Hook, Tale and Sting

I'd like to start by referencing events that I wrote about earlier, associated with the post, Who is Responsible.  One of the players foolishly attempted to cast an unknown spell inside a Merchant's Guild, which ended in his being taken off to prison.  Things looked certainly dire; the scene can be read on the first resource post from the Senex Campaign.

While the scene did not play out well for the player, as a DM I had no intention of executing the player for a simple mistake, which was reasonably a matter of not clearly understanding the rules.  Unless a player is deliberately obtuse, I consider it my responsibility to rebuild the situation into one that the player can rise out of ... and so I contrived a court scene that would end with the player character, Tiberius, receiving his freedom.

My perspective is that player foolishness is usually an opportunity for further events, which can set up a twist ... or, to see it another way, a sting.

In many ways, Dungeon Mastering is a confidence game.  The way in which con artists used to describe the process of fleecing their mark gives us the terms we still use in storytelling and in role-playing games.  The con's mark is given a "hook;" the hook is followed with a "tale" that baits the hook, encouraging the mark to want something so badly that they're willing to expose themselves. When the con artist takes advantage of that exposure, it is called the "sting."

For example, you're a mark; and you want to be very, very rich.  Being rich, however, is something hard to accomplish, so you're always looking for an easier way. This is what makes you a mark: your willingness to look for shortcuts.

The hook is the demonstrate that a short cut exists.  And the tale is the way that its revealed that you, if you're smart enough, and willing enough to break a few rules, can take advantage of this short cut.  And when you do try to take advantage ... I sting you.

That's what the Nigerian Prince is all about.  It's what most phishing scams are built around.  It's the tale behind Amway and most pyramid schemes.  "Do this, it's really easy, just get your friends to join, and once they get their friends to join, and so on, you'll be rich!  And in the meantime buy these products wholesale so you can make money off them, too!"

People believe because they want to believe.  Because they are desperate to believe.  Because the idea of not believing they can be rich fills them with angst and sorrow.

Role-players are excellent marks, because they have deliberately put their blinders on for the sake of enjoying the fantasy and taking risks that they wouldn't ordinarily take as real people.  They don't need much of a hook or a tale ... and though they are often doubtful, now and then they can be sweetly and beautifully stung ~ though personally, I like to do it in a manner that enables a continuing, satisfying and steadily profitable experience for the players.  This post is to explain how.

Of course, it's always possible to find some hook that can be baited for the player, but if we take a situation like Tiberius getting himself arrested, that's not necessary.  The player is already good and hooked, because the player is at the NPC's mercy.

I invented Johann Mizer carefully, on certain tried-and-true principles.  First, he had to be an important enough merchant that his word would be recognized by the Judge of the Court and be good enough to exonerate Tiberius:

Johann Mizer [known at this time only as a 'Gentleman']: “Your honor. I was present at the dinner in the Merchant’s Hall when this man’s honor was astoundingly and insultingly impugned by the action of the Hall’s concierge. The very idea that this man could stand in a public place and prepare to throw a spell in such a manner is utterly ridiculous and fully fantastical. This man is a well-known figure in the business world in Graz, in Syria, and is in the employ of the Baron von Furstenfeld, an upstanding gentleman and one of the Electoral College of the Empire, your honor. His faithfulness to the crown, to the well-being of his fellow man and to God is indisputable. I demand that compensation be made for this unforgivable attack!”

First and foremost, all of this is a lie.  The player behind Tiberius knows it is, but who facing a prison term would say so?  Obviously, if Tiberius did say so, as DM I would throw him in prison and ask him to roll a new character (for being deliberately stupid).  Secondly, the lie is ornate, excessive and full of names and details that I can advantage because my world is based on the Real Earth.  This is south Bavaria in the 17th century; Graz is an important trading city, there is an Electoral College in the Holy Roman Empire and Furstenfeld was a legitimate name of nobility.

