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View Full Version : Gone Fishin' - Players and Red Herrings



The Grue
2015-04-24, 02:24 PM
When I GM, I make an effort to maintain verisimilitude. I improv little details to help build the illusion of a functioning world that exists even when the player characters aren't looking at it.

The trouble is that for whatever reason my players love to look under every rock, open every door, follow every bystander. Practical example: my players follow up on a lead and arrive at a suspect's flat. Across the street is a boarded-up pub with an amusing name. Do my players try to enter the suspect's house? Do they question the neighbours? No; they cross the street and try to break into the abandoned pub.

Example 2: My players are reviewing the security camera footage trying to find who planted a bomb on the radio tower. Let's look at who was in the recording studio when the bomb went off - there was a guy there! Okay what happened when the bomb detonated? He panicked, and left. Where did he go? Well he went outside to the emergency muster point. What did he do then? What did he do before the explosion? What time did he come in to work that day? What did he have for lunch?

You get the idea. I think the cause might be that I don't indicate clearly enough which setting details are for flavour and which are plot related. But that's partly deliberate, real life doesn't flag which details are relevant to whatever you're doing and my expectation is that my players will know what they're trying to do and pursue that without stopping to check inside every log along the way. Should I be flagging relevant and non-relevant description? What else can I, as a GM, do to keep my players from overwhelming themselves with self-inflicted red herrings?

sktarq
2015-04-24, 02:42 PM
Is it a problem?

Try to have fun with it. And give mild negative consequences for mistakes (ruined clothes from dust/rusty nails, lead gets away and they have to re do the thing they just worked to complete, etc)

Let them ask for skill or ability checks to try and parse what's likely to produce results (don't force them unless something seems highly problematic-like with a time limit) but give them an option.

Also have others, competitors, on some aspects of their mission. Mention the cops have been interviewing or are looking for people who had been seen at the Radio Station for the previous two days or have found a timer device that had up to 24 hours of waiting. These hints can help them focus of periods of space or time that you want them to focus on. Also having them loose a race with said competitors can have fun consequences where the players have to race to get ahead.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-24, 02:42 PM
The big, glowing question mark over quest givers seems to work in some settings.

Yora
2015-04-24, 02:42 PM
My first guess would be to let them fumble around in the dark until they realize it is not getting them anywhere, so they learn to concentrate on the facts and not imagine that they know for certain things they just invented themselves.

However, there should probably be some way to make it easy to recognize when they actually do get on the right track. If it can take an hour to understand what a real clue means, there wouldn't be any way to know that running into a wall for 55 minutes is completely pointless.

Red Fel
2015-04-24, 02:53 PM
One fairly straightforward option, once all of the dice-rolling mechanics are out of the way (e.g. break into the pub, get the security footage running, etc.), is to simply ask the players what they're looking for. If it's a "right direction" thing, you let them follow that lead; if it's a "wrong direction" thing, you simply say something along the lines of, "After going over the room/footage/testimony/witnesses for an hour or so, you realize you're not getting anywhere this way."

You don't necessarily have to throw a lead in their faces, but you can cut off a lot of red herrings by simply asking what they're looking for, and then informing them that, after spending some time, they haven't found anything. As long as you don't have a habit of being an annoyingly literal DM1, they won't assume they were supposed to look for something specific; they should get the message and move along. It saves time and effort and keeps the players engaged.

1Literal DM: You come to a doorway.
Player: We go through the door.
Literal DM: You cannot.
Player: Why not?
Literal DM: It is closed.
Player: We open the door.
Literal DM: You cannot.
Player: Why not?
Literal DM: It is locked.
Player: Is there a key nearby?
Literal DM: Yes.
Player: We unlock the door.
Literal DM: You cannot.
Player: Why not?
Literal DM: Because you did not pick up the key.

Yora
2015-04-24, 03:00 PM
That's always good advice: Not only ask the players what they want to do, but also what they hope to accomplish. Often that makes it a lot easier to tell them that their current idea is a dead end without outright telling them to stop because they are on a wrong track.

Thrawn4
2015-04-24, 03:49 PM
I improv little details to help build the illusion of a functioning world that exists even when the player characters aren't looking at it.
[...]
I think the cause might be that I don't indicate clearly enough which setting details are for flavour and which are plot related.

