Take an object in your house; preferably a large, heavy one. Fill an opaque bag with sand so that it weighs a healthy amount. Then at the beginning of your session, reach down and pick it up, and drop it on the game table.
"This," you'll tell your players, "It 10,000 gold pieces." It can be 50,000 or 200,000, depending on the level of your players.
Next say, "This money, and the experience that goes with it, will be given to any player here that's LIED TO by an NPC. If any NPC you meet in today's running lies to you, because I've made them, and the player can provide proof that the NPC has lied, then you get the gold and an equal share of experience to go with it."
This, whether or not you give X.P. for gold. Make an exception.
Finally, say, "This isn't a game of 'spot the liar.' As your DM, I'm not going to give away any of this money tonight. Because none of my NPCs is going to lie. At all. Understand? This is a sign of my commitment that what you hear is the exact truth. Every time."
Tell me what response you get.
What are you trying to develop out of this?
ReplyDeleteSorry, I should have said. This is a follow up to the last post:
ReplyDeletehttps://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2022/05/counter-duality.html
I'll try this for my running this Thursday.
ReplyDeleteAs promised, I tried this at the beginning of my running last Thursday. Before the game, I filled a plastic cookie jar with rocks, then hid it in a brown bag. After doing recordkeeping and answering player questions from last session, while the players were finishing up some notes I dropped the bag on the table.
ReplyDeleteThe loud thud and table shake certainly got their attention!
I told them the bag was worth 5000 gold and experience (enough to level either of them Up) and that it would be given to them if they could prove to me that any NPC had lied to them during tonight‘s session. Then I explained that I had no intention of giving the bag away, and that the reason I was willing to stake this “reward” was because I wanted them to trust me when I said NPCs would not lie to them - that the information I gave them through the mouths of NPCs would be trustworthy.
They seemed a bit dumbfounded, so I added that the reason I avoid having NPCs lie is that I’ve seen that when the players can’t trust NPCs, the game bogs down into inaction as the players grow paranoid. On the other hand, when NPC information can be trusted, it’s a crucial tool in their tool belt for understanding and exploring the world.
In general all my players this year have been enthusiastic about having the ability to explore the game world and even reshape it on their own terms through their actions. With that extra explanation they got the picture; we had a brief exchange about the overall notion of the world being there for the players to master, and then we got down to gameplay.
(It was a good running. I didn't give away the bag; the players were *very* excited about exploring an unknown chunk of wilderness border region; the ranger got just enough XP from a goblin ambush to hit level 2; and the fighter is salivating over level 2, being just 77 XP away.)
I love that it got the players talking. This is critical; the game cannot move forward until a general sentiment towards the group activity is communicated.
ReplyDeleteI'm so blessed by the players I've been able to attract this year since I started running again in February.
ReplyDeleteHave you any other experiments you'd like to propose? I like this sort of empiricism. You've had plenty of influence on my style as it is, but I quite like this idea of you handing small, specific things for us to try in our home games, with us reporting back.
THAT is a very dangerous game. I count myself lucky that I haven't been seriously burnt yet.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, "dangerous?"
ReplyDeleteIt's an old saw of advice-column givers going back into the 1930s. Someone writes into a paper saying that he's unhappy with his marriage and nothing's working out, and that he has trouble relating to his children. The columnist writes back that he needs to sort out what he wants from life, so that he can approach his troubles from the perspective of knowing what he wants. When he knows that, he can decide how to present his perspective to others.
ReplyDeleteSo the guy decides what he wants, takes a gun and kills his family and himself. Because that's what he wanted.
Obviously, the columnist is not to blame; but seriously, if the advice had never been given, would the multiple-murder have occurred? Some would say yes, others no ... but if I were the columnist, that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
SO. Giving personal, "do this exactly" advice is dangerous. You never know what people are going to do with it. This is a public forum. We don't know who's listening.
Well THAT got dark in a hurry.
ReplyDeleteTo get back on track I'll report similar results to Maxwell's. Promised a full level of XP and gold to match (NOT our normal practice.) The next 15-20 minutes involved playing back interactions to determine if they thought they HAD ever been lied to. They came to the (correct) conclusion that they had not, although they did rehash some "misinformation" occurrences which resulted more from perspective and were not intentional lies.
Experiment seemed to cement the positive result that they can trust me, and NPC's.
Do you feel better, Es?
ReplyDeleteA clarification:
ReplyDeleteThere may be instances where an NPC is reluctant to give information. Or perhaps they are a villain and have a good motivation to lie (to swindle or otherwise mislead the party).
Does the DM simply resist the temptation to use these kinds of hooks? The loss of player trust doesn't seem to be worth whatever small game benefit may arise.
Yeah, the DM resists the temptation. These hooks are hideous cliches, low-hanging fruit and trust damaging. There are other, better narrative motivations to pursue.
ReplyDeleteThe DM has to rise above the simplicity of stabbing the party in the back, if he or she wants to be counted as a good DM by the players.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
ReplyDeleteLet me throw in an addendum, since I'm watching Lord of the Rings as I sit here.
ReplyDeleteThere are two serious backstabbing moments in the film: the first, when Saruman turns out to be following the Dark Lord and second, where Smeagol sets up Frodo for the spider.
In the first, we don't know Saruman yet; we've only just met him. Gandalf, of course, has a long history, and it's a clear betrayal. But the story ensures that while Gandalf suffers, he has an out and he loses nothing of value. So, reasonably, so long as the party experiences the betrayal without serious loss, so long as they have an out, this kind of set up could be employed.
In the second, Smeagol is so obviously suspect, so ridiculous charicatured as exactly the sort of person ready to stab the party in the back, that it would be the party's fault if they didn't expect it to happen at every opportunity, until it did. The DM could get away with this, too, since the party would be of the opinion, "Saw that coming." Unless the party was just so incredibly dumb that they didn't. But I don't let people wearing maga hats play in my game.