Today’s article is dedicated to the age old tradition of lying to your friends. Or, in more eloquent terms, the Narrative Skill of Artful Deception and Misinformation.

GMs have many responsibilities at the table. As judges as rules experts, we should always strive to be fair, balanced, and transparent in all our decision-making. But in our role as narrator, storyteller, and mastermind it is sometimes beneficial – nay – imperative for us to be intentionally deceptive to our players. All for the sake of an enriched experience, of course. So let’s get right into it shall we?

Red Herrings – A classic narrative element. A clue, object, NPC, etc. that is deliberately introduced to be misleading or distracting. You can deliberately misdirect players into encounters, traps, or ambushes. Or you can use a red herring simply to give them a sense of agency when exploring an otherwise linear dungeon. An example of this might be the placement of a particularly alluring piece of treasure in the middle of an otherwise empty room. The doorway leading to the next room is obviously there on the far wall. And the PCs can easily just walk through. But there’s this thing sitting unguarded. What is it? Why is it there? Is it a trap? Probably… but still… The actual thing, once acquired, might be of relatively little material value, or nonmagical. But the sense of mystery it creates in your PCs would do more than justify its existence.

The downside of red herrings is that they can sometimes derail your adventure if the PCs focus too much on the distraction. Once, in my home game, the party was tasked with hunting down a necromancer to find clues about a particular forbidden ritual. The adventure called for the PCs to arrive at the necromancer’s lair while he was out, defeat some guardians, and discover the necromancer’s notes on aforementioned ritual. The necromancer’s absence was an an assumption and his presence was not actually a requisite for the adventure. The necromancer didn’t even have a stat block. Unfortunately, the PCs wanted to focus on the hunting down part of their directive. They got up to defeating the guardians as planned but upon discovering there was no necromancer, immediately set off on tracking him down. For two more sessions.

Lies of Omission – As the GM, yours is the voice that creates the world for the PCs. And as such you should strive towards descriptive language and evocative terminology. Sometimes, however, we resort to out-of-character descriptions for the sake of brevity and clarity. Not every thing can sound like, “The half-elf gestures purposefully, fingers forming complex arcane patters. She utters a guttural curse accompanied by a short chopping motion with all the finality of a headsman’s axe. A shimmering semi-translucent blade materializes before you and strikes!”

Sometimes you just want to say, “…she casts Mage’s Sword. What’s your AC?”

Communication through game terminology – especially when talking about things like monsters or spells – can be far more expedient than going all out on descriptive narrative. But with some players, particularly some of the more experienced ones, revealing something as simple as a spell or monster name can give away all there is to know about that encounter. “He casts Phantasmal Killer at you.” “Well we know he’s at least 7th level…”

In one of the more interesting GMing experiences I’ve had recently, my PCs found themselves in an old sewer network – using it as a way to traverse the city undetected by the street guards. They’d been told that a ravenous creature lurked within the sewer but they were willing to risk it. So, of course, I set up an encounter with the creature. It came out of the shadows all grasping tentacles and razor sharp teeth accompanied by the overwhelming stench of rot and decay. It dragged one PC under the murky waters and proceeded to try and drown her. After taking a few hits it let her go and fled, only to return on the PCs’ return trip.

The PCs stopped using the sewers very much after that. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the creature was just an advanced otyugh. Had I told them that from the beginning it would have been far less intimidating an encounter. But because I stuck to descriptive language and avoided using proper terminology, their sense of immersion within the narrative remained intact and they were decidedly unnerved.

 

How have your experiences misdirecting your players gone? I want to know! Share your thoughts in the comments section or on the forums!