Well done, I would do it the same way.
If your players get distracted that easily, you should ask them OOC (maybe before your next game) why they are doing this in general, and you should also point out that not every character is important just because he has a name or an agenda.

The Evil DM
2015-04-24, 05:01 PM
As a long time DM of a sandbox world where I play in a similar manner. The answer is balance. If the players are having fun who cares if they chase down all the red herrings.

If they are not having fun, give them a little push in the manner Red Fel mentioned.

Rad Mage
2015-04-24, 05:38 PM
1Literal DM: You come to a doorway.
Player: We go through the door.
Literal DM: You cannot.
Player: Why not?
Literal DM: It is closed.
Player: We open the door.
Literal DM: You cannot.
Player: Why not?
Literal DM: It is locked.
Player: Is there a key nearby?
Literal DM: Yes.
Player: We unlock the door.
Literal DM: You cannot.
Player: Why not?
Literal DM: Because you did not pick up the key.

You mean you don't like RPGs run like a text-based adventure game?:smalltongue:

goto124
2015-04-25, 10:46 AM
Bwahahahahaha, that DM, really? I'm running a freeform based/ripped off a text-based adventure game in these very forums now, and I'm not even like that. I'm bad in other ways, but not that.

You could also turn red herrings into actual progress. The info-giving NPC was over the other side? She's in the pub now.

Where's the thread called 'What should I learn from this as a DM'...

Talyn
2015-04-26, 06:50 AM
Yeah, the way to get players to not waste time on the red herrings is to make them not red herrings - the guy on the security footage? Maybe he heard or smelled something before the bomb went off, something that will point the party in the right direction.

That boarded-up pub? Looks like there was an old security camera that was still running. Once they hack the dusty old computer in the back room that is still powered on, they can get the footage of the time they want. Or there is a bum who squats in the boarded-up pub, who will gladly give them the information they want in return for a sandwich and a bottle of gin.

erikun
2015-04-26, 05:44 PM
Well, one thought is to not have single individuals or single details in an otherwise devoid setting. They unintentionally tend to stand out, which attracts the players' attention. Rather than having one guy there when the bomb when off, why not a group of people? Rather than pointing out the one boarded up building in the area, why not state that multiple buildings are boarded up? I mean, if the players are that determined to pick out details of boarded up buildings, you can then state the bar with the funny name and let the PCs rummage around in the abandoned building for awhile.

It has been my experience that one thing is considered an important clue, while multiple things tend to be considered background details. That may not actually be true, of course, but most groups tend to get the first impression that it is.

Cealocanth
2015-04-26, 06:10 PM
In a situation like this is where I would suggest a little big of railroading. No need for invisible walls or telling the players that they aren't allowed to do something, but taking hold of the reigns and turning the story back around can help to keep the players from chasing a Red Herring too far. Here's a little example dialogue to demonstrate what I mean.


DM - You push with all your might, and the large metal door opens with a deafening screech. The musty stench of ancient supplies fills your nostrils as a small room is revealed. The walls are lined with sealed crates lashed together with some very old rope.
Players - I go to the nearest crate and pry it open, what do I see?
DM - The crate is filled with strange rectangular bars of jelly wrapped in foil. They are labeled in a strange, incomprehensible language.
Players - I taste one of the bars of jelly.
DM - Although it is beyond stale, you recognize the mild flavor as an old fashioned protein ration. There is probably enough in this crate to feed a colony for months!
Players - Great. I crack open another crate.
DM - The crate is filled with metalic-tasting orange dust.
Players - Do I recognize this dust.
DM - You suspect that it's rust. Something metal was in here a long time ago.
Players - I keep searching the crates.
DM - You spend the next few hours prying open the storage crates and salvaging the contents. Along with the protein bars, you manage to salvage the parts to a plasma rifle and some basic medical supplies. Nothing else of value was found in the crates.

If you have offered too many doorways to the players, just tell the players that they have taken them all and what the results were. Then you can move on with the adventure. Be sure to give some realistic consequences for this. In this scenario the players lost some valuable time searching the storage room, for example.

