What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes? What are some good plot twists basically?
What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes?
What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes? What are some good plot twists basically?
It will never work in a roleplaying game. Games are not books.
I've seen it done before, TTRPGs revolve around the concept of DMs keeping things hidden from their players.
>TTRPGs revolve around the concept of DMs keeping things hidden from their players
This is truly a fricked up way to view how RPGs function and most of the leads to very shitty games. I'd argue the opposite of what you said is true.
I don't understand. Do you play games where the DM just tells you there's a trap in a room? Where's the fun in that?
NTA, but I disagree. There is a fundamental truth to RPG's: things are only real in the game when the players (including GM) all imagine it together. That trap in your dungeon isn't made real until they hear about it and understand what it is. Now some things are going to be mysteries or be unexpected (like the trap), but the vast majority of the game world/space needs to be publicly shared with the entire group as it becomes relevant or the game doesn't work. Now it is true that the dungeon exploration mini-game within D&D relies on player uncertainty and exploration of a pre-generated space created by the DM. Even in this case I would hardly say the game "revolves" around the concept of the GM hiding things from players l, that is exactly opposite. The game is based around the GM revealing things to players.
Lastly, in other (better IMO) games there is much less emphasis on the hidden nature of dungeon terrain and much more emphasis on public sharing of knowledge and potential outcomes. This doesn't mean there aren't mysteries and surprises in store, but by revealing more of the game world you actually allow players to make meaningful choices. Any DM who "revolves" their entire game around hidden information is going to have confused and hesitant players who will tend to have less agency. It leads to railroading of overemphasized.
This. One of my biggest lessons as a GM was to stop playing 'poker' with my players.
If you're writing cool lore for your players to discover, don't hide it from them. Just let them see it.
Your point about meaningful choices is spot on. Hiding everything from the players for the surprise just leads to disengagement. The classic forked passageway with ZERO indication of what's down each side of the fork is basically not even gameplay; it's a blind choice.
That said, obviously other 'agents' in the game do not need to have their plans revealed. I'd say that this particular facet, the discovery of an opponents plans is one of the most fun things that can be done in the game, because it allows the players and PCs to directly interact with something that they can actively thwart, and then in turn, consequences happen, which is fun as frick for the GM.
so when you go to delve a dungeon, do you want the DM to give you a full map of the place with descriptions of what's in every room? if you're solving a mystery, do you want the DM to tell you who dun it at the begining, and just go on pretending not to know from there? wtf do you mean anon?
>Games are not books.
This is true, but
>[Intentionally deceiving your players] will never work in a roleplaying game.
What the *frick* are you even talking about? Not only is it possible to deceive players, players are often deceived by accident alone, to the point where they routinely manage to deceive themselves, with virtually no input from the GM even necessary.
Out of all the fricking most nogamest nogamisms I have seen in all my years since /tg/ was created, this has to be the nogamest statement I have seen. Goddamn, son, what the frick are you on about?
Also, I demand an answer to this.
>Also, I demand an answer to this.
>What the *frick* are you even talking about?
That it will not work in a roleplaying game and will every time result in a shitty experience for everyone involved.
Bullshit. Hogwash. Poppywiener.
Like I said, players routinely manage to do this to themselves, and it is usually funny for everyone involved.
Reasonable.
No he's right. Players will always make false conclusions and some even tend to act upon them to the point where they believe 100% that is what is going on. You learn that its fine to create a theory or narrative you also need to prove it instead of just assuming its what is going on.
I once ran a game where the players came up with this entire elaborate conspiracy theory about what was going on, that I encouraged in absolutely no way, and then were floored when the big reveal came and...the whole problem was caused by a power-hungry local noble, just as all the obvious signs had suggested.
There was no nefarious foreign influence. The king was not allowed the noble to gain power to use as a lightning rod for internal dissent. The foreign wife? Just a foreign wife, as nobles often get. The king apparently ignoring it? The king was an idiot more interested in partying than ruling, not some Sun King playing 5 dimensional chess.
I have to say, that was one of those rare times where the players created their own narrative.
Players tend to do the whole conspiracy theory shit if let to have free reign of ideas.
Players making false conclusions is completely a different thing than the gm intentionally deceiving them.
No it's not. Deception is about making others come to false conclusions. Full stop.
Given how easy it is for players to arrive at false conclusions on their own, literally all you need to do is to even hint at whatever bait you want them to take. Players are pathologically incapable of not taking it.
>No it's not
You're totally clueless.
