building DM trust without having to spoil the game

[Satinavian]

If I've made it abundantly clear that they can walk away though and they don't do I just stop being real? Do Npcs just "turn off" or go on pause?
That's a video game. That's not a table top rpg

How has that anything to do with what i wrote ?

[Rhedyn]

That is not cause and effect. I have played in (and run) many successful games where the PCs only touched on the tip of the iceberg of the world. Heck, I expect any one of us only touches the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in this world (Worst. Game. Ever. BTW.).

No, there are clearly other factors involved that added up to create "thus, it ended badly". If you can expound upon those, it might be really helpful for the OP, and to the rest of us.

Sadly, I'm too senile to remember if I ever knew what those other factors were in the complex games that failed. Other than throwing players straight into the deep end, without calibrating investigation Q&A via one-shots, that is.

It has more to do with humility and self awareness.

Understanding that, as a DM, you are probably not a professional author, and that your story and plot, without the players or the game helping, is merely passable.

Your players will need your full efforts for the game to be fun. Spending tons of energy on complicated subplots the players never even scratch the surface can trick you in thinking your world is fleshed out when it seems really thin to the players.

Like for the OP:
What was the name of last bar maid they interacted with? She's a more important character to the party than a secret spy master the party will never meet, regardless of how much that spy master may be influencing the party. If the party doesn't know about him, his story and tragic backstory that sent him down the path of evil matters far less than the Bar maid having a leaky roof at home causing her to work extra shifts at the inn and maybe get some big tips from wealthy adventures to pay for little Timmy's cough tonic.

Your efforts should be on things the party interacts with so that your time investment can match the appreciation you get.
Your players wouldn't mind plots coming after them seemingly at random if they felt like your world was fleshed out. Your efforts are invisible, so the players will naturally assume it's all BS.

Much of DMing is creating the illusion that everything has been planned for while not actually planning for everything. Players need to think your world is rich and storied while most of the real work is only on the narrow part of the world the PCs work with.

What was the layout of the last town the PCs visited? Do you even have a general layout? A population estimate? What goods and trade keep that town afloat? Is the Mayor greedy or a good ruler? Does he need help?
These "unimportant" details affect the party more than a list of names the party's invisible tail has because the tail wants to some day take revenge on everyone on the list and he needs to earn his employer's trust to do that, but the employer hates the party because they let his half brother die from a peasant cou that the party helped start because the brother was corrupt but the tail likes the party because that brother was on his list.
None of those details actually matter because the party has no way to interact with them nor will they shape any element of the town they are visiting.

[Yerok LliGcam]

The problem with those two examples is not what happens but how it is presented. I really don't know how you dealt with it, so I can't tell you did wrong or you did right, but I think a couple comments are in order.

No, you shouldn't tell your players "hey, these thugs are attacking you because you messed with the wrong guy." But, hey, the thugs themselves are the perfect people to say exactly that. They could say that and drop the name of the guy, or have something that easily links them to him.

It is the same with the local lord. Were the players aware that there are drugs in the world for that? Did they have someone they could go and ask? Or was it just yet one more of the many things that don't make sense and the players don't even know where to begin investigating from?

Open worlds are a lot of fun if the players have the necessary tools and information to figure out what's going on and interact with it. Otherwise it's just frustrating. Some people will require more knowledge and tools, some others will require less. But it is your task as a game master to ensure that they've got what they need.

Alternatively, the problem might simply be that your players do not enjoy open worlds. In this case, the best option is to talk about expectations and find something that is fun for everyone.

I totally agree i can't just jump on them and not explain why.

the thugs showing up i leave clues on the bodies, or if they're more brutes that talk i have them do so.

the drugs i had them notice that the guards would now and then drink from this drink that made them jerk, (its addictive) and they started to go down that path and learn more.

i dunno... the more i read these comments and realize i'm doing most of these things like lending an aid, i know that i'm not perfect and forget or glaze over it sometimes, and thats my bad for certain, i take full responsibility when players say "what... why is this happening again?" TO A POINT. they need to invest in figuring out why they're doing what they do too.

so i guess in the end the answer to my question is just "work on it together" to be incredibly brief.

but yeah. when players ignore your hints and still want to complain that they don't know about it. do i just stop? i don't think that's a good solution cuz then it all becomes ... i dunno. your world is just dead. which is pretty boring and repetitive if only the players actions affect what's happening in a fictional world.

