D&D 5E player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[Burnside]

Ugh, this is why I hate Forgotten Realms. The entire setting is like some giant in-joke. If you’re not in on it, you won’t get what people who are in on it are talking about, and if you try to joke about it yourself, it’ll inevitably land wrong.

I agree. And that's why I as a DM I generally appreciate that most of the official 5E adventures are perfectly runnable with only casual Forgotten Realms knowledge.

I am the opposite of excited when I see an FR celebrity, complete with cringe-y name (Artus Cimber, Volothamp Geddarm, Dagult Neverember) turn up.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Eh, I think OP definitely made a mistake, but I think the DM is equally to blame. If you're going to use a published character in your game, you can't really rely on that character's backstory being secret. If you've got PCs who are huge FR fans, there's a good chance that they know more about the setting and the NPCs than you do. That's just reality. It's the problem with using published material. Everything from campaign settings to modules to monster manual entries. If you use materials as they are published, you risk the players knowing what they are.

You're not going to have success running a Star Wars game where the PCs try to search for the lost jedi Anakin Skywalker. You're not going to run a superhero campaign where the PCs meet a wealthy socialite named Bruce Wayne and the mild-mannered reporter covering him, Clark Kent. You're not going to run a Game of Thrones campaign where the PCs need to meet with Robb Stark at his wedding. You're not going to run Planet of the Apes and surprise your PCs that they're on Earth. You don't get to give the PCs The One Ring and surprise them that it's not some minor ring 75 in-game years later. You're not going to run a campaign where your PCs try to figure out what "rosebud" means.

If your story is based on making the players suppress knowledge they have just so that the characters have to act surprised, you've got a great hook for an acting exercise but a terrible hook for an RPG plot. The plot isn't about satisfying the characters, it's about satisfying the players, too.

OP made a play error, but their DM made campaign error. The correct move at this point would be to drop that thread from the narrative. Have the lich pick up on the deception, remove herself completely, and move on to something else. It's not interesting or fun to make the players ignore what's going on just to satisfy the narrative. It's just dumb now that they all know because they're forced to just walk into the trap blindly. There's no way for the DM to foreshadow or drop hints, and the entire point of a secret in plain sight is to foreshadow and drop hints so the players might figure it out in advance!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Eh, I think OP definitely made a mistake, but I think the DM is equally to blame. If you're going to use a published character in your game, you can't really rely on that character's backstory being secret. If you've got PCs who are huge FR fans, there's a good chance that they know more about the setting and the NPCs than you do. That's just reality. It's the problem with using published material. Everything from campaign settings to modules to monster manual entries. If you use materials as they are published, you risk the players knowing what they are.

You're not going to have success running a Star Wars game where the PCs try to search for the lost jedi Anakin Skywalker. You're not going to run a superhero campaign where the PCs meet a wealthy socialite named Bruce Wayne and the mild-mannered reporter covering him, Clark Kent. You're not going to run a Game of Thrones campaign where the PCs need to meet with Robb Stark at his wedding. You're not going to run Planet of the Apes and surprise your PCs that they're on Earth. You don't get to give the PCs The One Ring and surprise them that it's not some minor ring 75 in-game years later. You're not going to run a campaign where your PCs try to figure out what "rosebud" means.

If your story is based on making the players suppress knowledge they have just so that the characters have to act surprised, you've got a great hook for an acting exercise but a terrible hook for an RPG plot. The plot isn't about satisfying the characters, it's about satisfying the players, too.

OP made a play error, but their DM made campaign error. The correct move at this point would be to drop that thread from the narrative. Have the lich pick up on the deception, remove herself completely, and move on to something else. It's not interesting or fun to make the players ignore what's going on just to satisfy the narrative. It's just dumb now that they all know because they're forced to just walk into the trap blindly. There's no way for the DM to foreshadow or drop hints, and the entire point of a secret in plain sight is to foreshadow and drop hints so the players might figure it out in advance!

You're assuming the DM knew this character was published in fiction.

The approach you suggest means either a DM has to read FR fiction themselves or they have to look up every character in the adventures to see if they are in some novel or another. While looking up every character is the kind of thing I might do, I think it might be asking too much of a DM as a general rule.