But
WHY
>players are often deceived by accident alone, to the point where they routinely manage to deceive themselves, with virtually no input from the GM even necessary.
Adding onto this: You don't even need to be a TTRPG player to figure this out. I've unironically done this to myself in video games where I convinced myself of a plot twist that never came. I once convinced myself so hard that Zant in Twilight Princess was actually Ganondorf in disguise. I almost shat myself when the helmet came off and it was, in fact, Zant.
God that brings back memories.
>/tg/ giving bad roleplaying advice, episode 1,378.
jeez are we only on episode 1,378?
Player skill vs character skill is an issue homosexual. Watch dorkness rising.
I’ve literally played in games where they’ve been done before.
>It will never work in a roleplaying game
I love keeping secrets from other party members as a player. If players can keep secrets and lie about themselves, DMs certainly can.
>I'm a lazy DM so that means it's impossible
Every time
>It will never work in a roleplaying game.
It works all the time.
To frick with my players all I have to do is start asking for Perception or Wisdom-Rolls out of nowhere and they go full-on tinfoil-hat paranoia.
>To frick with my players all I have to do is start asking for Perception or Wisdom-Rolls out of nowhere and they go full-on tinfoil-hat paranoia.
Based
The biggest obstacle genuine surprises is the fact that players immediately know if something is a success or not, since they roll the dice, see the result and then anticipate the effect in that order. Hiding dice rolls for situations where they are trying to detect danger or discern motive is a way to address this. As long as they trust you to not fake results, it should allow you to deceive them regarding the presentation of the results.
Could you give the players a “detect bullshit” roll at the end of every dialogue an npc has, which gives one of three answers:
1. “They don’t seem to be lying” (if you roll successfully and they’re telling the truth)
2. “They may not be telling the truth” (if they roll successfully and detect some form of deception but don’t reveal what it is, that will need to be figured out through dialogue)
3. “You’re unable to tell if they’re telling the truth or not” (if they roll unsuccessfully).
An unsuccessful roll result would still allow party members to try and detect lies through conversation / just knowing stuff from their backstory or adventuring, but at that point, they would need to roll check by accusing the NPC, which could result in conflict.
>The biggest obstacle genuine surprises is the fact that players immediately know if something is a success or not
"You do not detect any traps" is not the same as "There are no traps" anon. Come on, this is like dungeon delving 101. Just learn to extend that approach to things other than traps and environmental puzzles.
Sometimes a low roll can still tell you something, and sometimes it doesn't tell you anything because there's nothing to tell. You don't only make your players roll perception when the room is trapped do you?
Traps?
Not the femboy crossdressers that drain your wiener and balls of cum the hidden things that hurt you
Hence the kobold
Sorry I thought you were expecting a crossdressing boy bawd prostitute who loves to drain mens balls
>players immediately know if something is a success or not
They know they rolled a 27. They know that is generally a very high roll. But they do not immediately know it is a success, because the DC may have been 30.
Why is she wearing a leather garter despite not having any stockings?
She probably took her stockings off for easy access.
Easy access to what? And why leave the garter on?
Now here's a sensible answer.
It's a strap for a (mana) battery pack.
>garter
it's a strap can be used for carrying a concealing weapon.
Seems like a common aesthetic for some females in fantasy art
Especially in leather corset/dress combinations apparently
That one at least looks like a holster.
For what?
Something heavy but hidden behind her skirt.
It’s just an accessory that draws the viewer’s gaze toward the thigh region.
Considering she's dressed like a prostitute and the file name calls her a succubus, it's probably specifically to draw attention to the fact that she's going around with bare legs and no skirt or dress worth the name. Or it could be deliberate flaunting of fashion and manners, like wearing a corset as outerwear.
>dressed like a prostitute
Very judgemental of you.
'Normal outfit, but modified to accentuate sexually attractive parts of your body' taken to that extreme tends to say 'prostitute.' I wouldn't assume based on that alone, but when you see a sky full of dark clouds you bring an umbrella.
Is her pimp a high-level fiend?
I think she's a free agent.
I would expect in a magical setting that women would use magic to make themselves more attractive and then dress to flaunt their hotness as a way to display their magical prowess to other women and intimidate them.
It's really going to depend on factors like social mores and current fashion. Class matters too. What the elite think is appropriate might not true with the views of the common folk. There is some credibility to what you opine in, for example, Korean surgery culture.
Yeah, it might be more if an upper class thing. Magical people would probably be the elite anyway.
