Reinterpreting in Our Favour

In this post, I'll be discussing some communication issues that arose with events of the Senex Campaign of March 31, 2009.  For this post, I'll be using the original, unedited comments, since they feature a scattering of miscommunication, misunderstandings and presumptive player behaviour, all of which I will reduce or cut out of the official campaign rewrite.

[Let me pause first and say that I trust that moving chronologically forward with each one of these posts, rather than jumping from place to place and time to time in the campaign, continues to provide a satisfying experience for the reader.  That said, let's begin]

When we join the players, Tiberius and Anshelm are moving over the roofs of Dachau, which they have used to get around the town guards, who are pushing people off the streets in accordance with the declaration of martial law over the town by the town council.  It has been made clear with many references that the guards are implacable, behaving in a brutal manner towards citizens, and that the whole town is affected.

Much of what follows should be ascribed to players being players ~ that is, that certain player types tend to adopt a perception that because they are players, the circumstances that apply to NPCs don't apply to them.

After climbing down to the street, the pair, led by a guide, move along a narrow, empty alley, eight feet wide.  They have drawn their weapons.  While moving down the alley, I instructed Tiberius to roll a d6, without explaining why.  This is my standard practice.  The die in this case was to see if the party was surprised; a 1 or a 2 would have indicated this.  By keeping the reason for the die from the players, it helps build up tension.  Also, because the reason for the die has not been revealed, it is harder for the player to tell if the best result would be a high one or a low one.  Given that we are playing online, that is in my favor.  In a table game, where  often I won't visually confirm a player's roll, this also helps to encourage honesty.

Tiberius rolled a 1, indicating surprise.  I answered with this description:

DM: Tiberius is pulling up the rear (being the second one to say he's following Udo), so he is nearest to the door when it opens. Two watchmen (privately paid city guards) in uniforms come tumbling out of a door, wishing persons inside the house well before closing the door and suddenly being face to face with the fighter/mage.

They are not surprised.  Which is to say, they are surprised, as anyone would have to be, but they are not AS surprised as Tiberius and the others.

For a moment both groups stand in the swirling wind and gawk at one another.

Whereupon the guards [sic, should be watchmen] poise [sic, should be point] their weapons (they are carrying fauchards ... 8 foot polearms) and demand to know who you are and your business.

At that point you cease to be surprised.

Let's break this down, which the players did not do and which I did not think I needed to do that day; which caused me to be somewhat peevish, as will be seen.

The party [Udo the guide, Anshelm the thief and Tiberius the fighter/mage] are running down a narrow street in order.  The watchmen come out a side door, BETWEEN Tiberius and Anshelm.  Unfortunately, I said, "nearest to Tiberius" and this was not clear to the players.  I thought it was clear, because of the narrowness of the alley, and because I used the word "tumbling" to describe the watchmen coming out of the door.  Moreover, I had Tiberius roll the surprise dice, and at no time did I suggest that the watchmen were behind the party.  Still, yes, I could have been clearer.  Sometimes in the moment, as we dump a bunch of information on the party, we make simple mistakes.  We call them guards instead of watchmen, we use a word like poise to describe their weapons rather than pose or point.  Mis-speaking is everyday for a DM and it does create problems.

Note, however, that I have clearly stated that the watchmen are face-to-face with the players.  This, surprisingly, can be viewed in different ways by different people.  Some players will think this means, "We are facing each other, distance uncertain."  Others will understand, in a narrow alley, with watchmen tumbling out of a door, in a cramped space, face-to-face means within very close proximity.  I could have said nose-to-nose, but I didn't actually mean to put the two parties that close to one another.  Yet again, yes, I could have said, "You are standing three feet apart."  Remember that distances measured in numbers are always clearest.

I'll take a moment here, however, and explain that players ALWAYS interpret any vagueness in their favor.  If I were to say, I surprised my father as he came out of the bathroom and we were standing face-to-face, you would know instantly that I meant we were very close to each other.  Inside a game, however, players will reach for straws to improve their situation: "face-to-face" is reinterpreted as "facing," which is almost the same thing but really isn't.  The former is defined as, "the people involved being close together and looking directly at each other," whereas the latter is defined as, "have the face pointing in a specific direction."

Having a definite understanding of language as a DM can be a drawback; we can choose very specific words to describe specifically what we mean, but those words can be misinterpreted by casual listeners right out of our intention.  This can make clarity difficult, when the language itself is turned in favor of the player or in favor of the DM.  That is why numbers are usually best; and why running a combat, as I did with this post, is easier when everyone is represented physically by miniatures or images, then when we rely on description.

The description above ends with saying the players are no longer surprised.  It does NOT say that they are free to take an action.  I left the comment open, expecting to receive questions as the players assessed their position and possibly sought to clarify any misunderstandings.  That is not what these players did.  Instead, they assumed that the words, "You cease to be surprised" meant, "Feel free to act as you will."

