I have been table-topping D&D off and on for 30 years, and still have a weekly table-top game that I love, but a few weeks ago I ran my Roll20 game thru an encounter that I really don't think that I could pull off in a table-top game. We use Dolby Axon voice comms so that we can easily (and freely) have multiple channels with separate push-to-talk bindings. We have one general game channel, one channel for only the players (so that they can strategize without me hearing it), and then I can spin up separate channels if I need some one-on-one comms with a player. The Party Ranger Ranger Rogue Fighter Bard Cleric Cleric Monk ... all approximately Level 6 ... all real-life friends ... or at least they were before this encounter The Setting The party has been crawling thru some ancient catacombs for about a day, encountering all kinds of elemental entities, and constantly being taunted/warned off by the visage of Kevtumal, The Elemental Master. Action Weary from battle, the party is trying to find their way out to take a rest when they enter into a "quiet area" ... no signs of mischievousness. Until, that is, they begin to hear, feel, and sense a magical pulse. As they move forward, they creep into a room where they find a low, round altar in one corner with a fist-sized blue gem lying in the middle of it. The gem is emanating the magical pulse they have been perceiving. On the far side of the room is a large, heavy, magically-sealed door. One of the rangers and the rogue move over to the altar to inspect the gem. The other ranger and the fighter move to the door to inspect it. They determine that there is a slot in the door that seems to be the proper setting for the gem. The ranger cautiously crawls onto the altar, and attempts an "Indiana Jones style, bag of sand swap with the gem." As soon as he lifts the gem, magical darkness engulfs the entire room and surrounding area. At this point, I create a new channel in Axon and add the ranger that grabbed the gem into it. I explain to him, that everything blurs for a quick moment as he is teleported into a room. As his vision clears he is looking at himself...and then he is struck in the head with a club and knocked unconscious. I have pre-staged a character sheet for the doppelganger with a multi-image token that has images for all the characters since I did not know which one would pick up the gem. I then modify the token to have the rangers name and give the ranger's player access to the character sheet so that he can control him...as I direct him to, of course. I place the doppelganger (henceforth known as the Doppelranger) token on the altar, and turn back on the lights... It took less than 5 real-time minutes to do all of this, but to the party it was only a matter of seconds. With their vision restored they see the ranger kneeling on the altar, gem in hand. Much arguing ensues about whether he should have messed with the gem or not, but he has it now so he walks it over to the door and places it into the slot. The heavy door opens without as much sound as a whisper... The party cautiously slides past the door, and into a long hall approximately 10' wide. The rogue takes the lead, and scouts ahead. As she moves past a spot, she suddenly notices the black dripping sludge falling from the ceiling to the floor. She recognizes it for what it is, and sprints back to the party to form with them, as the Black Pudding drops in and forms right behind her. The party has encountered one of these before, and know how to beat it. Volley's of arrows begin to launch out from the party...except the Doppelranger. He tells the party that he is guarding the rear and keeping watch to make sure nothing comes up behind them. In actuality, he is attempting to pickpocket the other ranger as he launches arrows. As the other ranger shoots his arrows, and yell's out to the Doppelranger, "Shoot it!". The entire party choruses in, "Just shoot your arrows at it!". The Doppelranger replies calmly, "I don't have any arrows that will hurt it.". Every round, the Doppelranger attempts to pickpocket the other ranger, and one round the other ranger notices that the Doppelranger is uncomfortably close behind him. "WTF are you doing?! Quit touching my butt! Just use your regular arrows and shoot it!" Seriously, the banter between the party and the poor guy playing the Doppelranger had me in tears I was laughing so hard. The party affectionately began referring to him as the "Rump Ranger" since all he wanted to do was guard the rear. So henceforth I will note the real ranger that was mimicked as Rumpranger. So to be clear: Rumpranger = the ranger that took the gem and got mimicked. Doppelranger = the doppelganger mimicking Rumpranger. Ranger = the second ranger in the group. I used Sleight of Hand vs Perception to see if the pickpockets worked. It's common for me to have them roll Perception in battle to see if they notice obscure things, so they did not think it odd. The party heavily outranks this low tier mob, and easily dispatches it within a few rounds...no thanks to the Doppelranger. The party carefully moves on until the hall opens up into the large entry room, and find that they have circled around to the entrance. "Ah the exit, let's get out of here." But wait... I explain to the Doppelranger in the side channel that he will want to stay as close to the Rumpranger as possible, so he needs to talk them into staying. The Doppelranger successfully convinces the group that while there is a lot of the catacombs left to explore, the immediate area should be safe because they have cleared it out. The party decides to move into a room that they have previously cleared that only had one entrance and was off the main thoroughfare. They park their Apparatus of Kwalish (yes, its way OP for their level, but its a fun twist in the story line) in the doorway to block it up, and post a guard while the group gets in a full rest. The Doppelranger desperately tries to get the first watch, but after his actions in the fight against the Black Pudding, the party members resist his plea...he does however get to have the second watch. <evil grin> During the first watch, the dwarven cleric gets terribly disgruntled with the Doppelranger that has decided to cozy up to him. The Doppelranger failed his Sleight of Hand checks again, grrr. The first watch ends without incident. Now its second watch, and the Doppelranger eagerly takes his position to stand guard over the party as they rest. Now, since the party is asleep, I give the Doppelranger advantage on his Sleight of Hand checks against the party's Perception checks. The party did find it odd at this point to be rolling perception while they rested, but I had the Doppelranger roll perception as well to keep up appearances. Thanks to advantage, and some truly horrific (I mean single digit) perception rolls, the Doppelranger manages to: 1) Steal the dwarf clerics Holy Symbol. 