So one of my groups is transitioning to Ascension. Instead of just picking a package and saying "it happened" we are running a session for each character to play through their chosen package. There are three of us GMing two other people each.

One of mine chose the package where you get given some information and then tested by the Inquisition to see if you are capable of holding on to it through interrogation and therefore whether you can be trusted with this sort of sensitive stuff.

Instead of me sitting down in front of the group and playing something straight I have conspired with one of the others to make it look like it is a different person's session with a different GM, whilst in fact I have written a scenario where the PC is kidnapped and put in an Inception-style dream state with the other players the interrogation team sharing it with him and trying to get the information from him.

So until he realises what is going on I won't apparently be GMing but instead playing. The idea being that when he is confronted with questions it will be a surprise to him and his character.

I have no idea if this is going to work but it will hopefully be fun to try. I was wondering if anyone else has tried something similar and if so any advice?

NoOOOoo! (never tried anything like that!)

But I am LOOOOOOVING that idea!

I am not sure how its going to work though, I will attempt to come up with a few twists here and there that you would be able to play trough to hint at it.

Could you post up a more detailed synopsis of the scenario? I'd love to get into the meat of it, see what I can come up with it.

In either case, it seems like an epic experiment which you have to keep us posted about.

Heh, alas I am a fool and it is actually happening in about 90 mins... I did only come up with this idea during this week as the guy I whose seesion I was going to be running can't make it.

I will definitely post up what happens, hopefully it will work to some extent!

Ok so briefly it went pretty well! This had a large amount to do with my fellow GM who filled in details wonderfully.

In more detail (Spoiler alert. Some of the details in this have to do with the adventure in the back of Ascension as I am playing not GMing that I don't know which parts are part of the that and which are additions...)

The party is (we're quite radical!), note we all have characters as through the campaign three of us have GMed different parts:

Me (Klightus) - Scum, very jack of all trades

Other GM (Devy) - Assassin, noble born, quite talky

Player whose transition it is (Solomon) - Adept, Sorceror

Player whose transition it supposedly is (Brutus) - Scum, Malfian noble all talk

Other two players (Cortez) - Arbites -> Sin eater

(Flare) - Psyker

Before the session I spoke to Solomon's player and gave him the information he is supposed to keep secret. I told him I was giving it to him now because his character should hold onto it for a while before he is tested. His character would not know when he would be tested even though obviously his player would know (so I claimed). The information was the details of how to perform a ritual that would effectively combat and dispel another ritual as it was being carried out, a sort of ritualistic dispel if you will. Emails also came out from the other GM to say that we would be doing Brutus' transition and setting that all up.

I then warned all the other players as to the situation and briefed them that they would start off playing their own characters and then switch to playing the interrogation team. However the interrogation team would all be using polymorphine to look like the player party and would be implanted with the personalities of the party so they could effectively impersonate them to Solomon. However they would not know every detail of everything so that if any truly specific questions came up that they couldn't know the answer to then they would have to bluff it out. I left this up to each individual player to judge what they could and couldn't know. I alos briefed them about the situation in the dream state so that it wouldn't be a total surprise.

However although I set up the situation and explained it to my fellow GM I didn't tell him any details so that when he described stuff it was his natural description and would therefore hopefully seem like it came from him and not something he was just reading out. We also had messaging set up between the two of us (him behind GM screen and me pretending to get texts) so that if he had any trouble he could get short answers from me. This turned out to be really useful as a couple of times I had to steer him to a particular direction to keep things going where I wanted them.

The party was debriefed a little about their last mission and given some gifts by their inquisitor. Then they were told that they will all be tested to confirm their ascension to throne agents. The idea was to keep everything as Solomon would expect for continuing with the GM we've been using for a while. Brutus was told that he would be leading a mission for his test but that the others would all be going with him. He was to be seconded to another inquisitor (that we had met before) on Malfi to help with something she needed us for. At this point there was also some specific messing with Brutus' backstory to keep the focus on him. The trip to Malfi was described very briefly as this was the point at which the switch took place and Solomon was now on his own in a Black Ship with the interrogation team and put in the dream.

To be continued...

Really looking forward to hearing how this went!!!

Sorry but I don't really have time to type it all up in one go... Anyway part 2!

