>the king's spymaster has discovered that there is a spy in the king's army, and narrowed it down to 3-5 individuals
>the king decides to send all 3-5 of them on a suicide mission to make sure the spy is killed, while perhaps doing some good.
Does this sound like a good set up for a game where one player plays a traitor with interests counter to the group? How do I generate good intrigue games where someone in the group is not all that they appear to be?
As long as everyone knows and accepts the premise going in, yeah. If you can get them to go along with it and they don't just... spill the beans five minutes in, I think you can have a lot of fun. Make sure you add a lot of private messages/note passing with all the players, maybe help them set up secrets for each one of them so that everything is suspicious. Just try not to stab everyone in the back too often. Do it enough and they'll kill everyone they meet, and each other.
sounds good to us!
Result: spy ditches party at critical moment, 2-4 loyal men die, spy is now completely unaccounted for.
Literally medieval Paranoia.
Why is Katana on this team? Is Killer Croc there because they couldn't afford to make King Shark? Can this movie stand on Harley and Smithshot alone? Are they going to push a Harley-Joker-Deadshot love triangle when Will Smith is like almost 50? Will it be a letdown like the last two?
>BvS
>Let down
Check out this fucking pleb
>Plot twist
>Party is told there is a spy among them
>Never actually make a character a spy
>Plot twist
>Everyone's a spy
>double twist
>hand a player a note saying their hypnosis trigger word is activated and they have remembered their orders to kill the other party members
>Everyone trying to convince everyone else that everyone else is a spy to cover their own asses.
>Everyone else is actually a spy.
Things would get so heated, holy shit.
>My liege, I discovered a plot where I tried to kill me to ensure I wouldn't find about my plot to kill me. Kill me!
Sure
Is Stellaris on the same level that CKII was at at launch?
>And it turns out they work for the same organization
>Who also has a spy problem
>A spy from another organization has infiltrated this organization and set up the suicide mission to dwindle the numbers of their rivals
Turns out the entire nation has been replaced by spies and they're all so good at it nobody's noticed
Too early to call for me. Most of my time so far has been trying to recreate various fictional space empires and varioius joke empires, such as the Federation from Starship Troopers or Totally Not Deep Ones who come from Nowhere Near Ry'leh.
even the children?
Pretty good. I'll probably steal it but have the spymaster be the spy who used them to throw suspicion away from himself.
Or at least let them think that until they kill him, then let them find out he was loyal and had been tricked by the real spy.
This has actually happened IRL before.
Especially the children
Watch/read Where Eagles Dare
Do either of these, OP, having one traitor in the group only leads to hurt feelings.
>Why is Katana on this team?
She's the bodyguard for the soldier babysitting the team, in case the dangerous criminals try to start shit.
Isn't this basically Paranoia at this point?
Who are actually spiders in disguise
Also known as Paranoia.
>someone is out and about to betray you
Well, GM, if you are telling me this, I am going to max insight and get some spells to compel the truth out of everyone I speak with.
that was a fun book. Series got a little wonky after, but it sure did this idea well.
>Have the king recruit all the PCs from his court individually
>Tells them the same story in private away from each other
>"My spymaster has informed me that we have a dangerous spy within our ranks"
>"He doesn't know who it is, but he narrowed it down to 3-5 individuals and your name came up"
>"I know in my heart-of-hearts it could never be you, but I don't know if I can trust the other 2-4"
>"The mission I'm sending you all on is a ruse to expose and dispose of the spy. I trust only you to complete this task"
PLOT TWIST:
>The king didn't lie when he told all the PCs that he trusted them
>The spymaster wanted them out of the way so he could turn the court against the royal family
>The spymaster is the spy
It was trash.
Someone needs to be competent. Yes. Only on tumblr. Probably. All superhero movies are.
I've played an SS13 game like that.
Details and wiki article please, I need this
After the group goes after him
I would take a queue from loyalty board games and hand out loyalty cards randomly.
Two characters are straight up loyal.
One is being blackmailed by the spy, they want the mission to succeed but it's in their best interests if the spy is not revealed.
One character is inept and must jeopardize the mission at some point.
One character is the spy, and must cause the mission to fail without being revealed.
Spie-ders
...