Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 133 - Using Lies to Make Campaigns Better

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

DMs are the sources of truth for the game world.  The players depend on us to provide the facts about encounters, the world, and NPCs and we should be truthful to the players the vast majority of the time.  But, there are times when sprinkling half-truths and lies into your game can make your world more realistic and keep your players on their toes.  In this episode Jeremy talks about motivations for NPCs to lie and the best practices for using lies at your table.   #DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #Pathfinder

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. DMs, you are allowed to lie to your players, but you need to be judicious about it. I know it's a fine line difference between NPCs lying to player characters and DMs lying to players, but the distinction is very important. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 133 of the Taking20 podcast. This week, all about how DMs can use lies to make their campaigns better. This week's sponsor, blankets. Your blanket probably won't say anything to you, but if it does, you should probably take it with a grain of salt. They tend to talk in blanket statement.

Have you liked and rated the podcast yet? If so, thank you so much for doing so. Every review makes the podcast easier to find for people who are interested in this topic of becoming better DMs and players. And if not, why not? It takes less than five minutes and it's a way you can support independent content creators like me. Please consider doing so if you haven't already. You will receive my eternal gratitude. On to the contest winner. We had 19 entries in the contest, and I created a list of them in chronological order that I received the email. I used random.org to select a number between 1 and 19, and it picked 6, which corresponded to Robert Nores,

I'm hoping I pronounced your last name right, Robert, who had a very interesting idea. I hadn't planned on reading out the idea in the episode, but I thought this was creative, so I wanted to read you his entry. A dice dispenser that looks like a bunch of columns next to each other that you can put your dice in, and then there's a lever at the bottom of each column

that you can pull and it drops dice into a dice tray. That way you can load up each of the columns with D4s, d6s, etc. and then dispense however many dice you need for your damage rolls or whatever you need. When I read this entry, the engineering part of my brain went into hyper design mode. Like, this is how you could design it and here's how you get the dice to fall out. But then my mind went quiet and the evil slice on my brain said, No, no, Jeremy. That's not why it would be fun. Imagine you have this thing sitting on your dice tray, and the players know that click-click means that a dice just got rolled. You announce that the big bad just cast some huge damaging spell,

like chain lightning or fireball, and you tell them you're going to roll the damage, and they hear click-click, click-click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Oh, the look of shock and horror and dread on their faces would be delicious. Robert, I love this idea. Thank you so much for submitting it. And I'll be connecting you and Britton up via email to coordinate your receiving this beautiful dice tower. Thank you once again to everyone who entered.

There were a ton of great suggestions sent in. Once again, though, I want to thank 3D Crafts and Curios and Brenton Galbraith for sponsoring the giveaway. I've sent Brenton the comprehensive list of ideas that were submitted. Hopefully some of those can become items that you can buy in a store sometime in the near future. Speaking of which, as a reminder, through the month of July, you can get 10% off any item in his store by using the checkout code TAKING20. That's TAKING20. Head over to 3dcraftsandcurios.etsy.com and support the podcast by supporting him and his store.

Before I leave the topic of sponsors, there's something I want to commit to, or at least plan to commit to, or maybe sincerely hope that I can plan to commit to this. You know what, maybe it's more of a framework of a hope that I can commit to. I've been approached by a few companies, not many, that had absolutely nothing to do with the gaming or RPG community about becoming a sponsor of the podcast. So far, I've resisted the urge to take their offers because I would imagine large swaths of my listenership doesn't really care about like shave clubs or meal delivery services of some sort. I'd much prefer it if a company more gaming related wanted to sponsor Taking20.

Maybe I'm a beggar being a chooser, but if you know of a company that would be interested in sponsoring the podcast in exchange for ad time or referrals or something similar, please reach out to me on social media or to feedback at taking20podcast.com and let's see what we can arrange. That being said, I am a mortal man and I have my limits. I'm just a man. And if some company wants to dangle a good amount of money under my nose, who knows? Well, next week's episode might be sponsored by Rick's Snorkel Shack and Diving Emporium. Anyway, thank you for everyone, the very kind emails I continue to receive about my getting better. To those who have asked, I'm recovering and I'm getting stronger each week. Radiation treatments have started, which I'm sure will sap my energy and probably make me nauseous, but for now, I feel like a normal person who took an axe hit to the back right head of my skull.