 

[Hriston]

Or the DM and the players could just accept that this is what was supposed to happen. I very much doubt that the author(s) decided to use an established character (a personage even) of the Realms thinking that no one would recognize it. On the contrary, they expected fans to recognize it and to think it was cool!

 

[Guest 6801328]

You're assuming the DM knew this character was published in fiction.

The approach you suggest means either a DM has to read FR fiction themselves or they have to look up every character in the adventures to see if they are in some novel or another. While looking up every character is the kind of thing I might do, I think it might be asking too much of a DM as a general rule.

No, that doesn't follow. You weren't speaking to me, but the only thing I assume (in saying it's the DM's fault) is that the DM knows that the Forgotten Realms have been written about extensively, for years and years, and that a lot of people know the lore. So even if he/she didn't recognize that particular character, they should either be willing to accept these sorts of hiccoughs, or be willing to change all the NPC names (or at least Google them all first), or not use FR.

Of course, I don't even think this incident was a problem, so I don't actually blame the DM for including the NPC. The only thing I would say would be "bad DMing" would be to get upset about the Big Secret getting inadvertently revealed and insist the players respond to it in a certain way. This whole is SO easy to explain, in-character. "Yeah, you grew up on a farm as an illiterate, but still you somehow know this name. Why?"

"Um...um...one day a stranger, barely alive and with the look of somebody who has survived horrors, showed up on our farm. My parents took him in until he recovered, and late at night when they thought I was asleep he told tales, while I secretly listened..." Etc.

There. Campaign saved.* There are an infinity of alternative versions to that.

As many posters in this thread have pointed out: Great, you are level 5 and you know she's a Lich. What exactly are you going to do about it? The fun is just starting.

*Meant ironically.

 

[Hriston]

The only mistake I can see happening is if the DM somehow thinks that it's impossible for a PC to ever truthfully assert that s/he knows or recognizes the name of an NPC.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The only mistake I can see happening is if the DM somehow thinks that it's impossible for a PC to ever truthfully assert that s/he knows or recognizes the name of an NPC.

You're reminding me of a thread from...a few years ago? An anti-metagamer offered a scenario in which werewolves simply didn't exist in a game world, until of course the DM decided to bring one in. "How," this poster argued, "would it be possible to have any knowledge of werewolves and their vulnerabilities?"

On the one hand, this raises the question of what "reality" is in a game world (as per my comment up thread). Does that reality exist independently of what has been experienced by the adventurers? Does the DM actually control every aspect of it? After all, if a werewolf suddenly exists in that world, it came from..."somewhere". Right?

On the other hand, werewolves don't exist in our world, either, and yet somehow even non-gamers know that you need silver weapons to kill them.

This recurring debate about playstyle, and the insistence of the anti-metagamers that we are not only doing it wrong, but "cheating", keeps making me think of the movie, "Lords of Dogtown". Specifically, the scene where Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, and Jay Adams show up at a skateboarding competition. All the other competitors were freestyle skaters, the style that basically defined skateboarding since the 60's. They took umbrage at these newcomers using skateboards in a way that one just simply did not do. They weren't following the rules. They were defying tradition. They were cheating.

And, of course, what these newcomers were doing was freakin' awesome.

 

[Bacon Bits]

You're assuming the DM knew this character was published in fiction.

She was also the first antagonist for Neverwinter, the D&D MMO. That's how I know the name. Like she's not Elminster, but I have to think she's pretty well known as far as FR NPCs go. To the extent that I think it was really dumb to include this character in this way whether the module authors did it or if it was an addition by the DM. As far as FR characters, she seems to have a lot of appearances.

The approach you suggest means either a DM has to read FR fiction themselves or they have to look up every character in the adventures to see if they are in some novel or another. While looking up every character is the kind of thing I might do, I think it might be asking too much of a DM as a general rule.

I mean, just the antagonists trying to conceal themselves in plain sight while not using a pseudonym?

I'll change my judgement to blaming the author of the module if they don't do anything to warn the DM, but in my experience if the name looks like one written by Salvatore (Fantasyname Adjectivenoun) chances are my players will know it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

if the name looks like one written by Salvatore (Fantasyname Adjectivenoun)

Freakin genius. You nailed it.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Freakin genius. You nailed it.

I mean, I get it. Naming things is one of the hardest parts and fantasy novels have lots of characters and none of them are named "Jim Cooper". But I wish he'd change up his style!