GM giving blind rumors and connections to adventure

[redrick]

For an upcoming single-session adventure I am running, I plan to start the game by giving each player a card with some sort of rumor, piece of information, or other tidbit on it. Standard stuff. I want these rumors to potentially be quite useful — a connection to an NPC in the dungeon, knowledge of secret locations in the dungeon, a key that they found on the road leading there, etc. I then plan to tell the players not to share this information with the other players. They can only share it with the other characters if and when they believe their character would do so. (Obviously fine if the characters pool all of their information, but I want to discourage it being the first thing that happens at the entrance to the dungeon, which is often what happens with rumor tables.)

For instance, one card might say:

Before you left, the Captain pulls you aside and says, "We have a contact on the inside, a goblin with a long scar from his eye to his chin. If you can get this coded message to him, he can help you, but you must not, under any circumstances, tell the others or do anything else to jeopardize his cover."


If this were the Hobbit, another might say:

As you traveled into the hills [where the dungeon is] you stumbled across a dull, golden ring lying on the side of the path. It exerts a strange pull on you.


I was then thinking, maybe I should give the cards blindly to the players, so that I also don't know who has what, or if anybody has it. Just for fun, to surprise myself a little. If the character recognizes the NPC from the card, they might try to give him the coded message. If nobody knows has it, nothing happens with that. Anybody here ever done anything like that? How did it work?

 

[Nagol]

I've done it a few times; I played when it was done a few times. It can be interesting. It can also end up being quite flat.

Several things can go wrong.

• Player groups forget things that are mentioned once all the time. If only a single player was told, the chances of it being ignored soars.
• Even if a player catches the opportunity to use the knowledge, a single player often draws a blank about what to do with it where the group can often find a way to use it.
• It can lead to intra-party conflict A:"Let's go this way! I know a secret!" B:"No. Let's stick to the plan." C:"What do you mean you know a secret? Why didn't you tell us this little tidbit back when we could have done something about it? Isn't our survival important to you?" D:"Let's not go that way. I know a secret too and mine suggests yours is wrong. I can't tell you what mine is either."
• Often when entering a dangerous situation, withholding information is contra-survival. Smart PCs who wish to survive should try to pool knowledge as best they can to help improve the odds of survival. "Gee, Bob. It would have been nice to know he was a turncoat on our side before I killed him!"

I still use the technique for campaigns where the expectation is secretive play, but they tend to be more time consuming and fewer in frequency than when I was younger.

 

[redrick]

I've done it a few times; I played when it was done a few times. It can be interesting. It can also end up being quite flat.

Several things can go wrong.

• Player groups forget things that are mentioned once all the time. If only a single player was told, the chances of it being ignored soars.
• Even if a player catches the opportunity to use the knowledge, a single player often draws a blank about what to do with it where the group can often find a way to use it.
• It can lead to intra-party conflict A:"Let's go this way! I know a secret!" B:"No. Let's stick to the plan." C:"What do you mean you know a secret? Why didn't you tell us this little tidbit back when we could have done something about it? Isn't our survival important to you?" D:"Let's not go that way. I know a secret too and mine suggests yours is wrong. I can't tell you what mine is either."
• Often when entering a dangerous situation, withholding information is contra-survival. Smart PCs who wish to survive should try to pool knowledge as best they can to help improve the odds of survival. "Gee, Bob. It would have been nice to know he was a turncoat on our side before I killed him!"

I still use the technique for campaigns where the expectation is secretive play, but they tend to be more time consuming and fewer in frequency than when I was younger.

Thanks for your thoughts! The goal is to find that middle ground, where characters have individual information and connections during the adventure, helping them to feel distinct, but where it does not become a point of needless conflict. Ideally, I want the characters to share at least some of the information with each other during the course of play, just not as an "all cards on the table" exercise at the start of the adventure, which just puts the information into the collective Party Pot.

I think it is normal for a character to not reveal all information "at the start of the game," because it might not have seemed relevant to that character at that moment in time. (I didn't tell you what I had for breakfast until I learned that the big bad was allergic to oatmeal!) I should avoid information that explicitly demands secrecy.

