What was the biggest long-con that the DM or players have ever pulled off in a D&D campaign?

[@ErzengelDesLichtes]

“Your characters will die a lot. We’ll have a dynasty system.” Ok. “The BBEG is a necromancer” Oh no.

[@manualcontrol5581]

Man really just straight up lifted the Obito/Madara strategy from Naruto (Understandably so since it seemed to be a big influence). The only thing different was the addition of the demon lord, but it's still almost 1 for 1. :p

[@sheldonbuchanan9484]

First rule of fighting necromancers: If it was easy to kill the necromancer, you didnt kill the necromancer.

[@wayneking3744]

I love this fact in that I recently ran my friends through a dungeon(Tomb of Horrors) without them knowing it was ToH. They fought a fake Lich, describing the fight(Lich moving his hands as if he's casting a spell, magic Mouth spouting incantations), baiting the characters into a confrontation with a regular skeletal being. After destroying the fake Lich in 2 rounds, and grabbing all available just as the roof collapsed in the room, I asked them how they thought the dungeon went. They all were excited that they owned a Lich with relative ease, and escaped with the rooms loot. On the way out, 1 player was looking for traps, rolling perceptions every 15 feet. He previously missed a secret door coming through that area, but found it going out. It was the door to the real Lich's room, and it wasn't an easy fight. They all made it out, but barely.

[@sheldonbuchanan9484]

@@wayneking3744 i love this kind of story. Players always seem to overlook one crucial detail when dealing with Liches: Theyre powerful spellcasters so paranoid and determined to live past their natural lifespan that they turned themselves into horrific undead nightmares to escape death... you really think theyre not gonna have contingency plan on top of contingency plan to prevent them being put down? Their entire motivation is to become unkillable by any means nessicary. Even with living necromancers, their primary school of magic is entirely focused on having control over the forces of life and death. If you kill one with minimal effort, its only because they wanted you to... or wanted you to think you did.

[@Splincir]

Second rule of fighting necromancers: if it was hard to kill the necromancer, you probably still didn't kill the necromancer.

[@cyanideytcuriousseadoggo]

@@Splincirso the main rule of fighting Necromancers: if they die there’s a very good chance they’re still alive

[@lexsamreeth8724]

I just remember a story from an older edition when the wizard player handed an envelope to the GM at the beginning of a campaign with a bunch of murderhobos. He spent pretty much the whole campaign getting bullied into being a magic item factory by everyone else, and once they deemed they were powerful enough, they announced their intent to murder the wizard. At this point, the wizard revealed that he had built failsafes into all of their magic items. The rogue's dagger sprouted poisoned needles from the handle, the fighter's armor heated to white-hot, the cleric's necklace strangled him, et cetera. Then the envelope was opened, revealing that the wizard player had seen this coming from level 1 and had spent the entire campaign plotting to kill them the moment they turned on him.

[@joesgotmore]

That is so awesome.

[@joelrehnberg626]

Nicely done! That certainly isn't the first story I've heard of the Wizard saying "I just KNOW these murder-hobos are going to come at me someday" but it's definitely equally legendary.

[@archellothewolf2083]

I remember reading that story. good times.

[@DepressedCrow]

Batman levels of scheming

[@nicholashodges201]

A mage after my own heart...

[@adamkotter6174]

Over a year into our campaign, we finally defeated the BBEG. We investigated his oddly shaped remains, only to find that the terrifying magician with an absurd number of spells and spell slots had, in fact, literally been three gnomes in a trenchcoat the whole time.

[@danielboatright8887]

Yeah, yall need to spoil that DM.

[@petupullo5160]

That's genius and hilarious 😂

[@Jonty-kq4fr]

Was that in any way inspired by Gravity Falls?

[@LoneWolf-rc4go]

Best long-con I can remember was a GM who had us up against an incredibly smart 'big bad'. He seemed to know all of our plans, foiling us at every step. After (in-game) years of this cat and mouse game we finally caught up with our opponent to find out that she was one of the serving staff that worked at the tavern that we owned. Her parents had died really early on in the campaign and she blamed the PC's for their deaths. She'd then devoted her life to ruining ours. She didn't have any spells, any character levels, and magic items, she was just an angry young woman who had lost those she cared about. The funny thing was that she literally listened to all of our plans of how we were going to defeat the 'big bad' and suddenly everything that had happened during the campaign started making a lot more sense.

[@Darkbeast42]

What did your party end up doing to her?

[@LoneWolf-rc4go]

@@Darkbeast42 Turned her in to the authorities as she was wanted on a laundry list of charges. It might seem like an anti-climax to a campaign but it's actually more memorable than the bunch of Dragon, Liches and evil wizards that we've faced down in other games.

[@jeremyrichard2722]

Reminds me vaguely of something I did during my earlier days as a GM when I was ad-libbing. I old school AD&D you used to be able to have special familiars with Quasits, Imps, Pseudodragons and such with a very unlikely roll on a "Find Familiar Spell". Nowadays such things are now class features enhanced by feats and the like in D&D in most of it's variants. At any rate I had a player who really wanted a special familiar and was cursed with bad luck, during one adventure the PCs defeated an evil mage who had an imp as a familiar and given that imps are cowardly and when it learned of this PC's desire in some off the cuff dialogue, it offered to serve as his familiar in exchange for being spared. This was of course it desperately BSing in hopes of surviving, and things did not work that way, especially then, but nobody thought that through.... and they accepted that offer. So despite none of the usual stuff that comes with having a familiar they had this imp following them around, totally conniving and evil, pretending to be the wizard's familiar, and secretly undermining the party who were all good aligned whenever it could as they would oftentimes make their plans right in front of it, or send it out to scout things, and it would report on them to specific bad guys that made sense that it hoped would destroy them. It reminds me of the serving girl because it was right there the entire time, and to be seemed really obvious, but for whatever reason they kept believing this unlinked imp was somehow a loyal servant of the wizard until they basically caught the thing selling them out when they sent a henchman (that was a thing back then) to find out why the imp was taking so long at one point. Pretty silly, but it was sort of funny at the same time, especially seeing as I was ad libbing the whole time which I'm not good at, and for months I was pretty sure "this is the session where Neferiax the imp is going to finally bite it" especially seeing as I didn't think the imp was even being all that smart about things. It's not really a "long con" though, because as I said, I didn't set this up with the imp intentionally infiltrating the party.

[@Sorain1]

@@LoneWolf-rc4go I think that's the perfect ending. No big dramatic attack or display of overwhelming PC power. Just collared like the common criminal she was. Would definitely make a solid novel plot skeleton to work with.

[@josephtownsend2103]

The "you're not a forever DM con". My friend that got me into DnD in high school was also my first DM, but it was understood that we would be taking turns among our friend group for who would be DMing each campaign. The first campaign ends, and we all shower him with praise for how he did and he admits that he has some idea about another campaign that he might be interested in trying. 20 years later and lots of "next time"s and none of us have ever been the DM.

[@jonahelliot4241]

A real life con, hah.

[@jamesdrury9309]

I feel like this is about to happen to me. I just finished dming my first campaign and my friend was supposed to do the next one but he quit so I'm taking over again.

[@goontubeassos7076]

@@jamesdrury9309 R.I.P James the player, Arise Drury the FOREVER DM OF EVERLASTING CAMPAIGNS!!!!!!! 4 players endlessly cheering you on, need a 5th? Lol

[@Zedja]

That's the opposite of what I thought it would be. In a way this is good since it means that the DM enjoys being the DM and is rather good at it instead of being forced to be the DM since nobody else will step up to do it.

[@jonahelliot4241]

@@Zedja Sometimes I just say I'm the DM because no one else is running the kind of campaign I want to be a player in.

[@addisonmaye-saxon9602]

Mine was a really bad joke. It was a character I named Finneon Ishline, who started going by Fin after a couple sessions. Fin would always talk about the honor of the Ishline clan (I basically stole sasuke’s backstory from naruto) and how he will avenge the one that slaughtered his family. So finally we get to interact with the guy that did it, and right before the battle started my character says “you killed my family, but you left me, Fin ishline, and I’m going finish you off here.” The whole group silently put together my long winded pun of a character name and finally the DM awarded me a surprise round and inspiration.

[@Celticshade]

Thats so dumb, i love it. 😂

[@havewissmart9602]

"NAARUUTOOOOOO!" "FIN ISHLIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!

[@joefurious732]

You do that in my game you take 12d12 psychic damage 😂

[@scoots291]

The longest one I ever did was as a player. Character concept. Elemental Monk who took the charlatan background who's secret identity was that if a wizard. (The gm let me start off with gold rolled instead of standard equipment which I bought all these wizard stuff (robes, arcane focus staff, ect) I let the gm know my plan ahead of time and was like that's cool. Let's see how long you can keep it up. And I told the party my character's wizard persona but never his real character class or abilities. If I wanted to do let's say ki point I would text the gm or hand them a note and I would describe it vividly but trying to sound magical. And never did an unarmed strike against anyone. Only using darts if I didn't use a elemental ki point ability. And eventually got a shortsword. We went from level 1-6 and the party thought I was just saving my spell slots and they were getting pissed. We are fighting a boss monster at the end of a dungeon and the healers go down and the tank is almost dead while I'm still fresh. So I say okay time to quit messing around. And I don't hide my monk abilities anymore. By the end of the fight I'm the last one standing. So the party starts asking me when did I multiclass into monk. I let them know I was always a monk. The gm starts laughing and one of the other players doesn't beleive me and grabs my character sheet. We seem him read all my monk abilities and my background (including persona) and his face just drops. I see the rest of the party were in complete shock. And the gm just starts laughing hysterical and this makes me laugh. This campaign was 9 months long at this point.

[@Artemisx13]

👏👏👏

[@jonathanmarks3112]

That was awesome.

[@papasmurf9146]

I'm GM'ing a campaign where one of the players is running a "cleric" -- who is really an assassin. Whenever the party is in town, he breaks away from the party and spends all of his gold on healing potions (which he covers by claiming to have donated it to the local church). He makes a big deal of proselytizing for "his" deity. It has been several months and I don't think anyone else in the party suspects.

[@Artemisx13]

@@papasmurf9146 this is fantastic 😂😂😂

[@EbuCallinav]

@@papasmurf9146 Hopefully none of them happen upon this thread and read this comment.

[@impofstpete727]

One of our players had been royalty all along. She, during her session zero with the DM, discussed that her character would be a princess who was unsure about ascending to the throne. They had decided to hide this from us both in character and in real life. She had doubts about having what was necessary to be a queen of the same caliber as her mother. She was playing as a tiefling rogue for nearly 7 months until we had crossed into a kingdom in the far western continent. Upon meeting with the ranger scouts we were escorted inside the main city where we were handed over to a large contingent of guards, like way more than necessary for 5 people. She turned to all of us and said, "Offer no resistance, and don't attempt to approach me. You'll be safe I promise." It was tense as she approached and we continued to process all the way through to the throne room. When we saw the queen was a tiefling as well wires started to connect in our brains but then the massive personal guard of the queen says: "I present to your majesty Princess Charadean Filigrin, first of her name and future queen of the Sapphire Throne. Your daughter has returned home." We lost it. Full stop. I was laughing so hard. We had no clue. It was total chaos for about 10 minutes and we had to take a break. Imagine every time you've watched Critical Role and Travis gets blindsided by a plot moment only to start laughing. Now imagine four people like that at once. Yep.

[@matteorossi1172]

Royalty? Really

[@meapyboy12345]

Ok i did read the comment except fir the first 2 lines so someone in your campaign was actually royalty in real life?

[@impofstpete727]

Apologies, I must have missed part of what I typed so the language is a little confusing. I made the necessary edits.

[@matteorossi1172]

@@impofstpete727 i thougt you played d&d with the nephew of some random european king 🤣

[@stormcloudgaming6029]

Had a character a bit like that once, Gold Dragonborn Rogue named Addax. Who was, secretly banished royalty and hid it from the party. Fast forward 11 levels he still kept the secret, but now they are back in his home kingdom. He gets caught, but tells the party to look away, and stay out of trouble while he gets brought before the Queen (His Cousin). The party found the throne room and were about to intervene, when the hood over his head was lifted and he goes “Oh, hey cousin”

[@connortg5]

Honestly that doppelganger one was crazy, but it feels almost like they missed out on a really good interaction there. Sure this doppelgänger wasn’t the original Fred, but he was the Fred they’d all known for months or years ingame, and any special attachments that formed since the replacement may well have been solely with the doppelganger. Of course it’s good it got beaten to a pulp, that kind of creature is dangerous as fuck, but I just hope the party felt a good bit of betrayal rather than just anger when they found out

[@SamMaxis]

BUT MUH FRIEND!

[@nicholashodges201]

I've got a home-brew creature like that. It's a type of jelly that assumes the form and identity of it's first victim and typically has no idea that it's NOT that person. First time I used it was on one of those players that's bad about making backgrounds for their PCs. They were level 10 before it got figured out and created a massive existential crisis for that dude and the party. Especially since his character was The Chosen One ™, or at least the jelly's first victim was anyway. The only character who knew was his magic sword, who was going to fulfill the prophecy by hook, crook or any other means necessary. I almost broke that group...

[@scorch2155]

Honestly feel sort of bad for it since it didn't want to hurt anyone just live a normal life like everyone else but because of what it was it never got the chance so had to use what it could to achieve it. Similar to my changeling bard who has to remain in disguise due to the fear thenworld has for her kind when all she wants to do is travel around and collect and share stories.