Again, as a DM, I presumed that players familiar with D&D had heard of, or had some experience with, Initiative.  Who moves first has been part of role-playing games since the invention of games; it was called "initiative" in the Chain Mail rules of 1974.  However, without expressly stating that initiative is a factor in the game's behaviour, players will interpret the situation to suit themselves ~ and as a DM you have to be on top of that.

Let's look at the player's response:

Tiberius: Tiberius takes a moment to recover from his surprise before identifying himself and his companions and explaining the nature of their task. He tells the guards [sic, he calls them that because I did] that he is delivering a message to Herr Mizer, a merchant who lives in the quarter.

Anshelm: Anshelm, well aware he's not at all a charmer, holds his tongue.

Very well, Anshelm merely supposes that a parley has developed and does not actually commit to anything.  Tiberius, as I said, assumes he has initiative and begins to explain the party's intentions for being here, in this alley, in a town that is under martial law, without an armed city escort.  With his weapon drawn, and Anselm as well.

Point in fact, though we should have rolled initiative, as a DM I just went with it and let the players drive the scene.  I don't recommend it as a habit, but flexibility has its place.  In this case, I was flexible because we were playing online and ret-conning anything is a bigger hassle than it is at a table.

Chances are that both players have totally forgotten this last detail.  In real life, if you had a sword in your hand, and you met a watchman, you would be really, really conscious of the weapon.  You would sheathe it before you did anything!  Tiberius is clearly oblivious.  I was myself, for a few minutes, until I remembered.  In part, that was because we were playing by posted comments, and several hours had passed between drawing weapons and meeting the watchmen, but I've had similar things happen at a table many times.  Fact is, with everything discussed in words, sometimes players and DMs just forget.  There are a lot of details and that's an easy thing.

I'm more concerned with the nature of Tiberius' arguments and its effect on the watchmen. Everything Tiberius says is perfectly true ~ but from the watchmen's perspective, it sounds ridiculous.  If they have this message, then where is their escort?  How have they gotten this far without one?  There are city guardsmen all over the streets.  As the watchmen live around here, the party are recognizably strangers, because they don't.  So true or not, the claim is highly suspect.

As well, during a city-wide crackdown, there are always lots and lots of people who have all sorts of really, really good and special reasons for why they should not be held to the standard of everyone else!  Guards and watchmen call these people, "troublemakers," as in they make trouble for the armed forces to do their jobs.  In a time before the last century, the best way to deal with a troublemaker was to hit them until they fell silent, unconscious or dead.  In the middle of a city-wide crackdown, who's going to know who killed whom?

It can be enormously hard to get this across to a player, who thinks everything can be solved with a really strong and meaningful discussion, rather than having to resort to all the weapons we all have in our hands. I tried to do so:

DM: Eventually, Tiberius, I'm going to convince you that the powers that be do not care about your personal problems. These are merchant-paid guardsmen in the merchant's quarter who do not recognize you, not as an employee of any member of the Guild or as anyone with the right to be where you are right now.

This was ignored (perhaps because it was peevish, I don't know).  This was about the fifth example of players in the campaign assuming that they could explain their behaviour in terms of "I need this" and "I want that," and I was getting somewhat sore in the face of non-player characters who had absolutely no reason whatsoever to give a rat's ass what the player's needs were.

I recognize that for many players, and DMs, this is called "role-playing."  The idea that the player should always be entitled to talk their way past any problem ... and it is presumed by a lot of DMs that if a player does an amazing job of coming up with a great, terrific story, and spews it with really spectacular aplomb, then the DM is absolutely beholden to the player to recognize that performance and reward it with the obstacle being removed, the player's wealth or experience being increased, as that's the "game" being played at many a table across this wonderful RPG world.  Impress the other players, impress the DM, get everyone laughing or everyone applauding, and the world shall open up to thee, O Mighty Player.

Whereas I think, hm, this watchman likes his job, likes his position, doesn't know this player, does know how black the face of his supervisor gets and worse, has no actual knowledge of what actual evil these players may be pursuing.  So, yeah, no, we don't believe your story.  Especially if it's grandiose enough to make a table of players woot and cheer.

As a DM, I a real prick that way.  I don't think players should be able to talk themselves out of things, where they themselves are already talking good and loud with the decisions they've made up to now, the weapons they're carrying, the place they've decided to intrude upon and the guide they've blindly hired.

The watchmen tell them flat out:

First Guard [sic]: "Oh yeah? Then why ain't we seen you before?"

Second Guard [sic]: "Sounds like a looter to me."

DM: Tiberius, roll a d6.

Tiberius: Rolled a 3.

"Earlier today I had a chunk of plaster thrown at me. Forgive me if I'm a little cautious."

