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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pbartender" data-source="post: 5202166" data-attributes="member: 7533">This is not an uncommon problem...  It's something I struggled with for a long time.You have to remember that from behind the DM screen, you've already got the big picture and you've got all the answers.  From that perspective, many of the clues, possible plans of action, and intuitive leaps of deduction that are meant to advance the plot and keep the PCs out of trouble will seem obvious.On the players' side of things, however, they only have the parts of the puzzle that you give them.  They are almost always looking at an incomplete picture.  Things that are completely obvious to you will be completely obscure to them, and things that seem to be of tantamount importance to them will be meaningless off-hand details to you.As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."That holds true for DMing and gaming as well...  For you, "The compass will lead you to a great treasure," was a specific semantic clue to the trap that is the curse.  From the players' point of view, it's simply a description of the compasses function.  How are the players supposed to realize that the compass itself is the "great treasure"?  After all, from the standpoint of an adventurer, a compass that only leads to itself is next to useless.But in the end, the point is that is doesn't really matter whether or not you think their plan is clever.   That they think it's clever is enough.It's not really your job circumvent the players' plan based on its cleverness.  It's up to you to decide how difficult it should be for that plan to succeed (there should always be at least some minimal chance to succeed, no matter how difficult or dangerous that chance is), what the logical (and sometimes devious) consequences of success or failure are, and to perhaps give some mildly obvious hints of the possible dangers and consequences (if it seems reasonable that the PCs could figure such things out for themselves).</blockquote>

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