[@Tank1711]

@scorch2155 i do a similar thing with my changeling, the party currently has NO idea that they are one as they're a race that are hunted down and to be killed on sight. He and his wife were both always on the move after a few years, going town to town as to avoid being found out until he slipped up one day and his wife was burned at the stake in the middle of the village where he was forced to watch.

[@raider363]

Yea it's a bit odd. What was the doppelganger's end goal? Just be with them forever? I mean it sucks for Fred but the doppelganger didn't betray them or anything.

[@proffejor]

Years ago, I had a DnD party that was mostly composed of Magic: The Gathering players. I modified the Ebberron setting into a world that was superficially similar to the Magic world Mirrodin. Some plant life had a disease that was turning it into living metal and spreading, a material called Darksteel was basically indestructible, magical items and constructs were commonplace, etc. They recognized the elements I had lifted, and really appreciated it. The party got hired by a gnome artificer with a ridiculous name that he would insist that they use, (Memnopriapat Elzohakar Kleptiarch, if you care) and would go on quests for him regularly. Over several months of the campaign, they transported to him some large rubies to be made into Gems of True Sight, reclaimed a lost mine of the afore mentioned Darksteel, helped him gather and assemble dozens of Wand Sheathes he had been hired for, gathered rare materials and components to construct a spherical clam shell that could safely contain and render harmless a Sphere of Annihilation, slew a dragon who was causing problems and had a desired artifact in its horde, and brought the dragon's remains to make new magic items from scales hide and bones... fairly standard adventuring fair, until they sailed away looking for even greater challenges. The Gnome stayed behind, still trying to stop the spread of that metalic plague in the plant life. After a half a year of game time across the sea, the party came back with a large delivery of adamantium to find that their gnome patron had been murdered by the tribe of sentient constructs that had commissioned those Wand Sheathes. The artificer had had a defensive golem (used mostly as a butler), now possessed by the gnome. (He had created an infusion similar to the spell Simulacrum, but this spell would move a conciousness into a prepared non-living construct at the time of death.) The artificer sent them to avenge his murder, and equipped the party with a load of useful magic weapons for the fight. After the party returned from the fight with the constructs, they found their gnome patron had upgraded his construct form. He now inhabited the body of a construct dragon, with eyes they recognized as the same gems they had been hired to deliver over a year before, scales formed of adamantium and darksteel, massive wings with dozens of Wand Sheathes acting as structure in the webbing, and in the back of his mouth, a spherical shell that slid open around a sphere of inky black. In a villain monologue, he explained that the world would be better off in construct form, as the plants proved, being far more resilient since he had turned them metal, how his mind was far more clear and less prone to doubt since his death, and that the party would be blessed by being the first beings he would give a new construct form. Also, he finally understood why they kept trying to shorten and abbreviate his name, and as the new ruler of the metal world, he would just use the first 4 letters and last 4 letters of his name, leaving Memnarch. The realization that they had supplied the materials that built the big bad was amazing, but they had no idea that I had planned it all from day one until I dropped that the name of the big baddie from Mirrodin. TLDR: Party spends the campaign gathering the components to build the final boss.

[@ismailabdelazim2206]

Wow, that must have been awesome for them, just to go through it all, with all the tension, drama, and the big reveal, and all the nods to MTG, you must have given them a core memory right there man, kudos to you.

[@minimishapsgames894]

The first group of players in the world of Gether had a recurring villain that they eventually killed, but not before the villain uttered some weird unrelated conditions that would cause him to come back. That group continued to play and never allowed the circumstance to happen. But as groups tend to, they would change out real-life players slowly over a couple of years. When there was no one left of the original group, I steered the second-gen batch of players to accidentally cause the return of the villain. They loved it, loved having a re-recurring villain with a history, and when they finally killed the villain, they swore themselves to secrecy IRL that they would never talk about the new weird conditions uttered by the villain on his second death bed (in order to let the cycle happen more quickly now). Now the villain has returned from death 6 times, been encountered by more than 10 groups of players, and has his fingers in every villain-scheme-pie in the game. The kicker is that he maintains powers from whatever world is the present day that he does villainy, so he has skills/spells/special abilities from AD&D, 3e, 4e, 5e, both Pathfinders, and lots of homebrew, too.

[@minimishapsgames894]

Crimm Baphra (drachamancer) became Crimm the Red (drachamancer and fire magic), then became Crimm the Black (previous plus assassin skills), then became the Red General (previous plus control undead and psychic), then back to just Crimm Baphra again (previous plus ability-stealing and combat mimicry) .

[@danielschneider9358]

Sounds like an absolutely amazing legacy

[@teddywoods6463]

That is such a KZbin idea

[@MahoganyDesk]

Longest con I ran on my players was to teach them a lesson. The group I was with at the time had a horrible habit of changing characters. They'd build a character, focusing so much on mechanics and not paying enough attention to the backstory and personality that they found their characters weren't really that fun to play and they were itching to create a new character. It got so bad in our group that even though it didn't make narrative sense, we just all accepted when one person would leave and another would come. While everyone else seemed fine with it, I felt like our games could reach new heights if weren't swapping characters out like retail workers. So, my turn to GM and I decide to play a zombie apocalypse but surprise them with it, so they thought they were playing a standard monster of the week type of game. I ran them through three adventures and one of the players already wanted to change characters. I said, okay, but we're going to narratively make it fit. I'll overwhelm you in this next adventure and your characters can die off. Well, I guess I didn't balance it correctly *wink, wink* because he survived the crazed werewolves but were seriously injured and needed to go to the hospital. The player rolled his eyes because he was all ready with his new characters but I was like, please, just keep going for the story. I swear we can carve a good narrative death for you. At the hospital, once he was in surgery, one teammate stayed in the waiting room while the other two went back to their base of operations to get clothes and supplies. Then the teammate got a call to deal with some secret backstory stuff that he had to deal with immediately. He left, hoping to get back before anyone noticed he was missing. With the healthy teammates out of the hospital, I had go into lockdown mode. Turns out those crazed werewolves they were fighting that landed one of them in the hospital? They were crazed because a mad scientist was experimenting on them and accidentally created a zombie virus. The player's eyes lit up when he realized that not only was this a zombie apocalypse game but he was patient zero! There was a back and forth of the three healthy teammates trying to find out why the hospital was in lock down and the one injured player getting to live out his plague-starting dreams. The three teammates picked up a new people who was in the hospital and managed to escape not infected and now jobless and staring down a zombie plague, decided to go with them. Fast forward through several adventures of dealing with the plague and supernatural creatures and me forcing them to do a proper send off for every character they wanted to swap out (this alone decreased the frequency of characters leaving), they're running from a horde of zombies that nearly gets them. As they drive away, I narrator that one character looks back and on top of the hill, he sees one zombie, not shambling, a flash of sunlight off of his glasses, as he raises his arm, hospital gown somehow holding on, and waves. The players realize that this is patient zero and the player of said character was so thrilled, going "that's me! :D" Sadly, we didn't finish that campaign, but I had plans for every character they ever left behind. The patient zeroes were going to keep following the group because they wanted to reconnect with old friends (one player actually kept his OG character). I don't remember all of the characters or my plans for them, but they were tropey and over the top and fun. My con wasn't to make them stop swapping character but to pay more attention to the story and it worked.

[@Sewblon]

" The patient zeroes were going to keep following the group because they wanted to reconnect with old friends (one player actually kept his OG character). " How can there be more than one patient zero?

[@MahoganyDesk]

@@Sewblon Oh, there wasn't. I wrote that comment while being constantly interrupted by other things but I don't know how I managed that complex of a typo. 😅

[@PsionNovastar]

That was genius.

[@emberthecatgirl8796]

The changeling should have *been* Fred too. The only thing better than Fred not remembering is him remembering everything. *Everything*. The “includes the death at the hands of your team” kind of everything.

[@Nomadith]

Holy shit that first story/game sounds amazing, I love the idea of a long form campaign focusing on dynasties over individuals - especially that rug pull

[@thecraftycreeper3167]

yeah, and i love that legacy concept the power begets power concept

[@KumiChan2004]

I knew where it was going with the twist. But they did come up with a creative solution to... halt the effect.

[@Earthbound524]

I would love to both play and dm a campaign like that!

[@justinhermann4926]

I have two long cons. The first was one of my early characters. We all worked for the same trading company but he'd only just met. For some reason everyone kept handing me the loot to store in my handy haversack. And then after the adventure I would parcel out their shares. I was a rogue and these were not my friends. I always kept the best stuff for myself as well as a hefty percentage of the coin. They never did figure it out in game. Eventually I got rich enough to start my own company, and it made so much money I could buy them whatever they wanted. Literally the GM said if it was for sale, we could afford it. By this time we were friends, and I take care of my friends. My long con as a GM was convincing my players I knew what the heck I was doing. That one is still ongoing.

[@kpwhatever1736]

I feel that GM long con very much 😂

[@TheOneTrueEfrate]

I think there comes a point in every dms career where he realizes that he has been conning everyone, Including himself, for a very ongoing time.

[@Sorain1]

@@TheOneTrueEfrate I remember getting to that point myself! It was when the players stole what was intended to be the recurring mid-boss of the campaign... on their first encounter... by pointing out how I'd used the Boss Arena Stupidity trope, and how that looked in setting. (Your bosses set you up to die!) Had to admit to myself I had no idea what I was doing while the players thought I'd intended that be an option.

[@trueblade39]

Halfway through my Rise of Tiamat campaign, our Vengeance Paladin (who routinely heard the voice of his vengeful god commanding him to destroy the wicked in his head) made a deal with a yuan-ti priest in exchange for having the snakes hand over the White Wyrmspeaker alive. The deal was that the priest would put a curse on the paladin, and at some time he would be forced to obey the command of a yuan-ti god somewhere down the line. Fast forward to the end of the campaign after Tiamat's defeat. The kid playing the paladin asked me why the snake god command never came about, and what would I have made his paladin do if I had done it. I smiled and said "you know how your god talks to you on the regular?" His eyes went wide as I said "how do you know that was still YOUR god telling you to slaughter your way through the Cult of the Dragon?" His character is now a villain in the follow up campaign where he serves a yuan-ti god in preparation to bring about the end of the world

[@danielboatright8887]

Oof

[@Sorain1]

Nice.

[@pulsefel9210]

that first one was both an awesome concept and a freaking insane twist.

[@ElvencloudYT]

Strangely, that last story is parallel to a game I ran many years ago. Instead of a doppelganger, it was an entity from the Mirror Plane, and the player was in on it - and a convincing actor. From level 5 to 9, the party continued to adventure in his god's name as the monster, party wary of a change but not sure what to expect. I handed the player a new character sheet in the middle of a battle with new gear. He handed me the monster sheet, and I placed his new minature with new armor and a new scar on the board. Jaws dropped and my player and I smiled as I asked him to roll for initiative.

[@sethb3090]

I looked at the artificer rules in 5e for a bit and designed a bag of holding weapon (not the two extradimensional spaces one, something else) because an infusion bag empties into its space when the infusion ends. All I needed for it to work was to be able to end it at will like a spell. So in session 2, I presented my DM with a hypothetical scenario where someone stole one of my infused items and asked if I could dismiss the infusion. I got my confirmation, and didn't use the weapon until we were up against a beholder a year and a half later (bag was packed with cinnamon, ground pepper, poisons, metal filings, sand, glitter, and basically every other eye irritant I could think of). Got someone to lob it over the beholder, dismissed the infusion mid flight, handed the GM a list of its contents and explained the rules about infusion bags.

[@LyrictheFilthyCasual]

It's not *too* long of a con, but it did span a couple of sessions and due to some conflicts between players killing the campaign after only a couple of months of playing, it's the only thing we really have that qualifies as a long con. So, we had a Bard. Our Bard was a chaotic IRL, completely unhinged roleplayer in the best way possible. Bard was Chaotic/Neutral in game, bordering on Chaotic/Evil (in the self-serving above all else way, not in the Moustache-twirling, actively trying to harm people for the sake of it way) So, our party was following a plot hook that a local Baron was inviting adventurers to participate in a "contest of skill" and the winners would be given a decent pile of gold for winning as well as be offered exclusive contracts with that Baron to go do his bidding. Upon arriving to the Baron's lands, we are introduced to an NPC named Arlas, describes as a handsome half-elven man appearing to be around early 20's with auburn hair and golden eyes. Arlas chats up the party and drops some hints that perhaps the Baron's offer isn't really what it seems to be, but he doesn't have any definitive proof, just that, in the past, "decent people who enter these contests rarely survive, and those that do... well, they tend to disappear." Bard is absolutely taken with Arlas and decides to do the stereotypical Bard thing of "I want to roll to seduce this NPC." Our DM allows it. Bard succeeds and beds down with Arlas for the night. The next day is the contest. We find out that the contest is a combat-trial in which groups that enter must fight each other, and to the victors go the glory. We are informed that killing is certainly allowed. Perhaps encouraged. And the group that we are fighting is comprised of three Cambions and three Blackguards. We succeed in defeating the enemy group and are told there will be a Victor's Feast on the morrow. Bard beds down with Arlas again, celebrating, but not before Arlas mentions to us that the other groups that fought were very much like ours, a group of greenhorn adventurers who seemed like decent enough people getting pitted up against a batch of demonic entities... But the other "good" groups didn't fare so well. The following day comes, we go to attend the feast, but our guard is WAY UP. Arlas also tags along with us, and he brings his grandfather along, too. Halfway through the feast, the Baron starts giving his speech which basically amounts to, "Your victory was a fluke, we're definitely going to kill you all NOW, oh and by the way, the meat you've been eating is the other losers." and the Baron's wife reveals herself to be a Rakshasa and about 20 blackguards and 40 Cambions come pouring into the hall. That's when Arlas and his Grandfather tell us all to hold hands, so we do because OMFG PANIC! We are teleported away to Arlas's grandfather's estate. They bring us inside, let us shower off the vomit (because we were all vomiting after that) and after taking some time to emotionally absorb what happened, Arlas tells his grandfather he's going to go do a sweep of the grounds and leaves the room. Bard follows Arlas outside and watches Arlas take on his true form, that of an Adult Copper Dragon. Dragon!Arlas turns his head just in time to see Bard, and winks, before taking off to do his security sweep. And that's the tale of how our bard seduced a dragon without knowing he was seducing a dragon. This begs the question... Who really seduced whom?

