Best Swerve You've Ever Pulled, GMs, how have stunned your players without a TPK? Options

[Abstruse]

My best story involves a globetrotting race that lasted for a month and a half worth of sessions...the group was running against another team trying to gather a series of artifacts to prevent an evil mage from opening a portal releasing an Unspeakable Horror. They were REALLY looking forward to killing that other group, even though they'd beat them to the punch and end up with the artifact first. Finally, they confront the big boss at mystic site where he's just about to start the ritual...

Party Leader: So how are you going to open the portal without all the artifacts?!

Evil Mage: Oh, those things? I hired that other team the second I found out you were on my trail. The artifacts are powerful, but while you were chasing my team all over creation, I went and got the ritual tome myself. It's the only thing I need.

Yes, I stole that from the Evil Overlord list...so what have you done that caused your players' jaws to drop?

[n0tthellama]

I am running a "Serial Drama" campaign that currently involves the machinations of Immortal Elves. It involves an alternate meta-plot timeline where the team of runners are all reincarnated pieces of people Harlequin knew back in the 4th Age. All of my players current characters have links to some of Harlequin's exploits in trying to prevent the scourge . The team has no clue as to what the meta-plot is just yet but up to this point, but they have worked out a number of small bits of info. Between a few cameo appearances by our favorite immortal elfe elf, Frosty, and the appearance of a Wraith as season one's big bad guy they get this sinking feeling when anything or anyone involved with any plot shows up.

The best part is I made the players choose their flaws before they built any part of their characters. I have about 30 or so pages of fiction where the flaws they have today are the same flaws they wronged Harlequin with in the 4th age. So, he is busy making them suffer a bit before he conscripts them in his personal war agains't the horror threat.

Every time I drop anything about the overall plot the team stops in their tracks and any forward progress they have made on the task at hand takes second string. They are already paranoid enough being shadow runners. Add some personal attention from an immortal elf and their lives really start to go topsy turvy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Saint Sithney]

I used to drop anagrams, literary references and other such subtleties into plots, but found that they were never really picked up on like a good red herring. So, as it stands most character's motivations are so fishy that everyone and everything is suspect. Makes things hard to swerve when the biggest reveal I can pull is that someone was actually on the level. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Blade]

- SR3 veteran players with 50+ karma pool (one of them even had a fragging assault rifle with its own karma pool!) who told me they wanted to save the world. I decided to put things in perspective and the run finished with them finding a boat used for no-so-legal genetic experiments and full of homeless children used as text subjects. Most of them were sick because of the experiments (cancers mostly). And that's when the "world saving" runners realized that even if they were top of their game, they were still far from being able to save the world. They were just killing machines who solved their problems with violence.

- I've also GMed a run for an eccentric artist. They had to protect a magical artifact he was working on (his works focused on magic artifacts). To do so, they had to live with he artist and his two housemates. They quickly became friends with them. Then things started to go wrong. One of the housemate was killed, the artifact stolen, the artist killed himself and the last housemate was starting to go crazy. Once nearly everyone and everything linked to the run was killed or destroyed, the runner discovered that there had never been any artifact. The artist wanted to do the ultimate nihilistic piece and have everyone fight and die for literally nothing, the only survivors being people who don't exist (the runners who have no real SIN).

[killerdbz]

The runners had just taken a job by a yak outfit to retrieve a runaway. In the middle of them doing legwork they got a second job to find the girl by the girls parents. Less money but I wanted to see if anyone would treat it like it was a real situation and use some damn morals. Someone did.

After finding the girl, the group was deciding who to deliver her too. Most of the party wanted to deliver her to the Yak and reap the monetary reward. One player, a real honest to god white knight, wanted to bring her back to the parents and wave the fee(as a note it was also his first time playing Shadowrun or any PnP game for that matter). This shocked the hell out of everyone, both in and out of game. He was dead serious about it. When the team rose up to object, he picked up his dice, looked at me and said "I roll for initiative first if I am going to shoot them right?"

Everyone dropped there arguments and took the girl to the drop off point with the parents. After putting her in the car and giving the cred back, the passenger window rolled down to reveal the Yak who hired them looking a bit upset. A pin drop would have sounded like a nuke, 100% distilled silence. Everyone was just staring blankly at me, then at the white knight, then at me. The look on the new players face was priceless. He learned the truth of the shadows that night.

That is how I taught my runners to do a background check on all their employers.

[Jhaiisiin]

I posted this in the GM ambush thread because well, I'm a dufus and misunderstood the thread meaning. Seems more appropriate here.

Best GM ambush we ever had was with our crew we called Omega (we just tended to walk all over everything that got in our way). I was playing a seriously stuck up Elf who was very proud of his race and very happily a loyal Tir citizen. We'd done several runs against SK and were finding ourselves getting targeted by them specifically, so we started trying to avoid them when we could.

One day, captain of the Ghosts shows up on my character's door step, stating that one of the Princes is requesting an audience. Without hesitation, I gathered my stuff and accompanied the Ghost to the Tir for the meeting, no questions asked. We get all the way to the chamber door, then the captain says "Prince Lofwyr will see you now." I had to pick my jaw off the floor once I finally came back to my senses. My response to my GM: "Mike, ScrewYou. Well played, but Screw you!" To this day, it's still revered as a stroke of genius on his part.