[MrSandman]

I totally agree i can't just jump on them and not explain why.

the thugs showing up i leave clues on the bodies, or if they're more brutes that talk i have them do so.

the drugs i had them notice that the guards would now and then drink from this drink that made them jerk, (its addictive) and they started to go down that path and learn more.

i dunno... the more i read these comments and realize i'm doing most of these things like lending an aid, i know that i'm not perfect and forget or glaze over it sometimes, and thats my bad for certain, i take full responsibility when players say "what... why is this happening again?" TO A POINT. they need to invest in figuring out why they're doing what they do too.

so i guess in the end the answer to my question is just "work on it together" to be incredibly brief.

but yeah. when players ignore your hints and still want to complain that they don't know about it. do i just stop? i don't think that's a good solution cuz then it all becomes ... i dunno. your world is just dead. which is pretty boring and repetitive if only the players actions affect what's happening in a fictional world.

I get what you mean. And it is a really tough issue, because hints that may seem obvious to me as a GM may just sound absurdly unclear or unimportant to my players. At the same time, if I overload them with too much information, I may just be simply telling them what to do, and then I might just start railroading as well.

It just occurred to me that maybe the problem is that there is too much mystery for your players. I mean, maybe they don't like heavy investigation, and maybe that's what your adventures feel like? It's just a thought, it might not be so. But maybe it would be worth a try to run a couple of sessions where the players don't feel that their role is to investigate what's going on?

By this I don't mean that you should throw away your idea of an open world. There is nothing wrong with the characters being mates with the local earl and having the earl tell them that he's received a letter from a neighbouring lord with whom he was good friends saying that he has had enough and that this means war, and have the earl ask them to go as his emissaries and sort out the mess. This comes from the politics of the world. A third party may have been raiding the neighbouring land under the disguise of the first noble's people. There may be a lot of stuff going on, and a lot of interests clashing with each other, and a lot of things that the characters don't know yet. But at least the players have a clear mission.

[Quertus]

Put yourself in their shoes while planning.

"Prison break" can be a really fun scenario to play in, but first you must be incarcerated. Imagine someone else running that game for you. What are some things you'd want that game to refrain from doing to you?

If the DM keeps throwing successive curveballs to keep you from simply escaping, at what point would it begin to get stale and unfun?

It's kind of the same with hidden plots. How long does ANYONE tolerate getting strung along in the dark?

Now, the other thing to remember is that all players need to accept the journey through the rabbit hole is that you let them come up for air occasionally. What I mean is, if ANY secret plot keeps affecting them personally and directly AND you want them to investigate, throw them a hint that there is something they want to investigate.

You caught that ruffian across the bar/street/etc staring at you. He disappeared the next moment.

*invisible spy sits quietly to eavesdrop on the party* For a fleeting moment, you have the eerie sense that you are being watched.

As you inspect the goblin den, something you can't quite place seems to be amiss.

What I'm suggesting is throw them a line. Give the hint that something might be worth investigating and give it freely. Then be careful that choosing to investigate only provides a clue, not a full plot reveal.

You come to where the ruffian was standing and find a parchment with a drawing of your face dropped in the gutter nearby.

Upon discovering the invisible spy, they use their readied action to teleport to safety.

After investigating the goblin den, it becomes clear that the clutter isn't merely the haphazard lifestyle of the residents; someone else has already searched this place for something.

Basically, give them the absolute certainty that something is going on so they can be on the same page that the fun you intend from the game is discovering what that could be.

You're not tipping your hand. You're tipping that you HAVE a hand that could be tipped.

It depends on the game, and the group. In some groups, the stuff you characterize as being not enough information would, in fact, be too much!

GM: as you walk through the tunnels, you see three Crimson Order goblins as they turn the corner. They level their spears at you.

Player 1: cool, we've faced those before - this should be easy.

Player 2: wait a minute - three of them? Isn't the motto of the Crimson Order "strength in numbers"? We outnumber them, and they aren't running away? You didn't say anything about them being wounded, or covered in blood.

GM: no, they appear fresh.

Player 2: Are they terrified, running from something else? Part of a larger force? Or... {Perception to sense more coming? Sense Motive for... Mind Control?}

GM: You do not hear the sound of more Crimson Order goblins rushing down the halls. There is no light behind the goblins to cast shadows to reveal them that way, nor could you hear them at this distance if they were standing quietly.

