The Horror
The challenge in a role-playing is to prank players in a convincing way. This is the entire premise behind the Syfy Channel’s Scare Tactics show – luring contestants into seemingly mundane situations that go horribly awry. A reality show – which dates back as far as Candid Camera – is certainly one way to introduce pranks to your campaign. Another is to have a prankster character. As usual, the challenge with the bond of player trust is that it’s unlikely players will believe another player’s character is pulling a prank. The burden shifts to the game master to make a regular non-player character a prankster.
Whomever the prankster, the prank usually involves a cruel unveiling – sex, nudity, sexuality – something deeply personal that is considered out of bounds for most ethical people. This alone might be enough to cause the victim to go off the deep end. In more extreme scenarios, the prank accidentally results in someone’s death; it’s not uncommon to stage a fake death only for it to turn fatal. The outcome usually concludes with the death being ruled accidental, or worse, the perpetrators cover up their crime and agree to never speak of it again.
Then the real fun begins. Someone surfaces with proof, threatening to unveil the real killers. Pranks are played with increasingly dead results. This escalates until all the original pranksters are dead. The villain can be anyone from a relative of the original deceased, one of the other pranksters, or an actual corpse returned for vengeance.
For yet another twist, the entire revenge story could itself be a prank. This creates a game-within-a-game (within-a-role-playing-game), in which it’s up to the protagonists to determine what’s real and what’s not. It’s even more confusing if only some – but not all! -- of the pranks are murderously real.
For role-playing games, pranks are just like illusions. If the characters believe it, it has the same effects as if it were “real.” This distances players a bit from what happens to their characters, because it reduces their ability to perceive reality to a die roll. It’s not uncommon for some players to “disbelieve” everything on the off chance they’re right. The reason this sleight-of-hand works in movies is because the frame of experience is directly connected to the audience experience through sight and sound – we can be pranked because we experience the world through the eyes of the victim. Because role-playing games are primarily visualized through our imagination, there’s no objective frame of reference to fool players…unless you use props. So use props: miniatures, photographs, and audio will all do the trick.
Your Turn: Have you ever successfully pranked characters in-game?
Looking for more gaming inspiration? Buy Mike's book about The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games, read his fantasy novel inspired by his role-playing campaign, or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