>dressed like a prostitute
Somehow her succubus form looks even more loose
>missing the garter
Where did it go?
anon, she has an entirely different outfit on in that picture
No but presumably she transforms from one to the other right? Like OP is just her human guise?
She's cute. Would commit vile acts of unspeakable evil with.
Honestly, im impressed, she goes from looking like a loose halfu pleb that would be impressed by a single gold coin to something that could have been a bastard spawn of the habsburg dynasty given make up.
>loose
Excuse me?
Since this focuses a lot on the core challenge of adapting mystery genre expectations into a classic RPG, I've found it full of helpful suggestions despite not playing GURPS.
Off the top of my head it will talk about some of the ways an author might deceive a reader (let's say like, the use of describing things lists to set up something that will show up later without drawing attention to it by packing it in that list) and comment how it might work well/poorly in a ttrpg
GURPS coming in with the win
Deception is a careful balance.
One hand as GM, it's your job to fill in the whole sensory array of a situation. You also have full control. It is extremely easy to have something be entirely unexpected since they might have never had any reason to expect it at all. Twists that you pull, or seem to pull out of nowhere can be downright insulting if there was no hint or foreshadowing.
Which is why my favorite tool to pull plot twists are the players. Since having fellow players deceive you is far more fair.
One such time I did so when adding a new player.
>Running Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, Party was a ranger named Vernon who was swiftly jaded by the region due it being Germany, a bubbly Pokemon Breeder named Momo, and the terrifying hybrid of Youngster Joey and Goku named Rudolph.
>one of the party members, Momo, had a girlfriend.
>girlfriend was named Juneau, quiet, reserved, blonde, rich, had Daddy issues, but genuinely caring.
>Juneau had a cousin named Minerva Burns, who was likewise rich, but a hot tempered redhead who always said something scathing to the party and particularly Juneau.
>The villains the party were fighting were Eco terrorists, they all wore masks.
>The Terrorists were headed by a swole shirtless dude named Alpha who literally punched a dam until it exploded.
>The lieutenants both wore suits, one was a ginger lady named Beta who had the hots for Alpha, and a white haired twink called Gamma who 2/3rds of the party had the hots for.
>One day the girlfriend noticed Juneau was acting odd. Really odd. Asking weird questions. Ranting about Industrial Revolution and it's consequences.
>they were able to glean that she was some kind of fake, but could catch her before she escaped.
>As the party continued on they got into a big boss fight with Beta and her fire types, which they effectively lost and Gamma managed to make off with the plot important Genesect.
1/3
>Eventually the party goes to the uranium refinery run by Minerva’s father, which then get’s overwhelmed by Eco Sleeper agents.
>Somehow Beta was able to get up the Burns the elder’s office without anyone noticing.
>Now, 3/4ths of the way through of a Pokemon campaign, one of the players had to drop
> so the dropping PC, Vernom, got taken hostage with Burns.
>Sleeper agents slow the players, but they get by to the top floor.
>They see Vernom, and another two hostages that also have bags over their heads, but clearly something in Burn’s office.
>Inside the party and their police allies find the charred remains of Burns.
>Behind them, who they though was Vernom stands up holding the two hostages and guns for the window.
>Just as he jumps, Gamma just manages to catch him on the back of the Genesect.
> They then find out Eco was really trying to steal the radiation suits, and there might be a great power source in the direction Gamma flew off to.
>Now, I would have introduced the replacement then and there but he missed the session ans we just soldiered on without him. But by then the party was halfway in the exclusion zone
>So the solution to introduce a new party member was to have them find them tied up by the villains since they made a habit of kidnapping people for brainwashing.
>This is when the evil idea came to me.
>In the tunnels they find Timmothy, tied up by two grunts.
>They free him and he explains that he is a Crypto-zoologist, and Eco kidnapped him for his knowledge of the legendary pokemon.
>He joins with his Cubone and Regional Snorunt and they eventually find the center of the exclusion zone.
>Thanks to the party, they are able to locate the target, a Victini. But Gamma is there too.
>Timmothy uses his power and connects with Victini, befriending it to join the party.
>They beat Gamma while Timmothy focused on Victini, but the Eco Admin gets away. But the party now has the power source in Victini.
2/3
>fast forward past the next two Gyms, the party now has all eight badges.
>BIG NEWS FLASH! Team Eco has kidnapped literally every NPC other than Gym leaders, including Rudolph’s parents, and Juneau.
