Grrrr!!! WotC drops major spoiler in Lair Assault. Well thanks a lot!

[GameDoc]

So, I cracked open Lair Assault tonight to prepare for running it at my FLGS and much to my dismay, I see that the very first sentence read to the players by the DM basically outs an archvillain from the Neverinter Campaign Guide.

Now, I realize it's not top secret - Anyone who reads through the latter chapters of NWCG can get the information. But believe it or not, a good many players keep their noses out of that material if they aren't planning on running a campaign.

It frustrates me as a DM (as much for my players as myself) that those who participate in Lair Assault are going to have some of the potential surprises of a full Neverwinter campaign taken from them. It takes a potential plot thread off the table.

The current Encounters storyline comes with it's own major NPCs so that after completing it, the materials in the NWCG are still applicable as written. Why did they not take similar steps with Lair Assault?

 

[catastrophic]

Oh come on. Was that really meant to be a suprise?

Spoiler

He's a suspected cult leader with Devil Horns

What did you think, he was an honest extremly opulent and smooth-talking merchant, since those are so common?

I remember at the time of the exert chapter that mentions him, thinking it a bit silly that the suave, public face of the cult was a tiefling. I mean, how unracist are people in neverwinter, exactly? Has he just got a really REALLY good bluff score, has he?

Especially since the cult also has a warrior-leader rough outcast-type who's a dwarf. It would have made much more sense the other way around. An opulent, 'honorable' and well-spoken-of dwarvern merchant as the public face, and a bitter, skulking, outcast tiefling as the muscle.

I guess maybe they were going for an extreme 'hide in plain sight' angle, but it feels like it would have been much more believable to play to the treatment such races are likely to recieve.

There's also the problem of that moment where the players realise who he Obviously Is, and yet the GM may feel they have to keep up the pretense of the mystery.

In contrast, I think the fell court is a much better take on tiefling villainy.

 

[GameDoc]

Oh come on. Was that really meant to be a suprise?

Spoiler

Yeah, I thought that going with a tiefling was a tad obvious myself. But I was going to just roll with it and work in a lot of "what are you guys, racists?" if any of the player's went down that path. I was actually going to use him as an ally, really get the player's to trust him and then have him turn on them after they helped him (or in their minds, he has helped them) neutralize the other factions. Guess I will just swap him out for a less obvious hommade NPC if it comes to it.

 

[catastrophic]

Well I mean, you could use him as a red herring, and have a more subtle figure lurking in the background. Another option is to play up some of his personality as described, and have him be quite brazen about his beliefs, past a certain point.

You could also play it for laughs, and have him seem suspicious, only for the players to find out that

Spoiler

he just flirts with the idea of asmodeus-worship when woman and gullible business parnters are around, to make him seem like a badass, when in reality he's an inefectual fop who faints at the first sign of danger.

He could even be like that, or another kind of red herring- but then get posessed by some trinket that he owns, which he didn't realised was actually magical.

.