magical artifact that the villain has been seeking - at one point we are in a facedown with him, and Ben has Spotter on his shoulder as usual. The villain says something like, "I want that earring, NOW," and Spotter *RIPS* Ben's ear off and wings it over to him. We were in shock - it all made sense now: How he had known where we were and where we were going, how he had been able to foil our plans, and how he knew when we were going to be distracted and away so he could use his time to his best advantage.

Later, when the party's sniper had a choice between headshotting the villain or taking out Spotter, he capped Spotter. This was shortly before the Villain killed Ben as we watched helplessley from jail. Ben's whole story was just pretty messed up. I guess thats why we made up a song about him.

[Mad Fnorder]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

In the Mekton Zeta game I ran, which took place in a combination military space station/Research facility/Ender's Game Lite Battle School, where the PCs were all students in the same training squad, I introduced early on Dr. Falcone- Brilliant, secretive head of the research wing of the station. He always seemed to be around, PCs overhearing enigmatic things from him, or, in rare situations, him mentioning something offhand before walking away, lab coat billowing dramatically. The coup de grace being him having white hair, glasses, and high Attractiveness, in an anime game.

 

Apparently the cliche was stronger than I thought, since the party was absolutely, utterly, and totally convinced he was the big scary arch-villain, running a shadowy organization to use the students for his own ends.

 

Sure enough, that Shadowy Organization attacks the space station, scuttling it. The PCs are making a disorganized dash through the station, evading enemy commandos while trying to make it to the escape pods.

 

Me: "You open the final door, and Dr. Falcone is standing there, looking as smug as usual."

 

*cue PC groans of "we're doomed"*

 

Me: He steps up to the group, away from the escape pods. "Get going. I've already set up your landing trajectory away from standard. It should buy you time."

 

At this point, the PCs were stumped. They stood there debating for a couple of minutes amongst themselves.

 

Me: One of the black suited commandos busts in through the door you came through, gun at the ready. *initiative dice clatter, muttering, people holding actions* Falcone walks calmly up to the guard, hands raised in surrender, and roundhouse kicks him in the head. He crumples like a sack of rice."

 

You'd think this would get them to make some sort of decision, but nooooo. It took another trio of commandos coming in to finally get them to use the escape pods. Of course, the good doctor was doing all his research to fight a potential alien menace. I don't think the group ever really trusted him until he gave them state-of-the-art custom Mecha when they returned to space. Giant Robots make everything better.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

So far, my favorite was the introduction of Cyl.

 

I run a Fantasy Hero game in a homebrewed world, where dragons are friendly but detached, and they can shapeshift. The party is well aware that they've probably met more dragons than they realize.

 

One night, they awaken to an intruder, who bolts away at top speed, before any of them can even see the person. The spellcaster casts Icy Ground, which makes the intruder fall and slide, luckily down a nearby hill (as the strongarm of the party was preparing his Windslash attack to destroy the intruder).

 

The spellcaster goes dashing after the intruder, and finds a scared, skinny little girl, crying her eyes out. She brings the girl back to camp, where they feed her. When the girl stops crying, she tells them her name is Cyllenna. They find out she's come from the city they're headed to for the purposes of liberation, and so she has useful information about the city layout and such. They bring her with them, and she clings to them.

 

They travel some distance farther, reach the city, defeat the demons holding it captive, and face the mastermind behind it all. He blasts them with a nasty spell, and they all pass out, except for the one character with a level of Magic Resistance.

 

And the little girl.

 

The mastermind gloats and brags and struts, and goes to take a couple of unconscious party members captive. Then Cyl's eyes start to glow, and she blasts the mage with a bolt of energy. He, shaken, teleports away.

 

Cyl turns to Daris, the only standing party member. "Don't tell anyone, okay?"

 

The rest of them still don't know she's a dragon, though they know OOC. Her plan is to remain among them, looking small and innocent, and making the mage wonder what her deal is. The next time he thinks he has the upper hand, she plans on shapeshifting into her true form and, while he's surprised and distracted, rally the party into defeating him. The reason why she has to keep this secret is because the villain can read minds, and has already extracted more information than the party would like. Daris is the only one who's learned to shield his deepest thoughts, and she's helping him cultivate that capability so he might teach it to others.

 

Not terribly original, I know, but I'm having fun with it. ^ v ^

[NestorDRod]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

Well, if I am allowed to describe a plot twist done to me, here's my all-time favorite.

 

In a modern Superhero campaign, I was playing a brick who'd been a scrawny kid until he'd bulked up big time at puberty. I'd described his childhood where his dad had been an abusive drunk who'd died when he'd smashed his car onto a lamppost.

 

So the GM starts dropping hints about a secret super-soldier program that had gone awry back in the 70's. The program modified their subjects to essentially turn them into Hulks, in full rampage mode. Then my character got a phone call saying that someone had stolen his dad's body from his grave.

