Help my players are smarter then me!!

[Aldarad]

The title days it all: my players perhaps dont look truogh my plots like crystalglass but the do smell an ambush or a foreshadowing miles away.
And they act more clever and resolute then I expected.
Wich is fine except, well as an example:
Villain V will be the power behind adventures A, B and C. To give the players some context and a furutre Aha!-event, I introduce him before the start of A. I mean it is more fun then if he appears out of the blue at the end of C.
BUT my damn players notice any odd behaviore like blood hounds, or they decide to check him out for another reason, and suddenly A and B becomes redundant! OR I have already decided clues for them that I expect them to check at C. Now I could ignore them but then I would get "But that ancient ruin wasnt here last week!" or something like that.
Should I skip foreshadowing?
Should V always succed with saves etc until adventure C?
Should I just be happy for my players, they do have fun inteligbly (?) wrecking my plots, its not theire intention to screw up 20 hrs worth of planning for me. They are just smarter then me...... :.(

 

[steeldragons]

This is an interesting problem...and one I think many DMs encounter from time to time.

To your own issues, as presented, I have a couple of suggestions...

1) Don't have Villain V do anything "out of the ordinary" to give the players suspiscions. Now, it sounds like that proverbial ship has already sailed.

But still, it is one thing for the players to "know" but their characters can really only "suspect" or have a gut feeling. Will they be surprised when the big "AHA" moment comes up, no, not entirely. But the "AHA, I was right!" can be just as good or satisfying (for the players) as "AHA, I didn't see that coming!" is for the DM.

2) Keep to the script. Did the characters suss out all of your clues already or do the players just "know/suspect"? If they really are 'ahead of the game", quite literally, then just breeze through those parts where the characters find the clues and "get" that what they "thought was the case" they now "have proof of/is fact." So, maybe A & B adventures run faster than you'd planned. Throw in a combat or two that you didn't have before. I concur adding some setting piece (like "old ruins that weren't there before) can be disruptive to the suspension of disbelief. But a cadre of guards or extra traps or a magical something-er-other in a particular spot where you didn't have them/think necessary before should not.

3) Don't "give it away on the first date", so to speak. If Villain V is to be the Big Bad, then have him in the background or a whispered "boss" or "master" that can be whined about by some captured foe or overheard between some underlings while the party recon's. Why you would/had introduced the villain before you even started adventure A, I suppose made sense to you/fit the story at the time. But if that is the case, "the evil vizier at the sultan's side", for example, then see #1.

Don't have them do anything or act in any way suspicious. Don't add in things like a scowl or glare that may/may not be noticed by the party. Don't see him slinking in the shadows talking to some raggedy looking minion in the marketplace. Make him the shining example of the perfect loyal servant...Hell, give him a shiny white fluffy bunny familiar if you have to (that's really an imp shapechanged, or some such) that way the treachery/Big Badness becomes a "Wait a minute! It's THAT guy?!"

Throw in OTHER, completely unrelated (at least to the immediate story) "suspicious" or "villainous" characters to distract the party from the REAL bad guy. This also allows you to branch off/lines up other side-adventures or major plotlines for the future. Characters can't be everywhere at once. While they take down one Big Bad, there should always be other "evil plots of someone else" unfolding. So when the party gets around to dealing with those, they are further along/tougher to defeat than when they first noticed.

4) There are times you will just get beaten. There are times the players will be able to "thwart" the best laid plot. Often, in fact. If that's the case and there is no retro-ing the storyline, then you have the right idea, just be glad you have good players...and make it tougher for them next time.

Good luck and happy gaming.
--Steel Dragons

 

[Cor Azer]

Eh... Remember, there's one of you compared to X of them, so they've got a lot more brain mass being thrown at your plots than you do at cooking them up. There's no shame in having things figued out.

Besides, every now and then, they'll be wrong. And every now and then, they'll be wrong but have a better idea than you had, and so you can switch it and make them "right".

