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New GM Problems

   
I've never had this issue in my campaigns (yet), but I would personally let it play through. If it's REALLY obvious and the system allows some equivalent of a Insight/Wisdom check, maybe allow the players one. I find players messing up to be very enjoyable to GM.

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Originally Posted by theredshirtwholive View Post
What do I do if my players started barking up the wrong tree and think a good guy NPC is a bad one?
Ask them what they're going to do about it, without dropping any hints. Whatever they do, follow the logical consequences to their conclusion, but you're not there to make decisions for them or leading them to the right conclusions. If you do that, what are the players there for?

Now, if they kill the guy, you get to have the BBEG offer them employment, and you can recreate the classical line "I see we're more alike than I thought, and I'm glad to offer you my hand in friendship".

BBEG extends hand with a poison snake, looks confused.
"No, wait, the other one!"


OK, maybe less cartoonish than that. In fact, you can make it about the consequences of their decision leading them to The Dark Side, especially if the good guys also act rashly!

Always remember, GMs are there to have fun, too!

If you're actually interested in getting them back on the right track, try having the real bad guy strike somewhere else while the good NPC is with the players. In fact, make his target the good NPC's family or other interests, to make it clear that they are not on the same side.

You can still combine this with the advice given above, by the way. Let them accuse the good guy, play that out, and then have it turn out that the bad guy was killing his spouse and children at the same time. That way there's still consequences for their wrong choice—the good guy might blame the PCs for distracting him while his family died—but the PCs will also have new clues to follow up on to get back on track.

Personally, since your option leads to the PCs being punished more than actually playing it out with GM interference, I'd strongly advise against it.

I mean, "we suspected the wrong person and the GM had us become the cause of the guy's family being killed" sounds like something you don't want your players saying about you. Or at least I wouldn't want it said about me.

Now, if I had already planned such a move from the BBEG, I wouldn't change it, either, but if things are at this stage, it should probably be obvious enough who's behind what that it's a matter of miscommunication between players and GM that Sense Motive, Wisdom or similar checks would easily rectify it.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
Personally, since your option leads to the PCs being punished more than actually playing it out with GM interference, I'd strongly advise against it.
Souring one NPC relationship is hardly "punishment" for the players. It's a minor inconvenience. You can always invent another NPC to carry out whatever task you invented that one to do, if necessary for the adventure. It's a pretty bad deal for the NPC, but he's an imaginary person who doesn't exist, so I'm not really that worried about him being mad at me for killing his family.

I mean, it's a game where choosing the wrong door can sometimes get you killed. I don't see how choosing the wrong person and getting some other person you don't know killed is especially punitive to the players. Sure, give them a Sense Motive check, but if they fail that, well, it's no different than if they failed a Search check for traps. Someone dies when the heroes screw up. Shoulda had a higher Wisdom score, I guess.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
I mean, "we suspected the wrong person and the GM had us become the cause of the guy's family being killed" sounds like something you don't want your players saying about you. Or at least I wouldn't want it said about me.
It wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Making and killing NPCs happens all the time; they have no value besides how they influence the events of the story. They're tools. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to feel bad about here.

There's no reason the players, who are real people, should be actually upset that the GM, who is also a real person, killed off a bunch of imaginary people in the imaginary world that they all agreed to give the real GM total control over. If the real players decide that their imaginary characters want to be upset about the imaginary deaths, that's fine. That's great, even. But that imaginary anger won't be directed at the real GM, who the imaginary people don't know exists, but at the villain, who is yet another imaginary person.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
Now, if I had already planned such a move from the BBEG, I wouldn't change it, either, but if things are at this stage, it should probably be obvious enough who's behind what that it's a matter of miscommunication between players and GM that Sense Motive, Wisdom or similar checks would easily rectify it.
A villain is presumably capable of changing his plans and deciding to do something else based on how the PCs are acting, so I see no reason to limit myself to things I planned beforehand when playing one, as long as they act within the boundaries of knowledge they could reasonably obtain somehow (that the family is currently unguarded, for example). I change villain plans literally all of the time during play, that's what makes them villains and not random encounters.

There are lots of different ways to handle this.

You could....

