ok ? hell I strongly encourage it
having the PC blindly trust an NPC for 10 levels only to find he's betrayed them is Role Playing gold.
not only are the charcters in game cheezed off, but the players are as well and will now hate your NPC to the point of obession, which leads to even more fun.
lying is a huge part of RP , revel in it :)
I have the opposite.
Nearly all of my players have been playing for as long as I've been alive. They don't trust any NPCs, even the ones who aren't lying (and by that they know they succeeded on a Sense Motive).
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Or as my favorite player just chimed in:
"If they get taken in, taken in, taken in and they don't learn better it's their own fault. It's up to them to learn."
I have the opposite.
Nearly all of my players have been playing for as long as I've been alive. They don't trust any NPCs, even the ones who aren't lying (and by that they know they succeeded on a Sense Motive).
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Or as my favorite player just chimed in:
"If they get taken in, taken in, taken in and they don't learn better it's their own fault. It's up to them to learn."
trick is to put them in a situation where they need to choose between 2 lying NPC's ;) and sucker them in slowly ;)
although there are some players who think the milk maid random citizen who the Gm dosent even have a stat block for she was just in a description, is out to get them.
of course you can work this back the other way, have genuine NPC trying to help the party but work it so that the party is suspicious to the point of shooting themselves in the foot by not taking the help ;)
As someone who's played a lot of shadowrun and wod....ummm, yeeeaaahhhh. I have a harder time remembering to tell the truth to my PCs...
I think most of my group realize when an NPC speaks, it's not the word of the DM...though there has been a few moments where I started wondering though.
As someone who's played a lot of shadowrun and wod....ummm, yeeeaaahhhh. I have a harder time remembering to tell the truth to my PCs...
I think most of my group realize when an NPC speaks, it's not the word of the DM...though there has been a few moments where I started wondering though.
Titania gives you a crystal she says "anytime you need me , you can use this"
Player:...ummm ....are you guys being funny ?
I have had both extremes. A favorite of mine was having a PC follow two complete strangers away from the party, down a dark alley, into a delapidated building, leaving his weapons in the front room, going upstairs, just to meet their "sister" whom he was told was very attractive and would like him alot. Yes, he was robbed.
And did it again, when they wanted to "appologize" for their behavior from before. Yes, he was robbed. The other players were in stitches, and I had the worst time keeping a straight face. I "KNOW" I was crying giving the same descriptions all throught the encounter.
On the flip side, in my ROTRL's, they do not believe ANYONE. Sense motives, detect alignments...priests of good religions...paladin's cohort...it is crazy. But then like a light bulb. One day it changes, and of course it is for the ONE encounter they are supposed to recognize as being a liar.
We have fun.
Greg
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Imagine you were standing before two doors, one concealing a lady, the other a lion. You don't know for sure, which is which. How would you feel about an NPC giving you advice if you didn't know that you could trust them?
Something's screwy as we're plus one lion and minus one tiger. I'd leave the door opening to him and go grab a soda.
well if players are playing there character badly it might be up to you as the GM to nudge them.
if for instance the character has a 16 wisdom and keeps getting suckered then something is wrong. Sometimes it's hard for a player to act wiser or smarter then they really are. in these cases i would allow a wisdom or intelligence check and give them clues "you know your character finds its really difficult trusting this sort of character, he's heard all kinds of stories like these before". or "your character would have a hard time trusting this character too much or relying on him, it's probably not going to amount to no good".
Most of my players have figured out, that not all that shines is gold and they need to be on guard when plying folks for info. I rarely if ever just allow them to make a "Gather Info" roll and get the full scoop on something.
NPCs will use as logical a motivation (Alignment, PC Notoriety; good or bad, Situation at the time) to give info and what not.
I mean, if you have a group of trusting folks, don't be mean about it and give them Sense Motive Rolls to get a clue the NPCs might be pulling their leg a bit. Then at least you can say you gave them a chance! But a fact of many plots and APs are NPCs misleading PCs for their own diabolical machinations of world domination! The PCs better be equipped to ferret out the bad guys and save the world!!
Hope some of this helps!
Have Fun out there!!
~ W ~
I wish my PCs trusted even half the NPCs that they meet.
Trust no one. Keep your laser handy. (Opps, wrong game.)
At least your players are (mostly) consistent. I've had some that seemed to flip from completely trusting one week to raving paranoid the next.