GM: Sense Motive reveals no Mind Control, although you do note that they weren't surprised to see you when they rounded the corner, and, despite holding their ground, seem rather anxious to "cross blades" with you.

Player 1: oh, dang, you didn't say that they were surprised, did you? How are they holding their weapons?

GM: ostensibly, prepared for a charge, but in a style designed to leverage their superior strength against an inferior opponent.

Player 1: they don't look any stronger than normal goblins, do they?

GM: no, they don't.

In such a group, where merely presenting inconsistent data is sufficient to arouse suspicion and spur investigation, most of these examples would be overkill, and kill the mood.

Know your group. Provide them an adventure at the level of detail and sophistication that works for them.

[Yerok LliGcam]

How has that anything to do with what i wrote ?

your original response was about gaining party interest in investigating. if they don't investigate and show no interest, then they can walk away. so if they do, what do i do? just say "well... i guess the npc who had their tavern burnt down just... stops caring..."

that doesn't make any sense.

[CantigThimble]

So, while they were raising the rebellion, did none of the townsfolk know about the absolute loyalty of the soldiers? If the army is so willing to attack their own families wouldn't the townsfolk know and be really reluctant to attack the lord head on as a result?

Also, the fact that the soldiers were addicted wouldn't come up unless either the drug was extremely mind numbing to the point where they'd follow orders without question or if they were under threat of having their supply interrupted and were suffering withdrawl.

In the first case, this would be pretty obvious, either to the townsfolk or the players. More so than a random soldier experiencing a slight high when he takes a drink.

In the second, unless the lord knew about the rebellion soon enough to cut supply lines and let withdrawl set in, and the soldiers didn't think they could take his supply for themselves if they turned, then he wouldn't have enough control to get them to slaughter their own people. Even then, the soldiers would have every motivation to subdue their friends and family with minimal bloodshed, do just enough to keep their lord happy and get their fix.

I'm not trying to be rude here, I'm just wondering if the problem is less "My players can't handle complexity" and more "This particular plot was poorly designed." If it is the latter, then it may be a lot easier to reach a mutually agreeable solution. It would be better if its a matter of a particular adventure going poorly rather than incompatible styles between GM and group, so it would be wise to check for that possibility first.


I had a similar experience with one of my DMs who had a lot of things going on behind the scenes leading up to big reveals. However, he ended up bending a few things to get the reveal to work the way he wanted it to. When I used an augury spell to ask "Should we go to this place?", where there was an ambush, the response was weal and woe. The reasoning was that if we went there then we would know that someone set an ambush. Afterwards we talked it over and agreed that reasoning was BS and wouldn't happen again. The moral is, don't get your heart too set on people finding things out a certain way. You are liable to unconsciously bend the world so that players will never find that thing out any OTHER way. When that happens, if the players can't read your mind and see what that way is, then they'll miss it and get frustrated.

This is part of the old DMing axiom that you should never design a puzzle with only one solution (or that you have designed all the possible solutions for). Be open to the possibility that players will learn things in ways other than the ones you planned.

[Yerok LliGcam]

Like for the OP:
What was the name of last bar maid they interacted with? She's a more important character to the party than a secret spy master the party will never meet, regardless of how much that spy master may be influencing the party. If the party doesn't know about him, his story and tragic backstory that sent him down the path of evil matters far less than the Bar maid having a leaky roof at home causing her to work extra shifts at the inn and maybe get some big tips from wealthy adventures to pay for little Timmy's cough tonic.

Your efforts should be on things the party interacts with so that your time investment can match the appreciation you get.
Your players wouldn't mind plots coming after them seemingly at random if they felt like your world was fleshed out. Your efforts are invisible, so the players will naturally assume it's all BS.

Much of DMing is creating the illusion that everything has been planned for while not actually planning for everything. Players need to think your world is rich and storied while most of the real work is only on the narrow part of the world the PCs work with.