A. Let things play out without interfering, leaving your previously established fiction in place, and simply adjudicate the results of the players actions as they come. For good or ill, the players have made their decisions and started to act. The consequences of their actions will be whatever they may be.

In this case you may want to ameliorate negative effects on the players, or you may not. That is sort of up to you.


B. Change who the bad guy is. If the players have come to the conclusion that the local priest is actually an evil cultist (or whatever), make that be the truth. Sure you may have to rearrange things on the back side, but you can still make it fun and memorable for the players.


C. Kill the suspect. One of the tropes of mystery fiction is that, as soon as someone becomes a suspect, they are found dead. Do that. Bonus points if you can cast blame on the player characters.


D. Throw more clues at them. Raymond Chandler (famed author of hard-boiled detective fiction) said, "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." You could have agents of the real bad guy come to attack the player characters, or some new witness turn up, or someone come to them with a new problem related to the events at hand. Bonus points if this is their suspect.


E. Divinely intervene. This is probably my least favorite option, but if one or more of the player characters has any sort of oracular ability at all, or any spiritual connections. Send them a vision, have them visited by a divine messenger, or whatever.


F. Use your OOC Voice. This is my second least favorite option, but you could always just tell the players that they've come to the wrong conclusion, and maybe point them at some pieces of evidence that they may have overlooked or incorrectly gauged the importance of.

When in doubt, create a diversion! Then see what happens and how the players react to it. Hopefully they forget the Npc and maybe they do something interesting with the burning building next door that the real suspect set on fire, or you know, insert wild diversion here.

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Originally Posted by CactuarJedi View Post
Souring one NPC relationship is hardly "punishment" for the players. It's a minor inconvenience. You can always invent another NPC to carry out whatever task you invented that one to do, if necessary for the adventure. It's a pretty bad deal for the NPC, but he's an imaginary person who doesn't exist, so I'm not really that worried about him being mad at me for killing his family.
The PCs are also imaginary persons that don't exist. Are you not going to be worried about killing their families, either?
Yes, I make no difference between PCs and NPCs. That's one of my greatest assets as a player, and probably one of my weaknesses as well. But it worked for me for the last couple of decades, I'm not planning to change it now.

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I mean, it's a game where choosing the wrong door can sometimes get you killed.
So? Choosing to move left instead of right can get you killed every day.
It's even got a name, "driving".

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I don't see how choosing the wrong person and getting some other person you don't know killed is especially punitive to the players.
The part I object to is "and kill those NPCs to drive home the lesson that you guessed right". The way you're presenting it, unless I misunderstood you, there's no IC connection between the two.
And personally, I find that to be a bad habit for a GM to develop.

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Sure, give them a Sense Motive check, but if they fail that, well, it's no different than if they failed a Search check for traps.
Search check? What is that Search you're speaking of? Are you talking about pouring water on the floor and using a 10-foot pole?
(Joking aside - that's what I suggested before you even posted. The trap, however, kills the PCs, or a henchman. It doesn't get up and goes to kill the henchman's family, because they'd need the henchman and you need to emphasize they'd failed the check.
Which seems to be what you're suggesting).


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It wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Making and killing NPCs happens all the time; they have no value besides how they influence the events of the story. They're tools. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to feel bad about here.
Funny enough, the same can be said about PCs, if you're so inclined.

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There's no reason the players, who are real people, should be actually upset that the GM, who is also a real person, killed off a bunch of imaginary people in the imaginary world that they all agreed to give the real GM total control over. If the real players decide that their imaginary characters want to be upset about the imaginary deaths, that's fine. That's great, even. But that imaginary anger won't be directed at the real GM, who the imaginary people don't know exists, but at the villain, who is yet another imaginary person.
...yes, of course. But OOC, we can talk, and I can ask myself "why the hell did the villain go after the NPCs that had nothing to do with those plans?"
And if I conclude that it was for OOC reasons, well, we're going to have an OOC issue.