Moreover, the details here took advantage of a background I gave to the character before the game started.  I did not create the background with this purpose; I didn't know the player was going to get thrown in jail so quickly.  But once I did know, I searched the background to find what I could exploit.  So that is Key: use the player's background, if there is one, to create a hook.
For Mizer's lie is a second hook, in that it leaves the player to wonder, "Why is this stranger lying for me?"

Connecting Tiberius to Mizer, as someone Tiberius knew once upon a time, helps create the hook we're going to tell.  The tale is this: Mizer always liked Tiberius, Mizer is rich, Mizer has power, Mizer has Tiberius' best interests at heart ~ and concordantly, the party's best interests also.  The virtue of the tale is that it helps convince the player, "1) If Mizer likes me, he'll help me. 2) If he's rich, he can help me with money.  3) If he's powerful, he can connect me with other people who can help me. 4) And he'll do all this because he likes me."

To make this work, we've got to be subtle and not heavy handed.  Mizer will help, but not now, because he's busy, he has to go talk to really important people.  Meet him tomorrow at a reputable place so we can talk about stuff.

Mizer's lack of availability sells point (3), as does the fact that the judge believed Mizer.  The importance of the people Mizer meets helps sell point (2). A public place suggests he has nothing to hide and helps sell point (1).  And 1 + 2 + 3 helps sell point (4).  We can do all of that with so little.

The story in the past that I gave was that once, Tiberius' master sold Mizer a blind horse; Tiberius was present as a stable boy.  Of course he wouldn't have dared, as a boy, speak up; and the player accepts that immediately, when Mizer says,

Johann: “You sold me a blind horse! Well, the Baron did. I think that’s the last time I did anything very foolish. Have you had a decent meal? Do you have somewhere to stay?”

The words are chosen very carefully!  He brings up the horse; he exonerates Tiberius in it, and Tiberius naturally assumes this was because Tiberius was just a stable boy.  And Mizer seems very content about it, blaming himself.  What a good guy this Mizer is!  And generous, too ... the generosity following immediately after the concept of blame/self-blame.  Look at Tiberius' response:

Tiberius: I laugh uneasily at Johann’s small joke. “My jailors treated me remarkably well. Food, water, a place to think. All well and good, considering.” Tiberius informs Johann of his accommodations at The Pig. “If I might ask, what brings you to Dachau? Besides helping an old acquaintance out of an unfortunate scrape?”

Hook taken.  Tiberius reveals his abode without hesitation.  Ask yourself as a person: how quick are you to tell near strangers where you live?  Tiberius the player trusts Mizer already.  As a DM, it is my role to figure out a way to transform that trust into a good game experience.

Johann does not tell Tiberius where he lives; he gives his point of contact as the Market Hall, also called the Merchant's Hall.  And when the party does see Mizer the next morning, he's rushed and puts off their meeting to the beer garden.  This helps sell further that Mizer is too important to be interrupted, which the party buys hook, line and sinker (also a con artist's phrase - the "line" is another name for the tale and the "sinker" is another name for the sting).

Johann and I, the DM, are playing the same game.  I've fashioned Johann as a con artist to play off the vulnerability of Tiberius' arrest.  But the con I'm playing here as DM is not to take the player's money; it is not even to put the players into trouble.  Let's ask ourselves: what does Johann Mizer know about the players?

Well, he's heard what happened at the Market Hall with Tiberius, so he knows Tiberius is a spellcaster.  He talks to the guards and they tell him how the spellcaster came in with another man, who tried to ask about hiring mercenaries: Josef.  Mizer asks around and figures out that people have seen them both in the company of a very extroverted bard, who stays at The Pig ... and learns about the other two, Kazimir and Anshelm, through that connection.  He learns this group don't have jobs, they've been able to pay their way up until now, they don't seem to respect authority very much and they are constantly asking people about some sort of adventure they'd like to be on.  It's pretty much exhausting how often this group harasses others on that point.

