Players becoming antagonists for a mini adventure

[Geode]

In my campaign, I intend to have each PC go on a few solo missions. This will be a very rare occurrence, but I'm trying to keep them on their toes. Instead of simply calling them for one-on-one sessions I thought up a way for everyone to be involved.

All of the players that are not involved will take on the roll of the antagonist for that mission. So let's say that Protagonist Rogue Nimblebutt has a mission to steal the Gem of Awesome from the generic palace. All of the other characters will take on the roll of the palace guards. I will hand out roles out of earshot of the protagonist, and give them all a couple of personality traits and a very brief history so they can role play the guards (and so I don't have to micromanage each movement and personality). Maybe guard 1 doesn't actually care about his job and slacks off while guard 2 takes his job very seriously. I was also considering having someone being assigned to guard captain and being in charge of assigning the patrols.

Antagonist players gain experience for fantastic role playing and a small bonus for the whole group if they catch the elusive Nimblebutt (Weighted to be more worth it to role play well). Nimblebutt gains experience for escaping with the Gem of Awesome, and also a bonus if he is never seen or if he doesn't kill anyone.

I was thinking that I could handle this two ways. On the honor of the guards by actually putting the rogue's location on the map, or having the rogue hang out with me as we make secret checks (and number the battle grid sort of like a chessboard A-T, 1-28)

So what do you all think? Will this work? Are there flaws? What might absolutely ruin my plan? What suggestions would you make?

[nijineko]

what might ruin it? the players.

i suppose if you pregen'd all the npcs it might work. though one tends to worry a bit about disparate skill checks. on the other hand, if the other players are playing "normal" npcs instead of heroic pcs, they might gain an appreciation for the difference. and if everyone knows that they will each get a turn, i'm sure it can be made to work out.

i recall a board game based on finding mr. x on a map of london. mr. x keeps track of his moves on a hidden score board. the rest of the players have pieces on the board. what mr. x has to show is how they moved. movement options on the board are by foot, by bus, by rail, and by boat (iirc). mr. x also has two 'hidden movement' tokens which can be used to which method was traveled by. we have always had fun before hand with it.

i suppose that if you talked the generic idea over with everyone before hand to make sure they were all on board, it could be fun.