As to the high wisdom character mentioned above, I as a DM might call for a wisdom check (roll d20 and add wisdom mod). If they make the (completely arbitrary) DC that I set, I'll say something like "That might be unwise because ....) and if they fail, well, then they do it and suffer the consequences.
In alot of ways, trust is an odd thing in D&D. We have to deal with issues of trust/dishonesty in our daily lives and we don't have a d20 to roll to know if we succeeded or not. We don't know we have a -4 or a +24 to the roll either so we are never sure.
For some folks- that makes them never, ever trust an NPC. Period. When the King rewards them for good service, they are looking for the poison in the goblet at the feast and still won't drink it after their "detect poison" enchanted ring doesn't give a positive.
Others do the opposite. They trust everyone because they don't want to worry about it. They figure the DM Railroad is on the track and they go where they are lead.
The trick is knowing your people and the group and compensating. I wouldn't punish the PC's who are tired of that aspect of life and want to do away with it in gaming. I also wouldn't necessarily have the King poison the food just because the PC is expecting it.
Know your PC's :")
-S
One of the problems we had when third edition came out was not everyone understanding how (or at least how it worked with us) sense motive worked. We used it as an active skill, in that though it didn't take an action, you had to declare it. In an all rogue campaign my friend ran this was explained to everyone at first, but as we got new people we forgot to give them a heads up, and just assumed everyone was on the same page.
There was one night in particular where no one hardly rolled a single dice, as it was almost all roleplaying of different members of the party making back aly deals with eachother. I distinctly remember not having to make a single die roll myself, though I bluffed/lied about nearly everything I said...because no one thought to declare sense motive on me.
Might do some good to go over things before your next session. Explain to them very bluntly that NPCs can and will lie to them. Not single named NPC is a back stabbing two faced bastard, but some are.
Trust no one.
Why should I listen to you?
Trust no one.Why should I listen to you?
You shouldn't. Everything I say is a lie. I'm lying to you now.
This statement is false.
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I had to retcon a little bit in a campaign that we had been playing for like 14 or 15 levels back in 3.5. The group encountered an NPC who seemed to have similar goals. They didn't initially trust him, but he traveled with them for like two levels of adventure, helping along the way and they grew more and more comfortable with him.
Eventually they achieved what he had been waiting for and he decided that he needed to remove the competition. They made a quick trip to retrieve an item from a fairly barren demiplane and were attacked. Once the group was pretty tangled up with the fight, he turned and disintegrated their caster. His last word's were 'Why you son of a...'
The caster was the obvious choice to drop because he was the big nuker in the party and the one most likely to take out our little betrayer. The rest of the party dropped the monster faster than I had expected and turned on him so he plane shifted out of there to escape and thats when we all realized that it was effectively a TPK, none of them had what was needed to raise the wizard when he was dust, and even if they did he didn't have plane shift already memorized(the NPC was their way home) and with the spellbook he had with him turned to dust, he couldn't even prep it if they somehow did revive him and rest.
They are much less trusting now.
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It all depends on the player. Some are blindly trusting, others suspect everyone and everything.
The thing I realized from this is that I as DM shape their perception by what I say and what I don't. I can make the characters believe a lie with just my description of the scene. It's a powerful tool, and I have to be careful not to smile when they get misdirected.
I used to be very much into never trusting a word anyone says in game, but this caused a LOT of problems once I started running games. YES, all NPCs have their own motivations, viewpoints, perspectives, and ultimate goals, but after the PCs have tortured the 90th innkeeper because "He's got to be hiding something!!" it gets REALLY old. I try to be like old Beezelbub when I'm running NPCs- they only lie sometimes.
This statement is false.
Or is it?
I wish my PCs trusted even half the NPCs that they meet.
I know the feeling. I had a player who had his character buy a phony magic item. After that, he met several people who COULD HAVE easily told him that he had been hoodwinked, but he didn't trust any one of them.
Years later, in another campaign, I played a "DMPC" paladin due to lack of players. It was understood that my character should be treated as a PC in all practical respects. When the party accepted a job working for an evil dragon, my paladin expressed disapproval. The short story* is: the player chose to trust the evil dragon, and not my paladin character! He soon learned that this was a mistake, when he finished the job and the dragon tried to kill the party!
That player has an uncanny knack for making good judgement calls... but not when deciding whom to trust!
*(The long story is here.)