I too like the idea of flaunting the big bad early, so to speak, so I heartily endorse red herring antagonists as well.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Shell game them. Place more events and NPCs in play, create things that happen in the day of your campign.

• A murder happens every X Days
• X number muggings happens every X days
• Pick pockets pick X number of poctets a day
• Smugglers smuggle stuff every X days

what this does is to provide a number of red herrings that will not have anything to do with your plots but will distract the players. The BAD news, the players may end up more interested in creating a side adventure.

 

[Gilladian]

Maybe you need to NOT hide the villain. Introduce him early in the way that the Wicked Witch of the West is introduced in the Wizard of Oz movie; she's so powerful, scary and villainous that Dorothy KNOWS she can't defeat her. Instead, she spends most of the movie trying desperately to escape her!

No, there's not a lot to figure out, except WHY she's the villain, and HOW to defeat her.

I'm not big on foreshadowing, but I am big on freedom to make decisions. Don't line up plots A, B, C to be completed in order.

Make the events that comprise A, B, and C adventures available to the PCs all at the same time. If A adventure revolves around figuring out that there IS a bad guy, and C involves raiding his secret lair and confronting him, well, there's no reason they can't raid the secret lair WITHOUT any knowledge of whose lair it is. Or, if they guess that the Wicked Witch must have a lair somewhere, then let them skip over the "wow she's really bad" revelations. Just make sure they miss some other goodie in the process - like "hey, the witch never takes a bath, and is afraid of water!".

 

[Hand of Evil]

Also...on the NPCs

• The good bad cop...henchman to V, points out that the players always seem to be at the scene of a crime. Can drop clues or move to frame the players if told. Catch phase; kind of knew you would be close by.
  
• The Do Gooder - a off the wall lesser noble that wants to help, bored with too much money, information and not a clue. Seems to want to stick his nose into the players business, as he is writing a book...comes up with ideas out of the blue...mostly dealing with vampires and werewolves. Catch phase; are those fang marks, looks like fang marks?
  
• the false witness...henchman to V. Catch phase; the dude looked like a lady!

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

blah blah blah can't give more exp to steeldragons. Anyhow, I think SD hit it right on the head with his post and the others following him made good points as well.

I like to try to make the bad guy someone close to the PCs, one they never suspect that looks, sounds, smells, and acts "good" try to make him a source of information that they use to thwart the "BBEG" that they think is a shadowy overlord, but in reality he is just ingratiating himself in with the PCs so that when it's time to destroy them they don't see it coming. He would give up some of his minions in a heartbeat in order to fulfill what he sees is his destiny. I like to give BBEGs a real motivation for what they do and what they feel is right in their eyes, make them very human so to speak. PCs never suspect someone that seems to be very helpful, he could even be posing as a counselor to the king, a good wizard, a knight of the realm, whatever you feel would work in your campaign this BBEG could fit the role.

 

[Jimlock]

are you sure they don't read your notes?

Even from home they could hack into your PC...

watch out

 

[RedTonic]

I also like to create red herring bad guys. Of course, sometimes I also make evil-aligned characters sympathetic enough that the party really wants to find out that the villain is someone else. I've had a party argue over how to save a bad guy they captured red handed from execution under the law.

Just some things to consider.

 

[Asmor]

There's a concept known as Schrödinger's Gun. It's kind of an amalgam of Chekov's Gun and Schrödinger's Cat.

The idea is that, until such time as you tell the players what happens, anything can be changed.

An example: In a Savage Worlds game I ran, I had a mysterious villain who was a dragon. The dragon was also an influential noble, whom the players met at a party. They immediately guessed that he was the dragon... so I changed it so that a different character, an artist I'd introduced earlier, was the dragon.

The players never knew--could never have had any way of knowing--what my original intent was. As far as they knew, the artist had always been the dragon, and they guessed wrong about the noble.