>Eco is going to use Genesect as a super laser to destroy the entire industrial of Germany. But has too many hostages, the whole area is covered in a thick layer of Mist and are hiding in Neuschwanstein castle to discourage attack.
>The party of course makes it in with all their Pokemon in tow.
>As they step into the courtyard, they see a familiar face in a window.
>It’s Beta, slumped over what looks like paperwork, but she hasn’t noticed them.
>Timothy says “Momo, use the gun you stole off those grunts”
>She complies, and managed to land a sneak shot off, getting her right in the head!
>… Shooting the wig clean off….
>Revealing Momo’s own girlfriend, dressed in a suit, hands bound, and gas mask taped to her face.
>Timmothy starts laughing.
>I start laughing.
>Timmothy melts away, leaving only Minerva Burns and her strikingly similar face.
>The odd occurrence with Junea wasn’t nothing, that was really Beta.
>Not only was Minerva Beta, but she was a rules compliant facestealer.
>They party never met Timmothy, it was always Beta.
>They didn’t befriend Victini, they just stood by while they let the villains take the Pokemon for themselves.
>Their friends and family were kidnapped while Beta was taking night watch.
>They acted as the region’s last hope, only to bring the power source right to the enemy.
>Momo shot here own Waifu in the skull with an AK-47.
And that was my favorite plot twist. Months of build up and careful coordination with Timothy’s player to pull it off.
The characters and NPCs involved had years of build up to that point produced just the most delightful result. My greatest regret is that I never got to see the player's face as she realized she shot her Waifu.
this sounds awful, anon.
I refuse to believe people play like this
I'll be honest, I struggled a bit to follow this, but here's my question: were there opportunities (and rolls) to discover this deception? It doesn't make much difference that it was at the hands of a fellow player if it was unavoidable all the same.
NTA but the point isn't to give the players a chance to be undeceived, especially not by rolling something. The point is to trick them in a way that doesn't breach the pact of nonfrickery between the players and the GM. Basically, in your GM state you should never tell a lie to the players, but you can let things in the game world lie to them just fine.
I would object as a player if there was literally never a chance to see through the deception. Most RPGs have some sort of Perception skill. If the deceiver was too skilled for my character, that's fine, but it's a different matter if I never got to roll.
Sorry about that.
Plot was less complex in practice, but I was trying to condense details scattered across a 2 year campaign into a distilled form in the wee hours of the morning. Keeping only the bits that are relevant to the plot-twist.
Paperwork and it being a mix of Nazi and East Germany. As in that big compass thing.
The shapeshifter thing was written into the book as a player class, and there was RAW way to detect it. I went to the effort of making her behave very differently to have the detection be done by the players rather than dice roll. While having Timmothy play the role of Beta disgused as Timmothy was perfect, since the players never had a baseline to work off of. But I did ask him to let the Eco-terrorist part slip from time to time. But I did do a hidden perception check for the gunshot thing. Hidden perception checks are very good in general for this twist thing.
In contrast they very clearly could tell who the champion was. The manic druggie in the spiky coat that was on their record label. Which was intended to be a plot twist.
This plot sounds about as complex as a FF game's.
You don't need much plot in RPG games, just a hook, a few characters and villains in the background doing shit and characters doing what they want about it and the fun comes from interaction and creative use of player resources or comical failures.
>Vernon who was swiftly jaded by the region due it being Germany
Excuse me? Is beer and pork that horrible?
Asking the players if what they are interested prior to the first game, and then talking about the sessions had so far
I wouldn't. Plot twists are mostly pretty shit at the best of times, but in an interactive, collaborative medium they sound like a fundamentally awful idea.
Telling them "this will be a fun campaign".
That's intentionally deceiving yourself.
> Every item is cursed that you pick up in the dungeon before cleansing it...
> This will be a fun campaign!
Had a old dm I’ve cut off contact with do this shit. He had a store he specifically built to be full of cheap magic equipment for low levels that was all cursed in a character ruining way that he constantly shoved in our faces. I was the only person in the party that didn’t buy anything. The other two bought an item that had the chance to literally portal you to hell every day, and a ring that made you eventually have disadvantage during the daytime
Your presumption is that the players are either metagaming homosexuals or morons incapable of compartmentalizing player and character knowledge. Real solution is to play with neither type.
Deceiving players is the easiest thing in the world considering the GM literally controls all reality and all the senses of the players. The only hard part is doing it in a way that's "fair".
Player knowledge and character knowledge should be 1:1 identical, barring skill use and setting-specific lore. Having them be separate destroys immersion into a million pieces with no hope of recovery. Nobody is really capable of acting like they don't know something they do in fact know.
