Have you ever forced your party out of their element and into a completely ridiculous situation?

Continued: >Gaining access to the Duchess' Men: Plan "B"
Falling back on their more developed sailing-related skills, they wait until the troupe is performing and have the 16-year old cocaine-addicted rigger boy (he wasn't always a druggie, but he stole an army's worth of the stuff early in the campaign and only sold most of it) scale the bare walls of the establishment and pry open a window before dropping a rope. Access granted.

After clambering inside, they spread themselves throughought the premises. Costumes, makeup, mirrors, writing materials, and all manner of expensive and useless things lay strewn chaotically around the place. They help themselves. Then, they settle in. One hides in an armoire. Another under a bed. Several choose to hide behind doors.

A few hours later, the troupe returns, excitedly congratulating each-other over another excellent performance and talking entirely in posh, mock-British accents. Many of them are dressed in ways which I described primarly as "ruffle-centric", and their faces are caked in makeup. They are entirely male.

As soon as the last one enters an area able to be shut behind a door, the group springs into action. Expensive things are trampled, fancy men run scooby-doo style from their pirate attackers between the rooms on the floor and, quickly (though not quietly) enough, the entire troupe is subdued.

Continued: This, of course, brings security. Two things happen simultaneously.

In a bedroom, the party's captain (even when land-locked) props up the leader (and playwrite! He wrote this particular retelling of Homlet) of the troupe and proceeds to pump him for information. You see he realized that his crew--being uncultured swine to a man--actually had no idea what Homlet was, and would therefor need a quick rundown in order to give a passable fake performance of it. The playwrite, contrary to what one might expect, is extremely enthusiastic about this turn of events. He continuously asks his rough captor about his past exploits (and the captain is vain enough to oblige), and is so impressed with his retelling of his seafaring life that they actually spend a goodly amount of time going over some of the playwrite's projects. The captain even suggets a few changes to Homlet that the man seems quite taken with. The rest of the troup is, of course, entirely bound and gagged at sword-point during this time. Also during this time, the following conversation occurs:

>Security, from behind one of the doors: "Hello? You all right in there? There were sounds of a scuffle."
>"Aces" again, using his best gay-Englishman voice: "Uh, no, nothing like that. Just an... orgy."
>"But sir, I didn't see any women come up with you."
>"...A gay orgy?"

The guard was made uncomfortable enough to leave.

Once security had been dealt with and a general idea of what "Homlet" entailed had been hashed out, the party stole the personal posessions of every member of the troup, gathered together a number of animal costumes, and absconded (with the playwrite making the captain promise to visit again sometime--he was always looking for inspiration).

Continued: >To the Duke's house.

The party quickly gained entrance and, this being the first time the Duke had ever met any of the Duchess' Men, he took their appearance for granted. A little rougher than he expected, but then again Homlet was a rough story. They were treated to a lavish meal with the Duke, his wife, and his beautiful daughter. They relished in describing how they ignored the utensils provided to them and speared meat with their daggers, ripping at it with their teeth, spilling drinks and food all over the gorgeous spread, and generally horrifying their hosts. The daughter, however, seemed quite impressed by their barbarousness.

It is important to note that there was a session-break between the capture of the Duchess' Men and the players' entry to Duke's House. This is because, in the time between the two sessions, I offered homework: anyone who would actually write out a brief part of the fictional play "Homlet", complete with lines for each party member, and perform it the following week would get bonus experience points. Anyone who participated would get half as many. One of my players obliged (and all of them participated).

The play was monstrous. It involved them hiring two working women to accompany them, both of which were paid splendidly and called on to utilize their particular skill-set, on stage, in front of the Duke and his family. The animal costumes were... not entirely removed. The Duke's wife was absolutely mortified but the Duke--being an uncultured philistine himself--tried to convince her (and himself) that he really "got" this interpretation and was determined to sit through it all. The daughter was made to leave the room.

Continued: "Aces", who had slipped out of the Duke's sitting room between scenes, proceeded to rush through the house, opening every door until he found something suitably "study-like". Inside this room, he found a small written document and confirmed that it was indeed the blackmail material they were here for. He was also walked in on by the daughter.

Shortly after (and decidedly more dishheveled than when he entered the room), he returns to the sitting room and gives his captain the signal. They wrap up the play, graciously thank their host, and leave without swiping too many valuables on the way out. The Duke is gamefully attempting to act like he didn't just watch a bunch of pirates fuck hookers in front of his wife. His wife, by this time, had retired.

Before they even leave sight of the estate the guards are called. They do end up escaping, and actually ended up using one of the animal costumes to great effect later in the campaign (they successfully avoided airborne scouts by crowding together in a multi-person horse costume). All things considered, the mission actually went off relatively close to how they'd planned it. Huh.