This is how I want to think as a DM.  NOT about what I know about the party, but what an NPC knows ... from the way the party acts.  Parties tend to think they move through a world like ghosts; that no one is watching them on an everyday basis.  But that's not how it would be, right?  Player characters, with their armor, their cavalier attitude, their tendency to wander about without giving a care about things like responsibility, working, being concerned about others and so on, must leave a pretty large footprint as they wander around.  It's a good thing to remember.

So Johann thinks, "I'll give them an adventure."  And does.  But when he meets the party at the beer garden, he is careful not to say so directly:

DM: Mizer is there; he happily greets each one of you; introductions are made, and Mizer pleasantly insists that he buy the first round. The day did not begin too well for him; but an arrangement has been made and a silversmith is to be ousted from his rented property a few miles out of town, so that it will be put under Mizer’s ownership.

Anshelm: “This silversmith ... what’d he do?” I inquire after a moment, keeping my tone as neutral as possible.

Johann: “Oh nothing, I suppose. But it’s not his land, is it? I might have a look at his books, see if he’s worth having as a tenant ... but I’m thinking I’d like to turn the land over to cattle. There might be some trouble, depending on what sort of man he turns out to be - but I’ll send a group of hooligans if I must.”

Johann is generous again, he's apparently forthcoming as he talks about his "troubles" ... and he starts the ball rolling by inserting two words into his story: the word "silver" and the word "arrangement."

See?  Everything is absolutely legal, though the players wouldn't recognize legal if the face-planted into it (they don't care anyway, they only care that an illegality doesn't pursue them).  The key word is silver ... which, though not a single player makes a comment on the word for the rest of the adventure, I know as a DM that it hasn't been forgotten.

Anshelm takes the bait with his question ... and then shows himself to me that he's eager by telling me he's not eager.  A real Johann would identify the exact same message by the mere fact of Anshelm's question, picked out of everything else Johann says, accompanied by body language and the like.

In How to Run, I talked about how a magician guesses your card by holding the cards shown to you in a specific way that makes you pick the card the magician wants.  We think we're using our brains, that we're exercising our freedom of action ~ but the magician knows better.  The magician knows we're being manipulated.

Here is a real example of my doing that.  I want the player to ask the question that lets Johann answer with more information; the RIGHT information.  "Oh, I have this problem, I'm sure some bully boys can solve it."

Johann knows he's talking to bully boys.  The players also know they're bully boys ... but they think, somehow, that because Johann is a stranger, he doesn't already know this.  They assume that I, as DM, know it ... but surely, I'm playing Johann here, so I'm not acting on that information.

It is a weird sort of double-bluff, and to play it well takes practice and an awareness that this is what you're doing.  You're giving the NPC the information they're entitled to have; you're reasoning with yourself how the NPC knows it (in a way that you know you could explain the legitimacy of it if you had to) and you're giving the TALE to the players so they'll walk into the sting:

Delfig [to Johann]: “Why would there be trouble?” I ask rather innocently.

Johann [choosing to answer Anshelm]: “Oh, these country bumpkins, they think they have rights because they pay their money. They never understand that these shacks and flimsy waterwheels they slap together hardly substitute as privileges of land.”

Anshelm: I lean forward. “Yes, the folk ‘round these parts seem the petulant type. Have you had trouble before?”

See?  They haven't got the job yet and already I'm explaining how easy it will be.  It's a total lie. When the players get to the Meyer's homestead at the end of this tale, it is far from a "shack" and a "flimsy wheel."  It is a monument to hard work and maintenance.  But the players don't pick up on this even when they're there.  In fact, until they actually find that Herr Meyer is prepared to fight them, they suppose he's absolutely a country bumpkin, just as Johann says.  So the tale was set deep in their heads; wasn't even that hard.

So the players try to sell themselves to Johann, and he asks if they've tried their hand at collections; and the players make the connection and accept the job, and there we are: the players are off on an adventure to throw someone they don't know out of their house: for 25 g.p. up front and 100 g.p. when they do the job.  Big whup.  But the party is sure, like all parties are, that this is just the beginning of their association with Johann Mizer.

Very well.  Onto the sting.