Tiberius tells that guards [sic] that he has legitimate papers, and if they will give him a moment to get them out of his pack, he will sheathe his sword and produce them with haste.

[damn it; see how you say "guard" one time when you mean watchman and the whole thing just goes straight to a dumpster?]

Again, I don't explain the purpose of the die roll.  In this case, I'm asking Tiberius to roll initiative with the watchman, who intends to attack. Again, Tiberius is oblivious.  He ignores my suggestion that no one cares; he ignores, or simply washes over, the relevance of the die roll he's just made; and he ignores the watchman's question ... and then effectively repeats his story, only now he wants something out of his backpack.

[wait a minute; what is a messenger with legitimate papers doing with an adventurer's travelling backpack?]

Look at those words: "If they will give him a moment ... he will sheathe his sword ..."

Apart from a compulsion to go off on a tear about players who insist on referring to their characters in the third person, consider the situation.  You are facing a watchman who is paid to keep the peace on the streets, with a sword in your hand, and your argument is that you will put the sword down IF they consent to letting you get "papers" out of your backpack.

How come these "legitimate papers" are not carried inside your doublet, or up your sleeve, as all messengers used to carry them?

How many people in the history of these watchmen have tried to get things out of a backpack?  In a world where magic items exist?  Of extremely powerful potential?

Imagine a cop today consenting to your holding a knife on him, with the potential that you're going to pull a gun out of your backpack.  Now replace "gun" with "item of unknown and potentially absolute power."

Tiberius was perfectly capable of imagining such a cop.  I am not.

I come back to what I was saying earlier about players reinterpreting situations in their favour.  These aren't modern cops, these are 14th century watchmen.  They're not even actual guards.  We are way, way smarter than these guys.  We can totally talk ourselves out of this.  Even if our "legitimate papers" are merely a pass that exempts us from paying tolls on roads within the Duchy of Bavaria.  These papers have no bearing on anything to do with what's going on in Dachau, or exempting anyone from the authority of watchmen or guards.  As well, Tiberius was arrested once before, and he had the papers on him then.  This is nothing more than a case of a player trying to make reality fit his preconception, as players will often try to do.

So I explained,

DM: The guards thrust at you, but you have initiative. You have three seconds...so not enough time for a spell.

And 18 minutes later received this answer:

Anshelm: is it even worth trying to get them to listen or are we engaged at this point?

That, for me, is a head scratcher.  I look at that and I see a player being staggeringly obtuse.  I recognize that a lot of other DMs would see this from Anshelm's point of view:  "Why are these uniformed, armed fellows so unwilling to listen to our very legitimate story?  Why can't they see that we're just innocents here, that we're players, for heaven's sake, with the whole world revolving around us and important things to do and important places to go!  We don't have time for a wandering encounter!  Damn.  This is really, really unfair of these fellows not to talk to us like we're honest and upstanding persons of such importance."

This, I find, tends to describe many a player's perception after playing years of story campaigns, where they are indeed the protagonists.  It's very hard for such players to understand that the world possesses people who aren't part of the story, who happen to be here, who have their own narrative, and are viewing the situation strictly from their own point-of-view.  They haven't got a script.  They don't know the player's story so far.

They have no idea what the hell Tiberius is talking about when he babbles earlier, "Earlier today I had a chunk of plaster thrown at me."  Was that supposed to encourage empathy?  Because it sounds like Tiberius assumed these watchmen would know everything about the campaign so far that I know.

Let's go a little further with this, as we start the fight ~ the first honest fight of the campaign:

DM: They've pretty much decided to engage you. Can't say at this point whether or not they intend to fight to subdue yet, but that is probably their intent.

Tiberius: Tiberius will move a safe distance away with Anshelm between him and the guards [sic]. Once that course of action is taken, he will cast Charm Person at one of the guards.

[note: I don't use "subdue" any more; I've cast it out as a combat option]

Again, we're back to the dimensions of the alley, the proximity between Tiberius and the watchmen, the notion in the player's mind that "a safe distance" is something that can be obtained just by stating that they want it and the totally ridiculous notion that a watchman is going to let the fighter/mage wander up the alley so that he can turn and throw a spell.

Honestly!  These players think that everyone who has grown up in a world of magic are just dense as posts.

I want to come back to this answer from Tiberius, but first I'll quote my response from the campaign nine years ago:

DM: This is impossible in the space of three seconds. I just finished telling you that you do not have time for a spell. You are being attacked by two persons with 8' polearms. You cannot "move to a safe distance"--there's no such thing. You have time to defend yourself or be cut to pieces.

To expand a little, I was using 6 second rounds at the time, which permitted just three seconds of acting on the player's part.  You could run as far as you could expect in three seconds, or swing your sword maybe once, or shout out as many words as three seconds allowed.