 

To make a long story short, after a while we discovered that his dad had been one of the subjects of the super-soldier program, who'd escaped when he realized they were being used to "neutralize" areas with no regard for civilian casualties. Before this, he'd been a decorated hero that everyone had respected. His dad had used alcohol to keep the "rage" at bay, and had fought constantly to keep his inner beast under control.

 

The best part was how the GM built this whole storyline, including details on why my character had inherited his powers, without cluing me in on it until the big revelation. The climactic scene was a time-travel story where my character got sent back to 1971 to land on a rice-paddy somewhere in Viet Nam, just in time to see this familiar-looking big over-muscled guy drop out of the sky nearby.

 

To this day, that game stands as one of my most favorites.

[Sidume]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

Mine was running a Star Trek game. It was a long campaign, and this didn't come out until after we'd played the game for about nine months. Even then, it didn't really come out perfectly.

 

I had them on an exploratory ship, checking out different planets in a mostly unexplored area. And, from the very beginning, there was a Romulan spy under deep cover on their ship. Ordinarily, s/he gave no indication of the deception, only doing things that would might be important enough to justify jeopardizing the long term mission of infiltration. But s/he was never caught.

 

Then one day, one of the players had an idea for a one shot story that he thought would go over well for the Trek game. I agreed (somewhat reluctantly, and after much pestering), to allow him to run his story. But before he did that I gave him a write-up of certain things that he wasn't allowed to change, and let him know who the spy was, on the promise that he would keep player knowledge separate from character knowledge.

 

Just the look on his face as this player read my write-up - was priceless. His character was playing the Ops officer, with an intelligence background. And as he read, he realized what every missed roll, incomplete answer, and strange tidbit tied together.

 

And having to keep player knowledge & character knowledge separate as the campaign continued for three more months just drove him nuts.

[Matt the Bruins]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

I think the best plot twist I ever sprang on players was when I was running a DC Superheroes game with an extended story arc about a group of Asian super-villainesses. At one point, a Batman-esque vigilante gadgeteer PC was kidnapped for his knowledge of Apokolips technology, met the villains' mentor—a conquest happy Zamaron, and had his gender switched (she explained it as a both a vengeful blow to his male ego and a way to remake him as a superior being).

 

Eventually the character escaped, rejoined his/her teammates, and after finding out that the transformation method involved complete rebuilding on a genetic level and precluded simple undoing, began adjusting to life as a woman. Adopted a new civillian identity, revamped costume and weapons to the new physicality, etc. Wacky "my eyes are up here, bud!" hijinx ensue.

 

Cut to several weeks later, when we rejoin the PC as he wakes in a sensory deprivation tank, escapes with the help of a turncoat in the villains' operation, and returns home to find out that his teammates haven't been trying to find and rescue him, but instead have accepted a female imposter version of him into their ranks as the genuine article while he's been held captive for weeks on end.

 

I believe the player in question shouted an admiring "You bastard!" at me when the big reveal happened.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

One of my best plot twists was for a Fantasy Hero game:

Some orcs had been troubling the local area with magic more powerful than one might expect from mere orcs, so the heroes investigate. Their encounters with various low-level undead and orcs (sometimes one in the same) seem to indicate that the orc shaman is running the show. The heroes chase the shaman into an ancient crypt and after dealing with some nasty traps and undead they find the shaman cowering behind a lich that claims to be the great Azeri (who the heroes know from previous encounters was supposedly killed by the great hero Roarnok ages ago). Or is the shaman really controlling the lich and using the magical artifacts from the crypt to enhance his power? They kill the lich only to discover that it is really the animated corpse of Roarnok who apparently had sacrificed his life in defeating the lich so many years ago. They finally manage to catch up to the slippery shaman fleeing deeper into the crypt and kill him with one clean stroke, beheading him. Then the shaman’s head slowly twists around to face the heroes and cackles “Do you think this pathetic pawn is behind the power you have witnessed? You have entered Azeri’s crypt and have thus sealed your doom!” The heroes come to discover that Roarnok merely managed to imprison Azeri, but the orc shaman freed him. Since then Azeri has been using the shaman as his puppet to explore the current state of the world before conquering it. Needless to say, the lich who was nearly unstoppable in combat and the heroes only won in the end by using their wits.

 

____________________________________________________________

"The rich scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

[Fenixcrest]

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

Not a plot twist, so much as an "Oh crap" moment:

I was running a sort of outlaw supers game couple years ago. The PCs were holing up in some farmhouse in Utah, waiting for the mob to get off of their backs. One of them decided to catch a bus into town. After she was done, she began walking back up the road, back toward the farm.

Now, the PCs didn't know a lot about the mob agents in this region, except that one of the lieutenants had electrical powers.

An outgoing young woman in a pickup truck pulled up next to the PC, and offered her a ride. Being nigh invulnerable to normal people, she accepted. There were several minutes of pleasant conversation, and then the driver reached into a brown paper bag and began eating AA batteries.

 

Best look on a player's face I've ever achieved.