Darth Ultron
2015-04-26, 11:04 PM
I add lots of detail and often run into this problem, and the related one of the players think everything is connected to everything like a bad movie. There are a couple tricks:

Make the fluff as unappealing as possible. It's still fluff, but make it uncool. So it's not a bar across the street, it's a nail salon or a model train store. Make it whatever you know the players won't like and will ignore. There are plenty of uncool things most players will ignore by default. If players see a bar they will get all excited as they can role play how cool it is to go to a bar....but make the bar a 24 hour bingo parlor and the players will stay clear.

And on the flip side, make the plot things as cool as possible. You want the players to run towards them as fast as possible. If the bad guys loft is above a nightclub, the players will be climbing over the table to say their character runs to that spot and does cool nightclub role playing stuff.

Greed. Nothing keeps a player more focused then greed. Just sprinkle bread crumbs and watch the players again climb over the table like crazy to get the loot. It can be money, coins or whatever will drive the players wild with greed.

Make sure you police up loose ends that have strings the players might tug. Like just have no one at the place when it was bombed. Or have them killed in the blast. Blanks are good here, as they leave nothing to go on.

Should the players go off on a wild and crazy tangent, just make it dull. They find the guy and he is a ''Forest Gump'' type person, for example. Or they break into a place and find dust. You really want to avoid encouraging them with things like ''in the abandoned warehouse you find a pot of gold and a dragon!'' as then they will want to check every abandoned warehouse forever...

Storm_Of_Snow
2015-04-27, 05:17 AM
Just don't let the world stand still - if they take an hour to investigate everything, the person they're looking for is an hour further away, has changed their clothes, shaved, grabbed their fake passport and is heading for the airport to leave the country. Or maybe they're outside in the crowd, watching everything that's going on.

erikun
2015-04-28, 08:50 AM
Make the fluff as unappealing as possible. It's still fluff, but make it uncool. So it's not a bar across the street, it's a nail salon or a model train store. Make it whatever you know the players won't like and will ignore. There are plenty of uncool things most players will ignore by default. If players see a bar they will get all excited as they can role play how cool it is to go to a bar....but make the bar a 24 hour bingo parlor and the players will stay clear.
Most players I am familiar with would be eager to tear apart a nail salon or a model train store. Why? Because it was mentioned, of course! Why would anyone even take the time to mention a 24-hour bingo parlor if it wasn't some sort of cover for an underground extortion ring? It's it suspicious that the bingo parlor is open 24 hours?! Does the city really have the people to support bingo for 24/7? etc.

This is why, if it's boring, I don't generally mention it. Or if the players want a detailed list of all the stuff in town, beyond "several shops lining the walk" then I give them the full list. If they still insist on visiting the bingo parlor after that? Well then, I guess the party will be playing bingo, if that's what they want. Or perhaps the one CN character will be, while the rest of the party goes off and does something important.

goto124
2015-04-28, 09:57 AM
Conservation of Detail is something I make use of when DMing. It helps in pretty much any medium - stories, video games, tabletops.

Darth Ultron
2015-04-28, 04:15 PM
Conservation of Detail is something I make use of when DMing. It helps in pretty much any medium - stories, video games, tabletops.

I'm not a fan of the limited short attention span level of detail. I take the other route of lots of detail.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-28, 05:03 PM
If you're already putting a lot of effort to paint around the edges to make a setting feel alive, the answering to players going on wild goose chases is: let them. Enjoy the chaos. Relish on your players actually doing things out of their own interest and iniative, rather than because you only prepared one narrow trail for them to follow.

However, if your players are just perpetually clueless - that is, they'd want to do something relevant but can't manage it on their own - there's a little logic game you might want to engage in to train their minds.

In it, the game master describes a situation, typically the scene of some sort of a crime, and typically also ludicrous and counter-intuitive; and the task of the players is to ask questions which can be answered binarily, with just yes or no, until they can figure out what happened and how the situation got how it is.

Sample scenario: A girl ventures into a restaurant and orders an ostrich steak. After taking one bite out of it, she goes out and jumps under a car.

Once they get good in this game, you can bet they become better in investigating mysteries inside RPGs too.