Solid

>They do end up escaping, and actually ended up using one of the animal costumes to great effect later in the campaign (they successfully avoided airborne scouts by crowding together in a multi-person horse costume).

That was the real response to OP's question, was it? The rest was just all a set up.

I guess the original thrust is that they were combat characters forced into theatre but I kind of lost myself in the story.

Consider this: forcing your party out of their element and into a completely mundane situation.

A robot dog, a street samurai ogre and a shortstack had to do some Assassin's Creed-style street tailing without being immediately discovered by the security cameras OR their target. The robot dog had to put on a flesh dog costume, and the ogre put on make-up to look like a clown. I haven't had this much fun in a while.

I think it's mandatory for every DW kill team to be invited to a fancy dinner in the spyre at least once.

Kaz, get off the computer. Mother base needs you

I once forced my players to role play.

It's neat, but wouldnt fit with the tone I'm trying to convey

You fucking monster.

give me some tips

No shame in that, it was a good story and worth the time I spent on it.

How could you do that to them?

I once put the party in a gala where the big villain person came up and casually chatted up the heroes. She had no idea the party was working against her, or that they desperately wanted to murder her, but it was strongly signaled to the PCs beforehand that conflict at the gala was effectively suicide. All the big heavyweights and serious hardware were there.

Yeah it's a pretty classic movie trope, but for a party that was used to bullying their way through problems, it was a shift in theme without using a clutch. They had to act completely against their own natures and instincts for a few sessions.

Shadowrun - bunch of cloak and dagger underworld mercs, used to blasting their way through every problem, albeit, with a healthy dose of strategy, tactics, and information gathering. Been doing this for ages, and were sitting on so much cash it was getting a bit over the top.

They get this job involving stealing something from a tiny corporation that, for some reason or other, has the military defenses of a small nation (part of a pre-fab module, no explanation really given).

Realizing this was just far too dangerous, even for them, and that the corporation was so small, and they had so much cash... They decided instead to pool their cash buy out the corporation.

End result was that they completely flipped not just the module, but the entire game on its head: They went legit.

For several sessions, had to come up with all sorts of stuff, revolving around stock markets, hostile take-overs, mergers, acquisitions, and all sorts of other stuff that was not covered in the rules at all, but also nearly entirely outside of the character's normal skillset - save maybe for the one guy who had Corporate Etiquette maxed. The original tiny entertainment corp quickly branced out into technology, weapons, and a series of cookie stores that the group's Troll made "Troll sized cookies for Troll sized men", that eventually branched out into all sorts of "plus sized' items.

Did occasionally find uses for their old tacticool combat skills, but for the most part, it became an entirely new game. Less Shadowrun, more Corporate Management 2050, where the theme quickly became, "Always make a deal with a dragon" .

I once had my party go to a formal ball surrounded by wealthy socialites. They spilled their spaghetti everywhere as expected because they are uncouth savages and are even less skilled in etiquette when it comes to dealing with members of the aristocracy.

Also they are shit at dealing with well planned ambushes. I nearly killed 3/5ths of the party because they were ambushed by a small band of highwaymen who had set up traps and stuff so they ended up running into traps, getting stuck in traps, some characters simply bolted leaving the rest of the party to die while others tried to make a last stand protecting their comrades instead of spending a turn freeing their comrade from the traps. Of the five party members 1 was killed, two had bolted in different directions and got lost, one got stuck in a trap and the fifth stayed behind to protect the guy stuck in a trap instead of freeing him.

Eventually the bandits just stripped the dead party member of anything of value and left. He was brought back and the two lost party members eventually found their way to the road and a nearby town a few days later. I ended up statting the surviving bandits as characters and made them recurring characters who ended up being like a competent version of team rocket.

Ridiculous? I mean, technically, for a given definition; a, "war is hell," vibe from someone that, usually, does crazy, hilarious, and fairly lighthearted games is ridiculous, and I've been doing that lately, and I'm going to do more of that soon.

The character started out as a member of a four person squad, with three NPCs. During one mission the target, seemingly out of left field, committed suicide in a big, flashy way, to get the job done. Next mission, right after that, their replacement CO, because their current one was injured, had a really creepy personality, like a cross between someone who would, unironically, refer to people as, "peasants," and someone who was about to take the old hunting dogs out behind the shed and kill them. Which she tried to do, after going batshit insane. Killed one NPC member of the squad, permanently disabled another, and convinced the only other one, their squad leader, to take a desk job because, to quote, "fuck this shit, I'm done; I've lost a good friend, another's no longer fit for service, and the third's shown more initiative in the last few weeks than I have in months."

Since then, the character's been, basically, a rolling trainwreck, barely done convalescing before running right back out. And that CO that went nuts? "Assumed dead," and, "confirmed dead," are two very different things...