What was the layout of the last town the PCs visited? Do you even have a general layout? A population estimate? What goods and trade keep that town afloat? Is the Mayor greedy or a good ruler? Does he need help?
These "unimportant" details affect the party more than a list of names the party's invisible tail has because the tail wants to some day take revenge on everyone on the list and he needs to earn his employer's trust to do that, but the employer hates the party because they let his half brother die from a peasant cou that the party helped start because the brother was corrupt but the tail likes the party because that brother was on his list.
None of those details actually matter because the party has no way to interact with them nor will they shape any element of the town they are visiting.

in answer,

that's what i'm doing.

the barmaid example is inconsequential, they've never been to a bar, but they know all about some of these NPC's that they have risen up as their army, they had all sorts, i have a goblin with followers (he's playing a demi-god nilbog type) and a necromancer with an NPC apprentice he calls fledgling. i play out a detailed world because i've DONE that.

you assuming i haven't doesn't help answer my core question.

as far as details, i've drawn maps, i've given them handouts and all sorts of things. the thing my 2 players didn't like was that due to the party setting off a pluthera of sides, and me reacting in a manner that i felt was realistic, caused a HUGE influx of activity from a LOT of angles, so i sent out the hooks, and said "bite one" and they bit 20. so it turned into a lot all at once, and i tried to slow it down and help manage it down to maybe 4 at a time. and that helped. and just the amount of crap going on upset my players, they haven't even left the starting town yet. its been kind of insane. because they dove REALLY deep into my detailed town and that's just what i did:

"Players need to think your world is rich and storied while most of the real work is only on the narrow part of the world the PCs work with."

and because they didn't know every reason why things were happening they had a breakdown and said "i don't get it this isn't fair why are our peasant armies being killed by trained soldiers, why are people chasing us after we've pissed off people?"

in a lot of ways it was "well.. wait and you'll see next time we play."

so again my core question, how can i maintain the element of not having to tell them whats behidn the dm screen completely, i understand you need to give clues through NPC's etc,

but how can i avoid lifting up the DM screen altogether and just giving away all my details and plots, and still help players trust me to not just be screwing with them and that things are happening for a reason?

that's my key problem.

[Yerok LliGcam]

I get what you mean. And it is a really tough issue, because hints that may seem obvious to me as a GM may just sound absurdly unclear or unimportant to my players. At the same time, if I overload them with too much information, I may just be simply telling them what to do, and then I might just start railroading as well.

It just occurred to me that maybe the problem is that there is too much mystery for your players. I mean, maybe they don't like heavy investigation, and maybe that's what your adventures feel like? It's just a thought, it might not be so. But maybe it would be worth a try to run a couple of sessions where the players don't feel that their role is to investigate what's going on?

By this I don't mean that you should throw away your idea of an open world. There is nothing wrong with the characters being mates with the local earl and having the earl tell them that he's received a letter from a neighbouring lord with whom he was good friends saying that he has had enough and that this means war, and have the earl ask them to go as his emissaries and sort out the mess. This comes from the politics of the world. A third party may have been raiding the neighbouring land under the disguise of the first noble's people. There may be a lot of stuff going on, and a lot of interests clashing with each other, and a lot of things that the characters don't know yet. But at least the players have a clear mission.

yeah. i will keep trying to do so. one thing unique about the campaign though i guess i failed to mention at first that didn't seem pertinent at the time, is that this is a "we are the bad guys" campaign. they're playing the evil guys. so the dynamics of regular adventuring don't apply in some sense.

but yeah. i hope that me allowing things to play out without letting to much (i mean at this point they've turned over nearly every stone IN this town anyways) start up again.

[The Jack]

I like to GM a world with NPCs that tell good lies and have their own wants, struggles and needs. You don't need to completely dumb the game down...

But you need moderation, or to strategize how much you put in your deceptions.

The key thing is to interject a lot of straight stories between the machinations. For every grand deception or diabolical screw-over, you should have multiple tasks that can be taken at face value . These can be apart of A or B plots.

Another thing is that, even when characters lie to the players, they shouldn't always be screwing the players over, and they should often reward the players even when they do lie or cheat. Do these things and it'll help your players agree to whatever you say.

You also need to consider that you're not always as smart as you think you are, and your players can very happily both exceed and excessively fail your expectations.

[Pleh]

It depends on the game, and the group. In some groups, the stuff you characterize as being not enough information would, in fact, be too much!

Know your group. Provide them an adventure at the level of detail and sophistication that works for them.

I was going based on the OP saying the players wanted to know what's going on without outright spoilers.

Sometimes a more specific answer is more helpful than the general one.

[Yerok LliGcam]

So, while they were raising the rebellion, did none of the townsfolk know about the absolute loyalty of the soldiers? If the army is so willing to attack their own families wouldn't the townsfolk know and be really reluctant to attack the lord head on as a result?

