I’d never have thought that players would do such a thing… but I guess that in a situation where the adversity level between players and DM is high enough that could happen.

That being said, if it gets to that point with players in a storyline, I think the campaign is doomed anyway. If PCs hate a NPC enough to destroy part of the world (enemies included) well then, let’s roll credits and move on to something else.

This allows for a wonderful evil in a can scenario. Instead of aliens, your infiltrator is a demon who has hidden in a human community. It isn’t a good demon, but it has self control enough to be a decent neighbor, and it is no longer trying to prepare the community for demonic invasion. It does some unpleasant things, possibly it has a penchant for eating cats, maybe there are some gory animal sacrifices that it needs to do regularly to keep up its disguise, maybe something else, but it tips off the party or their patrons that not all is what it seems. When the party finally discovers the demon, they are faced with a serious problem, since piercing its disguise will open the gates to an invasion.

(The Angel and Demon from Good Omens were beings of this sort. They were agents of their respective powers, but they were working together to avoid achieving their sponsors’ goals, since that would mean the end of the world that they both enjoyed.)

Michael Phillipss last blog post..remembered one of the things I’d intended to say.

Maybe he wants to die. Maybe he has realized that he doesn’t have the means to destroy himself, so he becomes a bastard to goad high powered adventurers into killing him. They may not do it right the first time, or the second or third, but pehaps he has faith that if he keeps goading them they will eventually discover something he couldn’t, and finally pull it off. His dying words…”Thank you…” One last bit of magnificence as the PC’s realize they have been played all along.

…Brainstorming an adventure hook of an insane Lich who wants to die but can’t remember where his Phylactery is hidden. So he hires/tricks the adventurers into looking for it. Not exactly like that, but something like that…

Michael Phillipss last blog post..remembered one of the things I’d intended to say.

There’s also soul-in-a-jar…the MB can’t be killed until his heart/soul/last hit point is found and destroyed. Then he can be killed like anyone else. I think a variant of this was suggested.

Make the MB the head of a subverted good organization that does a lot of good while unknowingly funding evil…killing him will put society on its ear and make the heroes horrible villains to the rest of the populace, turning a “good” organization against them.

Simulacrums, clones, and surgical doubles. Nothing allows your MB to continue operating like the rest of the world thinking he’s already dead. Did you get the real one? Are you sure? This one can’t be overused, but certainly if set up appropriately ahead of time, it’s as MB as MB can be. (”Oh, I know you killed me on the ramparts of Castle DarkbloodGlorymore. That’s exactly what I wanted you to do… It was the only way to return to my proper lair in time to crush the nobles of your homeland. Thank you!”)

Just some ideas.

-Ben.

Side note: NEVER, EVER DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

Ahem. So, things started off okay. I was the only healer and I successfully stayed in the back without arousing suspicion. Then the GM goofed, managed to knock everyone else unconscious in an encounter and it was just me. The characters had no clue why they woke up safe afterwards but the players heard a couple rolls which implied I wasn’t a human as I appeared to be (had a 19 str in 2nd edition D&D).

From this point on the other players basically just metagamed. Every session there was player to player chat about how they were going to kill me and were just waiting for a hint of an excuse. The characters all started distancing themselves from mine, pouncing on things I said, acting paranoid, etc. I should’ve just stopped healing them.

End result: I was willing to sacrifice my character for a good plot. I wasn’t willing to do the same for metagaming silliness. So the whole plot got scrapped and the character got revamped. They all still hated their healer but I managed somehow until the game stopped due to too much silly OOC/metagaming BS.

I just figured I’d share the story since it sounds like the players in the original question have some metagaming issues as well.

Michael Phillipss last blog post..remembered one of the things I’d intended to say.

Michael Phillipss last blog post..

I’ll open you a Wordpress.com account myself!