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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6203564" data-attributes="member: 29398">Whether in a dungeon, a town, or a palace there's going to be times when things just don't work the way the PCs might be expecting them to.  This is good, in that it reflects real life where things sometimes don't go as expected for no obvious reason.Not necessarily; the steps that need be taken are just different.  Instead of ripping down walls the PCs need to - dare I say it - use some diplomacy (or chamr spells, whatever) with the servants, or listen for rumours and tales, or simply hide (if possible) and watch which picture the chamberlain hides the money behind.What about secret backstory at a much higher level, to the point where the players/PCs don't even know there *is* a hidden backstory until ten adventures into the campaign (despite occasional breadcrumb clues along the way)?  That's what I'm doing in my current game - the results have always been plain to see (hiding in plain sight) but the root causes are completely unknown.  I'd give more detail but I've got players who sometimes read these boards... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And again, mystery.  As a player I want and expect there to be things I don't know - I'll either eventually get the information or I won't - as that's just part of life.  As a DM my stories are (usually) built around things people at least in some part don't know - an example: earlier in my current campaign I ran a series of 5 adventures - in the first one the party finds the long-dead bride of Ares and learns they have to track down several items to build some sort of Torch; those represent the next 3 adventures.  Not until the 5th adventure with the PCs already on site and way back in time do the players/PCs realize their real mission is to use this Torch they've built to kill the bride whose corpse they found!  <full write-up is <a href="http://www.friendsofgravity.com/games/decast" target="_blank">here</a> as most of part 2 of the adventure logs, if anyone's interested>Lan-"in the future and present and past, long past - Ares is burned by the Fires of Decast"-efan</blockquote>

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