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View Full Version : Herring, some of which, may have been, in retrospect, Red.



The Pressman
2010-08-30, 12:15 AM
Have you thrown your players off the scent? How, why, and what.
Me: The librarian did it. However, all the players knew was that the cook had come home late, carrying a suspicious package, and was named Rotislav Zarko.

Ormur
2010-08-30, 12:20 AM
I'm depending on it in my current game. :smallbiggrin:

Swordgleam
2010-08-30, 12:53 AM
My players ended up paranoid, but they didn't start out that way. We found the mangled bodies of three of the four heroes? The fourth one is definitely dead. No need to think about him again.

Gralamin
2010-08-30, 01:20 AM
If my players are not paranoid about everything - including each other, I haven't done something right. This makes it really easy for them to miss details :smallcool:

Aroka
2010-08-30, 02:20 AM
Hardly ever. Players have a hard enough time getting to the bottom of a mystery as is - they create their own red herrings all the time, and you usually have to feed them clues over and over to lead them to the next point in the mystery. Why waste everyone's time?

GURPS Mysteries actually gives this some treatment.

Lost Wanderer
2010-08-30, 02:47 AM
Hardly ever. Players have a hard enough time getting to the bottom of a mystery as is - they create their own red herrings all the time, and you usually have to feed them clues over and over to lead them to the next point in the mystery. Why waste everyone's time?

GURPS Mysteries actually gives this some treatment.

Well, that depends upon your group and how much you conserve detail. A canny group where the GM is known to describe fair amounts of fluff and other ancillary information is liable to take initiative on info gathering and deduce what the real clues are.

I use a fair share of red herrings, but then, I run WoD games, so the opposition is understood to be trying to throw the PCs off their scent.

And in my last major D&D campaign, there was a pretty major red herring. The PCs were trying to find info on an apparently or criminal group where the leaders had nick names titles based on colors. They had names and general locale for a Red, a Yellow, a Green and a Blue (who they also knew was a dragon). They debated and went after the Red one, who was located hundreds of miles away and had something to do with a cult. They figured he'd be the lowest ranking major member and that they could take him and interrogate him.

Nope, he turned out to be a completely unaffiliated demon. A true Red Herring.

fusilier
2010-08-30, 12:17 PM
Yep, this has happened to me. I learned the hard way about red herrings. 1930s GURPS campaign involving arms smuggling to warring South American countries. Introduced two NPC's: 1. A former German general who was advising some Hollywood war movie, boisterous and full of life, 2. His former subordinate, quiet, stayed in the background. The second NPC was also the one who had an acquaintance with the American business man who just happened to be storing military weapons in his house -- not that any of the players bothered to investigate that connection. I intended the first NPC to be a red herring, but I also thought the players wouldn't spend 3 sessions pestering the guy until they figured it out. The character was very congenial, but the players would not leave him alone, they became totally fixated on him as the culprit, and had totally forgotten about the other German officer. *sigh* I learned not to make my red herrings too affable. :-)

Esser-Z
2010-08-30, 12:20 PM
I tend to run based on Schrodinger's Herrings. Basically, clues may or may not be real, and I may or may not have decided whether they are when I give them out.

Furthermore, there could easily be side mysteries, too!

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-30, 12:44 PM
First Rule of Plotting: Never give the PCs a Red Herring. They will follow it to the ends of the earth, no matter how many Real Clues you give to them.

If your players end up on a Wild Goose chase, it is almost always better to drop the Plot on them rather than let them go insane.

For example, if the PCs are locked on the Cook, have the Librarian decide to set the Cook up with a decent frame so that the PCs can lock him away - but make it such that the planted evidence doesn't match up with the evidence that got the PCs on his trail in the first place.

It's no achievement to sent PCs off on a Wild Goose chase - the real test is to get them back from one without having everything burned to the ground :smallamused:

Reynard
2010-08-30, 12:58 PM
I once, as a CE Halfling Rogue, exploded the plot-quest NPC.

This was at level one, and all I knew about him was that he'd tried to rip us off big time.

Rather than a DM fiat of 'you didn't actually kill him', the DM had the quest info hidden in a secret compartment of the loot I gathered, along with some shiny gems (promptly cashed in for some new gear), so the Plot was saved, I got a new set of armour, and all were happy.

Toliudar
2010-08-30, 02:30 PM
I've tried red herrings, but as noted above, the laws of perversity dictate that it's only the false leads that the PC's choose to follow to the ends of the lower planes. Which thereby requires much more writing than I normally want to do.

Now, as to hiding ACTUAL plot in plain sight: In 3.0, I once had a year-long story arc in which a scaredy-cat gnome wizard became the cohort of a stick-up-butt paladin. The plot slowly wove through different stages, ending with a long trek through the underdark and into a drow city. At which point the gnome dispelled his own polymorph, revealing himself to be the BBEG drow asshat the PC's had been trying to find for the better part of nine months. Nine months of the paladin never thinking to check alignment (he was wearing an amulet, but it would have revealed that he was hiding SOMETHING), never getting targeted with detect magic, never being questioned because he'd been around so long. It was beautiful.

drengnikrafe
2010-08-30, 05:58 PM
Red Herrings... ugh. I've only encountered or used one. We were doing a CoC one shot, and he decides to aid us, we will get spooky guides to help us out. He made the first one extra suspicious, and one clue that the second one wasn't evil. Unsuprisingly I was suspicious of the first one until the very last moment when several plot points were revealed.
I wasn't happy. It harmed my suspension of disbelief.