Note: with some players, especially little kids, it's hard to get them to ask questions even in the proper form, nevermind questions which might actually be relevant. Logic is surprisingly hard.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-28, 08:47 PM
Sample scenario: A girl ventures into a restaurant and orders an ostrich steak. After taking one bite out of it, he goes out and jumps under a car.


First question: Was the ostrich sandwich the cause of the gender switch?

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-28, 08:49 PM
No. :smalltongue:

erikun
2015-04-28, 09:19 PM
First question: Was the ostrich sandwich the cause of the gender switch?

No. :smalltongue:
That is because you are asking the wrong question. Look at the example again, and it was clearly an ostrich steak and not an ostrich sandwich. Of course the sandwich wasn't the cause when there was no sandwich to begin with! :smallwink:

Maglubiyet
2015-04-28, 10:00 PM
That is because you are asking the wrong question. Look at the example again, and it was clearly an ostrich steak and not an ostrich sandwich. Of course the sandwich wasn't the cause when there was no sandwich to begin with! :smallwink:

Foiled again!

DontEatRawHagis
2015-04-28, 10:25 PM
You get the idea. I think the cause might be that I don't indicate clearly enough which setting details are for flavour and which are plot related. But that's partly deliberate, real life doesn't flag which details are relevant to whatever you're doing and my expectation is that my players will know what they're trying to do and pursue that without stopping to check inside every log along the way. Should I be flagging relevant and non-relevant description? What else can I, as a GM, do to keep my players from overwhelming themselves with self-inflicted red herrings?

Improvise is sometimes the best policy. Those red herrings they are going after, make them the size of sharks.

The guy that left the radio tower seems nervous, but not guilty. Maybe he saw something of interest and is worried about him being targeted by the actual perpetrator.

My players tend to come up with elaborate plans that seemed destined to fail. Every once in a while they will fail, but every once in a while I will follow down their logic to make them feel like they figured it all out when really they helped me figure it out. DMing and being a player is a give and take sometimes.

LokiRagnarok
2015-04-29, 12:47 AM
If you're already putting a lot of effort to paint around the edges to make a setting feel alive, the answering to players going on wild goose chases is: let them. Enjoy the chaos. Relish on your players actually doing things out of their own interest and iniative, rather than because you only prepared one narrow trail for them to follow.

However, if your players are just perpetually clueless - that is, they'd want to do something relevant but can't manage it on their own - there's a little logic game you might want to engage in to train their minds.

In it, the game master describes a situation, typically the scene of some sort of a crime, and typically also ludicrous and counter-intuitive; and the task of the players is to ask questions which can be answered binarily, with just yes or no, until they can figure out what happened and how the situation got how it is.

Sample scenario: A girl ventures into a restaurant and orders an ostrich steak. After taking one bite out of it, she goes out and jumps under a car.

Once they get good in this game, you can bet they become better in investigating mysteries inside RPGs too.

Note: with some players, especially little kids, it's hard to get them to ask questions even in the proper form, nevermind questions which might actually be relevant. Logic is surprisingly hard.

Side note: what you would be looking for is called "situation puzzles". http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_puzzle

nedz
2015-05-04, 05:30 AM
It sounds like your players have been conditioned into expecting Chekhov guns. This is a concept which comes from minimalist theatre where if a prop exists then it must serve some purpose, otherwise: why put the prop there.

One solution is the old wandering monster, which could just be an NPC turning up for them to interact with.

Segev
2015-05-04, 11:41 AM
Just chiming in to add my support to the "make them not red herrings" advice. If they're following a piece of furniture (insofar as you originally planned its importance), then re-assign some of your clues to be relevant to it. Perhaps that random fellow IS the person you'd intended them to hunt down based on his fingerprints. Or maybe he's his housemate, and that's how the desired fellow wound up getting access.

BayardSPSR
2015-05-04, 01:39 PM
That's always good advice: Not only ask the players what they want to do, but also what they hope to accomplish. Often that makes it a lot easier to tell them that their current idea is a dead end without outright telling them to stop because they are on a wrong track.

I read the blog post on that the other day, and I now think it is a very good idea, and infinitely preferable to "Are You Sure?" wink wink nudge nudge. It also makes it possible to make their plan not a dead end, which might be difficult otherwise.