[@Sorain1]

Clearly, the Dragon seduced the Bard. Classic really!

[@mysticmoonlight9695]

The campaign I'm currently a part of has been going for roughly a year now. Since the beginning, I've been playing a reborn bard. The typical amnesiac (from being reborn) that is anxious about their amnesia- so plays it off as simply being forgetful. I've dropped a large number of hints that something wasn't right about her health since the beginning. From her "forgetting" to eat for days on end (from never feeling hunger), to her never feeling tired. A vampire once sampled her blood when she gave it as a bit of a gift, and remarked it was stale. She is not affected by the temperature of a room. She's been possessed by a fae-demon that has only possessed undead recently. The most the party has been able to learn is that she has amnesia, not *why* she has it. Can't wait to see when things finally click in their heads about it.

[@amberkat8147]

Nice

[@MitchellTF]

Excuse me. I have to go interview my players, because DANG do they have stories...

[@MitchellTF]

...Okay I can't be the first story. I WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING!

[@MitchellTF]

Also, my response to the Fred questoin? "Wait, Fred? You've been a doppleganger this ENTIRE TIME?" "...Yeah?" "...And never betrayed us?" "You're my friends?" "Okay, so we have to rescue Actual Fred, but..."

[@MechbossBoogie]

Campaign setting based on the Rainbow Goblins book, which the band Primus made an album of. Pretty neat, I suggest checking it out. Party was going up against the Blue Goblin first. He used his special dream ability on the party to cause them to fall asleep. None of them were elves so no outright immunity. Everyone failed their save. They were safely captured in the dream. Now, the players never figured this out. Every time I gave them a save to resist the dream they'd fail it. Not that the save was that high, but they were just rolling that poorly. What the players see is the goblin disappear and the portal at the bottom of the mine they went into is closed. They go back up and the goblin siege has ended, there are no more goblins anywhere. No one is being attacked. Peace has returned. Now, the purpose of the dream is to keep you in it. So they were showered with praise for ending the siege, closing the portal, and generally being the best people in the entire world. They were paid in more silver than they could carry. Any time they asked for something they got it. +5 bastard sword? You find one sitting on a tree stump on your travels. Facing off against the big bad? He turns his back to you allowing you an entire round of free shots on him during his monologue. Doesn't even defend himself, stupid low AC, etc. The party started to question how the game was so easy, but one player decided that he was instead going to play the game against me. Rather than trying to understand what's going on he decided that I just couldn't say no to the party, because to him the praise and adoration and gifts were just a normal thing that you get as adventurers. Every time another party member tried to question it he'd tell them no, that's normal, in fact we should milk them for everything they'll give us. I'd still give them a save and they'd still roll a 4 or something stupid low like that, but when they'd fail the person would just give them everything they had no matter how bad the deal was, how unimportant the quest they'd undertaken was, or how poorly worded their argument was. The narcissist player was also collecting female NPC's as he went and there was no infighting amongst them whatsoever. No disagreements. No cat fights. No jealousy. I'm sure you're thinking: "Okay, DM, I don't even need a save at this point. I know there's fuckery afoot." But this guy... this guy didn't even question it. the self described smartest person in the room who spent so much time trying to read me that he didn't even notice what I'd done. They quest so long in this dream that eventually the dream no longer needs to keep them in it because their real bodies have long since passed away, but now they are part of it. They get to the end of this big, convoluted fever-dream of a storyline and by weaving this rainbow dragon back together they think they've saved the world, but in reality they didn't even beat the first goblin lord. The thing is, this isn't even something I came up with. This is just a twist on an old story about an eldritch being that sucks the players into its dream, showers them with gifts, makes everything stupidly easy, because it doesn't want to be alone, or something. It's actually on a table in Pathfinder. I rolled for it and that's what they got and if it hadn't been for the one player being a narcissist and not allowing the other players to even question it, they would have likely gotten it right away. One player even asked me if his character thought the world felt weird or off in any way. I straight up told him to give me a save and he failed the DC 15 will save. I told him "yes, very, but you're not sure why." Straight up this guy put it on me not being able to say no to them rather than it being that there's actually something afoot. I never told him. Next campaign he started noticing that I would tell them no to things all the time. "Oh, so you finally learned to say no to us." Well, no, but I don't want you to know the plot of the previous campaign if we ever go back to it. I don't play with him anymore and I don't think I'll tell him. I'll just let him keep thinking he won and his character is still alive, which in a sense he still is. Alive in the dream of an eldritch being.

[@rewerstfd]

Kind of just sounds like you made an incredibly boring and unfun game that you should've just fudged the dice roll on after 3 attempts to get someone to wake up - in order to keep the plot going and keep your players invested. No challange sucks just as much as too much challange. Just because you know the players are being challenged by will saving throws, from their perspective, you're just being a bad DM and story teller. D&D is not DM vs Players.

[@MechbossBoogie]

@@rewerstfd Yeah, I am just the worst, aren't I?

[@lVideoWatcherl]

@@rewerstfd Tbh, having a little real life cognitive barrier to cross shouldn't be too much to ask. If it was like oc said, then it's definitely not too difficult to figure out that there's something afoot, and the players should have figured it out.

[@AlxanderBrd]

I played as a monk rouge that had very high investigate and intimidation, i also split off from the group fairly often only to reunite with them later with some key information. Eventually toward the end of the campaign the DM looked at me and said "omg your batman." And i turned to the cultist leader and said "im batman" just as i lobbed a boulder down on his shrine and set free my party memebers. Ill never forget that 😊

[@Crazael]

Back in the days of 3rd Edition, in one of my very first DnD sessions, my character subdued and interrogated a goblin. After the interrogation finished, I threw the Gobbo out a nearby window. A year or so later, we ran into a Goblin mercenary. Thig goblin ha a mysterious grudge against us. And my character in particular. Well, it turned out, that goblin I threw out a window survived, got a dozen or so levels of Ranger and decided to hunt me down. 13:14 I agree with the player's wife, here. You don't do stuff like that to a player without consulting them first. Or, at minimum, telling them it happened. You can keep it secret from the rest of the party if you want, but you don't just mess with a player's character like that.

[@jamestaylor3805]

Old curse rules, you were stuck with it until someome accepted them from you. My druid horded cursed objects until the time came, and he gave away well over a hundred massively cursed items to the officials of the largest city in the campaign, which led to it's dysfunction and eventual collapse.

[@andrewmakar2035]

In one of my Eberron campaigns, that ran for about 3 years, we just kept rotating in new characters when we felt we had an interesting one. The DM's wife was particular egregious on this... she rotated characters fairly regularly... but she always played bards. Turns out after 3 years... she'd be playing the same Changeling bard since day 1.

[@Isaiahb1987]

I never got to reveal a long con that I was working on as we only played for a semester in college. The party was being transported through very random areas, fighting these homebrew shadow creatures, that, unbeknownst to the party, were the same creatures and they kept getting stronger with the party. I didn’t get a chance to reveal the dark truth that they were in their own dreams and there was a manipulator putting these things in their dreams to distract them while they were slowly being taken to a demon’s portal to be thrown into the plane of fire if they never awoke, and never got to reveal the end boss to that saga.

[@aeonise]

My longest con was as a player with the assistance of the GM. We were fighting (or running and hiding and looking for a way to fight) an empire and its evil ruler. They had an item that allowed one to extract a creature's powers (and kinda their soul) and pass them on to another and were harvesting monster races for it. My character was a wizard who's home was destroyed by the empire, vowed revenge, the usual; but also with his sense of morality burned out and replaced with "Does it help me get revenge? Y/N". He also started taking ur-priest, a sort of anti-cleric that hates the gods so much they learn how to steal divine magic. Eventually, the ruler is revealed to be a recently-returned "lost" god, and we shift to gearing up for a little god-slaying. Find out the rest of the gods are imprisoned and only able to offer a help through certain artifacts. Party gets unnerved a couple times by how my character has no remorse killing off anyone he thinks has wronged him, but he's never shown any sign of turning on them and has been contributing a lot. In the end, we had defeated and imprisoned the god and gained control of the power-extractor. Well, it's go-time. Wall off the party and grab the imprisoned baddy-god, the character's god-link artifact, and the power-extractor before teleporting out. Original plan from the start was to use the extractor to consume the souls of everyone even tangentially related to his home's destruction, but that will take years to capture them all. There are better options now. Use extensive knowledge of both arcane and divine magic with the power-extractor to rip out the deific powers of both the imprisoned baddy and the god linked through the artifact (coincidentally the god of war) and absorb them. Also inverted the link his several warlock levels gave him to an archdevil to drain him as well. All hail the newborn god of Vengeance, the only god currently free in the world. Copy the ability of the power-extractor, then unmake it for good measure. Proceed to rain biblical vengeance upon the empire and personally eat the souls of everyone involved in the destruction of his him. Note that "involved" went all the way down to "made clothing for the soldiers" and "grew crops that fed the soldiers". The entire empire was erased and hundreds of thousands of people killed in the span of a single day. Then decide to turn all of the corpses into ravenous undead abominations to take revenge on the rest of the world for not stopping the empire. For good measure, shatter all of the remaining god-link artifacts, cutting all the other gods off and leaving them trapped in the void for not stopping everything. Party is horrified but lacks much means to stop it since they had gotten used to my wizard/ur-priest megacaster providing all the magic mojo for the party. Cue the next phase of the campaign, in a world overrun with super-undead, trying to find a way to free the other gods and stop Vulkyne, the mad god of Vengeance.

[@theblueincineroar6905]

You’re telling me your PC was driven mad to the point of ascension into godhood after obtaining everything he needed. That is metal as hell dude. How did it end? (If it ended, of course)

[@timivore7909]

I have a dm that kept adding kermit in as a shop keep and he just keep reappearing. So I added my own shop keep that'll keep popping up. Eyesac(Isaac) who runs the Eyesee where you can buy anything the eyes can see. He appears like a little kid around eight years old and is a total prankster and loves messing with his customers. Now his shop is not normal appearing in every town that the party goes to. They don't know this yet as they haven't been out of the starting town and I just introduced him but he'll pop everwhere. Eyesac says he just moves shops but the inside of his shop is always the same. The inside of the first shop was wood for instant and the next time they see him he'll be set up in a tent but when they walk in it'll be the same wooden walls that the players have seen before. If they cast detect magic the two doors(the front door and the employee only door) will glow with magical energy. Now if they investigate the back of the shop(the employee's only part) there is a whole mini dimension that's basically an open flea market where people from the multiverse can come and trade their wares. 'How does a child have access to such a thing?' I hear you ask. Excellent question, traveler! He's a god. Yup straight up a god. No one knows this yet. Like I said they've only been in his shop in the first town and and a couple of times but I am so excited for them to find out. Think of his domain similar to Hermes where he's a friendly trickster merchant god.He also a twin brother that is the god of black markets, thieves and harmful tricks who desperately wants to kill him and steal his domain. I'm thinking of running a few campaigns with Eyesaac popping up to get the players used to him then running a one shot where they save him from his from his brother to reveal the truth about him, but really I have no idea how I'm going to reveal this to my players. Honestly I can't wait for their reactions to it. It's going to be hilarious.

[@jacoblansman8147]

The first story has inspired me to try an Infinity Blade homebrew someday. I'm sure a lot of people will know what I'm on about but for those who don't - Infinity Blade was an iOS exclusive game in which the vast majority of characters (both the player and the enemies) in Infinity Blade are called Deathless. The Deathless are the result of humans binding their souls to a technology called a Quantum Identity Pattern to achieve near-immortality and resurrection (either the QIP enables the soul to seek out a new, identical body, or if it cannot find one, it allows the slain body to regenerate slowly from death back to full health). The first game's character believed himself to be the current generation descendant with some vague memories of his ancestors challenging a dictatorial leader known as the God-King. It's not until the end of the game that it's hinted the player character is actually the same person across all "bloodlines", and it's not until the second game that he realises he is Deathless himself and figures out that his vague memories of his "ancestors" were memories of his own failed attempts to overthrow the God-King. The game is also centered around melee/magic combat, using medieval weapons and magic rings. One such weapon is a sword called the Infinity Blade; it is the only weapon in the first 2 games capable of destabilising a Quantum Identity Pattern. The Infinity Blade was created by the one who created the technology for QIPs; Galath, the Worker of Secrets, who created more Infinity Weapons sometime between Infinity Blade 2 and Infinity Blade 3. So yeah, could try an Infinity Blade 1 inspired homebrew campaign, which could also lead to later campaigns down the line.