>Nobody is really capable of acting like they don't know something they do in fact know.
moron spotted. The mere fact that you refer to basic tenet of roleplaying as acting only reinforces that.
>Player knowledge and character knowledge should be 1:1 identical
Ask me how I know you never, ever, not even fricking once, played a single session of any given TTRPG
Don't try to actively deceive them, for one. Let them make their own assumptions on whatever pieces of information they have and run off with their theories.
Well, for example, players having dark secrets like in some YZE games is fun.
I would never do this as a referee but an NPC might
Make the deceiver attractive.
People wilingly fall to a pretty face every single time.
Men, women, doesn't matter.
Even when explicitly told that the character is doing evil stuff, all the way to genocides, they will make excuses as long as they've been exposed to the pretty character before.
Seduce them.
We tricked the gm once by waiting until he took a smoke break to write down "she's just a hologram" on a piece of paper. When we "escorted" the NPC into the palace, the bad guys let us get all the way inside before attempting to grab the NPC. The gm was pretty surprised.
How did that work?
>How did that work?
The GM loved being surprised. The Hutt was not very happy but everything eventually worked out better than expected.
I meant more like, how did writing it on the paper affect it? Did you write it in his GM notes or something? Was there a special rule that y'all could just make stuff up when he was gone?
Give the player what they want. Have them WANT to bite the hook and sinker.
> If you play a trap, you will have a love interest that believes the lie. And one hell of a romance.
> If you keep the charade, your trap will lead the victim to suicide when revealed.
This thread has some of the most autistic responses I've seen in a while.
>What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes?
If you mean shit like deliberately leaving out information they'd reasonably have access to, just don't.
Otherwise, it's generally best to have NPCs talk in half-truths, to have hidden ulterior motives, and so on. Don't have your characters make definitive, factual statements that a dice roll will then handily tell the players is false. This way, you can still reward your players if they can tell a character has said something kind of off and want to make dice rolls, but you don't have to tell them much more than "Yeah, this butthole is lying, but it's not clear why and they don't seem openly malicious".
From there, you can have multiple NPCs do the same thing, and encourage your players to discuss amongst themselves who they think is the most trustworthy or agreeable of an otherwise untrustworthy cast.
Don't just make a twist villain who knows he is a villain and is simply waiting to backstab everyone. That shit doesn't work, especially when the party start casting spells to determine factual information.
It does depend on on the npc and how good they are at lieing not only stat wise but character wise. If a player has a reasonable suspicion they are being lied to they are free to roll but all I have to tell them is they suspect deceit. They usually push and then I will "reluctently" tell them a half truth or something embarassing about the npc that the players will believe. They usually don't push too much more after this.
Allow your players to draw their own incorrect conclusions from factual information given. That does most of the work.
Give them at least one or two opportunities/clues to figure out that they're being deceived. If they can't deduce the mystery, then continue as planned.
Alternatively, if they do figure it out, play it out appropriately depending on the circumstances.
You need to also keep in mind that doing this might make your players inclined to avoid trusting NPCs in the future.
>What are some good plot twists basically?
Honestly, anything that doesn't actually significantly detriment the players would be a "good" twist. Your players will feel the surprise you want them to feel without feeling like they'd been scammed or played, as they might feel if you have an NPC pull off a good grift on them.
For example, a nobleman who needs his daughter rescued, but that daughter isn't actually his - she is instead the result of an affair between his wife and a peasant. Fill in some gaps to make it fit with your world and the players will probably think it's neat.
>puckee21 thread
>intentionally deceiving your players
The best way, is "don't"
>What are some good plot twists basically?
In a table top RPG, there are no good plot twists.
Why would you care about narrative in a RPG?
RPG is a game where the GM creates a situation and let the players decisions provide the outcome.
You literally CAN'T make a "plot twist" in a RPG, because RPG does not have any plot to begin with. All outcomes are equally unpredictable.
Trying to make a plot twist happen in a game will only derail your game into railroading waste of time. If you like you idea, write a story.
If you want to run RPG for your friends, create situations, characters, places -- not events. Accept that a player decision and action can change everything you wanted to happen for your "perfect story". With time, you will understand that if you want to waste time telling a story with an already decided outcome and guide players through it, prepare to be overworked and underappreciated.
Based complete fricking idiot.
He is 100% correct. A "twist" can still happen, but it will arise from the natural interplay of action and reaction, not from a preformed "script".