Aroka
2010-08-30, 09:46 PM
First Rule of Plotting: Never give the PCs a Red Herring. They will follow it to the ends of the earth, no matter how many Real Clues you give to them.

If your players end up on a Wild Goose chase, it is almost always better to drop the Plot on them rather than let them go insane.

For example, if the PCs are locked on the Cook, have the Librarian decide to set the Cook up with a decent frame so that the PCs can lock him away - but make it such that the planted evidence doesn't match up with the evidence that got the PCs on his trail in the first place.

It's no achievement to sent PCs off on a Wild Goose chase - the real test is to get them back from one without having everything burned to the ground :smallamused:

There was a KODT strip that really summed this up, I think, where the guys find an empty hallway and spend hours examining it, and finally returned to town to get excavation equipment and a team of workers because it can't just be an empty hallway that ends nowhere.

Players can turn anything into a Red Herring for themselves.

Red herrings work great in writing and films, where they add a nice twist to the reading experience or let the reader feel clever by figuring them out, but not so well in games where they take up time.

The Pressman
2010-08-30, 10:57 PM
Yep, this has happened to me. I learned the hard way about red herrings. 1930s GURPS campaign involving arms smuggling to warring South American countries. Introduced two NPC's: 1. A former German general who was advising some Hollywood war movie, boisterous and full of life, 2. His former subordinate, quiet, stayed in the background. The second NPC was also the one who had an acquaintance with the American business man who just happened to be storing military weapons in his house -- not that any of the players bothered to investigate that connection. I intended the first NPC to be a red herring, but I also thought the players wouldn't spend 3 sessions pestering the guy until they figured it out. The character was very congenial, but the players would not leave him alone, they became totally fixated on him as the culprit, and had totally forgotten about the other German officer. *sigh* I learned not to make my red herrings too affable. :-)

Ah. See, I'm just used to playing with people who know that if something seems obvious, then it's wrong. We've had at least three fairly good red herrings so far, and they've fallen for none of them. Well, different players different ways.

Piedmon_Sama
2010-08-31, 12:54 AM
-I once had an NPC Orc Rogue follow my PCs for something like fifteen sessions, the whole time pretending to be a simpleton (he actually had Int/Cha 12). They had rescued him (along with some other PCs) from slavery in a Kobold Warren. His only motive was to survive and make it back to civilization (they were lost in the wilderness for 36 sessions), but once he decided the party was getting nowhere, he decided to strike out on his own. So it happened the party spotted a mysterious, direlect stone tower in this forest and the majority decided to investigate to see if they could loot it. The Cleric (and ostensible party leader) was so disgusted he waited outside with their baggage mule (which the orc had been given responsibility for) while the others went in. Just as the others disappear into the tower, the Cleric feels something cold against the back of his head and realizes the orc has him dead to rights with a pistol (which another PC had looted from the forest earlier and left in the baggage for some reason). The Cleric had to just stand there while the Orc scarpered with all their food, bedding, and winter supplies. This was after weeks of me playing that orc up as a totally stereotypical Warcraft Grunt-style hurf durf moron.

-This isn't really something I did, but one time one of my players accidentally helped me conceal an ambush. One of the PCs in this group is playing a Draconic Elf Monk who is basically a roving engine of destruction and tends to attack random NPCs with no provocation anytime she's bored. So the PCs have been trundling through open farmland in their wagon for days and are sick of the bouncing vehicle and monotonous countryside alike, when they see this splendid Tudor-style manor standing alone on the plain in front of a lush walled garden and orchard, and a beautiful dark-skinned girl in a summer dress standing on its luxurious veranda. I think I even described her staring wistfully into the deepening russet dusk.

Alleria the monk hops out of their wagon and hauls off over about 100 yards from the highway to this manorhouse, vaults over the veranda balcony and cold-***** this girl right in the face, sprawls her and breaks her nose for no apparent reason. Alphonse the Cleric (same poor bastard from the first anecdote) about has an aneurysm. I have the party cohort draw his sword and start screaming at Alleria. The monk moves right over the downed girl, kicks in a splendid oak door and starts ripping paintings off the wall and silver off the dining table, dumping them in her bag of holding. Valda the Fighter finally reaches her as she's ransacking the dining room and the two have a wrestling match that almost ends in Valda getting her arm broken before Alphonse orders Alleria to go back to the wagon before he blasts her (and bizarrely, she obeys).

After all this, the players have, for once, forgotten to be suspicious of seemingly-innocent NPCs. They revive the first girl and find the house empty save her two sisters. They claim to be three maids left alone in the remote house by an evil knight to be prisoner until the oldest agrees to marry him. My players should be screaming TRAP and drawing their weapons before the oldest sister even finishes her story, but they're so mortified by what the monk did they don't even think of it.

Punchline: The three sisters were phasms placed in the house to lure and assassinate Alphonse. He killed them all while buck naked with his magic hammer and then Alleria said TOLD YA SO, and Alphonse was like NO YOU DID NOT.

There's more. A lot more. My players really don't trust anything I tell them at this point. But that's enough for one post.