Also, the fact that the soldiers were addicted wouldn't come up unless either the drug was extremely mind numbing to the point where they'd follow orders without question or if they were under threat of having their supply interrupted and were suffering withdrawl.

In the first case, this would be pretty obvious, either to the townsfolk or the players. More so than a random soldier experiencing a slight high when he takes a drink.

In the second, unless the lord knew about the rebellion soon enough to cut supply lines and let withdrawl set in, and the soldiers didn't think they could take his supply for themselves if they turned, then he wouldn't have enough control to get them to slaughter their own people. Even then, the soldiers would have every motivation to subdue their friends and family with minimal bloodshed, do just enough to keep their lord happy and get their fix.

I'm not trying to be rude here, I'm just wondering if the problem is less "My players can't handle complexity" and more "This particular plot was poorly designed." If it is the latter, then it may be a lot easier to reach a mutually agreeable solution. It would be better if its a matter of a particular adventure going poorly rather than incompatible styles between GM and group, so it would be wise to check for that possibility first.


I had a similar experience with one of my DMs who had a lot of things going on behind the scenes leading up to big reveals. However, he ended up bending a few things to get the reveal to work the way he wanted it to. When I used an augury spell to ask "Should we go to this place?", where there was an ambush, the response was weal and woe. The reasoning was that if we went there then we would know that someone set an ambush. Afterwards we talked it over and agreed that reasoning was BS and wouldn't happen again. The moral is, don't get your heart too set on people finding things out a certain way. You are liable to unconsciously bend the world so that players will never find that thing out any OTHER way. When that happens, if the players can't read your mind and see what that way is, then they'll miss it and get frustrated.

This is part of the old DMing axiom that you should never design a puzzle with only one solution (or that you have designed all the possible solutions for). Be open to the possibility that players will learn things in ways other than the ones you planned.

no your points are well noted, i did have the rumors our bard spread cause fear in the lords ranks and he lost 3 battalions who were of the lesser caste in the city, the others more loyal were younger men without families or who were power hungry etc. but the bards goblin army and the rogues assassins burnt all of them down in two buildings they snuck into and ambushed the peasantry militia. it was quite tragic and very cool story telling. fun that a vampire joined our monster party at that time so i had him start IN the basement of one of these buildings in his coffin. fun fun. i had planned out every little thing and knew that there'd be discord in the ranks. our Bard (he's a nilbog- this is 5e D&D) can possess bodies as a homebrew and he possessed some guards and acted out to really sell the fact that the lord was corrupt. it was actually really good.

the thing that i didn't tell the players, was that the rumors caused such discord UNTIL it started happening, they were rushed one morning, and 3 of the 5 groups were abandoning the city and leaving to find better lives and get away from the madness. so it's all really started working out, its just that when they were in the thick of the "WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!" that the 2 players got upset enough that they felt they needed to talk, which i was totally okay with. it just was a discussion that was very much them saying "you should change" and me thinknig "you guys have no idea that next game about 3/4ths of the complaints will all make sense due to what's happened..."

i just want to avoid the players having a breakdown in the future and feeling that they need to come talk to me. building DM trust. i guess maybe it's only possible sometimes when your players understand that there's a method and reason for the madness after experiencing an episode of it. and then during the next one they can say "okay... what's he planning THIS time...." instead of "why!? this isn't fun! i worked hard to get this militia up and going and you just slaughter half of em with 2 battalions of guards!?! (crossbows in the windows, it was pretty good military strategy on the lords part, but very tragic. which isn't a bad thing i don't think.


as far as showing hints that these guards were being supplied addictive mind control stuffs, i alluded to it with strange behavior at the start, they rolled it up to guards being pricks and racist (like no one is playing a human, again this is a monster let's be evil campaign where i have a drow, an undead, a shadow, a nilbog goblin, and a tabaxi vampire. its... interesting - first time running a monster bad guy game) but anyways its been hard since they didn't check it out further and would just kill guards and escape and run. so i guess in that respect they're PLAYING the part of the evil bad guys and SHOULD expect to be chased around by angry people and even odd adventuring NPC crews hired to chase em down...

maybe they're just learning about being the bad guys... now that i think about it...