Interesting side effect, by the way, and I know this isn't why you're listening, but I thought it was cool. When this whole process started, my hair was about 90% black with a smattering of gray in it. Salt and pepper, if you will. I finally got a haircut to even out my hair length because I'd had two surgeries and they had to shave part of my head and parts of my head were all different kinds of hair lengths. I look like I could have been in the band A Flock of Seagulls in the 80s. And if you're not old, look that up. And yes, people actually look like that in the 80s. I decided to get a buzz cut to basically get my hair all the same length and I discovered I have gone more gray than black.

I know it's not important in the grand scheme of things, but it was just surprising to me. So if you ever see me in the convention circuit or anything, get ready for someone who looks more like an old man than I ever have before. Jesus, I've rambled enough, and this episode is probably going to be long. Let's get to the episode, shall we? Okay, before we get started, a terminology reminder. Player versus character. The player is the person sitting at your table. The character is the avatar or creature your player is role-playing within your game world. Or if you hit a character with a hammer, they take 1d6 damage. If you hit a player with a hammer, you go to prison. And I am far too pretty to go to prison. I mean, I'd be a first round draft pick in prison. My skin is so soft and milky white and I'm going to jump off this

train and thought right now and walk back to the station and try this start again. The dungeon master or game master is the ultimate source of information with a game world. We provide information to the players as their characters discover it about the world, and the players use that information to determine what their characters are going to do. Since we are the sources of information, the vast majority of the time and the vast majority of the campaigns,

the information that's revealed should be reliable. The door does appear to be unlocked. There are fresh tracks in the mud that look like hooves. The koi fish have become unusually aggressive, and some have even tried to jump out of the pond Players count on us to describe what's real in the world. But think about your life here on Earth. Is every fact you ever learn always true? Of course not. Some are misunderstandings, some are rumors that aren't true, and some are just flat-out lies. If not all information is reliable on Earth, shouldn't that be true in your game world

as well? Now, let's start this off with a warning. Not all lies are equal. DMs lying to players is very different than, say, an NPC lying to the player characters. DMs. You should not need to lie to your players often, if at all. Also, now is when I'm going to draw a very fine line and say that withholding information from your players isn't lying to them. For example, you probably don't tell the players how many hit points that minotaur that they're fighting has. Of course you don't. The other thing is, you may occasionally fudge die rolls behind the screen, and I don't know if I've ever said this before, but I think it should go without saying, if like me you think it's okay to fudge die rolls every now and then behind the screen, it should always be in the player's favor. That werewolf

that just critted the cleric, thereby all but guaranteeing that the cleric's going to become a werewolf herself, she's going to become a werewolf herself. She's going to commit horrid atrocities without her knowledge, and it takes away some of that player agency, and maybe even making the cleric lose connection to their deity. On top of that, I mean, it's the player's first campaign, they're having a great time. No, sorry, that just became a regular hit, and the cleric's lycanthropy, if she fails her saving throw, will be very slow acting, and there'll be ample opportunity to cure it before the cleric has to atone for grisly murders she commits that are completely out of her character's control. There's one last character attack roll just before the big bad's turn, and they're going to fireball the entire party into oblivion. That attack hits and does enough damage

to drop the big bad to five hit points. Nah, fuck it. That's good enough. The big bad just died with the spell still on their lips and the character feels like a big damn hero. GMs, you may withhold information about a creature, a town, a dungeon, a region, country, geographic feature, or piece of history, maybe just because no player said they wanted their character to use a skill or make a check about them. For example, I, the GM, know that the nation of Cheliax is ruled by devil-worshipping evil pact makers who are always angling for more souls to give to their patrons. But if none of my players say, I'd like to make a skill check to see what I know about Cheliax, I may not be forthcoming with that information unless it's crucial to advancing the

plot. And even then, the characters will discover that information one way or another, like a conversation with an NPC, hearing a rumor, seeing anti-Chelliacs graffiti painted on the side of a building, or some other clue. Or I may just flat say to the players, someone make me a knowledge whatever, history, politics, local, whatever's appropriate skill check so I can reveal this plot critical information to the players. I'm all over the map here, by the way, but to sum it up, DMs generally don't outright lie to your players. Withhold information if their characters may not know something, but don't be afraid to

outright say you need their characters to make a skill check to give the players important information so their characters can advance the story. Jesus, that wasn't any shorter. You know what, let's just move to the second part of my statement. DMs, you are allowed to lie to your players, but you need to be judicious about it. NPCs can lie to your player characters. Yeah, carte blanche, no problem. I know it's a fine line difference between NPCs lying to player characters and DMs lying to players, but the distinction is very important. I tend to save lies like this for truly reprehensible NPCs or NPCs with specific motivations for lying to your character. If you overuse it and too many NPCs lie to your characters, then the players stop believing anything about your world is real and they assume that they're being lied to all the time.

