If Only One Knows

[Frostmarrow]

I just had an idea. Perhaps it's dumb but I'll relate it anyway. I always feel that this place is a great old brainstorm.

Normally the DM reads up on all the material and let the players explore the material through the DM. Now what if one player also knows a lot about the adventure at hand? Perhaps this has happened by mistake, please tell?

I was thinking if I knew what was going to happen I would probably try to explore the parts I didn't already know about. Sort of like you play a computer game for the second time. One usually goes trying to find the stuff one missed the first time. Moreover, if I already knew the answer to the great puzzle I would probably role-play instead of being all analytical when the party is about to solve the puzzle. Or I'd might try to obstruct the party's progress if I felt like being particulary nasty.

My point is that by doing this on purpose one could probably enhance the role-playing a bit. Would the trade off be worth it, I wonder?

Perhaps I should incorporate the idea as a feature in a written adventure, who knows.

 

[Piratecat]

This is a big problem with "classic" adventures like Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain. If I really wanted to run an adventure that I knew people had read, I'd probably tell the PC that they had had a prophetic dream. Then I'd let him act on his half-remembered memories, changing things enough to really keep him on his toes.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Well, I thought it also could work as a fail-safe against lag. Sometimes the action come to a decisive halt because the players don't have a clue about what to do. In such a case the informed player could easily drop hints or even have great ideas so as to get the action going again.

I think the informed player mustn't tell the others that he has been informed so they don't know that he actually knows what has to be done. His input shouldn't be more valuable than the other players'. It's like playing a diplomacy-esque board game where you can brag about the cards on your hand but you can't actually show the other players that you have them. They simply have to trust you or not.

I think you are right, Piratecat, about having an in-game explanation of why the character has this knowledge. It could be a prophetic dream or simply a fairy tale he heard as a child. Heck, it could be anything.

 

[KidCthulhu]

I'd also make sure that I made lots of simple changes to the module, like doors being in slightly different places, or moving rooms around. Move the enemies around too, wherever it seems logical and feasible. Instead of ten kobolds in the kitchen, have 3 in the hall, 4 in the kitchen and 3 more who come running in from wherever.

The biggest potential problem lies with the player. If you trust them to keep their mouth shut, then there's no problem. If they are usually the party leader, and their sudden silence would seem strange, perhaps the player and the DM can work out a "guest" character, and offer the regular character exp for some side adventure.

I wouldn't try this with a player you can't trust. Too many things can get revealed, even by body language.

 

[LostSoul]

Once, I was going to play in a module that I DMed a couple of times. It had a big dungeon that I had (mostly) forgotten the layout of, but I still remembered some of it, and I knew the politics of the dungeon.

We decided that my character once worked, as a lackey, for one of the evils lurking in the dungeon.