[Darth Tom]

the thing my 2 players didn't like was that due to the party setting off a pluthera of sides, and me reacting in a manner that i felt was realistic, caused a HUGE influx of activity from a LOT of angles, so i sent out the hooks, and said "bite one" and they bit 20. so it turned into a lot all at once, and i tried to slow it down and help manage it down to maybe 4 at a time. and that helped. and just the amount of crap going on upset my players, they haven't even left the starting town yet. its been kind of insane. because they dove REALLY deep into my detailed town

I understand where you're coming from. I chose a similar style when I started DMing. I thought, "I don't want a railroad, single plot with just one way of solving it. I'll have a whole bunch of stuff and latch onto anything they try to investigate even if it means making it up as I go along".

I don't think that's wrong per se. My first attempt was DMing a Star Wars campaign where I let the players make any character they wanted (a Mandalorian and renegade Chiss), asked them to come up with one thing that their character is annoyed by (the Mandalorian's armour had been stolen and the Chiss felt his entire culture had been abused by the Empire despite having only met one), stuck them in a cantina and let them loose. By the end of one game session they had a lead on the thief, trashed the cantina, won passage on a ship in Sabacc, run from a shootout with Stormtroopers, and were now hurtling into the Galaxy in the company of a notorious pirate except they didn't know that bit yet. We had weekly hijinks for the next few months and good times were had by all.

This game certainly ran on Rule of Cool. I let them get away with anything once because it would be fun and awesome. I used in-universe realism to determine what consequences might happen. These included several crime lords, Imperial Moffs, many, many planetary governments and for a while a cadre of the Rebel Alliance after them. I'm happy for my games to be joint imagination: I provide the world and they find fun things to do in it.

The thing is, that what you describe as the problem above is kind of in your control. Yes they jumped on a ton of triggers. Yes that means a whole bunch of people are now involved. But only one person gets to choose how and when they do so. You.

*****

In my mind, the DM is responsible for pacing and plots. Say they have set off a bunch of triggers. It's entirely realistic that one group takes time to learn about it, another combs the surrounding villages and is only met by chance, a third has more important things going on... but this is only to justify it to yourself. As far as they need to know, they poked around and suddenly things are happening.

They may not have realised that EVERYTHING had consequences. Maybe throw 3 things at them, not 20. By all means have hints that even more will happen - get them nice and paranoid.

[Yerok LliGcam]

I like to GM a world with NPCs that tell good lies and have their own wants, struggles and needs. You don't need to completely dumb the game down...

But you need moderation, or to strategize how much you put in your deceptions.

The key thing is to interject a lot of straight stories between the machinations. For every grand deception or diabolical screw-over, you should have multiple tasks that can be taken at face value . These can be apart of A or B plots.

Another thing is that, even when characters lie to the players, they shouldn't always be screwing the players over, and they should often reward the players even when they do lie or cheat. Do these things and it'll help your players agree to whatever you say.

You also need to consider that you're not always as smart as you think you are, and your players can very happily both exceed and excessively fail your expectations.

true. wise words. thanks. this is quality advice.

[Yerok LliGcam]

I understand where you're coming from. I chose a similar style when I started DMing. I thought, "I don't want a railroad, single plot with just one way of solving it. I'll have a whole bunch of stuff and latch onto anything they try to investigate even if it means making it up as I go along".

I don't think that's wrong per se. My first attempt was DMing a Star Wars campaign where I let the players make any character they wanted (a Mandalorian and renegade Chiss), asked them to come up with one thing that their character is annoyed by (the Mandalorian's armour had been stolen and the Chiss felt his entire culture had been abused by the Empire despite having only met one), stuck them in a cantina and let them loose. By the end of one game session they had a lead on the thief, trashed the cantina, won passage on a ship in Sabacc, run from a shootout with Stormtroopers, and were now hurtling into the Galaxy in the company of a notorious pirate except they didn't know that bit yet. We had weekly hijinks for the next few months and good times were had by all.

This game certainly ran on Rule of Cool. I let them get away with anything once because it would be fun and awesome. I used in-universe realism to determine what consequences might happen. These included several crime lords, Imperial Moffs, many, many planetary governments and for a while a cadre of the Rebel Alliance after them. I'm happy for my games to be joint imagination: I provide the world and they find fun things to do in it.

The thing is, that what you describe as the problem above is kind of in your control. Yes they jumped on a ton of triggers. Yes that means a whole bunch of people are now involved. But only one person gets to choose how and when they do so. You.