Now, that being said, you should occasionally have NPCs lie to the characters. Lies are realistic. People lie about small things. Oh, you know, that shirt looks good on you. Tina? Nope, haven't seen her at all. And sometimes people lie about the small things. Oh, you know, that shirt looks good on you. Tina? Nope, haven't seen her at all. And sometimes people lie about the big things. If elected, the first thing I'll do is cut taxes.

No, I'm not having an affair on my spouse or anything. Why would I do that? And of course I have condom and I'm happy to use it. Okay, that went a little dark and I apologize for that. That last one was way inappropriate. My point is, people sometimes lie on Earth, and if that's true, why wouldn't people lie on the Sword Coast, for example? Now, I'm going to break lies down into three different types based on intention.

The first types of lies are deceptions, so lying with the intent to deceive and knowledge of what the truth is. The roving merchant is promising to pay the party to take care of the bandits, even though she knows she won't be in town by the time the party returns. The party's questioning Melissa the blacksmith about the bandit group, the Sanguine Raiders, but Melissa's wife is a member of that group. What's she going to say? I mean, yeah, third cave, mile north of town, go kill the love of my life.

I mean, she might. Melissa could be a paladin, and paladins are going to paladin, but probably not. Melissa probably loves her wife and doesn't want to see her killed by a bunch of murder hobos who rolled into town last night. So she lies in the hope that she can get her wife hidden long enough for the party to move on. Yes, it's a deception, and Melissa comes to terms with that just simply because it's the lesser of two evils in her mind. That's a believable motivation for a lie, and believable motivations make for better NPCs. Another example, the magic shop proprietor realizes the party does not have any clue the true value of the scroll they brought in to sell it, so he offers 10% of the item's real value to try to take advantage of the PCs, who he

views as suckers. So lies may be based on deception, but lies could also be truths from a certain point of view, like lying by only providing part of the information or one slant or take of what the truth really is. The classic example from media, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars A New Hope, who tells Luke that Darth Vader killed and murdered his father. Later, it's revealed that Darth Vader is Luke's father,

so Luke confronts the Force ghost of Kenobi with this information, and Ben says, well, what I told you was true from a certain point of view. You're going to find that many of the truths that we cling to was true from a certain point of view. You're going to find that many of the truths that we cling to depend greatly on your own point of view. Yeah, Kenobi, that's a pretty deceptive point of view, either because A, you didn't have the cojones to tell Luke the truth, or more likely B, George Lucas didn't have that fact planned for his movies yet. Maybe the nation of Donnell views the barbarian tribes as marauders, rapists, and thieves, when from the tribe perspective, Donnell took their land, their way of life, and many of their

youth away so that Donnell are monstrous colonizers of their land. This can be used very powerfully in storytelling and campaign writing to muddy the waters between which side is good and which side isn't. Make the motivations and beliefs realistic and you have a good complex plot brewing here. Throw in some violence and maybe people working for peace and baby you got a campaign stew going. The third reason for lying is lack of knowledge. So lying through no fault of their own but they believe it to be true. I heard the old sawmill's haunted and if if you go there at midnight, you'll find out when you're gonna die. Or, the disease that's running rampant in the Goblin Quarter is because they do not

revere Iomidae, and this is her punishment. So there's three reasons why people can potentially lie to the NPCs. Deception, truth from a certain point of view, and lack of knowledge. But why would an NPC lie to the NPCs. Deception, truth from a certain point of view, and lack of knowledge. But why would an NPC lie to the character? Well, the three main reasons because they're motivated to do so, they're deceptive by nature, or they just don't know any better. So let's talk about lying because of motivation. Every single one of us, every time we're asked a question, weigh pros and cons of being truthful or lying when we answer. The reasons for not lying are as varied as the number of people on earth.

We believe lying is wrong. We want to be helpful to the other person. Lying doesn't benefit us at the moment. Telling the truth usually results in a lesser punishment than extended deception would. Many people believe we deserve to hear the truth about a given situation no matter how painful it is. Or if you're like me and if you start lying, you won't remember what lie you told to whom and you'll eventually get tripped up when you cross the streams of your lies, you don't lie for that reason. There are situations, however, that all of us may face where lying is the easier road or at least the one that results in less conflict or heartache.