[CanRay]

I had the Disney Mouseketeers SWAT Team surround their safe house, they were fully ready to repell a "Home Invasion" when the Front Lawn stood up and started beating on the house, bringing it down around their ears.

As someone else on the forum put it, "They shouldn't have been surprised, it is the MAGIC Kingdom after all!".

All because they had to extract Goofy.

[emouse]

I used to drop anagrams, literary references and other such subtleties into plots, but found that they were never really picked up on like a good red herring. So, as it stands most character's motivations are so fishy that everyone and everything is suspect. Makes things hard to swerve when the biggest reveal I can pull is that someone was actually on the level. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

I played in a campaign where the party had some run ins with Ares and was very wary of them.

None of us picked up on the fact that our most frequent employer was named 'Seraton'.

[DMFubar]

Mine was a swerve that Catalyst pulled on all of us. Not sure if it fits in with the other stories, but here goes...

I ran a game a little less than a year ago that involved the Mage's mentor requesting a specific artifact, a splinter of the True Cross. It was located in the Arabian Caliphate within a former Crusader castle called Al-Karak. Entering the Caliphate posing as members of the media following a story on increased violence between the Black Scorpions terrorist group and Israeli forces, they made their way to Al-Karak which was a staging point for the Black Scorpions. Keeping their cover intact, they toured the ancient castle while undergoing a great deal of scrutiny from the tour guides/security personnel stationed there.

That night, they discovered why, as they began a raid on the castle to find the splinter at the same time that the Black Scorpions attacked the castle looking to destroy the outpost of New Templars stationed there (the tour guides/security). A major firefight broke out with an appearance by the Archangel Michael (a force 8 Spirit, can't remember which type though). The group made it out fairly successfully without raising too much attention and returned to Seattle (they had other problems on the return trip involving Shedim, but that is another tale).

Fast forward about eight months or so and we are looking at the Sixth World Almanac. We get to the Arabian Caliphate entry to read about Aden circling over Al-Karak after destroying Tehran. One of players said "Aden knew there was something big there, he must have been the client!"

He wasn't (the mentor, who was trying to get turned into a vampire and join a coven looking to control the Seattle area, needed the splinter as a component for a magical ritual that would remove a vampire's allergic reaction to sunlight).

[Neraph]

None of us picked up on the fact that our most frequent employer was named 'Seraton'.

...?

[DMFubar]

Seraton backwards is not ares.

[CanRay]

Seraton backwards is not ares.

Well, it's not a Japanacorp then, they're notorious for not having a sense of humour...

Fuchi or one of it's decendants?

[Bull]

Best one I pulled was the time the PCs got hired to retrieve their Johnson's daughter, who had run off with some ganger (A Lt. with the Cutters). I decided that while this run was going on, the FASA module "Elven Fire" was getting run by an NPC team in the background, and tehy were failing it. The result of screwing that adventure up is that a huge gang war breaks out across the city, and eventually the Metroplex Guard gets called in and declares Martial Law.

So the PCs have this gradually escalating gang war going on, while they're trying to track down this Cutter LT. and the Johnson's daughter. The PCs end up in the middle of a 3-way fight with the Cutters, the Ancients, and the Steppenwulves (Cause lord, I love those crazy cyborgs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ). Part way through the fight, the Cutter Lt. gets shot, and the girlfriend/daughter flips out... And turns into a dragon. The PLayers didn't know what th fuck to do, and had to scramble to prevent her from eating them too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Turns out Mr Johnson was an Adult Dragon, and his daughter was basically a "teenage" dragon going through a rebellious stage. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

(this was all 2nd edition, so before Drakes or the Dragons book or any of that came out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ).

It was a lot of fun, and the players were just stunned stupid for like 5 minutes. They didn't know what to do (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bull

[IceKatze]

hi hi

Fuchi or one of it's decendants?

And not Ares backwards "is Ares." Still a little confused as to why his name wasn't Mr. Johnson though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[CanRay]

And not Ares backwards "is Ares." Still a little confused as to why his name wasn't Mr. Johnson though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Yeah, that's too obvious. Unless it's a double-blind.

[Smokeskin]

The runners had just taken a job by a yak outfit to retrieve a runaway. In the middle of them doing legwork they got a second job to find the girl by the girls parents. Less money but I wanted to see if anyone would treat it like it was a real situation and use some damn morals. Someone did.

After finding the girl, the group was deciding who to deliver her too. Most of the party wanted to deliver her to the Yak and reap the monetary reward. One player, a real honest to god white knight, wanted to bring her back to the parents and wave the fee(as a note it was also his first time playing Shadowrun or any PnP game for that matter). This shocked the hell out of everyone, both in and out of game. He was dead serious about it. When the team rose up to object, he picked up his dice, looked at me and said "I roll for initiative first if I am going to shoot them right?"

Everyone dropped there arguments and took the girl to the drop off point with the parents. After putting her in the car and giving the cred back, the passenger window rolled down to reveal the Yak who hired them looking a bit upset. A pin drop would have sounded like a nuke, 100% distilled silence. Everyone was just staring blankly at me, then at the white knight, then at me. The look on the new players face was priceless. He learned the truth of the shadows that night.

That is how I taught my runners to do a background check on all their employers.

This is so fucking brilliant. It goes into my Twists document!