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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5201826" data-attributes="member: 58197">Bear in mind that there are different degrees of adversarial play. There's the kind where it's all in good fun; the players get a kick out of the way the DM makes their characters' lives hell, and the DM is careful to "play fair" and not abuse his/her authority. Players accustomed to this type of play are skittish and suspicious (which, when you think about it, is a sensible attitude for an adventurer to have), but they don't usually act like sociopaths.And then there's the kind where the DM's hostility is directed, not at the characters, but at the players. The DM deliberately abuses the players' trust and punishes them for doing anything other than egregious metagaming. In this case it all gets very ugly very fast and leads to the behavior you describe.I notice that a lot of your trouble seems to revolve around the PCs being absolutely unwilling to trust your NPCs. That's likely a response to DMs who look upon "the players are forming a bond with this NPC" as a reason to have that NPC be a traitor.My suggestion is: Stop trying to make the players trust NPCs. Players have an exquisitely attuned sense for when the DM is pushing to gain their trust, and any player with even a little paranoia (which is most of them, IME) is going to run screaming in that situation. Instead, concentrate on making your NPCs cool and funny and memorable. Give them crazy accents, funky mannerisms, and bad-ass attitudes*.Chances are, if you do this well, your players will soon come to like some of your NPCs, because they're just so entertaining. That's your cue. You've gotten past the paranoia and established a bond; now build on it. Have the NPCs do favors for the party, and ask favors in return. Each interaction that doesn't result in the NPC betraying the party will develop trust. Eventually you'll have a firm bond.Just remember that if any of these NPCs ever does betray the party, all of the work you've put in will be instantly shot to hell and your players will be more paranoid than ever. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[size=-2]*But don't make them so bad-ass they take over the story. That's a whole different issue.[/size]</blockquote>

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