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A villain is presumably capable of changing his plans and deciding to do something else based on how the PCs are acting, so I see no reason to limit myself to things I planned beforehand when playing one, as long as they act within the boundaries of knowledge they could reasonably obtain somehow (that the family is currently unguarded, for example). I change villain plans literally all of the time during play, that's what makes them villains and not random encounters.
Well, that right here makes no sense.
The villain is either aware that the PCs exist, or not. And if he is, he's either aware they suspect the "good guy", or not.
If he's aware of both, he shouldn't be attacking. Instead, he should be sending the good guy monetary gifts, publicly, and delivered by easily-traceable intermediaries.
If he's aware they exist, but not that they're suspecting anyone, the villain would either go after them, or create distractions. He probably has no reason to believe they would care about the NPC's family, so it's more likely they'd get a false lead towards something they want, a threat to their own family, or the like...none of which cue them about who the villain is.
If he's not aware they exist, there's no reason the villain would change his plans at all.
In all three cases, the suggested course of action would make no sense.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
The PCs are also imaginary persons that don't exist. Are you not going to be worried about killing their families, either?
I once started an adventure by delivering a PC a satchel with the PC's mother's severed head in it, so that's an obvious, "Not especially."

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
The part I object to is "and kill those NPCs to drive home the lesson that you guessed right". The way you're presenting it, unless I misunderstood you, there's no IC connection between the two.
And personally, I find that to be a bad habit for a GM to develop.
Everything has an IC connection. The connection is that the villain is trying to do villain things and taking whatever opportunities present themselves. If the PCs give him an opportunity, he takes it. You seem to be hung up on the idea that if I didn't write down in my notes ahead of time, "He wants to kill the good guy's family," then he's not allowed to do it. Which is silly.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
The trap, however, kills the PCs, or a henchman. It doesn't get up and goes to kill the henchman's family, because they'd need the henchman and you need to emphasize they'd failed the check.
Which seems to be what you're suggesting).
The henchmen, the trap, the villain, and the henchmen's family are all equally abstract story elements. Fail to stop Story Element X, and Story Element Y gets hurt. The fact that the trap has physical consequences bound by physical space and the wrongful accusation has social consequences not bound by immediate physical space makes no difference.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
Funny enough, the same can be said about PCs, if you're so inclined.
Theoretically, yes, but the PCs explicitly belong to the other real players at your table. There are complicated rules in place if you want to do something to them. Everyone else in the world, not so much.

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Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
...yes, of course. But OOC, we can talk, and I can ask myself "why the hell did the villain go after the NPCs that had nothing to do with those plans?"
And if I conclude that it was for OOC reasons, well, we're going to have an OOC issue.
Well, first, I can't imagine discussing why an NPC did something OOC with a player afterward, not unless it was the end of the campaign. And second, if you had an OOC problem with that, then that would be your problem and you'd be welcome to game elsewhere.

But third, you're presuming that the NPCs had nothing to do with the plans. I assure you, if I decide the villain is going after them, then they will just so happen to turn out to have something to do with his plans. Some magical bauble will miraculously appear in the good guy's house that he just needed to get, and just so happen to kill the family in the process.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
Well, that right here makes no sense.
The villain is either aware that the PCs exist, or not. And if he is, he's either aware they suspect the "good guy", or not.
If he's aware of both, he shouldn't be attacking. Instead, he should be sending the good guy monetary gifts, publicly, and delivered by easily-traceable intermediaries.
If he's aware they exist, but not that they're suspecting anyone, the villain would either go after them, or create distractions. He probably has no reason to believe they would care about the NPC's family, so it's more likely they'd get a false lead towards something they want, a threat to their own family, or the like...none of which cue them about who the villain is.
If he's not aware they exist, there's no reason the villain would change his plans at all.
In all three cases, the suggested course of action would make no sense.
Again, you're assuming that I wouldn't invent some absolutely crucial reason why the villain needed to make that attack when and where he did, and the family was just in the way. Some element that the good guy was hiding from him, but he could now get. Something he needed that he was willing to risk even exposing his plan to acquire, because if he gets his hands on the Evil Whatchamacallit, why, he'll be invincible anyway! Let those fools know who he is, for now is the time of his Dark Ascension! Bwa ha ha ha!

You have absolute control over reality. If you can't think up a perfectly logical reason for anyone in your world to do whatever it is you want them to do, then that's just a failure of your imagination.




 

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