They're taken out to the Meyer house and mill, five miles west of Dachau.  Before they see the house, or learn anything about it, they have a big conflab about what to do and how to do it, and how many weapons they'll take and armor and equipment and on and on.  I'm never clear about these scenes; me, I'd walk up to the house, explain to Meyer what I've been told, assure him if he doesn't leave that I'll be back with more people and that is a promise.

This is what I expected from the party.  This is what Johann expected.  He didn't say, "Do you want a job threatening a man and his family.  He said, "I might have a look at his books, see if he's worth having as a tenant ..." That doesn't sound very threatening.  But he also says right after, "I'll send a group of hooligans if I must."

Players will convince themselves of the most absurd agendas, even when the original suggestion is written in text.  It is worse when everything around the table is spoken.  One of the players at the Meyer Homestead suggested burning the house down.  We should ask ourselves: if Johann were to see this immaculate mill and farmhouse, would he want them burned down?

Johann wants to scare the silversmith.  That's all.  He doesn't actually own the property (though he'd like to).  He isn't known by the name "Johann Meyer" to the silversmith.  The party learns both these things ... as they realize they never were given written proof of their right to do anything at all.  In fact, the party bumbles around like a bunch of buffoons as they slowly get it into their heads that, for whatever reason, Johann is playing them for fools.

That's a sting.  And the party's reaction was priceless.  They weren't hurt at all, not really, but it certainly buried them in the situation and they certainly came out of it with their faces red.

But that was supposed to be another sting ... which, to be honest, I don't remember if I ever got to play in the campaign or not.  It's a major reason why I've decided to rewrite the campaign out; I've forgotten more about what happened than I remember.

When the players get back to Dachau, they find out very quickly, by overhearing two guards, that Johann Mizer is dead.  Which throws the party for a loop.

What they didn't realize at the time was that the party had never met Johann Mizer.  Instead, they had met a doppleganger pretending to be Johann Mizer.  And now, the guards were talking about the REAL Johann Mizer, not the fake one the party had met.  That is why Herr Meyer at the mill in the country had never heard of Mizer.  And it was why the party had been sent there. The dopplegangers knew about the farm; they knew about the vein of silver under the mill, and the hidden mine the players never discovered, and the potential for funding themselves in order to go on looking like rich merchants, while killing real merchants ... and ordering the death of innocent innkeepers.  They knew about it as something they'd learned while being dopplegangers.

But, sadly, none of that came out until much, much later.  And a large part of it never came out.  Mostly, in this case, because the party could not get its shit together; and partly because I played the hand much too large later in the mystery (though that was to try to get the party galvanized, which proved near impossible, as they continued to bumble around like buffoons), and partly because it was played online and the players lost the thread of what was happening.

It was supposed to be a really great sting; at the very least, it was a good hook and tale.

NPCs Lie

I want to say as a DM that there is little that frustrates me as much as role-players who must treat every encounter with excessive dramatic importance, that see every NPC like a pantomime villain or themselves as the center of the setting's universe.  Of course, this is trained into players, who are the center of the universe as far as most settings go.  It is no mystery for a player that the king of the country wants to meet with them personally, or that some powerful wizard has taken the time to choose this particular no account group of wanderers for the most important adventuring business imaginable.  The tropes surrounding role-playing are as anvilicious as they are common, particularly in that savvy players ~ most of all ~ come to expect the anvil to be dropped right on their heads, all the time.

So much that they can't help themselves from looking straight up at the DM, waiting for it.

This is a trial and a half if the goal is to run a nuanced, subtle campaign where the NPCs have their own lives, their own agendas, and couldn't care a whit for the party's involvement ... in fact, the party's involvement is often directly not desirable.  Yet with some parties, as the DM sets up the scene where the townspeople all appear to say, "Get out, you're not wanted here," we can count on the players to hear that with a *nudge nudge* *wink wink* no matter what we say or how we say it.

