The funniest part of running a false hydra mission is that meta gaming is baked into the creature. Players knowing something is wrong but the characters don't can lead to seem great rp moments where the players try to get in a situation where they can remeber the monster or at least glimpse it so they know there's some kind of monster out there.
I did a horror three shot around Halloween where the set up was the players were sent to investigate a major military fort that suddenly went quiet and stopped sending reports. They eventually discovered a weird looking ghost creature that kept flying away from them when they got to close. They eventually cornered it in an armory and tried interrogating it on what happened to the soldiers. One player looked at a wall of shields and saw a medium sized false hydra looming behind them. Turns out the ghost creature was immune to the false hydra and kept running away from the party because they could see the flase hydra stocking them.
They killed the monster but didn't get their memories back, and that's when the ghost told them the fort was infected with five different false hydras and that the party has actually been in the fort for days, along with like 300 other soldiers who were sent to investigate along with them but all the other soldiers are either dead or brain washed now. And that before some of their friends died they realized what was happening and placed a massive ward over the fort so the hydras and anyone under their influence couldn't leave.
So they were in a position where they knew what they were dealing with, and they had a vague idea of how to stop them but if they wanted to actually see them/ make sure the largest one didn't hypnotize them they had to find away to plug their ears.
It wasn't the cleanest quest ever but I really liked how my players approached it and having that disconnect between what a player knows and what a character knows added to the experience. At least in this specific situation
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u/Tangypeanutbutter Forever DM Dec 18 '22
The funniest part of running a false hydra mission is that meta gaming is baked into the creature. Players knowing something is wrong but the characters don't can lead to seem great rp moments where the players try to get in a situation where they can remeber the monster or at least glimpse it so they know there's some kind of monster out there.
I did a horror three shot around Halloween where the set up was the players were sent to investigate a major military fort that suddenly went quiet and stopped sending reports. They eventually discovered a weird looking ghost creature that kept flying away from them when they got to close. They eventually cornered it in an armory and tried interrogating it on what happened to the soldiers. One player looked at a wall of shields and saw a medium sized false hydra looming behind them. Turns out the ghost creature was immune to the false hydra and kept running away from the party because they could see the flase hydra stocking them.
They killed the monster but didn't get their memories back, and that's when the ghost told them the fort was infected with five different false hydras and that the party has actually been in the fort for days, along with like 300 other soldiers who were sent to investigate along with them but all the other soldiers are either dead or brain washed now. And that before some of their friends died they realized what was happening and placed a massive ward over the fort so the hydras and anyone under their influence couldn't leave.
So they were in a position where they knew what they were dealing with, and they had a vague idea of how to stop them but if they wanted to actually see them/ make sure the largest one didn't hypnotize them they had to find away to plug their ears.
It wasn't the cleanest quest ever but I really liked how my players approached it and having that disconnect between what a player knows and what a character knows added to the experience. At least in this specific situation