[@dragonbretheren]

My longest con story: I joined a group of friends in a Tomb of Annihilation campaign. The rest of the group were relatively new players coming out of a quick level 1-2 tutorial campaign and rolling their characters into ToA. I rolled up a Batiri Goblin (native to the setting) for fun and ended up randomly rolling the Bond "Someone I love died because of a mistake I made. That will never happen again." The DM and I agreed that an interesting hook to get a Batiri Goblin into this already close-knit party, also taking this Bond into account, would be for me to be the last survivor of my former tribe after some big catastrophe (probably my fault to tie in to the Bond), which would leave me looking for a new group to attach myself to. This also allowed me to be the "keep these newbie adventurers out of trouble" player by giving my character a "I won't let you die. Not on my watch." type of personality. Now, one of the things that drew me to Batiri in particular versus normal goblins is that they have tribal war masks that associate individuals with their tribe (e.g. you might have a dinosaur tribe with dino-themed masks or a great ape tribe with ape masks, etc.) When I first introduced my character to the party, I made a note of a wooden mask strapped to my belt carved into the shape of an animal skull of some sort, but the paint and decoration had worn away over time such that it was just bare wood by the time I met the party. Since I had not been with my tribe for a few (in game) years, the mask was still very sentimental to me, but I had lost the will to keep repainting it. Over the course of the 2-year long campaign (we were going fairly slowly and worked around several scheduling conflicts/life events), I made sure to mention putting on the mask every time we entered combat, intentionally getting the party numb to the fact that it was even happening. Over time, I would offhandedly adding small details (e.g. at one point referring to it as "my gray mask") that the party largely didn't notice. Finally, at the end of the campaign, we did "where are they now" style epilogues for our characters. In my epilogue, I finally describe the mask in full for the first time since Session 1: "...on the coat rack hangs a Batiri tribal mask, newly painted ash gray (a nod to our Rock Gnome Druid) with crimson red eyes (our Human Warlock), a flowing golden mane (our Elven Cleric), and two horns pointed skyward (our Minotaur Barbarian)." My Batiri had found his new tribe in this group of adventurers.

[@jettblade]

So I was in an OVA(this is an anime based system) game. I played a classic Black Mage from Final Fantasy, this is the robe wearer magic users you can't see the face because it was hidden in shadows but you can see the glowing yellow eyes. The other players didn't really bat an eye. He was actually a Kalamartian, basically a squid with a shell. The shell was hidden in his large pointed hat and he had this hazmat-like suit he wore like a glove, he stood and walked on his tentacles like a human. A few times I thought I was found out but the players just kind of brushed it off. Like one time another character picked him up and I had to describe that his body was very squishy and light but his head was really heavy. He also never removed his clothes. Well he had a goal that if the others found out he would have gotten into a ton of trouble. He was sent out to infiltrate and explore the surface world to see if they were worth either doing trade with of enslaving them. Several times there was information he had that no human could know. We ended up becoming lords of this town that had a port. Well this race of squid-people that no one has ever heard of wants to start trading with the surface. We had an interesting travel which lead us to other planes and we ended up having a staff that could open portals to any destination. We found out that time passed differently where we were at and my character had to leave for damage control. He had to give specific instructions not to portal to him, or else his cover would be blow. At the end of the last game his suit got damaged and finally one of the other players caught on when he saw the tentacles. When the players caught on is was beautiful to watch unfold: they piecing everything together and all the odd things. It wasn't until the last game that they realized why I had the flaw secret at max level allowed. If it got out that I wasn't human and I was there to spy it would have caused a ton of problems. Btw he was on the side of peace and trade. He also was one of the few people trying to deter the Kalamartian military plan of enslaving the surface world. One of the best characters I have ever played, the stakes were extremely high for him to succeed.

[@Petronio39]

My longest con was actually as a player. It wasn't a years long thing, only running for around 6 months, but it was very satisfying. This happened in a 5e homebrew campaign with some friends I made at a local card shop. I'm playing kind of a joke character named Nightblade Bloodfury. A beastmaster ranger who acts like an incredibly edgy vigilante, stalking the rooftops at night to correct injustice, with the joke being that instead of sweeping in to deal with crime, he reports it to the proper authorities and follows the letter of the law. Through some party shenanigans, the whole party ends up in prison, with the exception of Nightblade, who was never arrested and actually helped the officers with their arrest. The party was thrown into separate holding cells where they each individually formulate plans for their own escape. Meanwhile, Nightblade, still loyal to the party, studies the local statutes for any legal loophole that will allow his friends to avoid their charges on a technicality. The party have their own misadventures, trying sleight of hand, brute force, and seduction to stage a prison break, each of which was thwarted by the DM. Eventually the party stood trial, but were acquitted thanks to Nightblade using party funds to hire an excellent legal defense. Later on, this aspect of the character resurfaced when the DM introduced a Rumpelstiltskin-esque character who the characters ended up indebted to, and forced to sign contracts that would require them to go and do some potentially very dangerous and sketchy jobs in order to clear their debt. Of course, Nightblade thoroughly reads the contract, looking for any wiggle room. The DM, not having provided a physical contract, lets me roll to determine how iron clad the contract is. After determining with a roll that it seemed pretty solid, I start adlibbing parts of it that my character seems to be concerned by. "This clause in particular is concerning. Verbal agreements made concerning the creation or payment of debt that are agreed upon by both parties will be tantamount to a legally binding contract. This is absurd, what's to stop you from using thuggery or misinformation to trick us into further indebting ourselves to you?" The character agreed to not use force to prolong the contract, and my character took down the agreement in writing. From then on, any dealings we had with the character, I kept any agreements made in writing. Meanwhile, the DM was using the character to try to slowly corrupt my animal companion against me. This might need a bit of explaining, but Nightblade's animal companion was a wolf named Soulripper, though, while it used a wolf's stats, the DM allowed me to reflavor it as a pug. I had actually used most of my starting gold to buy barding for Soulripper, and painted it, "Black with cool flames." Our party druid, a gnome named Humphry Pebbledropper, was curious about some of the little pug's strange combat aptitude and cast speak with animals on him. The DM gave Soulripper a fully intelligent noire style inner monologue where he was a weary soul, constantly dragged into Nightblade's enthusiasm, and was the level headed part of the duo. In order to try and thwart the DM's attempts at corrupting Soulripper, I came up with a plan to have him stay hidden while I secretly met with the Rumpelstiltskin character to reveal his unethical nature. However, this plan wasn't actually about exposing the character at all. By this point basically everyone knew he was unethical. My real goal was something a bit more devious. The DM dodges the questions about trying to use Soulripper, but, Nightblade throws in a quick line. "You don't even care about what methods we use in your service. All you care about is that we deliver. Only then will our debt be clear." The DM chuckles, and doesn't even have him try to deny it. "Well of course. The why should I care what methods you use?" I divert the subject back to the pug once more, which the dm still continues to carefully choose his words on and deny, not realizing I got the response I had actually come for. I conclude the conversation with the usual. "Okay, so I have your word on all of that right? I'm putting all of this in writing." The DM agrees, thinking he's carefully navigated the question while avoiding giving me a straight answer on his involvement with Soulripper. I file the part o the conversation about him only caring that we deliver away right next to the part about oral contracts being treated as legally binding. With that all squared away, we begin making preparations for our next mission. Before we leave, I make, what seems like an innocuous question. "Does pizza exist in this world?" the DM shrugs and says, "Yeah, why not." and Nightblade grabs a pizza before heading out. He paints the sack it's in with a red stripe and they head out. The pizza stays in there for a long time... like a really long time. It gets soaked as we get plunged into the sea. moldy from months of travel. Frozen on desolate mountain peaks. We end up going through a time portal and wind up in the past briefly, get teleported to another continent. As encounters are getting more dangerous, Nightblade talks with the party leader, a human fighter named Karth, and tells him that if he should die, to take the bag, along with a set on notes he always keeps in the wrist of his gloves (not the only copy of the notes of course.) He writes a set of instructions for the moldy bad of pizza, along with the notes to show Rumpelstiltskin that he had agreed to "Only care that we deliver, didn't care what methods we use, and then the debt would be clear," and that the agreement was agreed upon by both parties, making it legally binding. Eventually, Nightblade does die trying to help an unlucky companion fight an avatar of death from the deck of many things, and, after an interlude playing as a cavalier, is eventually resurrected and rejoins the party. By the climax of the campaign, the stage is set. We have stolen an artifact of great power that would allow Rumpelstiltskin to control Tiamat herself, and he plans on using it to take over the world. Rumpelstiltskin appears, and demands that we give him the artifact, using our souls as leverage. Then, Nighblade pulls the moldy bag of soggy pizza from his pack and puts it in the villain's hands. "Here's your delivery. That should clear our contract." The DM's face when the chat transcripts were pulled out with the relevant passages highlighted and half the party clued into the plan already, and he, completely forgetting what was even in the bag by this point. After the shock of the moment wore off, he nearly fell over laughing. Rather than capping off the campaign with a final boss fight, it was instead concluded with recalling everything that bag of pizza went through, and how absolutely rancid it must be by now. It was a fantastic, funny ending, to what had been an incredibly fun and silly campaign.

[@roadtrain_]

This story was fantastic... but I actually missed the long con... I feel like I'm not clued in on something. How did the pizza become a substitute for an artifact?

[@Petronio39]

@@roadtrain_ The character made an agreement to release the contract once we delivered, but there was no mention of delivering the artifact specifically in that conversation, so instead we delivered pizza. Lesson being: Be careful with your words when playing someone who uses contracts.

[@roadtrain_]

@@Petronio39 Ah. That, is amazing. I love it.

[@WillTBear1]

8:52 A Snatcher. You made a Snatcher.

[@pinkliongaming8769]

"I had to fudge things and say he had levelled too" Well if they have a Symbiotic link then it would make sense he would level up too even if he doesn't remember it. People with amnesia can still do things they have learnt like playing instruments

[@joesgotmore]

On of my players during character creation in a 5E game said they wanted to play a warlock. Sure thing I thought, anything you want to say about your patron. He said that his patron thrives on the suffering of his followers. Living on the trauma while giving power to him. In his backstory he and his wife were adventures. Him a fighter type and his wife a wizard but gave up on adventuring early on to start a family and had a child a white haired half elf daughter named Silvia. Some 5 or 6 years later he lost his child while she was playing in the back of their home near the forest. Stolen from him as he saw a strange robed man dart off into the woods with her. All he found was a cracked crystal that he kept, becoming his arcane focus. His wife soon took ill with grief from the loss. A few years later the wife died. The trauma of the loss of his daughter and now the death of his wife was too much for him to take. He refused to believe she died that day so he believes his sick wife needs special medicine and make excuses to check in on her. As a rule of cool I even let him have her be seen by others via the minor illusion cantrip he had. His character claimed to not know magic that well but his wife has taught him all he knows. The delusion being he thought of himself as an arcane fighter rather than a hexblade warlock. The campaign was a sandbox style where all the players backgrounds drive the story. Taking inspiration from each to draw each character into each others interests and trying to tie them all together. Not an easy task, but by the time I got to this thread they were fairly high level around 13 I think. They were dealing with mindflayers and intellect devourers working with necromancers. Where a plot to send live victims to the mindflayers in exchange for the empty husks was about to be revealed. One of the NPC''s that met with the players after a fight with intellect devourers, one which took over one of the players, was an older hooded man with a cane. He had an apprentice with white hair that spilled out from under her hooded robes. The player getting suspicious tried to get a closer look at her face but couldn't get a good look. Even so what he could see was the way she moved and mannerisms convincing him that could be his long lost daughter. However being injured from the prior encounter they decided not to attack now. But, as they left he did get a look at the older mans arcane focus that mirrored the players own. A cracked crystal hanging from his neck. The players decided to wait to confront him after they dealt with the necromancers hoping he would be weakened during the encounter. In route to the necromancers who planed to raise the dead in the town graveyard the discussion was had that the party was going to get Silvia and kill the old man who took her. The fight starts and the old man and his apprentice reveal they are working with the necromancers. The player pleas with his daughter that he never stopped looking for her. She responds you never tried hard enough, he is my true father lunging in front of many of the attacks against the hooded old man taking the damage. The hooded old man taunted the player saying she belongs to me and if you kill me you will kill her, we are bonded for life. The player managed to separate them by casting force cage on the child so they could kill the old man. Calling him a liar trying to save his own skin. As he was looking hurt, the player struck the final blow. As that happened the illusion of his sick wife fighting at his side faded away. The hooded old man fell to the ground and the illusion of the child in the force cage faded also to reveal the old man wasn't an old man but the daughter he lost. The party rushed to heal her and save her but a voice was heard in the players head. "Her soul belongs to me now. You can have her soul back but you will always suffer knowing your were the cause of her death and suffering. Accept my terms and you will gain more power. Deny them and continue in this delusion of your own mind. Still suffering giving me power. The choice is yours." Players attempts to heal her and fail as he decides to keep her soul with him. The two crystals fuse into one as an opaque mote of Silvia's soul is seen floating within. By far the best twist I managed to pull off as a DM where the player didn't figure it out until it was happening.

[@yoshi6421]

Please separate into more than two paragraphs for readability. It was an enjoyable story, and I love the creativity, however I'm sure others were put off by the walls of text.