I forgot to mention before that the group were allowed to requisition anything they wanted for the mission within some reason. At the point that Cortex asked for power armour and got the ok Solomon's player said jokingly "I've been in adventures like this before, it'll be a dream - there's no way they would give us power armour otherwise." :-D

The team and Solomon were now in the dream state. The party were told that they were being seconded to another Inquisitor that they had met before named Skame. She has spoken to the group before about investigatiing another Inquisitor, who goes by the alias Lady Chesne Duquesne. The party met her before when she stopped them intercepting a chaos artefact that she had passed on to some people and was tracking to see where they took it. Skame believes that Duquesne is secretly just dealing in the artefacts for her own gain, but doesn't have enough evidence. The group already knew this was going on so it didn't take much persuading that such a mission could take place.

In the mission itself they were ordered by Skame to infiltrate a ball at the Inquisition's tower on Malfi. The ball was sold to them as a way the Inquisition on Malfi take a look at the people they invite once a season. If people refuse then they are suspicious etc. Duquesne was going to be there and Skame had information that she was going to try and steal something from the vaults. The party were to:

1. follow her if she went into the vaults and catch her in the act of stealing something.

2. If possible interrogate anyone they found to be working with her in order to discover in advance the plan and set a trap.

At the ball itself Brutus went in as the Malfian noble that he is along with Devi and Flare as +1's with Klightus and Cortez as servants and Solomon as adept. The other GM focussed on Brutus interacting with Duquesne whilst the rest of us did a little RP with a few guests and also watched the room.

The actual setup was the whole ball is populated by constructs of Solomon's subconcious (like in Inception). Duquesne was the final member of the interrogation team, the guests were his mind and the staff were the militarised parts of his subconcious representing all the talents he has about mental strength etc. All of the actual Inquisitirial security personnel were just unmoving statues with fake guns, this would have been clear if anyone had looked at them properly, but of course the team steered Solomon away from doing this.

I delibrately investigated the staff and the GM told me that they appeared to be working with Duquesne. It was at this point that Solomon's player said "This doesn't make any sense! If they work for the Inquisition they ought to be above reproach." However the rest of the group didn't bat and eyelid about the situation as they had been instructed. The situation deliberately contained some 'plot holes' like this for him to spot. The idea was to see how long it took him to actually act suspicious. Anyway we all continued to work the room then reported our findings to Skame.

Skame then ordered Brutus and Klightus to kep tabs on Duquesne whilst the others were to grab a member of the staff and interrogate him. This way Solomon would be onvolved in interrogating his own subconcious. So Cortez got one of the waitresses in a back room and Flare and Solomon joined them, having noticed that all the staff seemed like they might be drugged (an artefact of the drugged state that Solomon was really in).

They asked her a bunch of questions about the situation, she was extremely vague in her answers and kept coming back to looking at Solomon and saying "I'm here to help you." Solomon got increasingly frustrated with this and finally asked Flare to use Mind Scan. Flare not actually being a psyker, but instead a null keeping Solomon from using any powers, couldn't actually do this. But in the dream she made as if she was trying (the player made rolls) and was told that she just could't manage it. At this overtly hostile action the waitress was activated to defend Solomon and attacked. She was swiftly killed by Flare and Cortez.

It was roughly at this point that Duquesne made her move to the vault and the other GM took me and Brutus' player off to a side room and pretended to run through what was happening whilst instead the team set up the next scene.

To be continued...

Mmm, very interesting

Part 3!

When they hear that Klightus and Brutus are 'following' Duquesne into the vault the other three are not overly concerned and Solomon spent a bit of time wondering wtf just happened with the servant. Then over their com-beads they heard Brutus exclaim that Duquesne had just ambushed him and stabbed him with a dagger. He was now paralysed. Klightus reported that he could see she had inscribed something on the floor. Klightus normally goes out of his way to avoid contact with any actual heretical practices/writings/artefacts etc. He is jsut a hive scum that helps get the experts where they need to go and helps to handle politics etc. So it was another clue that he immediately went "&%$£ it I'm going in."

The others hustle to their friends' aid. I told the other GM that regardless how quickly they move the situation is the same when they arrive, as it is a setup to get Solomon to use the ritual and therefore give away how it is done. So when they burst in they could see Klightus in the centre of ritual circle with blood running from his eyes, mouth ears and nose. They could see Brutus with a clearly slaaneshi dagger (that they have seen in relation to Duquesne before) stuck in his shoulder, with some sort of dark shadow creeping up on him. Duquesne was stood behind Klightus clearly (to those with the right knowledge performing a ritual to summon a slaaneshi demon into Klightus. I delibrately went "Can I describe it please?" to the other GM and then said what was happening to Klightus with him adding a "nice extra details!" as a slight clue.

