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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7057281" data-attributes="member: 29398">Just to be fussy: the vampire's schemes aren't evil at all, and neither is he (well, not any more; he sure used to be).  The secrets are a) that he's a vampire at all, and b) just how long (centuries!) he's been pulling strings behind the scenes.By who?  And when?  And, if the DM's intent is that he be a vampire all along, what if a player narrates something that contradicts that...even something as simple as the guy admiring his reflection in a mirror.And again, why a failure?  Maybe learning this information qualifies as a success for the PCs (and thus a failure for the vampire, I suppose).  It all depends on context.For clarity: the vampire example comes from my current campaign, with the difference-for-discussion-here being that he keeps his secrets from the PCs for much longer than he did in actual play.Which in the moment is really cool!  It's just the invalidation of what went before that's not cool.Another example where I as DM got hosed by this: years ago I was running a party through a big somewhat-linear adventure.  The weird element was, this adventure was in fact being written (by someone else) as it was being played; and sometimes the author had to struggle to keep ahead of the advancing party.  What this led to was a few rather glaring instances of an element being written in later which, had I known of it earlier, would have been rather obvious to the PCs. (wagon tracks on a trail was one example I can remember: the party follows this trail for ages but it's not until the wagons are written in later do I realize they should have been seeing wagon tracks all along)  So, much to my annoyance I had to retcon some things, which thoroughly offended my sense of internal consistency and meant some things that might have been done differently at the time had this info been known were not.Lan-"type type type"-efan</blockquote>

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