[@joesgotmore]

@@yoshi6421 Thank you and your right of course. Sorry for the text wall. :)

[@jonathantidball3735]

My players love a good hack n slash campaign. I had a story set in Tethyr (Faerun/Toril/Forgotten Realms), where the new queen had a rival threatening to unseat her, and she needed loyal troops and agents to support her. The characters had options - they could join the usurper, or the queen, or play both sides by taking quests or jobs, or run away and leave the kingdom altogether for greener pastures in another kingdom or city. It was pretty wide open - I had contingencies. No matter what they did, they would hear stories about earthquakes or random volcanoes erupting close by Tethyr. They chose to be Queensmen. They were marvelous at it, as well - destroying every bad guy I threw at them, and every army that tried to march on their queen. Eventually, they forged alliances with other, smaller kingdoms, and went to war with Calimshan. The war was amazing. Massive campaign. The Queen was victorious, thanks to the help of the characters. The characters took over Calimport and began using it for their own base of operations, running the city in a way that respected law and punished evil. Before long, those quakes and eruptions began to become more frequent. At this point, we went to the epic side of things (3.5 edition). The Queen once again asked the characters to aid her, and they were all too willing. They headed toward the Alimir Mountains to investigate a recent eruption, and found a rift from the Abyss into Faerun. That's when they began to piece the larger picture together - they began to see that the earthquakes and eruptions had been tied to abyssal rifts, which were each very tiny in themselves, but together created a vast web of pinholes - like a reverse starfield. If they opened it enough to travel through, it could risk widening others. They reported back to the Queen, and she asked them to figure out where they were originating, and how they came to be. They spent the first half of their epic journey in the Abyss, trying to close the pinholes from the other side. However, as each one closed, one of the remaining holes would get bigger. After the fourth Demon Lord - Astaroth - revealed they were fighting a hopeless battle - and why - they made the decision to return to Earth. Why, you ask? Because the Queen - who was actually a polymorphed imposter who had killed the previous queen (which they would have learned if they had sided with the rebels), and who fought off the true heir to the crown in the rebellion, and then killed her allies in Calimshan to be the sole vessel for demonic praise - was creating a scenario where Abaddon (her Lord) and Ba'al (his Lord) could come through with their armies to conquer the material plane. They found this out at level 28. By the time they realized what had happened, and what they had helped bring about, it had been too late. The characters watched from Astaroth's side, from the pinhole they were about to close, the Queen open a pinhole into a wide portal. Simultaneously, all the pinholes became garage doors - they spent the next 2 levels fighting hordes of demons invading the material plane. They killed Abaddon and were granted godhood - Ba'al fled after that. It was really hard going 28 levels, even slipping hints and clues as to the Queen's nature, without spilling the beans. But they wanted hack n slash, and I gave them hack n slash - but it worked against them. For every hack and slash in the name of the queen, a soul was committed to Abaddon.

[@federicogiacomelli198]

Do you know the game Munchkin? I love that game. So i made the quest giver of my campaign a munchkin without telling my players. I actually left some hints, but nobody ever realized till the end of the campaign. For example, the quest giver (named Random) could shapeshift in any race he wanted. Didn't seem to age. Had knowledge and abilities from every class. On a very good roll a character could notice a very quick movement of his hands while changing race/class: he was swapping his munchkin cards. He actually turned a regular kobold into a necromancer! A player had to make a new character and i proposed to be the kobold they captured some sessions earlier. "Yeah it just starts talking and seems to know magic.. he was SHY!" but no, Random just inserted a Necromancer card in him while he was sleeping. He seemed immortal as well! If killed, he just standed up again the next turn. And the most obvious clue: despite being so powerful, random never left his tavern because everytime he walks thru a door an horrific beast appears from nowhere (if you played munchkin you know what i'm talking about) At the end of the campaign some stuff happens and everyone is suddently into a black void without their body. I, as DM, take out my Munchkin cards and start giving them to the players, to form their characters. For exaple, i gave the necromancer a Kobold card, a Necromancer card and some other i dont temember. I gave the paladin a warrior card, a cleric card and a super-munchkin card, and so on. Then revealed who random truly was They were SPEECHLESS. The campaign was 1.5 years long!

[@eldonpike4781]

The doppelganger is literally a Skrul.

[@jesster402]

I had a pretty minor one in a campaign years ago where I played a tiefling disguised as an elf. Eventually my character was capured by the big bad evil guy near the end of the campaign, and sent back under mind control to sabotage the party. During the course of the confrontation, the party discovered that the one that had been sent to fight them was my character but covered in demonic features. It was so satisfying when, even after all the hints I dropped to them that something was amiss, their first reaction was asking what the villain did to my character.

[@justinelliott7827]

I started DMing a new campaign with my wife and three relatively new players (all had some experience, but had never played a long campaign). One says he wants to start as a rogue then multi class into a warlock. His backstory said a tattoo mysteriously appeared on his back just before the campaign began, so I set the game in Eberron and said he had a never before seen, full Dragonmark, not an aberrant mark. When the time came for him to multi into warlock, I had an alchemist lich from the Shadowfell contact him, telling him he would give him the power to survive to become a powerful Dragonmark house, and it would benefit the lich because he would be this Houses patron. Never asked anything of the character. When the character wanted to drop his rogue levels for more warlock I said no problem, his Patron gladly made the switch. Soon the new Dragonmark gave him the powers of potion making and alchemy. Player is thrilled. BBEG time comes, two and a half years later. The lich appears and offers his servant to the BBEG, who the lich had served for centuries (BBEG was an archdevil). The lich takes control of the player, the DC to resist is 2x his warlock level (they were 13th level, so wisdom save of 26). He was devastated, thought his patron was just the nicest guy 😂. His sorrow made it all the sweeter.

[@YarDarkwood]

I remember doing something similar to the doppelganger but with a ghost in ravenloft. A player got possessed early, the ghost acted just like him, every now and than there would be a random murder or something. The players just chalkd it up to random ravenloft stuff than a couple years later they were going after the BBEG only to have the possessed player start trying to kill them during the end fight.

[@sph3re]

Anyone with a subscription to Dropout, shoutout to Operation Slippery Puppet in Dimension 20's _Starstruck_ season. Maybe not the longest con in a D&D show that I've seen, but one that swung an entire combat in the favour of the players in one move. If you can afford a Dropout subscription, I'd heavily encourage y'all to get it and watch that season, but I can explain how everything played out if you're curious.

[@scottforsythe37]

The dynasty one is an amazing idea! Honestly even without the twist that's one hell of a story

[@gideonbalchasan8302]

Its literally the plot of Naruto.

[@DrBolt-hw6hy]

I don't know if this counts as a long-con but here it goes: I was DMing for a campaign based in the Sea of Thieves world during Flameheart's first rise to power. At one point, the party had decided to investigate suspicious activity at Wanderer's Refuge (one of the bigger islands in the game). Upon reaching the island, they came across one of the 4 Ashen Lords in a cave (the same cave Wanda the Warsmith would set up her alchemy lab years later). Soon after, a second Ashen Lord would bring one of the many prisoners from the forgotten realms who just so happened to be a member of the Cult of the Dragon. He helped explain one of the artifacts that was found in the wreck of his ship: a scroll that could call upon the breath weapons of all 5 heads of Tiamat at the same fucking time (an item that I got from another campaign I had been watching at the time). The scroll would unfortunately fall into Flameheart's hands and a truce between the two dragon Gods occurred. Now, fast forward to after the naval part of the final battle. Flameheart breaks out this scroll and is prepared to use it after taunting the party about a fallen friend (another player who had to drop out of the game because he had gotten a job). Finally, it was time for me to scare them into thinking the DnD equivalent of Castle Bravo was gonna wipe them all out in the same place where Reaper's Hideout would be built. Only problem is, the scroll has a 1 year cooldown and it had been 6 months since it was last used. I'm very sure the party had forgotten about it, but it did make for a very anticlimactic beginning to the true final battle in my opinion. Still think about it to this day and can't wait to replay it.

[@007Kiristo]

I had a simple puzzle to open a door in my 3rd session of my longest campaign, which had purple gemstones powering the door/puzzle. Later in the dungeon they found a little purple gemstone, but accidentally set off a trap burning the paper with the command word on it. Basically the gem was like a key fob for the door so the enemy could open/close the door from the other side as there was nothing on the other side of the actual door they'd opened with the puzzle. They correctly guess the gem has something to do with the door, and one of them tosses it in his backpack. About 3-5 sessions later, the party is enroute to some far destination from the town they'd last been in. The first night of their journey I told everyone who was asleep they had the same dream: of a burned down town, with foul beasts battling soldiers. They hear sounds like a whisper talking about cleansing the world with fire and having a new kingdom rise from those ashes. They turn the corner of some burnt out building and see a little boy, covered in ash and dirt kneeling next to a woman's body. As they approach the boy, they hear that same voice again, louder this time. It says some more apocalyptic sounding stuff, and then right as they're about 10 feet from the boy, they hear it again, this time saying "I SEE YOU. I HAVE FOUND YOU" and it sounds like the voice is right behind them, and they feel a hand touch their shoulder - right as they start to turn their head, they wake up. Their characters awake in a start and see a purple mist forming near their camp. As they prep themselves for battle, monsters pour out of the mist. They had no idea what that was about. Checked the forest and of course, found nothing. On the journey, there is an ominous and oppressive air about them. They see not a single wild animal as they travel and their horses (they had a wagon) seem nervous, but when they use talk to animals, the horses just say they feel some kind of evil presence. I had a bunch of random encounters prepped. As they travelled each day I rolled a die to see if there was an attack (50/50) during the day and again during the night and if so, somewhere near the party they'd see the purple mist and another group of monsters would attack. Either way, anyone sleeping at night had that exact same dream (though if I rolled no attack, nothing happened after they woke up). Eventually, someone finally rolled a good Arcana check and I told him that he thought perhaps they carried something with them that was tied to all of this. So, they all are looking through their character sheets' inventories. I had forgotten by this point who actually had the gemstone, but one of them is like, "well I have this weird crystal thing" to which I say "you pull out a small purple gemstone" and of course now everything clicks, they're all like, "what, you took their magic crystal thingie?" They try to smash it and the Barbarian rolls terribly, so I roll another to see if they get attacked, they do and the whole party nearly wipes, two of them are at 0 hp when they defeat the final monsters and then the Barbarian says f this, and decides to slam it with his maul again but this time he's just trying to knock it in the air away from them instead of throwing it and then they'll just leave (which, would work, but he rolls a nat 20, so in more epic fashion, he shatters the thing). They take a long rest that night - a dreamless rest, and that was the session. I had no idea how fast they'd find it, so I actually had the whole next adventure for when they reached their destination prepped, but instead travel turned out to be the entire session and it was probably one of our best sessions. Everyone loved it, had no idea what was going on, but when they finally figured it out, they loved it (plus they nearly died, and that always makes for a memorable session). There are still jokes about it whenever someone pockets a random item now. I've still got the events of that dream that I'm sitting on til later. At some point I think I'll probably have them stumble upon a town being attacked and in ashes, and if don't think of it right away, they'll remember the dream when they see the little boy...then who knows what might be right behind them. :)

[@Ninisty]

The doppelganger thing happened in my campaign too once. Only difference is that instead of killing the doppelganger who had the party's childhood friend imprisoned for over three months. One of the players refused to kill it and then tried to marry it.

[@lovelessissimo]

For a very long time, the fighter in my Strahd campaign has been wearing heavy armor that was "gifted" to him. He doesn't know it was Strahd who gifted it, or that it is animated armor that will eventually turn on him.

[@awesomepossum2598]

This one has been going on for about 3 years now. In the first session, they met and freed a tortle that was trapped in a fire crystal. He had no memories, and a massive red crystal on his back. Which they later learned housed a red dragon named Scorch, who also lost his memories, that was the Tortles patron. Right now, the campaign is the party traveling across the world to gather Ally’s for a war against a goblin/demon alliance. As the campaign goes on, the Tortle and dragon slowly regain their memories as they travel with the party. Near the end of the campaign, after stopping the war, the tortle and dragons will regain all of their memories. The Tortle was one of 7 champions for 7 ancient dragons that once ruled the world. The Tortle was the champion of Scorch, aka, Bahamut. All the champions save the Tortle died in a war between one of the seven dragons, who went insane from ptsd after a massive war with the demon army. It ended up destroying the world, and the Tortle and Bahamut trapped themselves inside the crystal at the start of the campaign to save their lives and heal themselves. Eventually, the world was restored after different species settled on the planet(it’s a sci-fi/fantasy campaign where different dnd races are alien species.) When the two of them regained their memories, they will take the magical super weapon that the goblin/demon alliance was going to use to win the war, and use it to reset the entire world to how it was before the dragons war. Erasing everyone and everything the party has ever known. The final boss will consist of the party and their army of ally’s fighting against the friend they made throughout the campaign and his army of dragon cultists, Bahamut, several of the major enemies they killed but were resurrected, and the remaining dragons that were revived by the tortle, the true bbeg. Campaigns been going on for years now, and they still have no idea TL;DR The BBEG is a tortle who lost his memories and travels with the party, but tries to destroy/recreate the world after getting their memories back

[@danielboatright8887]

Any plans to give them wiggle room to talk it down, since they are friends ?