This is probably the hardest issue I have with experienced players.  It is a problem I never have with newcomers.  This tells me that it is a problem that is trained into players, most likely by badly designed adventures, supported by poorly written exposition to enable the most cliched of motivators.  The ever-present MacGuffin, for example, that we cling to as DMs because it's easy and players understand it.

All too often when we don't use a blunt instrument to put the adventure into the player's skulls, it just doesn't get there.

At the start of my online campaign in 2009, members of the party stepped out of the town of Dachau and into the nearby countryside.  Whereupon I described this simple scene:

DM: You find a small collection of eight cotter's shacks, cotters being landless people allowed to occupy the lord's land in exchange for their perpetual labor. This being Sunday, none are at work in the fields, but are instead commanded to not work at any activity.

Despite your efforts to remain hidden, your darker appearance against the white boughs is noticed rather quickly. Several men, who had been lounging and waiting for the sun to fall, rise now, grasping the nearest club like object to hand and stand staring at you distrustfully.

Here we have a perfectly reasonable reaction on the part of the cottagers.  This is their home.  It is Sunday and they are surrounded by their families.  Strangers show up, armoured and with weapons, in a place where no one with the money to buy armor has any reason to go.  Of course they're going to be distrustful!  Of course they're going to be sure they have hold of a club or two.  Being that its a party, there's no livery on these strangers, no indication that its the guard.  The party could be anyone!

Here is the party's response:

Anshelm [the thief]: "Ah, friend Delfig, perhaps we should join our compatriots back at the Pig? I suddenly have a thirst." Anshelm begins backing himself the way he came.

Delfig [the bard]: I sigh and hold up both hands to show peaceful intent, while smiling. I stage whisper to Anshelm "If you run, you're liable to bring them down upon you. Perhaps they can shed light on the burnt Inn..." I take a slow step forward and continue to show non-aggression. If they come at me like an ugly riot, I'm hightailing it outta there. Otherwise, I'd like to chat with them.

Anshelm: [chuckles] "I trust you're good with a rowdy crowd, or at least handy with your instrument," he whispers back.  He falls in behind Delfig.

Delfig:  "I hope I don't die finding out ..."

I think most readers would find nothing wrong with this ... but I am baffled.  I don't understand this certainty that a group of private farmers could be seen as the threat here ... except that it is played that way on endlessly bad television shows, where every small group of houses is a meth lab and every stranger is casually killed, butchered and disposed of in the local lime pit.

Nor can I blame these players.  Clearly, they've played in enough worlds where the DM also buys into this idea.  Everyone in the world is automatically a potential murderer, every group a lynch mob.  But then, this is the murder/hobo mentality.

Murder/hobos are, unquestionably, a problem ~ but not because they kill things.  It is this pervasive paranoia that underlies the expectation that everyone else in the world is also a murder/hobo, and must be killed first.  Or treated with at a distance.  It puts the DM in the position of having to put every bit of exposition into the mouth of someone whom the party can't kill; which is tiresome.

Am I not at fault myself, however?  Look at my response:

DM: They seem to have no inclination to riot. All told, there are five men, and behind them two women. One of the women is holding a rusty knife about ten inches long (she's not bad looking, by the way), the other some kind of hoe. The men are holding, from left to right, a cherry tree branch, a grain flail, a hand scythe, a wooden stool and an eighteen-inch piece of stone that might have been used for sharpening.

The runt of the group, being five-foot-three, the one with the scythe, asks menacingly, "What do you want, stranger?"

That certainly looks like I am feeding the party's paranoia!  That one woman has rusty knife.  That guy with the scythe is "menacing."  Damn.  The party is in real trouble, now ...

Seriously?

Are there readers out there who really think that these two leveled players couldn't carve up this group of poverty stricken cottagers for breakfast?  Yeah, that's a rusty knife.  It would probably break the moment it came in contact with a player's dagger.  And that menacing guy?  He's likely scared out of his mind.  Who is kidding who?

But, of course, the players don't see that.

Anshelm: "This is your chance to shine, Delfig."

