When it Really is that Dangerous

Adventurers typically fear nothing.  They strongly believe that their armor and healing spells will prevent them from dying every time.  Or maybe it is that they trust their GM not to kill them off, not to put them up against something that they really cannot handle.  That needs to end!

But what if you really can’t kill them?  What if playing by the rules means that you cannot kill the PCs unless you unleash some massive dragon on them or a full out army of super ninjas?  What if your game rules really have made the party the most powerful folks in the world?  How do you give them pause?

You threaten their family and friends.  If the party is the most powerful people in the world, then they must have some ties to others.  Even if they started the campaign as orphans, they will have developed contacts and friends along the way.  Who have they done missions for?  Who have they saved?  Who supplied them with weapons, spells, healing, shelter?  Who do they care about?

Hopefully if you bring back a young “princess” that they saved earlier in their careers and put her in danger again, they are going to have an appropriate reaction.  If their first question after hearing, “Help me, you’re my only hope” is “How much?”, well then your players and their characters are evil sociopaths and you should flee the room and the building.  (No, really, get them help!)  But normal people will feel a sense of attachment, even if it is “We saved this girl once before and no one is going to undo the safety we gave her.”

Hopefully in the playing of the campaign, the party has built up contacts, at least the bartender at their favorite bar.  If you as GM really haven’t fleshed out their activities outside of combat, you can fake it.  You can tell them that the person coming to them for help is their favorite bartender or waiter or blacksmith.  Better yet, if you know who trains them - Well, that’s an instant “family” for the PCs.

But who is the enemy?  This is where the secret societies as permanent enemies become so valuable.  If Joe the Evil Wizard threatens your family and friends, the party will go kill him.  If the Evil Family Who Has Been Here Since the Dawn of Civilization threatens someone, the party will never be able to be everywhere at once.  They cannot defend mom, Bob the Bartender, Milli the maid, Mayor William, and the little sister all at the same time.  And the secret group has multiple assassins, able to strike without warning.

But why?  Why do you need to threaten the party’s friends?  I think there are two really good (mission and role-play driving) reasons.  Role-play first:  What happens when telling your significant other about a secret society puts them in harm’s way?  If the secret society is going to try to kill everyone who knows about them, then telling a loved one about them puts them directly in harm’s way.  So now you have to lie to that loved one, at least by omission.  That is the kind of thing that destroys relationships, and yet you would be doing it for their own good.  That’s real drama!

But for missions:  If the super secret group threatens friends and demands that the heroes do something for them, then the super secret group can force the party to do missions for them.  If you’re going to do this, use this as an opportunity to let the party learn more about the super secret group.  There must be something about them that isn’t all horrible evil / destroy the world, right?  Very few groups are able to survive to become real threats if the mission is as boring as greed.  The heroes may not agree that killing every poor person in the world is going to make the world a better place, but at least they would know that the “evil” group is hoping to wipe out poverty, famine and even plague; they’re just doing it through a horrific means.

Making the party question why they are doing missions or if they should do them at all is a real turning point for a gaming group.  This is role-playing - what they claimed they were doing.  It forces them to truly consider what their character is all about.  Even if you think your players are only there for the slaughter of monsters, this type of event can really hook them on their characters and on your game!

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