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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brown Jenkin" data-source="post: 4488932" data-attributes="member: 2572">Player paranoia is the result of playing an RPG and not just the remnant of older versions. It isn't even bad DMing. It is just common sense by players based on modern culture. Just about every movie or TV show relies on having a surprise or twist somewhere. As a result we look at things and wonder if someone is telling the trueth or whether this is just another setup to missdirect us. We watch horror movies and know that you never open a closet door or anything else without the possibuility that the monster is in there hiding. All it takes is one DM action to make make the players paranoid because to not be paranoid could be suicidal. It takes just 1 NPC to betray the characters for them to never truely trust an NPC again, or just one door trap that goes off for all doors to be suspicious. As a GM you may only think you are using this "surpise" only once but the player doesn't know this. To them it is a learning experience. As a player they look at this "surprise" as confirmation that the game plays out just like movies and TV shows. To not learn and take precausions is just stupid. In real life if if even 1 out of 1000 doors we opened could blow up and injure us we would be checking all doors as well. As a DM you just have to accept a certain amount of player paranoia if you want to run a campaign that has any sense of surprise to it. The only real problems I have seen is when a DM allows player vs. player paranoia. I was part of one such campaign and it took 2 more campaigns before the players started trusting each other again.</blockquote>

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