Delfig: I smile as broadly and winningly as I can. "Good friends, we are just out for a Sunday stroll to take in the lovely country. We mean you no harm and in fact, as I am a musician, I would be happy to play for you, should you be so kind." I keep my hands outstretched, but I'm also waiting to see if they're going to remove my head from my neck.

If they're agreeable, I'll get my lyre out and settle down for a bit of music and dance.  Yea, or time to die ... LOL.

And so the cottagers relax.  There's no need to roll any dice.  It's suddenly clear.  This is nothing but a down-on-his-luck bard, probably one who can't talk his way through the town gate, hoping to get a free meal.  And, as it happens, since Delfig is at least good enough with a lyre to have a level (most people are not a leveled anything), the players do get a free meal.  These are Lutherans and it is the sabbath; charity is a thing, so long as the strangers are not, you know, murder/hobos.

Naturally, during dinner, this is a terrific opportunity to start an adventure. Not with a king in a palace, talking to a bunch of first levels, but an ordinary person talking one-to-one with players, as ordinary people do.

Problem is, most players (and DMs) have no idea how ordinary people talk.  Which is strange to me, because we are surrounded by ordinary people talking all the time.

For example:  you go to your Father's Day dinner and your Uncle Bob shows up.  And while he's there, he goes on some tear about, oh, something he doesn't like, shouting that it's a great wrong and that something ought to be done about it, and would be if those bastards in the capital ever did anything about it, which they won't, because they were all went to college or they're all wet behind the ears or they're book smart but not street smart, or whatever argument sounds most familiar coming out of Uncle Bob.  We've all been there.  We've heard it a thousand times.

So, you're a player character and you're sitting down to dinner with a bunch of cottagers ~ which, you'll remember, I described as landless people allowed to occupy the lord's land in exchange for their perpetual labor.  They are practically slaves. They have much more to be disgruntled about than poor Uncle Bob and they have a lot less power besides.  They're more ignorant than Uncle Bob, too, though that is hard to imagine.  These people can't read; they have no newspapers; they get rumours at best, mostly wrong, mostly tenth hand and as accurate as playing telephone.  So just imagine for a moment what sort of dinner conversation you're going to get.

To set this up, I have to add that the world is taking place in 1650.  It is just 18 months after the end of the 30 Years War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.  Bavaria, which contains the town of Dachau, was right in the heart of that.

The speaker here is Emmanuel [which sounds more German-Medieval than Bob].  He's just one of many cotter present, but he's the most talkative.  The party asks him about a nearby blockhouse that was ~ for the party ~ mysteriously burnt some months ago, and what the town knows about it.  That's when Emmanuel gets his back up:

DM: “The town knows nothing about it. They’ve been told Jan and his wife were sympathizers who gave comfort to Protestants during the war. They were innkeepers! They gave comfort to whomever knocked on the door!”

His wife Suzanne tries to soothe him but he won’t have it.

“It’s the war that’s done this,” Emmanuel says. “I’m naught but a cotter, and I’ve naught to do but tend the lord’s sheep and find what food I can, but I can say there’s an evil loose on the land. It’s these men taking pay for doing nothing. My father could remember when the men who owned and worked the land would rise in war to defend it—but those days are gone, and but in one generation. Now it’s the soldier, always the soldier, fighters with no master but the paymaster, who defend not the town but the purse of the town. Hired to fight the Protestants and now kept in hire to fight innocent innkeepers and their wives!”

Emmanuel stands up, needing more room to continue to rant.

“And who holds the purse? The merchants, that’s who! None of them landowners, none of them with a stake in this town nor any town, who gather their things with them whenever they wish to steal from us before moving on to steal from someone else. It’s they who dictate to the army, its they who pay the soldiers and feed the soldiers. If you go into the town, and you look in the town hall, do you know what you’ll find? There’s a notice there asking for more soldiers! For what I ask you? For the good of the peace? Not at all! For the good of destroying the peace, that’s what, to make more monsters to hulk out from the town and pillage the gentle folk here! God, I beg you, put an end to it! Deliver us from these money-loving sinners!”