In a less turn-based ideal, we can think of those three seconds as being intermeshed with the enemy's three seconds.  We can see the "turn" as merely an expression of the player's crucial split-second of effect happening moment's before that of the opponent ... so that with initiative, the combatant's crash together, both swing, and the player's swing happens to connect the tiniest bit before the opponent's swing does ... but the action, represented by the game, is utterly spontaneous.  And as the combat is resolved, the DM is tasked with the responsibility of keeping the dichotomy between game structure and perceived reality in a tandem balance.

This helps in judging if a player can skip away because they happen to have initiative.  In terms of the turn-based game play, this is represented by the player moving such a distance away, and then the enemy moves and "catches up."  In the perceived reality of game representation, however, what happens is that the player starts to flee; then the enemy starts to pursue.  Then both bodies, with the player having the initiative, turn in microsecond increments towards some distance further up the street; and then both are moving to the final destination; then the player's momentum ceases; and then the enemy's attack falls on the player.

OR, the enemy's pole arm starts to thrust, the player with the initiative starts to run, the enemy's blow comes closer to landing; the player falls back; the player gives up their initiative by choosing to run rather than fight; and the enemy rolls their attack.

And so on.  Players, however, have a tendency to think that game reality matches exactly the game's necessary turn-based structure ... which is utterly crazy on the face of it.  But again, always remember, it is in the player's interest to interpret everything that is said or presented in the player's favour, even if this means changing words, spacial relationships, ignoring NPC or DM statements, skipping over well-established rules, or anything else that balances control a little bit more against the perceived unfairness of a game setting that does not hand over everything for free.  Role-playing, in the sense of impressing a DM, or getting the other players to laugh and applaud, is just another form of doing that.  In fact, it has become THE form, since much of the game's culture has fled to that perception of the game's purpose.

Let me bring us back to Tiberius' last statement:

"Tiberius will move a safe distance away with Anshelm between him and the guards. Once that course of action is taken, he will cast Charm Person at one of the guards."

Again, it has been totally missed that the watchmen are between him and Anshelm.  That is on me.  I did not restate it, and I should have.  But in the larger point, even if he and Anshelm were standing side-by-side, it is assumed by Tiberius that this is possible.

It is a trope consistently accepted by the game community ~ but I suggest that you, dear reader, give it a try.  Take three of your friends out to a field.  Take sides, like two very short scrimmage lines ~ call it AB facing CD.  C faces A and D faces B.

Now, imagine that you're rushing for each other with the intention of wrestling or hitting each other with foam bats.  The D&D trope argues that A blocks C and D together, so that B can run behind A and have time to throw a spell.

Good luck.

Yet DMs will constantly let players do this, out of "fairness."  Mages, even when they are also fighters, shouldn't have to fight, just because they happen to be in a situation where fighting is, well, unavoidable.  In this case, the watchmen have 8 foot polearms; a weapon used because it's really good against enemies that try to run away.

But no, I'm not done yet.  Note how Tiberius assumes the course of action will be accepted; and not satisfied to tell me what he's doing this round, he decides to tell me what he's going to do next round.

As a DM, if your eyes are open, you're going to see players try to do this a lot.  It is a tactic, whether or not the player consciously knows it ~ sometimes, as humans, we do a thing repeatedly because it's worked for us in the past, without understanding why it's worked.  It is designed to get us in the head space of partially setting up the player to do exactly what they've planned.

DMs handle a lot of information coming from a lot of directions in a relatively short time.  It is human instinct to grab at things in moments of stress that seem defined, organized and determined ... and so, instinctively, we rack it into the slot in our brain that says, "problem already solved," and forget that, in fact, the player hasn't even resolved the actions of this round, much less the next one.

But that helps us resolve the actions of this round in favour of that slotted solved problem ~ and that's what makes us skip over the illogic of running behind player A, to manage player C and D alone ... we make it make sense in our heads because it makes sense in the players heads, and hell, we can't manage everything here right all the time.  So we'll just let that one go.  Sure, C & D attack A, and B can throw a spell next round.

These are all things to keep in mind.  The game is very, very fuzzy.  Try to reduce the fuzziness by resorting to numbers, not words.  Try to emphasize the players' position with relation to the enemy more than once.  Remind the players of their status, such as holding weapons or wearing armor, even if this is more and more information you need to keep in your mind.  Rely on the players NOT to help, because helping here does not serve their needs ... and recognize that, for the most part, this reinterpretation of descriptions, events, facts, reason, whatever, are natural human instinct.  We are built to ignore facts that do not fit our interpretation of events.  It's a large part of what makes it possible for us to do brave things, or carry on a war, or risk ourselves to help strangers, or a hundred other dangerous things.

Don't blame the player for this re-interpretation (though, like me, you probably will).  The more important thing is to remain conscious of it, to combat it, to make strategies that force the player to accept ALL the circumstances, not just those convenient for the player.

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.