*****

In my mind, the DM is responsible for pacing and plots. Say they have set off a bunch of triggers. It's entirely realistic that one group takes time to learn about it, another combs the surrounding villages and is only met by chance, a third has more important things going on... but this is only to justify it to yourself. As far as they need to know, they poked around and suddenly things are happening.

They may not have realised that EVERYTHING had consequences. Maybe throw 3 things at them, not 20. By all means have hints that even more will happen - get them nice and paranoid.

yeah. your point is a great one. i did struggle with pacing. as its a work campaign we have a lot of "so and so can't make it today" due to meetings etc. i mean 1 hour at lunch you know?

but yeah. pacing will definitly be my biggest take away from this campaign. it's been amazingly fun. we've laughed, we've cried, and there's been fun had by all and some games we walk away frusrtated and others its super hilarious. but yeah... i guess i need to remember that and not lose sight of the "this can happen... but it can happen after this other thing gets sorted out"

thanks.

[Darth Ultron]

Much of DMing is creating the illusion that everything has been planned for while not actually planning for everything. Players need to think your world is rich and storied while most of the real work is only on the narrow part of the world the PCs work with.

This is a good example of a casual DM: The give the illusion of putting in effort and doing work, but really do very little.

but yeah. when players ignore your hints and still want to complain that they don't know about it. do i just stop? i don't think that's a good solution cuz then it all becomes ... i dunno. your world is just dead. which is pretty boring and repetitive if only the players actions affect what's happening in a fictional world.

To have players that really invest the time and effort to really dig into the details is rare. In general, most players, will only really go for slight less then half of everything. It does leave a lot the players will never know, but that is normal. And most people are used to 'easy' fiction: the kind you see in most movies and TV shows. Things are very simple, very direct and everyone knows everything.

I get what you mean. And it is a really tough issue, because hints that may seem obvious to me as a GM may just sound absurdly unclear or unimportant to my players. At the same time, if I overload them with too much information, I may just be simply telling them what to do, and then I might just start railroading as well.

Technically if you just give them information, and they act on it, then it's not railroading.

but how can i avoid lifting up the DM screen altogether and just giving away all my details and plots, and still help players trust me to not just be screwing with them and that things are happening for a reason?

that's my key problem.

This just comes down to having the players trust you unconditionally. There simply is no way for them to know everything and still play the game as players. They just have to trust the DM.

If the players want to second guess the DM, or even just go full against the DM and be hostile...well, there simply is nothing to be done. After all, if you stop the game every couple of minutes to explain everything to the players, you won't even be playing the game. And once the players cross the line to being hostile jerks, there is nothing the DM can say anyway. Even if the DM says, and it is the truth, that the goblin bandits attacked because they are greedy....the hostile jerk player will still say ''nut aw, the DM just wanted to attacks us!"

[Satinavian]

your original response was about gaining party interest in investigating. if they don't investigate and show no interest, then they can walk away. so if they do, what do i do? just say "well... i guess the npc who had their tavern burnt down just... stops caring..."

that doesn't make any sense.

No, my original post was about not hiding all the interesting stuff going on in your world in the first place. Your game/your world should be interesting and engaging even prior to further investigation.

I would even go so far that investigation only works if players are already interested in the world/the NPCs or significantly involved in the not hidden conflicts and power struggles.


But i don't play in your group. I only have your posts and originally only the first one to judge. And it seemed your overapplication of secrecy was a problem that led to your players having no clue what happened around them and the world seemingly made no sese.
Maybe it is nother problem you have. But a serious problem it is, otherwise you wouldn't have all your players complaining or being absent. Dispite all your insistence on only portraying a believable world, you seem to have not managed to portray a world your players find believable.


But if you just came here to ask how to get your players to just suck it up and wait patiently for the big reveal because they trust you it comes, well ... there is no recipie for that.

[MrSandman]

Technically if you just give them information, and they act on it, then it's not railroading.

I never said that giving information is railroading. I said that if you give them so much information that you perfectly lie the path they need follow in front of them, you might as well start railroading them.
There's a point where, if you give too much information about what is happening and how to overcome it, you're basically lying out the best (maybe) course of action to follow.

[Quertus]

agreed, please elaborate more. otherwise that's just biased opinion.

Being me, I'm going to most object to the part where you say that you agree with me.

