PC gets too suspicious

[Gwenfloor]

My Player Characters have played up to the Demonskar Legacy Adventure and have found out through investigation several events ahead of the plot. They saw the birthmark on Zenith and Terrem and the Wizard roles a natural 20 on Knowledge (the planes), and in Flood Season and Demonskar Legacy and they find out that magical cages are being constructed. They do not know of the Cagewright's plan, but when the Elf Barbarian blurts out "The Demodands use birthmarked people in magic cages to summon more of their own kind. I know that he has not read any of the modules, but he owns the Fiend Folio and I do not know how he could be so accurate. Fortunately, I kept a straight face and looked at him whenever he said one of his crazy conspiracy theories like he does every so often. By then, the other players did not believe him, but if he does not own the magazines, then how could he be so accurate?

[evilash]

Well, if they know about the birthmark and about the cages it's not THAT big a leap to make. Fortunately my players are so clueless they don't even know about the birtmarks... and they've just "rescued" Zenith from the mean kuo-toas.

[airwalkrr]

Here's a phrase you might want to adopt. "I can neither confirm nor deny that..." and just fill in the blank with whatever conspiracy theory the party has. Make sure you do this both when they are wrong and when they are right. What the player of the elf barbarian was trying to do was get you to slip up and reveal to him part of the plot. You did good in keeping a straight face. But if the PCs want to learn something from you, they will just have to ask their gods with contact other plane.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the fact that your PCs are good sleuths. They don't need to be punished for figuring something out. If you don't like them meta-gaming, then simply tell them so. I don't recommend punishing them for it. If anything just ask players to keep meta-gaming to themselves.