I don't mind prepping material that never gets used — do that all the time, but I don't want players to feel cheated because the piece of information they learned didn't come up, or came up but they didn't recognize it, while another player got to use their information to save everybody's butts.

 

[Lanefan]

The trick might be to have all these seemingly-disparate bits of information ultimately end up as elements of the same adventure. So, using this as one of the notes:

Before you left, the Captain pulls you aside and says, "We have a contact on the inside, a goblin with a long scar from his eye to his chin. If you can get this coded message to him, he can help you, but you must not, under any circumstances, tell the others or do anything else to jeopardize his cover."


Another of the notes might be:

On your way to the docks a messenger from the Duke slipped you a note: "As a personal favour to me which I will generously return later, find out everything you can about the Captain and crew of the Rose of Tralee while you are aboard. They, along with one or more of your own companions, may be compromised. Destroy this note after memorizing its contents. Take no unnecessary risks."

A third might be:

The Goblin leader wears a ring with a black gem. A certain group of shady people have charged you with retrieval of that ring, with nobody else to know of this mission or (preferably) to see or handle the ring at all. Success means reward and survival. Failure means death for you and your family; as does breaking secrecy, and you will be watched."

And so on.

Yes, this'll have the party looking sideways at each other the whole trip...but that's kind of the point.

Lanefan

 

[Hand of Evil]

I do this as a newspaper, it is a simple sheet with a rumors and gossip that is going around; includes things like ship dockings, weather reports from the area, construction, strange events, things the characters may have done and such. This is all general information but can have information some of the players will know a bit more about. I let the players draw connections to plots.

I also have a system for "contacts" for characters, these are NPC that I allow my players to pick based on there back stories. Like a wizard may need a book dealer in a city, so, if he has contact points he (normally based on CHR bonus +2, plus a new 1 per level) he can pull the NPC out of the air, saying "hey, I have a friend that I need to see." This has worked well for secret cults, where a player will want directions for there character.

 

[5ekyu]

For an upcoming single-session adventure I am running, I plan to start the game by giving each player a card with some sort of rumor, piece of information, or other tidbit on it. Standard stuff. I want these rumors to potentially be quite useful — a connection to an NPC in the dungeon, knowledge of secret locations in the dungeon, a key that they found on the road leading there, etc. I then plan to tell the players not to share this information with the other players. They can only share it with the other characters if and when they believe their character would do so. (Obviously fine if the characters pool all of their information, but I want to discourage it being the first thing that happens at the entrance to the dungeon, which is often what happens with rumor tables.)

For instance, one card might say:

Before you left, the Captain pulls you aside and says, "We have a contact on the inside, a goblin with a long scar from his eye to his chin. If you can get this coded message to him, he can help you, but you must not, under any circumstances, tell the others or do anything else to jeopardize his cover."


If this were the Hobbit, another might say:

As you traveled into the hills [where the dungeon is] you stumbled across a dull, golden ring lying on the side of the path. It exerts a strange pull on you.


I was then thinking, maybe I should give the cards blindly to the players, so that I also don't know who has what, or if anybody has it. Just for fun, to surprise myself a little. If the character recognizes the NPC from the card, they might try to give him the coded message. If nobody knows has it, nothing happens with that. Anybody here ever done anything like that? How did it work?

i have done things like this in the past but more often its just seeded in.

What i would suggest you consider is this alight change:
over the next say six sessions include one of those bits in each run. maybe scraps of parchment, barely legible journal entry mostly destroyed, an ornate shield depicting... etc.

Seed these elements in over time and then have them start to tie in with other things that draw them into and through the adventure.

Dropping them in all at once as a pre-amble is fine. but working them in over time and then having them tie together makes you look even smarter and it feel like a larger story ties things together.

 

[MarkB]

Doing it this way feels a little arbitrary, and designed to lead to conflict. A better way would be to tie the information into the players' backstory, into information they already want to keep personal. That way, not only do the players have a personal stake in holding the information close and a better justification to their friends for not revealing it, they also get to feel like you care about their characters' backstory and want to build upon it.

In a lot of cases, they won't just run with it - they'll come back to you with ideas to build upon it.