This is a great opportunity to paint pictures.  The most important one being, even though the war is over, there are still catholics and protestants fighting.  Quietly, yes, but persecuting innocent people.  And the town of Dachau is turning a blind eye.  There's adventure in that: learning who is committing the crimes, how they're organized, what powers might be behind it, and so on.  But these three keys of the speech above are ALL that is reliable about Emmanuel's speech.  I mean, consider the source.

The players don't.  Being good, savvy D&D players, they take Emmanuel at his word.  Can you guess why?

Anshelm: "You speak boldly, friend Emmanuel. I'm not so sure we can put an end to what you describe on our own. We might at best cause them annoyance, like flies on horses' hides. But even a small service might give you some satisfaction...what other depredations are the soldiery responsible for?"

Delfig: I listen quietly to Emmanuel's speech and after he's finished, I'll strum up a quick note on my lyre and nod. "Indeed, it is often the common folk who are left to bear the burdens and depredations of those who hold the purse. Certainly the wars of late have left most of the common man grasping for what little was left by the mercenaries.  Tell me, were all the town leaders of Dachau united in this or is there unrest between the landowners and the merchants?" ... and as a quick aside, I'll ask whose lands we are currently sitting on.

For people who make such hay out of role-playing, they're certainly ready to equate the words of every peasant as though they came straight from the DM.  They can hear me perfectly clearly, telling them that I want them to go on an adventure to fight against the merchants, the soldiers, the town hall and everyone else in Dachau.  Because those were my exact words ... well, Emmanuel's exact words, but what's the difference?

DM: You receive the answer that certainly, the town fathers were unanimously united in this, as they all expected to increase their wealth. Those who were first opposed were won over with benefices and grants of land, and have become the loudest proponents.

You are on the land of the Baron Egbert Wittelsbach von Asper, a name you recognize as part of the family controlling much of the territory around Dachau.

Anshelm: Do we know much about the Baron von Asper beyond his name?  I ask if any others have expressed discontent.  If so, who and how many?  And is any of the town fathers particularly notorious for committing these injustices?

Delfig: nods at Anshelm's question and waits for an answer, strumming idly on his lyre.

And I am in deep, deep trouble as a DM.

Consider.  First of all, Emmanuel's answer is a complete fabrication.  He has no idea what the town fathers do from one minute to the next, much less what the actually expected to have increase anything about their lives.  Emmanuel is spewing Uncle Bob's bullshit.  But Emmanuel doesn't know that's what it is, because this is what this poor cotter wants to believe; this bitterness is what gets him through the day as he tears his body apart digging into the earth and shortening his life every season.

And as far as whose land are they on, well, it's got to be somebody's land.  And since they're within half a mile of Dachau, a town of more than 2,000 people, it's bound to be someone important.  Or at least sounds important.  The players don't know the Baron from the next guy, but surely the Baron has to be involved in this massive conspiracy to destroy this poor couple of innkeepers: everyone is.

Look at Anshelm's questions, as he builds the conspiracy theory in his own head.  And like McCarthy, he's already demanding names, building a case, looking to start indicting suspects ... to a room full of disgruntled, impoverished, very badly informed Uncle Bobs who are certainly ready to name names, picking anyone whom they happen to dislike most heartily, probably because the individual raised their rents (paid in labor) last year.  As far as "role-playing" is concerned, I have no choice but to play it straight, to pour out the ire against the noble class to the nth degree, which the players eat it up with a spoon.  But what gets accomplished?

Nothing.  These are 1st level characters.  They're certainly high enough level to track down a group of hooligans with a taste for arson, as the adventure I conceived was actually about ... but having created the bugbear of the whole town in their heads, based on their willingness to suppose that there's no way that the DM would have an NPC be ignorant and mis-informed, there's absolutely no way the players are going to pursue this.  They're not high enough level for that!

