Player accidentally stumbled onto big spoiler about NPC online. Need advice.

[Unoriginal]

Hi folks.

So, as the thread's title says, one of my players stumbled onto a big spoiler for the adventure module I run, and I need advice.

More specifically, my player



found out that Zybilna was actually Tasha/Iggwilv



Now the thing is, this player's PC is a Fey Wanderer Ranger with the Feylost background, so I could try tying this spoiler into in-character stuff rather than just go "well, let's just apply player/character knowledge divide here".

But on the other hand I'm not sure if it's fair for the other players, 'cause it's likely they'll get the spoiler too rather than have the gradual reveal the campaign plans for.

On the third hand the Ranger players hasn't got the full info on who the NPC is, just the first layer, so it may not be as big a spoil as I think it is...

Regardless, I'd love to hear your perspective on the question.

[Angelalex242]

If you want to give the player a chance to know, have the NPC do something rather boneheaded that reveals her identity.

[tokek]

Its not as big a spoil as all that - specifically in the last chapter those are not the names that you need to achieve one of the endings. The name you need for that is slightly different.

I would just have a word with the player and ask them not to tell everyone else and say that you would much rather play the adventure as written but will happily let their character have some unreliable rumour that there is something going on here. When clues start to come out their character is free to then "remember" scandal and rumour that they once heard saying that Zyblina was really Iggwilv. Or that Iggwilv had replaced Zyblina, or one of any number of similar rumours all of which will turn out to be partially true when you run the full story.

I love the idea of untrustworthy or incomplete knowledge in-game.

If your player then plays the character as thinking that Iggwilv is the main villain and they need to rescue Zyblina from her then be generous awarding inspiration for great role play.

But also people should use spoiler warnings around that information online. Really they should.

[Kane0]

Do you trust your player(s) to avoid egregious metagaming? I dont really care if my players know, especially since three of us are DMs and are likely to own the same adventures anyways.

[Unoriginal]

I love the idea of untrustworthy or incomplete knowledge in-game.

I got to play with that a lot in this campaign, it's pretty great.



But also people should use spoiler warnings around that information online. Really they should.

Yeah. Amusingly enough my player got that spoiler by reading the Forgotten Realms wiki, which is on many place out-of-date but apparently someone decided specifically the page on Archfey needed a link to Iggwilv's page without warning.


Do you trust your player(s) to avoid egregious metagaming?

Absolutely. If I say we should go for the "you know, your character doesn't" angle, I trust them to do it without issue, and they have told me they have no problem doing that.

I was just thinking it could be interesting to work this in-character since the PC is so linked to the Feywild and its inhabitants.