The three of them of course began trying to disrupt the ritual: Cortez charged towards it but was held back as though running through treacle. Flare moved to help Brutus and started fighting the shadow. Solomon tried to shoot Duquesne - but the bullet veered wide, then he tried to use his sorcery to get next to her - but was blocked just like other psykic powers. This was delibrate GM flange to come up with some way to stop whatever they tried from working. I hasten to add this is not good practice normally IMO but in this case I really wanted him to have no choice - after all that was the whole point of the dream. After a few rounds of this cortez gave up and went to help Brutus. He pulled the dagger out freeing Brutus but was then posessed by the demon on the dagger. This was another clue that it wasn't real as Cortez's identity is almost wholely based around the fact that he is the guy to deal with that sort of thing. He started fighting Flare whilst Brutus forced his way into the circle (continuing to make it look like he is being the focus of the story) draws various weapons that continually start to float away from him. It was at this point that Solomon's character starting saying things like, "This makes no sense, I can't do any powers and yet her sorcery works," and "There is nothing we can do!" I, still sitting in a player seat, started passing him notes about how he did know a way to stop this. He pointed out that if his sorcery didn't work then a ritual shouldn't either but I assured him that if her ritual was working then it was logical that his could too. This was the point at which he finally twigged and I swapped to sitting behind the GM screen, to much hilarity from the players in general.

Whilst the others continued to mess around failing to stop things coming to a head and the other GM's character Devi ran in persued by the now alerted staff Solomon stayed untouched wondering what to do. He actually considered doing the ritual to save Klightus. He made a willpower check to realise that he could will the components for the ritual into being and that was when he knew for sure that it was not real. He then paused a while to try and determine if any of the others were actually their characters but decided that regardless he had to get out without revealing anything, and promptly shot himsel in the head with a cry of "Death FIrst!"

And the final part....

In killing himself Solomon broke the dream and they all woke up gradually tied to metal slabs in the balck ship. The backup teams had taken any paraphanalia for inducing the dream away so Solomon had no idea what was going on. The others were still in their polymorphed state so they continued to act like the characters. Everyone tried to escape their restraints but Klightus was the only one that managed it using contortion not lockpicking. He then 'failed' to help anyone else out. He went to explore where they were and came back claiming it was a mockup of a black ship.

I was hoping the others would start trying to get the information out of him but they didn't really try so I did asking him what it was the dream seemed to be after, and trying to get him to tell us so that if we didn't all escape we could report back to the Inquisition properly. But he continued to stay tight-lipped and then said that the fact Klightus was asking meant he wasn't sure this wasn't still a dream (which was exactly what I was looking for). Then the NPC that was Duquesne in the dream came in looking like our Inquisitor and said it was ok, he had passed the test. Now he could reveal to the group what it was all about. Fortunately he didn't fall for this final trick, then everyone took the antidote and reverted to their proper look, nodded respectfully and then left him to be escorted back down to Sibellus.

There he met the Inquisitor, confirmed his identity and was rewarded for passing his test. The best thing about all this is that the player told me he only properly suspected at about the point that he walked in on the ritual. Before that all his exclamations were genuine reactions to the slightly confusing and odd situation. He was convinced that it was the other guy's session! He didn't notice me messaging directions to the other GM and he really enjoyed the extra paranoia that the scenes gave.

I think I defintely could have thought up a slightly tighter dream sequence, and maybe briefed the other players a bit more - but I wanted them to have some unknowns to RP through too and on the whole it was good fun for everyone.

Man, that sounded like a pretty damned good session- I've got to try running something like that myself. Perhaps sooner than later, a few of my players have "mind-screwy" plots running about them, so I might hijack the idea.

The only problem is that I've been the only GM since we've started playing, so they'll immediately suspect something if someone else is Gming!

Damm that had to be 1 hell of game

Never tried it as it seems way to complicated and to much stuff that could go wrong, at least for me.

We are lucky in that the group has three people that want to GM some of the time. We go through periods with a main GM and periods like this where we mix and match. Like you say, Saldre, it probably wouldn't work if you suddenly just stuck someone else in the chair unless they have expressed interest in doing it before.

Also I think a key part was not giving the other GM lots of details - just the really pertinent ones and then letting him take it in a natural direction for him. That made it seem more convincing. The part that felt the least successful to me was the interrogation. He had to stick quite closely to what I had given him there which meant there was less room for his own improvisation - that meant it nearly fell down a bit there.

Glad to provide a little inspiration - fair enough Gurkhal, I was very nervous that it just wouldn't work beforehand. It might just be the rare situation of my group where it did!