By the Nose

[S'mon]

If the DM is heavily leaning on them to go to the Tower of Madness and then gives them an NPC who just happens to know the way through the Impossible Maze in front of the tower and said NPC also knows how to open the door to the tower which is impossible to open, and then said NPC after being perfectly reliable and 100% necessary to get to where they are suddenly leads them to a room that slams shut behind them and tells them "now you are all my captives!" it ends up feeling a little... railroady.

It could be railroady, but I wouldn't be averse to "evil NPC tries to lure PCs to their doom" type plots. I think the important thing is that the players aren't feeling forced to go along with it for metagame reasons 'that's where the adventure is'. Personally if I have an evil PC trying to deceive the NPCs I tend to give obvious 'this guy is creepy & untrustworthy' cues and hope the players are at least paying enough attention to ask for an Insight check. Even if they fail the check I never say 'You don't trust him'; I say 'You can't read him'.

 

[john112364]

Perkins' 'leading them by the nose' seems to mean nothing more offensive than simply throwing out plot hooks, which I'd think all GMs should be doing all the time anyway.

I'm not exactly sure about 'never leading them into a trap' - certainly my hostile NPCs may attempt to lead the PCs into a trap, but this will be an emergent property of gameplay, typically in response to prior player actions. If it's a completely arbitrary 'bolt from the blue' trap without foundation in prior events (you're at the inn, when werewolves attack!) then I would tend to make it a CR-balanced, but if it's a response to prior PC action that won't necessarily be the case.

I think he was referring to trusted NPCs. If an NPC you have trusted for an extended period of time who has never intentionally steered you wrong suddenly leads you to a trap, that would frustrate me. I would be very disappointed in my DM.

 

[john112364]

It could be railroady, but I wouldn't be averse to "evil NPC tries to lure PCs to their doom" type plots. I think the important thing is that the players aren't feeling forced to go along with it for metagame reasons 'that's where the adventure is'. Personally if I have an evil PC trying to deceive the NPCs I tend to give obvious 'this guy is creepy & untrustworthy' cues and hope the players are at least paying enough attention to ask for an Insight check. Even if they fail the check I never say 'You don't trust him'; I say 'You can't read him'.

I agree with this. If you give the players clues and hints and they still fall for it, well that's DnD.

 

[GreyICE]

But if you give them hints and clues it implies there's a choice.

I mean suppose the evil guy I mentioned who just happens to be the only way to accomplish something (find a villain who the PCs couldn't locate, break into a tower that is sealed) is created with copious hints to his evilness. Coal black eyes. Dresses all in black. You see smoke creeping out of his robes occasionally. He sometimes starts chuckling malevolently.

If he's the only way to accomplish what the PCs want to accomplish, they still have to follow him around.

It's only if he offers the PCs an EASY way to find the villain but the PCs know that there's hard ways that might involve expenditure of time, money, influence, etc. that there's a choice. The PCs can choose to follow the possible villain, the easy route, or rely on their own devices.

Even there, it's not a compelling hook unless most of the time the NPC doesn't betray them. Otherwise it's like "well we could take the obvious trap option here." And if you do that the few times the NPC DOES betray them can end up feeling like the DM is betraying them (because in the past, X worked, and now X doesn't!).

At the end of the day, I like betrayal to come about because of player choices. Maybe they had a loyal ally who wished to gather knowledge for the advancement of civilization, and the PCs ended up burning down a library full of irreplaceable texts. You can play up his shock and horror at the event, then later when the PCs find a knife in their back because they trusted him to still be loyal, there's a sense of connection. They realize it's a consequence of what they themselves chose to do. That takes away the feeling the DM betrayed them (if done properly) and actually reinforces their trust in the DM - the NPC had logical motivations and they themselves chose not to respect those.

 

[S'mon]

At the end of the day, I like betrayal to come about because of player choices. Maybe they had a loyal ally who wished to gather knowledge for the advancement of civilization, and the PCs ended up burning down a library full of irreplaceable texts. You can play up his shock and horror at the event, then later when the PCs find a knife in their back because they trusted him to still be loyal, there's a sense of connection. They realize it's a consequence of what they themselves chose to do. That takes away the feeling the DM betrayed them (if done properly) and actually reinforces their trust in the DM - the NPC had logical motivations and they themselves chose not to respect those.

Strongly agree - this is what I meant by 'betrayal as an emergent property of gameplay'.

 

[Tovec]

Okay, a bit of a puff piece.

But I want to know if anyone else had issues with the poll? It didn't really seem to make sense or track. I mean none of the answers given even seemed to match the question, let alone give me the one I wanted to answer. He asked 'How much help do your players need to decide what to do next in the campaign' and gave us two part answers without saying X often. 'How often do players get wrapped in debating what to do' would have been a better question for the answers given. Even that is inaccurate.

Anyone else agree/disagree?

 

[JustinAlexander]

Perkins' 'leading them by the nose' seems to mean nothing more offensive than simply throwing out plot hooks, which I'd think all GMs should be doing all the time anyway.

I'm actually unclear on exactly what he's talking about: The whole article comes across as very vague, unfortunately.

At one point he's talking about plot hooks. But then he's talking about nudging players into action when they get bogged down in debating what they're going to do next. And then he's talking about proactive clue-dropping if the players hit an investigatory dead-end. And then he's talking about moving the adventure onto a "scripted" path on which the PCs don't have a hand in unfolding events.

Of those, the only one I would actually classify as "leading by the nose" would be the last. But when he gives an actual example of what he means, it turns out he's just talking about having an NPC give them some information so that they can continue pursuing the goal they've chosen.

The result is a bit of a tabula rasa. You can read this as endorsing (or condemning) almost anything you'd like.