Player Characters as Traitors in Role Playing Games

I have been surprised during RPG sessions a couple of times by a (to me) strange comment. The surprising element in those comments was the implicit assumption that the Player Characters (PCs) are in that and all cases on the same side. This notion was surprising to me, because early on when I was a player and then also a Game Master (GM), I had been used to the idea that some of the PCs may not be quite so much "team players" as manipulators, or even outright traitors to the rest of the PC group. Sometimes it could be that the personal goals of the PCs were somewhat at odds with each other, in other cases a PC could be a deadly enemy to the others. I call all these kinds of PCs Traitors here.

What follows, are three types of Traitors that can be used in RPGs. There could be others, but these are the ones I wrote down years ago when I was still playing RPGs (as a GM). 

But first, you may wonder why would there be any kind of Traitors in your game? The answer is simple: they make the story that much better, more interesting. If you just have a bunch of "white hats" (to use a Western film term) or Lawful Good D&D paladins fighting against the "black hat" baddies or monsters in your campaign, your campaign is probably going to be naïve and boring. Spice up your story with conflicting interests, and you can have captivating drama, even if the basic story is pretty simple and boring.

1. The Traitor by Opportunity

This kind of Traitor is a PC who sees an opportunity for personal gain or advancing his own agenda, or alternatively, is forced into treachery by someone else, such as a powerful NPC or whatever entity. For example, a PC who finds some "loot" in a more or less classical dungeon crawl adventure, but doesn't tell the other adventurers (who may be sworn to divide all loot equally, or implicitly assume such a pact) about it. Or it could be a case of an Investigator being blackmailed into leaking information about the group's investigation to a mysterious third party, or even the cabal being investigated.

2. Traitor as a Manipulator

This kind of Traitor is a PC who is clever and devious enough to be able to use the other PCs to advance his own agenda without the others knowing about it. He might simply be omitting information for personal gain (such as not telling his fellow adventurers that there is a bounty to be collected, so he can collect it alone), without anything more nefarious. But it could also be total disregard for the well-being or life of his group, putting them intentionally in danger simply for his own benefit. This kind of Traitor, even the more nefarious kind, is simply using the others, but he is not directly opposed to their goals, and is not quite their actual enemy. More like a self-interested a$$hole with something to gain from the work of others. An employer.

3. True Traitor

A True Traitor is a PC who in reality is an enemy of the other PCs, or the group he has infiltrated. He is a secret agent, pretending to be friend while scheming against his "friends". He is probably using only indirect ways of harming the others, trying to maintain plausible deniability if caught doing something suspicious. Only in certain situations is he likely to directly attack any of the others, for example if all of the others have been captured or killed, and only one remains to be dealt with, and there is a high probability of success, or because he is forced into attacking by the situation or by his superiors. This kind of Traitor may sabotage the plans and equipment of the group, mislead them, "accidentally" cause alarms during stealth operations, and so on. He may try to manipulate the others into suspecting each other, or to otherwise behave in a selfish manner, in order to thwart the group's plans. 

The main problem with a Traitor like this among other PCs is that if caught too early or at a wrong time in the campaign, there may be difficulty in replacing the PC once the group has dealt with him. It might even be possible among inexperienced players that the other players (and by extension, their characters) will not trust the new PC; confusing the player with the PC, thinking the player is the traitor. But people who have a good understanding of RPGs will not have this problem. Of course the PCs may have good reason for being suspicious of strangers once they realize their group has already once been infiltrated by their enemies.

Using Traitors

If you as the GM are running a campaign with only one Traitor in the PC group, and you keep sending notes back and forth with that PC's player, and only that one player, the other players will quickly (correctly) suspect that PC. So, you should make sure to have private talks with all the players, give all of them some notes once in a while. 

You should, from the start, acclimate your players to a culture of playing where the character sheets are private, and there is some amount of private information in the game that at times becomes public when the PC reveals something to the other PCs. For example, you can have a handout with printed dialogue ready, so that when one PC eavesdrops the guards of the temple the PCs are stealthily raiding, only that player sees the dialogue. Then you take the handout back, but the PC may tell the others what he heard, in which case the handout can become public (depending on other things, like the level of intelligence/memory/communication skills of the PC).