PaladinBoy
2007-10-20, 06:06 PM
I have a question for the DMs that frequent these forums (and I guess some players, too), and I will illustrate my question with a section of a book, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
In this section, a character tells a story about a crime lord, to teach his new ward something about him. The crime lord, in the days when his grasp on the city's gangs was new and weak, had several gangs whose desire to unseat him was an open secret. Dealing with them brutally would cost him too many allies. So he waited. In the meantime, he bought a carpet for his hall; he loudly proclaimed the love of his new carpet. In fact, whenever he invited a guest to his hall whom he intended to kill, the carpet would always be safely rooled up and out of the way, so no blood got on it. It got to the point where men could tell upon entering the room whether or not they were to live or die. Back to his troublesome gangs...... of course, no member of any of them was stupid enough to be alone or undefended in the crime lord's presence. Then he invited their leaders and the most troublesome to have dinner with him in his hall. They consulted their spies, and learned that the carpet was unrolled, right under the table where they were to have dinner. And they, believing the crime lord to be scared and wishing to negotiate, came undefended. I am sure you can guess the rest......... in the words of the character telling the tale, "If there was a drop of blood that wasn't on the carpet, it was on the ceiling." In short, this crime lord made the gang leaders expect something, then used that against them.
My question is, how do you create such expectations in your players? How do you make your players expect certain actions of your NPCs? The simplest way would be, of course, to tell them that their characters would expect it, but then they might not really believe you, and some people would be annoyed over what they see as you controlling their character. The next up would be to establish the correlation over several sessions (such as attending dinner parties where people die, and dinner parties where they don't, and emphasizing the carpet's presence or absence), but what if you don't have several sessions? Is it possible to have one of your NPCs tell stories of past events and have it convincingly believed? Or would that just be taken as an overly elaborate way of telling them straight up?
I realize that these answers would depend slightly on how gullible (or paranoid) your players are. But, as a DM, what would you do if you needed to establish some expectations quickly? As a player, which option would you prefer to have used, or be most likely to believe?
In this section, a character tells a story about a crime lord, to teach his new ward something about him. The crime lord, in the days when his grasp on the city's gangs was new and weak, had several gangs whose desire to unseat him was an open secret. Dealing with them brutally would cost him too many allies. So he waited. In the meantime, he bought a carpet for his hall; he loudly proclaimed the love of his new carpet. In fact, whenever he invited a guest to his hall whom he intended to kill, the carpet would always be safely rooled up and out of the way, so no blood got on it. It got to the point where men could tell upon entering the room whether or not they were to live or die. Back to his troublesome gangs...... of course, no member of any of them was stupid enough to be alone or undefended in the crime lord's presence. Then he invited their leaders and the most troublesome to have dinner with him in his hall. They consulted their spies, and learned that the carpet was unrolled, right under the table where they were to have dinner. And they, believing the crime lord to be scared and wishing to negotiate, came undefended. I am sure you can guess the rest......... in the words of the character telling the tale, "If there was a drop of blood that wasn't on the carpet, it was on the ceiling." In short, this crime lord made the gang leaders expect something, then used that against them.
My question is, how do you create such expectations in your players? How do you make your players expect certain actions of your NPCs? The simplest way would be, of course, to tell them that their characters would expect it, but then they might not really believe you, and some people would be annoyed over what they see as you controlling their character. The next up would be to establish the correlation over several sessions (such as attending dinner parties where people die, and dinner parties where they don't, and emphasizing the carpet's presence or absence), but what if you don't have several sessions? Is it possible to have one of your NPCs tell stories of past events and have it convincingly believed? Or would that just be taken as an overly elaborate way of telling them straight up?
I realize that these answers would depend slightly on how gullible (or paranoid) your players are. But, as a DM, what would you do if you needed to establish some expectations quickly? As a player, which option would you prefer to have used, or be most likely to believe?