By writing a story that deceives the player instead of running stupid and linear dungeons.
I've had a DM run a linear dungeon and still write it in a way that the players were taken for a ride with plot twists.
Just have an NPC with a reason to deceive the players, and figure out what they would reasonably do to achieve this. Eventually, the PCs will discover their deception. Boom, natural plot twist.
It doesn't work unless your players like and trust you completely. If they trust you, they're willing to play along with any intentional deceptions because they know it will make the game more fun.
If your players don't trust you, the second they catch a whiff of you lying to them they're going to get annoyed.
There's are difference between lying to your players as a GM and having a NPC lie to them.
Isn’t it the same thing?
No.
Only "plot twist" I ever did was:
>pathfinder campaign in a city
>evil cult creates disease to kill people in city
>characters go on quest to find ingredients for cure
>basically neverwinter nights plot ripoff
>cure plague, cult tries other methods of terrorism
>characters also get missions to find alchemical ingredients from an alchemist they make friends with
>every time they leave on one of his missions, city gets attacked
>they finally track down cult hideout
>alchemist nobleman is there
>he'd been giving them missions to get them out of the city so they couldn't respond to cult terrorist attacks
>they disintegrate him and kill the rest of the cult
I was gonna have the potions he gave them be sabotaged, linked to a magic ring he had that could turn them into poison, but it was too hard to line that up with the final battle so I dropped it. Would have been a cool moment.
does anyone else think she looks kinda like Sue Lightning
Depends on the party. My group just doesn't handle cloak and dagger shit very well. I have them a treacherous employer who I thought was very obvious, but they just went with his every sketchy request. I sprinkled plot hints throughout the campaign and eventually just pulled them back to home base to have everything explained to them, and immediately got players saying "nice that we're getting deeper into the plot". Some dudes just want to get gold, drink ale, and stab baddies.
Players can be dense as shit if you don't lay things out for them with bright neon signs they wont get it
I've walked my party into a faustian bargain but the twist is that it's with a benevolent entity that can only operate in secrecy and obfuscation so it looks dark, spooky, and evil.
Facilitated by the entity's arrival being after its paranoid initial operative trying to kill them.
I am actively in the process of taking players through a quest to investigate an ancient 'temple' which is going to go full "this is not a place of honour" once they investigate a bit further in, with the idea being the real conflict won't be with whatever mythic evil is rumoured to be inside but with their employer who won't relent when the players (hopefully) realise there's mundane, non-mystical death waiting for them down there.
It's going okay but we're only one session in and most of it was getting to the place. The trick will be giving enough clues that they actually figure it out without making it blindingly obvious from the start.
Careful, if some of your players browse /tg/....
>/tg/
>Having players browse it
/tg/ is only for bitter DMs and nogames, don't you know?
I'm really partial to the 'guy who is an butthole initially to the party ends up being the honorable and caring one while the nicey-nice guy is actually a sociopath obsessed with only his own well-being' trope.
I love it too.
Run the game like JJ Abrams. Everything is a mystery box so when you spring something out of nowhere "oh it was that strange crystal you found back in the first dungeon".
However, don't overdo it. Its irritating to players just like how his movies and shows become completely boring as a result of this method, but now and then its fine.
I'm sure other anons have mentioned how you shouldn't be running the game trying to constantly outsmart your players anyway, the game is collaborative.
>Everything is a mystery box so when you spring something out of nowhere "oh it was that strange crystal you found back in the first dungeon"
The advantage you have in TTRPGs over movies and games is that you can use player speculation. If people think this mysterious figure is actually a high-ranking devil, then let their suspicions be true and make that part of the plot (with a few twists, of course, so they won't entirely predict the outcome).
People dislike mystery boxes because they're often empty. If you let them fill the box, then you simultaneously give the box substance and make it something that keeps the players invested.
You can even roll dice for no reason at all and they'll get suspicious.
>People dislike mystery boxes because they're often empty. If you let them fill the box, then you simultaneously give the box substance and make it something that keeps the players invested.
This anon gets it.
Mystery Boxes have become an issue in storytelling for dumb people because the writers themselves are more often than not also dumb people.
Just look at LOST. Its the prime example of all things wrong with Mystery Boxes despite one being able to actually use them well if you make it satisfying for the players.
If your Mystery Box is just an asspull no one will be happy.
Dont be that butthole who tries to "subvert expectations".
shes pretty hot
Here's here succubus form
The anime girl was actually a dragon.
The monsters are just misunderstood.