[@awesomepossum2598]

@@danielboatright8887 yea I’m giving them the chance to talk him down. His dragon patron on the other hand… lol

[@mushroomsoup2866]

not nearly as impressive as these, but I'm still proud of it. Was in a modern day/post apocalypse setting, and one of the major towns that survived had a casino in it. I got a few decks of cards, mixed them up, bent them, covered them in dirt - basically trying to make these cards look like they'd been scrounged up from wherever they were found. Really added to the atmosphere. The guy who ran the casino (called himself Billion) was a pro poker player. None of the players at the table were much good at poker, so it was super easy for me to up my skills whenever he was at the table. It wasn't until like 6 months later, a different group of friends that included one of my players was hanging out. We ended up playing poker, and I sucked ass at it. Player was confused because I was so good in the tabletop game we ran. Had to tell him that I'd spent a month before that game learning what the specific dirt patterns & folds in each of the cards looked like so I always knew what everyones hands were at all times.

[@ethankincaid6838]

Our dm once gave our ninja a cursed set of armor that slowly took over his mind. Dropped hints for months, but we never caught on. Never finished the campaign, but we knew we'd have to hunt him down

[@HandsomeLongshanks]

There was a deathwatch story of an Alpha Legionaire PC tasked with killing the entire party. He sneakily starts taking them out and making it look like an accident/blaze of glory/personal sacrifice. No one is the wiser. It's a brilliant story.

[@elijahsteele9170]

One of my favorites was I was a chaotic evil rogue in a campaign full of neutral good and lawful good characters, I had confided in the DM that I wanted to try to play this out as long as possible. My character would play at being a goody two shoes but occasionally her true personality would leak out, usually in the form of me stealing shit from other party members and also occasionally “taking care” of townsfolk who had pissed her off. Every time my character was subjected to the detect good or evil spell I had to roll Arcane to try and trick it, luckily I never failed the check… until the dungeon with the final boss of the game where I had FINALLY rolled a one on the arcane check. The look on my fellow players faces will forever be in my memory. Immediate after we killed the final boss they clapped me in irons and shipped my sexy ass to a prison island… which I promptly escaped by seducing the head guard and stealing his keys… and pants.

[@TheTriforceDragon]

I am currently playing a long con. About 2 years ago I had a solo session in which my character met a very powerful entity who could help them bring back someone they lost in exchange for aid. I took the deal and have been secretly working towards fulfillling my side of the bargain for the last 2 years, even got the other players in the party to help me (they know about the entity, not the deal) and next session is when the deal will be fulfilled on my end. Now, the entity seems benevolent and there will almost certainly be rewards in it for the other players, but bar the Wizard of the party (who i needed some advice from in regards to trusting the entity) knows the whole story nor how it will play out. This is off course a mild case, but I kept it hidden from the party mostly because at the time I (in character) was mostly new to their group and didnt fully trust them and because the fulfilling of the deal is likely to have a quite heavy cost (for my character only) that I know (in character) some of the other players would oppose (also in character).

[@stupidratt]

"Wait wait, I can explain you guys!-" *PROCEEDS TO GET BEATEN TO A PULP*

[@robertdrake1756]

Ran a campaign once based on season 1-4 of Babylon 5. An agent of the never seen ancient, 'good' race enters town one day. Slowly the players form ties and think they are working for good and fighting against the bad. It took about 2 years for the characters to finally realize they were being played by the 'good' guys. Both the so called good and bad ancient races were only using the younger races as cannon fodder to fight the war they set up to determine which of the two ancient races were correct in their ideas of how the world should work. The ancient races would avoid direct conflict with each other as they viewed themselves as too valuable to risk death.The characters them formed the alliance of the younger races to banish the ancient races.

[@sheepieworks4974]

I played this really suave bard by the name of Rudy van clause in one of the campaigns that flirted with every woman he could find, especially if the party was around. What the party didn't know was that Rudy was a closet homosexual and fell for one of the party members. It took 2 years for the party to realise what was going on, even though Rudy had many night time adventures with ladies that resulted in him just talking about their feelings and resolving the personal problems that they had. It eventually concluded with 1 of the party members finding out and telling the rest of the party and them having some kind of intervention with Rudy about how being gay is okay and him just going. "I'm not heckin gay" which became a running joke in the group.

[@taterenforth6433]

I was playing D&D 3.5 as an Effigy wizard. This essentially let's you make constructs using other creatures stat blocks. I ask the dm if I can make a swarm of treasure scarabs (creatures that look like gold pieces then unfurl to eat you). He says yes. I pay a little extra to have them explode when I give a command word. I ask him if people accept it when I pay with them. Since they cost more than 1gp to make each he says yes. Cut to 2 years later where I, a now level 15 wizard, have been exclusively purchasing things using my scarabs for 8 years in game. Suddenly, an ancient black dragon is attacking the cities bank. It stands atop its new bed of gold and groats at us. I say the keyword and the entire pile explodes killing the dragon and destroying over half of the cities wealth in the process.

[@Xenozfan2]

For me, it's a character I played once then reskinned for a different campaign. Enter Smallit Stringweaver, a halfling bard. Yep, definitely a bard, definitely a halfling, nope, nothing suspicious here! In actuality I was a warlock 2/bard 1 kenku named Whizz. I took Mask of Many Faces to constantly disguise myself (some fudging had to happen, as Disguise Self only lasts an hour), proficiency in Performance and Deception, and kept all of it from the party. The plan was later to pick up the Actor feat for better impersonations. The reskin is Dei Versyfiyr (actual name: Brom). In the setting, warlocks are from a certain bloodline that make pacts with the avatars to defend the world from alien invasion, so the class is highly restricted (like once in a generation or two restricted). We're all working to get one player's character as powerful as possible to be the chosen one and defend the world, but since I was also marked I'm the backup in case he fails. There have been hints here and there about my secret (the paladin knows I have something fey - my invisible imp familiar - but everyone thinks it's just me, touched by the Spark [the Archfey] who is also patron of the bards), but I'm pretty sure my full secret's safe. Because spells in this setting are somatic only, I can disguise my casting with my "tapping into the song of the world" dance I'm always doing because bard. The campaign is a ton of fun. Everyone has their own secrets and are trying to keep the rest of the party from knowing them, so there's no hard feelings about withholding information.

[@fadran11]

Not a very *long* long-con - just one session - but still so much fun for me as the DM. It was a sci-fi game, where the players had just completed their induction into a massive galactic intelligence agency. Their first mission was to track down a gang leader they'd encountered during the last part of their training (joining on an actual agent's mission as interns). Being members of this agency, they had the galaxy's worth of knowledge at their fingertips, so I left it up to them to decide what they were looking for to find the gang leader. One of the players remembered me saying in the previous session (the intern assignment) that the leader had escaped in a "special ship," which was just something I'd said in the moment to characterize him a little. Somewhat impressed at his memory, I gave them some information that the ship had been seen outside a city on a far-off planet. They flew over and started doing what any player would do: bang on some doors and intimidate some people. They found some lower-level gang members here, but none of them knew anything - or at least none of them cracked. Eventually they found out that a higher-ranking member had been stationed on this planet as their local leader, and figured that he'd be the most likely to know where the boss was. Only problem was that this member was an artificial intelligence, capable of transferring its consciousness through any kind of electrical circuit, meaning that it could hide pretty much anywhere or even escape the city at any time through the power lines. After a not-so-subtle reminder that they had been granted full authoritative control of the city though, they quickly put the whole place under martial lockdown. They closed the power grid and ordered everyone to bring out their service robots. From there it was a game of chicken as they slowly went down the line of cleaning bots, blasting them one after the other with their plasma guns until the inhabited one gave in. The AI did, in fact, chicken at the last second, so they took him in for questioning. That went about as expected: "Where's the boss?" and such. I had them in conversation for awhile, going good cop to bad cop, and eventually managed to break the machine. "I don't know where he is; all I know is that he told me to bring his ship here." And then I called the session.

[@cantini46]

I just started mine. All their gods have secretly changed alignment and are leading them to unleashing the apocalypse on the world. Then they will have to fix what they broke.

[@papercraftcynder5430]

I planned a long-con that ended up getting revealed sooner than I expected but it was still pretty great. One of my players is an Eladrin Princess who was forced to flee her kingdom before she could remember anything. She was entrusted to a powerful Drow wizard (there's two factions and this one rejected the cruelty of the Spider Queen), and that wizard became her father figure. During pre-campaign prep, we were talking about her backstory and my first idea was to kill the wizard in the disaster that struck her kingdom, but she wanted him to be alive by the start of the campaign and told me I could kill him later if I wanted to. That's when a better idea entered my mind. I could kill the wizard, or I could make him the BBEG. From there on out, I devised a plan that would force this wizard onto a collision course with the party, and every time the wizard's fate was mentioned, I'd simply laugh evilly. My original plan was to have the party explore the world and find clues about their goal that would slowly implicate that wizard as the likely antagonist that could also be mistaken as marks of death on the wizard. If all went to plan, the party would reach the Underdark at the end and confront the wizard while hoping that they're wrong. Of course, things didn't go to plan. As soon as I turn them loose after introducing their goal, the first place they go to is the Underdark. I decided to keep my plan to confront the wizard about a lie he told, but instead of having it be the big reveal where his entire plan starts to fall apart, I chose instead to make it the first domino to fall and let the wizard keep his cool. I'll admit that I underestimated the player's abilities because she used Detect Thoughts and successfully dove deeper into the wizard's mind. I kept things vague, but still allowed that seed of doubt to bloom. That moment of realization when she realized what I had done to that wizard was worth it.

[@ThatVia]

One of my players made a one-off joke about a cybernetic kangaroo kicking his character’s butt in his past, only for that same kangaroo to appear as a critical boss three real years later.

[@Tank1711]

Stuff like that doppleganger situation is why I ALWAYS take Alert as a feat, been screwed over by being surprised too many times in previous campaigns to overlook it

[@scorpioperk1137]

Long con achieved, SPOILER warning for Rime of the Frostmaiden.... Ok, so my character, Pafir, is a harengon genie warlock, pact of the tome. Invocations include the Sending ability through writing. This is important for later, we also RP hard so this might start sounding weird. The party has reached Termalaine, and helping with their mine problem. As per usual, Pafir gets targeted by the Grell and survives due to sheer luck. Party helps kill the thing, and heal up. Pafir is cautious yet annoyed, when they come to the bridge with the rope, Pafir is the only one to spot something in a little nook across the way. One Acrobatics check and Rabbit Hop later, he's across. Before helping the others, he checks out what he saw while the party squabbles across the pit. What he finds is a fossilized mindflayer skull. Pafir sees there's something shiny inside through an eyesocket and being too curious for his own good, is able to break the skull and get the Psi Crystal. He then helps his party cross after pocketing the "pretty rock". That night, after successfully clearing the mine and dealing with the ghost, Pafir attunes to the crystal. He begins to hear whispers. A pull in the distance. And a sudden thirst for alcohol. He could speak... into peoples heads. Now, after all the near death experiences that Pafir and the rest of the party endure on a daily basis, it's no wonder he gained a sudden reliance on alcohol to get through the day. And he could already speak to the party in their heads, so nothing changed there. So, out of character summary: Pafir gained indefinite madness and the DM rolled stupid well, only gaining alcoholism. He can now speak to people telepathically in a 30 ft radius, and is hearing whispers that pull him someplace that will most likely get him and his party killed. The party is none the wiser as Pafir is the only one with decent perception and the thoughtfulness to even ask if something is wrong. Luckily, Pafir has a decent wisdom and experience with manipulation, so he has never failed a Wisdom save when the DM calls for one. Twice or three times in a in-game day. I know he is just waiting for a failure, as Pafir is the only moral compass the group currently has. I can make guesses to the DMs plans (all of them involving mind control of some fashion), and a betrayal by Pafir would break a few of the party members. It has been several sessions, I have dropped little things, like Pafir not always taking out his book to talk mentally, and the fact that he went out of his way to get more than one flask for alcohol. The rest of the party still hasn't noticed anything. Edit: Well, it finally happened. We were in Bremen visiting an npc, and were going from one tavern to another. In each, Pafir ordered a drink, and in the final tavern while chatting and de-escalating a situation involving a former cultist (we literally scared him straight) DM calls for a Wis save. Rolled a 3. Failing for the first time. The whispers in Pafirs head become so bad he drinks double his body weight in alcohol, passing out at the bar. One of the others finally rolls an insight check, with advantage for knowing me for so long. He concludes I have an alcohol problem and am in severe denial. Internally thinking nothing would happen, imagine my surprise when he organizes an intervention. An extreme intervention. While I am still unconscious, he and the rest of the party take me up to a room, and then the sorcerer who just so happened to be a sailor, rolled a nat 20 for bandage. Not only was I tied to a chair, I was also tied to the ceiling via ropes, pully's and pistons. Upside down. Gravity did its thing and Pafir finally woke up due to vomiting everything he ate and drank from the past two days. I was immediately gagged after to prevent verbal spells. The others began explaing that I woul hang here until I had a better hold on my alcoholism. And to help me along, the paladin removed my buzz and subsequent hangover. Which led to me being asked once again to make a Wis Save. Rolled a 4. Failing by 1 after bonuses. Instead of the patience plan I was concocting, poor Pafir was subjected to screaming psychic whispers that he. Needed. To. Shut. Up. The others made several errors. They did not search Pafir. Nor did they strip him of any gear. He was just a warlock after all, what could he do? Well, Genie warlocks have this nifty at-will ability, Genies Bottle: Bottled Respite. My bottle was in the shape of a ring. Which they did not remove. With a poof of wind and arcane power I vanished from existence, my ring dropping to the ground and then with another poof, I reappear, a crazed look in my eyes, shouting mentally into everyone's heads, "whispers, Whispers, WHISPERS MAKE THEM STOP." Roll for initiative. The dice were not on my side today, going second to last in initiative. Paladin tries Calm Emotions. Brush that off, triggering full panic. Cleric tries Hold Person, nope. Wizard tries Charm Person, and like the other two, the spell doesn't even register. They all used their movement to essentially surround me. An ability that the Harengon have, Rabbit Hop, is a Gods send. Since no one grappled Pafir, he used Rabbit Hop which provokes no opportunity attacks to get around everyone and to the door. Which DM ruled opening and closing a free action. I then cast Create Food and Water, 40 pounds of food and 35 gallons of water appeared in jars stacked against the door. Which opens outward. It takes the rest of my movement to get to the end of the hall at the top of the stairs. Sorcerers turn, nearly breaks their shoulder when he attempts to open the door, and has nothing that wouldn't cause extreme collateral damage. Back to the top, Paladins rolls a Nat 20 in a charge attack to open the door and shatter my barricade. Cleric comes in... who I haven't mentioned is an almost nine foot tall heavily muscled Goliath. Sprints after me, and attempts to grapple. Just barely catches me (21 Acrobatics vs 23 Athletics). Wizards turn... doesn't have any non-lethal spells, so takes the dash action and Nat 20s an Acrobatics check to get over the Cleric and me, reaching the bottom of the stairs, blocking my exit. Using Prestidigitation to create harmless sparks in the clerics eyes, im ablevto break the grapple and Rabbit Hop down the stairs, not giving the Cleric the chance to grapple again. It gives the wizard an attack of opportunity... and I forget he's a muscle wizard. I am once again grappled. Sorcerer attempts chill touch, but misses, paladin is able to get past the Cleric and in front of me, attempting Compel Duel. It fails. Initiative order breaks when the Cleric, whom I remind you is an almost nine foot tall Goliath in heavy armor, dives from the top of the stairs in a belly flop on top of all three of us. I finally succeed a Wis Save to ignore the whispers, and let the Paladins Calm Emotions spell take effect. From their it took the others a teeth grinding long time to realize I was suffering from madness caused by an item. Not helped by the fact that I couldn't roll above a 4 to stop the whispers from influencing me. When I FINALLY succeeded, I was only able to get out one word. PACK. They finally search my pack, and find a very out of place humming crystal. After translating the whispers thanks to a great Arcana check, my attunement finally ends to the Psi Crystal's, leaving Pafirs mind blessedly silent. Which is were the session ended leaving everyone else reeling. During the near hour of interrogation real-time, they had learned that Pafir had been constantly bombarded with the Deep Speech equivalent of the Baby Shark song every. Waking. Moment. For months. Hanging on to sanity ironically thanks to Pafirs insane willpower. DM had not expected the session to become an impromptu chase scene (several nat 20s being the only reason it didn't last longer) and everyone loved the rp.

