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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5169790" data-attributes="member: 4937">If Hercule Perot and Sherlock Holmes can spend a considerable time chasing red herrings, then I figure its good enough for the player's heroes as well.  Besides, if every good red herring turns out to be true, the game just teaches the players to either leap to false conclusions or punishes them for speculating.  Moreover, every good mystery has red herrings in it and much of the enjoyment of a mystery is that momment of ephinany when you figure out that what you've always assumed was just a red herring and something quite different is actually going on.  That's 'the twist'.  That's the point where the direction of the story radically changes.  That's like my favorite point in an adventure when I'm a player.I think that this method runs counter to the notion of developing 'skillful play' and is lazy story telling on the part of the DM.  I can see the attraction and it might even once in a while be a useful technique, but I don't think its the best possible practice.Which isn't to say that you can't invent things in midstream.  In my current campaign I inadvertantly created a new red herring improvising a scene I hadn't anticipated, and it's a good one and some of the PC's are already lured by it.  I briefly considered completely changing who the main villain is.  However, I realized that while its a good idea with lots of play potential, it's also a sterotypical one and would be completely unsurprising.  I'm not going to change the story to put it on the new path, but I probably will develop contingencies along that path in case the players end up chasing the story in that direction.In another scene, the players got distracted from there goal and ended up spending a long time chasing a red herring before finding the main plot again.  That's ok.  It's ok to be lost from time to time, and they might find that red herring comes back later to complicate things.</blockquote>

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