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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Varianor Abroad" data-source="post: 1199701" data-attributes="member: 12425">Nope. A good mystery (I accept the prior poster's redefinition of your examples as more mystery than deception) depends on matters being revealed later. Keeping the PCs interest through to the end for the big revelation is always cool. Adding a twist makes it brilliant. Now, there are meta-deceptions that may be needed to achieve some of this because most savvy players do try to read DMs and look for their "tells." In turn one has to figure out what those are and break them. Example: many groups I have DMed for get to know when big encounters are coming from the way I describe things. To avoid buff spells coming out when the characters have no idea that they will need them, I occasionally throw in a non-encounter. This is a description that sounds highly significant, but really isn't of anything important. Of course, you don't want to overuse this and you can later come back and make it meaningful. Berandor's example is also excellent.</blockquote>