[@bloodyredshade]

I was DMing and my players frequently went into a tavern where a particular female red haired bard played almost every night. Of course they were obligated to make moves and a few even managed to sleep with her. Of course in the process of making moves they announced how they were after the Cloak of Amara Guster, a magical cloak that would grant the user the ability to transform into a gust of wind which could either get someone into a space otherwise impossible or dodge a death blow at the last second. What my players didn’t know was that the bard was a rival thief who was also after the Cloak. Of course I had given them information and pieces that might have tipped them off but they never asked for the red headed bards name and therefore never went down that quest line. After braving a dungeon, the undead, and rival bands, they came to the final resting place of Amara Guster. Pushing open her coffin they found the cloak folded neatly around the remains of amara. With two failed perception checks and a natural 1. The two remaining team members were dumbstruck as a figured dashed by and snatched the cloak. A familiar face smiled cheekily at them while fastening the cloak around her neck. Before they could do anything she winked and activated the cloak which allowed her to vanish in a gust of wind. The name of the thief, Amara Guster the Third, bard by trade, thief by tradition.

[@jbw065]

In my Eberron game I had a group of BBEGs that the party accidentally started to thwart without realising it. Their leader (the BBEGs) was an armorer artificer, with a Order Domain/Clockwork Soul Sorcerer, a Bard/Sorcerer and a Rogue/Barbarian. They were planned to be 9th lvl at the time of the party finally meeting them but they were supposed to get glimpses of them ahead of that time. One of the things I’d planned to help the party figure out who was responsible for the bad stuff happening in their world was a seer who would send them on a vision quest. During that quest they would watch the history of the BBEG group as they find each other and start plotting, with clues as to where their HQ would likely be in the present day. The party never found the seer but eventually (finally!!?!) found them and went to confront them. Now as with all groups sometimes some people can’t make a game. So one week I said to the others that I’d set up a one-shot for them when one person couldn’t attend. I’d made characters for them all and let them choose who would play which. There was an artificer, a couple of other casters and a barbarian rogue… they were 6th lvl. Cut to the final showdown battle where the five party members face off against the BBEG group and the look of amazement when they see the tokens were the same people that they’d played as 6 months earlier, but 3 lvls higher. It was an epic fight, and lots of fun.

[@DomyTheMad420]

okay yeah that first one takes the cake! at first i was rolling my eyes cuz "oh god a narutard world". very clever & interesting!

[@ephemispriest8069]

I had a vow of poverty stigmata barbarian back in third edition. Stigmata allowed you to take con damage to heal with positive energy. It didn't specify if you could use this to hurt undead, and the amount healed was per hit dice. The party got cornered by an elder lich they had pissed off at some point, and my barbarian comes stumbling out of another room dripping blood from her entire body. The lich thought it was cute someone would touch it and paralyze themselves. It didn't think it was so cute when it got 16 positive energy per hit dice. I never did top doing almost four hundred damage in the rest of the time I played third edition.

[@destroyerinazuma96]

Not my story but a guy had named his character David Oliver Ituwasumi. Mid-campaign, PC had to sign a document, so he signed "Ituwasumi D.O." Only then did GM notice.

[@cadavreplatter379]

My favorite one pulled on my players was really mean. Bit of context, my players were very peaceful and valued rp a lot, so combat wasn't something I focused on, but they had encountered a little unassuming fellow who said he could give them anything they wanted, in exchange they had to do a favor for him later down the line. He was small and nice to them, so they made a deal with him, several actually. Around a year later after the island the campaign had been taking place on was decimated they traveled to a large continent. The creatures there were incredibly kind and I framed everything like an absolute paradise, but this was also when I had them do the little guy a favor.

[@cadavreplatter379]

He requested that they take crystals made of part of him, and put one of them on alters located at each cardinal point around the continent. So they travel around, meeting creatures, making friends, and fighting a time or two, before the creature that has destroyed their island cake for the continent. Everything was going to crap, but they barely managed to get the crystal into the last alter, thinking that would save them. The energy formed a pyramid engulfing the entire continent... Which utterly obliterated everyone and everything inside of it, including their souls. The party looked on in horror from right outside the pyramid, as the little guy sat on top of the whole thing, smiling. He thanked them for the help, and vanished, leaving nothing but a dead continent and pained memories.

[@kylelonnes5833]

As a DM: PC's complete meaningless side quest, helping an armless beggar get a job assisting a Church as its tower bell ringer. Fast forward a year and a half in real time and about 12-13 levels in game, the PC's return to that starting village to complete a larger quest and get met with shocked villagers surrounding the body of that same armless man, who just fell off the tower after a bell ringing procedure. The elderly priest is retrieved to identify the person, and gives the response "I can never remember his name, but his face rings a bell" AND PC's given multiple clues and gossip on mysterious poisonings while journeying from town to town, often coming up short on finding out motives or who was behind them. Eventually find themselves in a Wizard's tower converted into luxury Inn, of 12 floors only accessible by teleporting circles, giving it its' name 'The Spanless Inn'. Each night, the guest/s of the lowest floor gets murdered by a dark, robbed figure, who taunts any PC trying to catch them. First night victims business partners Mr's/Missus Tartridge and Parree, 2nd night victim a Tortle named Doug, 3rd night victims NPC named Frenchy Hyms, etc (the PCs eventually realize each night's victim/s are a wordplay from the 12 days of Christmas. Eventually they capture the murderer, who turns out to be the gnomish physician of the Inn, who was to retire soon. As a high level wizard/Illusionist he was able to avoid getting caught up till then. After getting caught, he gives the response "Nobody ever suspects the Spanless Inn Physician!"

[@chadbrochill19]

AD&D. A drow themed campaign in Menzoberranzan, a loose party of 4 adventurers and the political intrigues of the dangerous city. 2 year long campaign an aspiring Cleric of Lloth (Female from a minor noble house), her brothers (Fighter) and Ranger with a female magic user (wizard) who wasn't a cleric from outside the city who they unofficially 'adopted'. It was a long and intresting campaign until the end where things got really heated. The last session that was planned had them taking down the rival drow house and finally their matron mother, replacing her with the female Cleric of Lloth as PC. (In the events prior, the Female Drow Wizard had become a Lich) With the battle won and the DM was about to end the campaign doing the wrap up of events the player wrote a note to the DM. Pulling his books and notes back out he asked out loud "Are you sure?" they said "Yes." phase 2 was enacted. The 'nameless' female wizard who the party had 'adopted' into their family would turn on them and similarly 'execute Order 66' moment happened. They had basically had planned the demise of each of her party members over the 2 year period, learning their strengths and weaknesses. (The player's had units in the fight such as Fighters had a small fighting unit, the ranger had his rangers, the cleric had some priestesses and the wizard had wizards, etc.) Suddenly there were explosions left and right, fireballs unleashed from the wizards who had stayed mostly out of the fight due to some protections that were enacted by the other house (which she had planned for) suddenly started causing chaos. A golem that had been constructed with the soul of the Ranger PC (who she convinced that this was the only way they could pull off the plan) and had killed the Matron of the house suddenly turned on the new matron mother killing the Cleric PC. The fighter PC subsequently was turned to stone and later shattered by the golem (Ranger PC). The wizards had decimated the forces of the newly victorious house and began to go through a portal to a new city. It had been in the backstory that there was a connection with the Female Wizard and their family from character creation. She was a surviving noble whose house had been annihilated by the PC's house and had concealed her identity for the entire campaign. Final words were "Long Live House A'Daragon." as the final PC noble died. Everyone at the table was completely surprised and they still talk about it sometimes.

[@drjester5750]

In high school me and a group of my created the dungeons dorks. we had a campaign that lasted all high school and a few years afterwards and all the time i was the bbeg. the rest of the players didnt know this but i was in charge with coming up with evil plans and getting henchmen to do my bidding. i left clues everywhere, i even shown that i knew where the crimes were committed and i was playing a necromancer. it was a good 7 or 8 years till someone put 2+2 together that it was me all along.

[@TheCorgayArts]

My dm pulled a long con that nearly TPK'd the party. It started with my characters backstory. He's a rogue (later multiclassed into bard/paladin) and was based on the Winter Soldier a bit: ex-slave/assassin made to kill the citizens in subjugation for the emperor who tried to rise up. Lots of mind control fuckery/modify memory. At the start of the game, I was informed that I would know about an invisible tattoo the emperor would use to track my movements. Yeah that's not what that tattoo was. It was a complex rune system, because the head mage for the emperor was experimenting on him in his "down time." Anyway, the major spell is Karsus' Avatar, but theres at minimum 100 spells permanently on him. We found this out about 2 years into playing (and we play fairly regularly), after our party wizard did identify on my pc. All we knew is that we had to keep him from being dispelled, because it would likely kill him based on some of the spells on him. This knowledge made him nervous for the party so anytime they encountered a trustworthy high level spell caster, he had them verify that is he was dispelled, it would only kill him. A year and a half after finding out about the spells, the sorceror was negotiating with a Beholder. The Beholder didnt trust us, so he cast his antimagic field on the party, which actually had the misfortune of activating all the spells on my PC. It took 2 real hours for everyone in the room to make all the necessary saves, for what took in game 6 seconds. It dropped every party member except the wizard who teleported away and my pc, who had 1 hp left at the end. Good thing hes a bard, or he wouldnt have been able to bring up the party. Used all his spell slots to do so. One shot the Beholder. Anyway, the spells are still on him, as the field was temporary, but the biggest spells are above what the Beholder could antimagic, so we dont even know what those are still. Don't dispell my PC.