I got into trouble like this often when I started running online.  I had never met players so willing to accept my word as gospel, no matter what NPC spoke those words.  But then, I had been out of gaming with strangers for almost 20 years.  The party I ran throughout the 2000s were mostly newcomers, or with less than a few years' experience.  When I began to run online, I found myself running very experienced players again ... and found myself faced with having to adjust my taste for subtlety quite a bit.

Which brings me to the advice here.  Unless we're ready to handle the consequences, we can't be subtle.  Chances are you see the potential for it, and you're not wrong there ... but players have to be trained to operate in a subtle world.  If we don't give them the straight up, heavy-handed world they're used to getting, they'll assume that's what we're doing anyway.  For them, adjusting things like exposition and delivering the adventure so that these are subtle things is like changing the game's rules.  That rule change has to be explained.  And then the players have to be given time to adjust to that change in rules.

Your best tactic ~ and I'm sorry, this isn't going to be popular ~ is to back off on the role-playing for a bit. Not altogether, and not permanently.  Just until an adjustment is made.

Today, I could easily adjust the delivery of the adventure above just by couching Emmanuel's rhetoric by skipping the role-playing language.  "The cotter is plainly full of it, he's just angry and bitter and even though he says all these things, it is plain that he doesn't know what he's talking about.  The only things you can be really sure of is that the inn was probably burned down by someone who hasn't gotten past their hatred for Protestants."

And that's it.  Immediately, the guilty party diminishes a great deal in the player's heads; they don't see themselves has fighting the whole town.  They get that Emmanuel isn't Mr. Expert here.  He's not the DM.  He's just a guy giving a rumour.

It's funny, because the party prior to this kept asking me again and again if they had heard any rumours about things that had been going on around Dachau ... but when I delivered one, exactly in the way that rumours are really given by people, in real life, full of falsehood and nonsense, the players did not recognize it for what it was.  They assumed it was ME, the DM, telling them what to do.

As DMs, it takes time to build paths of communication with a party so that they understand that we're just giving information, we're not giving orders.  It takes time to play the game on the level that someone holding a weapon is often more afraid than murderous.  Or that when NPCs shout about injustice, that might be based on false ideas.  Or that just because the NPC says it doesn't mean the streets are full of bugbears.

DMs, speaking on behalf of NPCs, must be true to the NPC, not the DM.  The NPC doesn't know what I know.  The NPC's motivations are not my motivations.  The NPC isn't running the game, and doesn't have all the answers.  NPCs lie.

No matter how much they sound like me.


UPDATE:

Looking over the content surrounding the scene above, I realize I left something out of the above discussion ~ I simply forgot about it (a circumstance I am starting to fix, so it doesn't happen again).

I set the seeds for the player's misunderstanding in one other way, that deserves telling.  Just before meeting Emmanuel and the Cotters, the players had met a farmer.  This farmer told his own version of the story about the burnt Inn, the Innkeeper Jan and his wife.  Here's how that went:

Farmer: "Ya. Those town father swines. You see that?” He points. “That Inn’s been there since the year 1112. Those hanging there are the innkeeper and his wife. His father and his father’s father for twenty four generations have tended that, and the town’s murdered them. They say the Inn’s a danger to the town. They say that marauders might use the Inn to attack the town. They say that, ya. It’s not that that threatens them. No, they want that we should pass through the town gates and pay our silver to drink there. They warned Jan, and Jan warned them. And now Jan’s hanging there. It’s not right."

The players CAN'T be blamed for jumping to the conclusion they did ... and in case it wasn't understood, that was definitely my fault.  But as I have tried to explain, players are too willing to believe everything they hear, regardless of the source.  The farmer is just as likely as the cotters to be wrong about what happened here.  It is the same rumour, spread from country person to country person.

It's the DM's responsibility with a new party, presented with this sort of exposition (where we are deliberately lying to the players) to warn them that the D&D world can be just as duplicitous as the real world.  And help them navigate that reality.  So that the "story" players hear isn't so easily assumed to be the one the DM wants the players to believe.