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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8770038" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Here's the thing.... the players, even if they're trying to think entirely as their character when they make decisions... will remain aware that they're playing a game and that the game elements including all the NPCs are created by the GM. So very often they will or won't trust a given NPC based on nothing other than player intuition. And I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that... it's unavoidable and trying to prevent it only calls more and more attention to it. So I set that aside, and if there is reason that an NPC may not be trustworthy, I'm going to offer some possibility for that to be discovered. Sure, I get that as a guiding principle, but there's more to it. The GM isn't just simulating things... the GM is also creating the things. There's nothing less realistic about a trustworthy patron than an untrustworthy one... there's no reason you can't have chosen to have an honorable patron for the PCs to work with, and craft another way to show them that not everyone can be trusted. The appeal to simulation isn't specific to what the GM has chosen to do. You can simulate anything you want! You're creating the siutation! I don't really see how they can't. Like, the decisions you make as a GM are going to impact my opinion of the game. I don't really see how it's avoidable.There are always two levels in that sense... the fiction in the game, and the game itself. The GM decides much of what will be in the fiction, and those decisions aren't separate from a player's evaluation of the game. I realize the above is incomplete, but looking at it all, the only thing you mention as a possible cue that something is up is that the supposedly empty castle is in fact not empty. I don't know why this would immediately make anyone suspicious of the company instead of just assuming that monsters/humanoids/whatever had simply decided to move into the empty place, but maybe there was more established to suggest the company was involved? Was there anything else? Did the contact let anything slip? Did any of the locals offer any information about the Company ("I heard they disbanded years ago...")? Did any of the PCs have any contacts in the area they could lean on for information gathering? Did any of the PCs have any foreknowledge of the area or the history of the region or the Company? Were there any reluctant members of the Company who may have tried to clue these poor saps into what was really going on? Or any of the other adventuring parties? Anything at all? Because based on this sketch you've provided (and this relates to my point above about how we can't always separate the fition and the game), it sounds like the players were given specific elements for PC creation (neophyte adventurer at some kind of recruitment drive), sounds like they were new to the area and to each other, were given a job by an NPC (which is largely the GM saying "here's the game"), and then they went off to an adventure site. The old "abandoned place that now has monsters in it" is such a well worn trope that I can't imagine it would even serve as a clue that something was wrong... but by that point, it doesn't even matter because the trap's already been sprung. Again, I know the above lacks all the details, but based on what's there, this doesn't sound to me at all like the kind of situation described in the OP.... an environment rich in information and resources that the players can leverage to then set their own agenda. It sounds like a GM who has an idea for an adventure, and then created a scenario to make sure that adventure happened. And that's perfectly fine, but it's simply a different kind of play. At what point (if any) do you think the players may have learned enough to not go off into the trap? It doesn't seem like much was offered in the game world to allow that to happen. It doesn't sound like the game situation would suggest to the players that they didn't need to just follow along because clearly this is what's been prepared. Sure, having that kind of stuff can help serve as a framework. I'm just saying it's not necessary... there are other equally valid methods. I think it tends to lead to more rigid GMing, myself, but will of course vary from GM to GM.</blockquote>

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