[@mattbrammeier8938]

I once had the players go on a series of fetch-quests to gather materials for a resurrection ritual. One party member had died in combat and it timed out perfectly that he was going to miss the next several sessions. Rest of the party agreed to get the supplies to resurrect him while he was gone. One of the items that was needed was freshly congealed blood of a dracolich. The party took on the quest and then enjoyed the bountiful hoard of riches and magical items that were in the hoard. As he attuned a +3 jeweled war hammer, the party's Conquest Paladin heard a voice whispering in his mind, which he soon learned was the war hammer. It spoke of a life of conquest and yet more magical abilities that the hammer could display, given the paladin could finish the other pre-requisite steps to finish the attunement. There was a series of benign things that culminated in needing to smear the blood of a freshly killed dragon on the jewels of the hammer. Paladin said, "Sure, sounds great!" Fast forward about half a year and the party has picked a fight with an Ancient Red Dragon known to be one of the most powerful in the setting. They fought valiantly, used up most of their resources, had a grand old time. The hammer reminded the paladin of the steps to finalize the attunement, with the only remaining step to be the whole dragon's blood thing. Party emerges victorious but clinging to life and the paladin smears some of the blood on the jewels. I described him turning it over and over again, hoping to see something change or to feel the attunement complete, but instead the corpse of the dragon they just killed began to stir and pick itself back up. The corpse then thanked the paladin for making sure a suitable replacement body was found, and the dracolich flew off to get back to it's original plans. The +3 war hammer was still a +3 war hammer, but the jewels on it where the temporary phylactery of the dracolich, who was now free to do as he pleased in an even stronger body.

[@matthewlabodin3981]

This is more of an accidental long con. I once had a wizard character who had a running gag that he basically collected job titles. He had acted as a lawyer, a chef, a butler, a doctor, and several other things, usually with at least passable results. Eventually, though, I got bored with the character and retired him. He faked his death in his home country, and didn't want to endanger his family, so he laid low by setting up a detective agency in town, and my new character was introduced by bumping into the old one as he exited. Our party rarely makes lasting allies, although admittedly I'm the only one trying to do that. Our characters ended up signing a magical contract with our current employer, who was recently revealed to be super evil. Said contract (and our paycheck) forced us to massacre the city council, and any members of the wizard's guild protecting them. Those wizards were unfortunately probably the only ones willing to help us break those contracts, because the rest are just stoked that our boss legalized necromancy. That is except for one fairly powerful wizard, who is explicitly laying low and didn't join the guild. I unintentionally created a very helpful NPC for our current situation.

[@raider363]

Some very cool stories there. But if you're doing a long con, for me anyway, it's not enough to simply trick the players. There has to be a significant reason or goal for the trickster. For example on a game I'm running now an evil wizard created a simulacrum or one of the party's npc allies. Then Captured the npc, interrogared them, and send the simulacrum out. It gathered information, kidnapped a key npc they needed to take with them to safely navigate a temple, and ultimately fed information back to the wizard so that he could discover the secret to lichdom that is locked within this temple. Now they don't know all of that yet... but they will soon wuahaha!

[@guillermorelobalopez7553]

Not a long con, but I loved a horror D&D story of a party (of four players) arriving to a town where people dissapear and their loved ones have no recollection of the dissapeared ones. After they realized what was going on, subtle hints, missing gear and incoherent details were planted. After they finally found and slayed the monster responsible, they found the remains of its victims along with their missing gear in an unknown corpse in whose sketchbook they're all represented. The body of their fifth companion, whom they lost to the monster and of whom they had no recollection.

[@katherinepurvin7802]

Oh, I remember that one! That's the False Hydra story, isn't it?

[@guillermorelobalopez7553]

@@katherinepurvin7802 Indeed it is.

[@UchihaKat]

The very first time I played was a month-long playtest of dnd 5e during an Independent Activities period in undergrad, so we were playing like every day. It was so intense, and I was playing this chipper little rogue that rode around on the bigger characters' backs. I loved them all so much! Then, near the final session, I get separated from the group and ended up confronting a hooded figure. Only survived because I rolled a Nat 20 on a grapple and killed her instead. Pulled back the hood to reveal my friend that I rode on the back of. I was devastated that I had been tricked into killing my friend! And then the player cried and was like. "No, fool, I was trying to kill you!" Turned out the whole party was evil except me and they'd been trying to off me, but because I kept being a sneaky rogue, I hadn't actually gotten hit at points where any of them could use that to sneakily hurt me too. Such a betrayal for my first dnd experience! XD

[@mikereinken4928]

Ran a two year campaign. The first player death occurred at level 3... about session 6. It was the dwarf cleric. Due to circumstances the paladin ended up being the only one present to bury the cleric. At forth level the paladin's player decided he didn't want to play the paladin any more (in game the paladin sought revenge on the hobgoblins for destroying a village and would have taking the entire party off task for the campaign... and the player didn't want to be the default healer). Due to his desire for revenge the paladin's deity left him ... and he goes off to fight hobgoblins. The paladin dies seeking revenge but cries out to the deity of death that he would serve deity if the deity saves him. Agreed. Deity sends paladin on quest for powerful artifact ... the party finds out the paladin is "still" alive and seeking the artifact. They confront and "kill" the paladin but the artifact disappears with him when he "dies". The party is level 8 now. The party runs into the paladin again at level 11. Finally at level 14 the party confronts the paladin (as a death knight) in a titanic battle as he attempts to destroy the Citadel of the Mists (which they caught him in the process of doing). Only the paladin has brought along the first to die Cleric who has also been resurrected by Myrkul. The party realizes only then why the paladin was always one step ahead of them... the original quest was initiated for only two PC, the Bladesigner ... and his buddy, the cleric... because, by chance, the paladin was the only member that knew where the cleric was buried ... and then he quit the party ... sought revenge ... died and was resurrected by Myrkul ... then subsequently resurrected the cleric... the paladin knew exactly where the party was heading at every turn. It was a welcomed deviation from the original homebrew story that ended up as an epic 2 year campaign conflict because one character died ... and the other walked away from the group.

[@geordan4951]

The long con in my game is convincing my players I actually know anything about what I’m doing

[@Manicies]

My party still doesn't know I'm playing a changeling :)

[@WarChallenger]

Unfortunately, a lot of players do have these stories, but can't share 'em. They're in-progress cons that have yet to fully play out.

[@BurroughsProductions]

While I like the doppelganger story I would never do that without my players permission.

[@MrRadik94]

Buddy made a warforged cleric named "Sorexbot." Campaign continues for about two years and we're at the last session. We finish off the BBEG and are standing around, when the dwarf fighter goes, "Hang on [Player name], did you know that you can rearrange your name to make it "Sex robot"? Haha." Sorexbot and the DM exchanged glances. Sorexbot: "Does that count?" DM: "Yeah that counts." Rest of party: Does what count? "Sorexbot" starts counting down from 10 in his best Dalek voice Party: "WTF is going on?" "Sorexbot" ended up exploding, almost resulting in a TPK after the campaign was done. "Sorexbot" had apparently a secret self-destruct code that was "sex robot".

[@ItsAVolcano]

As a DM one of the earliest encounters I wanted my party to deal with was a coven of witches obsessed with magic research led by a headmistress who was turning herself into a lich. After the party just ignored the group since they kept to themselves in an old monastery, I kept having different groups they met warn them of a witch at the monastery trying to turn herself into a lich. When they finally went to go deal with it at lvl 15-16 they Leeroyed right in convinced they could steamroll a lich and a couple of witches. That's when they found out every single warning they'd received was about *another* member of the coven undergoing a lich transformation, including the headmistress becoming a demilich.😁 They actually made the final fight harder for themselves as they immediately charged the ritual room figuring that any reinforcements outside of it would be trivial. Cue them ducking it out with a Demilich and two liches while 4 more made their way into the room over the course of ~12 turns.🤣 They technically won the encounter but had to drag 2 dead party members back to the capital for a resurrection.🤗

[@the_idiot_gm]

I just recently started a new campaign, it's a heavily homebrewed environment and because of that my players wanted to be able to play exotic races, like fairies. Trying not to spoil anything I was able to get them to play more simple characters. In the setting there is a lot of talk about this adventuring group that not too long ago had saved the world from a lich that caused a blight across the land, but nobody knows who or what these heroes are. Unbeknownst to them they are currently on their way to steal an item so the lich's right hand man can continue the blight. Also unbeknownst to them is that when the blight starts up again their current characters will be too low leveled to fight anything like that, and at which point they will create new characters that will make up the adventuring that originally took out the lich. (And when they make the new characters they can go nuts and play their fairies.)

[@Arkloyd]

In an Ironclaw game, I played a "Hobgoblin" which is a name for a type of assassin that disguises themselves as a clown. Being of the "Fool" archtype, I decided that a fool's advice should be foolish, so any time the party was making plans, I made up the most bloodthirsty, violent and deadly plans I could. Even then it still took the other players some time to realize they should *not* take Giggles "advice". After they had figured out that Giggles is low-key trying to kill them, and they stopped listening to her, I waited. At some point later, I saw my chance. Giggles gave the party the most thoughtful, carefully planned stealth mission I could concoct with my limited knowledge of the target. The other players, save one, were immediately into the violent options, and with each other player's addition, the plan grew even more bloody, until that one one player had seen enough of the results of what Giggles had done, and turned the other players to her safer plan. I'm glad my attempted TPK failed. Had it worked I would have felt very bad, but I would have been laughing my ass off.

[@Frozenkoldfury]

Decided to run an Evil-Aligned campaign for my players, mostly to see just what kind of shit they got up to. They decide they're going to play the leaders of a Cult. "Great!" says I, writing up Lore for their gods, the town they were in, etc. Play continues as normal. Three or Four sessions in, they encounter a Wizard who also worships one of the Dark Gods. He tells them that he has been sent by visions of a world under the rule of the Black Pantheon, and that he wishes to assist them. He offers the Cult Head, a Cleric, a Magical Item containing a set number of casts of a *Permanent* Domininate Person spell, telling him to use it to ensure the loyalty of whoever they deem most useful to the cause. As the Party are marvelling over this gift, the Wizard teleports out. Fast forward about 13 levels worth of play time later. The Cult is huge. Leaders of the Guard, The Princes Fiancé, Master Blacksmiths, High Priests, Mighty Wizards and Powerful Politicians have all been dominated by the party. They are ready to make their move. The Wizard strolls into their base. Half the party barely remember him. He thanks them, tells them they've done well. And then he uses his own version of the Staff, and takes control of all of the people they Dominated. Every skill they had selected their Victims for, Every mighty warrior, all of them suddenly turned on the Party. It was one hell of a fight.

[@hownowpuncow1546]

I tasked them with finding the adventures that had trapped this shadow dragon previously. They ended up finding them over the course of 9 months or so. They reached a puzzle that required them to name those adventurers in a particular order to open it. Nere, Gon, Gith, Yu, Op. Had to fight a massive dancing troll.

[@michealnelsonauthor]

Dammit! Lol. Well played, sir. Well played.

[@michealnelsonauthor]

A massive “troll”, you say. Yaassss

[@wakkawagga443]

I insert a hidden secret into every npc the players encounter during their travel. A players dog might be replaced by a shapeshifter that spies on them, the beggar they saved might be a priest for some dark god and lure them into a trap slowly while showing his gratitude with humble gestures over time. Just be sure to give the tiniest of hints throughout the campaign.

[@thehuntersburrow7453]

One of my players was actually a spy for the bbegs who has since been dubbed zoko you can take a guess why

[@C00kyCorey]

Would not recommend. Priceless I played a trickster in LARP The gms send out bags of gravel as minor plot items. The bags were heavy, dusty, handfuls and had no in game value outside , "Its a bag of rocks," I told a few players during a yearly all PC shift "A year and a day later I was going to place them all through out game." No one would remember what they were and being these bags had no in game value it would a harmless prank. Yeah. :) Next year's all PC shift comes. Rocks get dropped off at 5 am. This guy sleeps through most of the all PC shift. Apparently a year and a day later the "bag of rocks," prop number had been switched to "Dragon's Hoard," or something like that...

[@Closer2Zero]

First OP literally recreated the 4th Great Ninja war lmao

[@GeryonM]

It was 2E and my character was LE wizard/their with a focus on necromancy and deception with a bunch of neutrals and goods. The DM new of my plans but I kept my true motivationd to my self. As low level PCs I helped the baddies survive my comrades and plan my evil cohort for the eventual backstabbing that was to come. After many adventures and getting into the early teans is when it happened. Theothers had figured out that i wasn't what I seemed and had plotted the ambush during the "training" time. They had figured out most things except my necromancer focus. This game was an anything goes and PC conflict wasn't forbidden just frowned upon by most. When the jig was up I let loose without warning on the party and figured I had it wrapped up. I was wrong. They had prepared as well which was songwriter they never really did with other encounters. I was multi-classed with the 2 worst HP types in the game and even my newly risen "friends" and my imp familure couldn't save me. It was good fun though. My evil replacement character was more successful though.

[@MitchT97]

In the middle of one right now in fact. With a dragon. I guess only good aligned ones can morph their form but I’m disregarding this as a power the BBEGs right hand manage to obtain. He’s been multiple semi unimportant characters around the party and even a really trusted side character I implemented. As I expected they have more or less told this guy everything by the time you put together all the info they have shared with each npc. Keep in mind none of these npcs are essential and they didn’t have to tell them anything. They chose to in rp situations. I still have one more instance of this to implement and we’ll see if they catch on as I have dropped countless hints. Some being: one of them has been noticeably gone a lot with no reason why when they really shouldn’t be, one died but time of death was long before they last talked to the npc, and finally many notes and correspondence they have on their person make hints at this. They just stopped looking at the notes to hurry on with a session. Oh and a pc has the ability to a few times a day see the last action (6 seconds) that caused a creature death, the final blow damage type, as well as the victims lasts words, but just not the attacker themselves. They’ve caught on to theirs some sort of doppelganger just not what’s going on or their full intent yet.

[@pman87850]

My Australian firbolg got a crow familiar that he named Russell, Russell the Crow. It took 3 whole real life months before anyone realized the joke.