See, the thing is, despite how it probably wouldn't be terribly productive to do so, you could probably call most any statement made in this thread "biased opinion", and be more accurate.

The statement you were responding to was simply science and logic. By observing even a single (let alone many!) instance of X and not Y, it proves that "X therefore Y" is not true.

So, how did you perceive my statement to say something different than that, or what were you trying to say related to that, to produce such a seemingly misplaced comment?

I figure it might be wisest to see your response to this before attempting to address the rest of your thorough response.

Myself, I don't consider that babying you - I consider it "establishing a dialog". Understanding where you're coming from. That kind of thing.

I was going based on the OP saying the players wanted to know what's going on without outright spoilers.

Sometimes a more specific answer is more helpful than the general one.

Ah. Fair enough. Over-generalization does seem to be one of my many flaws.

I never said that giving information is railroading. I said that if you give them so much information that you perfectly lie the path they need follow in front of them, you might as well start railroading them.
There's a point where, if you give too much information about what is happening and how to overcome it, you're basically lying out the best (maybe) course of action to follow.

Equating "giving information" with "railroading"? That's novel.

I suspect it depends a bit in the delivery. I suppose I can see cases where it would come across that way, but... I don't think that making uninformed decisions is exactly the hallmark of Sandboxy games.

[Pleh]

Equating "giving information" with "railroading"? That's novel.

I suspect it depends a bit in the delivery.

Very much so.

Players rely on information dispensed from the DM. If a DM only provides a single trail of information (or only a single trail that ends in a meaningful progression), it's become a railroad.

[Satinavian]

It is still not a railroad, just a very linear adventure. There is only one path worth following, but you could leave it if you wish which also means leaving the plot and the area the GM prepared. But there is no force keeping you on the path.

[Pleh]

It is still not a railroad, just a very linear adventure. There is only one path worth following, but you could leave it if you wish which also means leaving the plot and the area the GM prepared. But there is no force keeping you on the path.

Maybe. You're right that more is needed to constitute a railroad, but perhaps not as much more as you think.

What I meant by, "only one path worth following" was essentially an "endless desert" of information scenario.

"You see an oasis on the horizon."

"Probably a trap. We search in a different direction."

"You travel for hours and cannot distinguish any meaningful progress."

Information railroads employ negative space barriers. Nothing prevents you from traversing the barrier space, but by definition, there is nothing to be gained there, either.

Basically, the difference between linear info dispensation and an information railroad is if the DM is willing to cooperate with the creation of a new trail if the players abandon the first.

The other way to do information railroads is the "all roads lead to rome" where any way you try to explore off the path *just happens* to lead to the same place anyway.

[VincentTakeda]

Schroedingers' railroad?

[Beleriphon]

Very much this. Your players have spoken; they don't want such a complicated web of intrigue.

If you're going for layers of intrigue they can't be more complicated than a Batman comic. So you can have gangs, controlled by a mob boss, controlled by a cult, controlled by R'as al-Ghul. At most you want to make plots four layers deep, and the first two should be relatively obvious that they are connected. The reason I'd max it out at four layers is because otherwise it takes to long, and like a comic book you only get to see the story periodically, rather than being able to read it all at once (in theory) like a novel.

To borrow the example for the Duke von Killstabber from up thread. The players stop a slave trader, who is employed Duke von Killstabber controls. But its through Baron Swordguy who actually pays Jane Evil-Slaver and her gang. Connecting the Baron and Jane should be pretty straight forward if the players make any effort, a letter, one of the baron's men, something obvious. Connecting the Baron and the Duke however should be harder and take some real effort and investigations, and may not come until later as a "big reveal".

You can have those complicated webs, but they shouldn't be connected except at the outermost layers, otherwise players have to start dealing with flow charts and mapping things out, and remembering a dozen different facts that quite frankly are probably pretty low on the things they need to think about day to day. Even if they think its really important unless they happen to be investigative journalists they probably aren't very good at it either.

[icefractal]

Keep in mind also - IRL, people receive vast quantities of sensory input, only some of which is handled by the conscious mind. In a TTRPG, this is reduced down to one narrow channel, and an often imprecise one to boot.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that players often require information to be much more blatant than it would realistically be before they can receive it through the limited and imperfect channel available.

For that matter, even professional investigators have plenty of unsolved cases. You're not often going to get a satisfying outcome by pure chance.