2) Sabotage the rangers bow string. 3) Steal the rogue's Bag of Holding. 4) Steal all of the bard's crossbow bolts. 5) And last, but not least...ride off in the Apparatus of Kwalish. WTF?! I mean it's a big steel lobster...surely it would wake them up when its moving. I figured I would get a Party vs AoK battle here, but nooooo. The entire party rolled low single digit perception checks on this. They must have been in a really, REALLY, deep sleep. The dice don't lie. The party slowly begins to awaken, and they notice that the Doppelranger is gone...AND THE AoK is gone!!!!!!!!! They furiously collect their belongings and take off back to the entry room in search of the missing Doppelranger. I wish I would have recorded the voice chat from the party for this...PRICELESS! "That ranger (aka. Rumpranger) is always going off half-cocked and getting into trouble. Like that one time in the gnoll cave when he got upset while trying to reach the treasure chest because a trap almost killed him, so he decided to grab burning wood from the fire and throw it into the tents and set everything on fire...thus forcing the party to run for their lives and escaping the cave just before the intense heat from the fire causes the strong magic item in that chest to explode massively...triggering a caldera like cave-in. What has he gone and done this time?" The party perceives metal-on-metal clanging and a ruckus coming from an unexplored hall, so they charge down it thinking that it is their missing AoK. They reach an cased opening into a room where they find some more Magma Mephits and several Azers forging weapons and armor. The party engages, in hopes that their haphazard ranger is somewhere nearby. Meanwhile, in a small room, somewhere else in the dungeon, the Rumpranger regains consciousness. He manages to find an elevated passage out of the room, and climb his way out. Then he moves down a dark hall to a dead end in which he finally finds the switch to a trap door, and escapes into the room where the blue gem was. From there he sees that the big doors are open and runs thru them looking for his friends. As he gets near the entry room, he hears a battle ensuing down a corridor that he has not been down, and hears the screaming of his friends, so he runs to their aid... As the party engages, the Ranger looses an arrow into one of the foes...his drawstring holds. The bard raises his crossbow to attack, but there is no bolt loaded, and he can't find any in his pack, so he slings insults at the attacking Azer. In the second round, the Ranger raises his bow to fire another arrow, and as he draws the bow back...the drawstring snaps. He narrowly manages to prevent from pulling the nock of the arrow into his face. He tries to repair the drawstring, but finds that it has purposely been sheared down so as to break under tension. As the fight continues the fighter finds himself surrounded by a few of the stout Azers, and taking a bit of damage. The dwarf cleric runs in to lay his healing touch upon the fighter, but as he goes to grasp his Holy Symbol to call upon the powers of Berronar...his Holy Symbol is gone. There won't be any spells coming from this cleric any time soon. Suddenly the Rumpranger runs into the room from the same entrance the party had come from. You can probably imagine the words that are coming across voice chat now. At the same time, the Doppelranger runs into the room from a different doorway. A quote from the player playing the Doppelranger, "First you wanted me to play devious and be mischievous...I can do that. Now you want me to play schizophrenic...I don't think I can play that." The Doppelranger runs straight into the middle of the fight near the dwarf cleric, Ranger (who is using sword because his bow is broken), and fighter, and starts pointing at Rumpranger as he shouts, "Intruder"! All the while the Rumpranger is begging them, "No, its really me, that is the fake one over there". The Ranger queries, "Why would a fake one run up into the middle of us"? The party is none-to-happy. They "quickly" (after about an hour of debate, and me laughing the whole time) decide that they will knock them both unconscious and sort it out later. Down goes the Doppelranger quickly at the hands of the upset Ranger. The rogue and monk move to intercept Rumpranger. The next round, Ranger goes to grab Doppelranger's bow, but doesn't see one, so he moves with the quickness and a whole lot of motivation towards Rumpranger. A couple of rounds later, Rumpranger is down and Ranger has taken his bow. The clerics and the fighter are finishing off the Azers...and the Doppelranger rolls a natural 20 for his death save (regains consciousness with 1 hp). With everyone distracted, the next round the Doppelranger takes off running out the door he had come in thru. The party decides to revive the Rumpranger (who quickly takes his bow back from Ranger). They quickly search thru the room of finely forged weapons and armor, where I reward them all with +2 weapons (if forged of metal...no bows <evil grin>) / shields. Then take off after the Doppelranger. The Topic Now, that is a whole lot of story to get to the actual topic of this post. Having table-topped for so long, I have done the whole note passing thing, and more recently the text-messaging thing...but when you do those things, it is always, "Pause; write the note; pass it on; player reads the note; player giggles, grunts, or sighs; party wonders what the dm and player are up to". There is a lag in play flow, and the party always knows something is up. It is very hard to disguise it for a few rounds, let alone an entire session to keep suspicion down. Thru the use of Roll20 and separate voice communication channels (and a little bit of prep), I was able to keep the game flowing at a good pace, and stay in constant communication with the Rumpranger player to give him directions for Doppelranger. The only thing that slowed play down was the player banter back-and-forth, which I will normally try to keep to a decent timeframe with negative reinforcement...but in this case the banter was friggin hilarious, and I needed them to keep it going just so that I could have time to gather my composure. ...and the players didn't have a clue of what was going on with Rumpranger until he and Doppelranger showed up in the room together. PS The group has yet to track down the Doppelranger in the catacombs. They returned to town for some rest and so that the Ranger can try to get his bow fixed by the Bowyer. The rogue is more than a little upset that her Bag of Holding is still missing. The monk desperately wants to find the Apparatus of Kwalish. He is its normal driver in the party. Rumpranger is still getting heckled, even though he had no control over the situation, but he is a good sport about it. ...and I still get all warm and tingly inside when I think of the player interactions during this encounter.