You see a friend's boyfriend out on a date with someone else. It may be easier not to tell my friend about it because you don't want to be the one to break his heart. It's a lie of omission, but some people don't do well with upsetting others. After receiving an invitation to your aunt's art show, you show up and every painting looks like someone... That's a polite way to say this. Technicolor yawned on a canvas and they're trying to sell it.

Which, by the way, Technicolor yawn means vomit if you've never heard that term. Your aunt runs up to you when she sees you at the art display and says, What do you think of my paintings? If you say what you're thinking, it looks like someone yacked up Brunswick stew and called it art, you'll hurt her feelings, so you fib a little. Oh, it's very interesting, or I've never seen anything like it, or if you're dancing a little closer to the truth, it's not my cup of tea, but it is visually striking. If there are times when some of us are motivated to lie, wouldn't that be true of NPCs as well? when some of us are motivated to lie, wouldn't that be true of NPCs as well? Maybe the NPC is motivated to lie because they would see direct benefit by lying. See Melissa the blacksmith from earlier. She would obviously benefit by having her love of her life alive, so she misleads the party

about where the sanguine raiders are. Or the shop owner I talked about who knows about the mysterious object and knows what the true value of it more than the PCs do. They offer 120 gold pieces for it, knowing full well they could sell it for more than 1,000 gold pieces to the right buyer. Another reason an NPC may lie is the character or psyche or foible of that NPC is the reason for their lying, and it's baked into the character of the NPC. Some NPCs lie because it's who they are and what they do. Yes, it could be someone who's pathological and hardly ever tells the truth. Or maybe they're in a position where lying is encouraged based on their job or situation in

life. They get ahead by taking advantage of others. Certain types of sales, maybe politics, or maybe some sort of service that's only used by the truly desperate. Some people just have a penchant for exaggeration and the tail grows taller with every tailing. Scratches that they suffer becomes gashes and then later huge wounds and then later life-threatening injuries as they tell the story multiple times. Three bandits breaking into a barn to steal a tractor becomes a horde of ruffians stealing and burning everything as they go. Individuals sometimes even lie to themselves, or they've told the story in an exaggerated manner so many times they start to believe it to be true,

even though they originally chose to tell a lie a certain way, but since then they've kind of forgotten or disregarded the fact that they were lying from the beginning. But there are creatures in RPGs that lie as a matter of who and what they are. Lying is built into their culture or maybe even their DNA. It's inherent to the creature. Devils, for example, will lie or use creative wording in their deals with mortals. Hags will lie in their bargains, misleading mortals about what they'll receive in exchange for what they're giving up. And then Fae do the same thing. They lie, they take advantage of mortals, and deceive the mortals about the true cost of the deal they're

getting into. Now, the NPC legitimately may not know any better. They heard a rumor and they believe it to be true. The lie may reinforce a belief they hold to be true so they don't question it. The goblins are dying because they don't worship Iomedae. I worship Iomedae. That's why I'm not dying. Or the lies are born out of naivete because they're not worldly or they're young and inexperienced. Or maybe even the lie teller's insane or at least mentally detached from reality. There's a lot of potential reasons why an NPC would lie to a character, but now is when I ask the question, why should I use lies at my table?

Using lies in your campaign, NPCs to play your characters, makes the world feel more real. To repeat what I said earlier, though, I wouldn't make them common, but I would occasionally sprinkle in a falsehood here and there. Using lies will make the PCs consider the source of the information before blindly trusting it. Using lies can encourage PCs to take or not take certain actions. For example, it's been shown that information revealed during torture is notoriously unreliable. People will say whatever they need to say to make the pain stop. If the PCs resort to torture to extract information from an NPC, maybe the information isn't exactly true, or it's only true from a certain point of view.

Another thing, lies can reveal the facts or character about NPCs, groups, or areas of the world that the players, well, they learn about. They figure out on their own that these characters have been lied to, and so they can learn not to trust certain types of NPCs or groups or areas. The reveal is bigger when the players figure out that they've been lied to without your having to tell them, that was a lie. God, that could be an episode all its own. I might have to write that later.

Last thing I want to talk about very briefly is the brief discussion of what's called the unreliable narrator when telling a story. Whatever the reason for the lies, the person telling the story is lying to themselves. And there are a ton of great movies with unreliable narrators to see examples of this. Every one of these movies has a twist of some sort, so Iable narrators to see examples of this. Every one of these movies has a twist of some sort, so I'm not going to spoil anything, but movies like The Joker, Memento, Number 23, Big Fish, American Psycho, and Fight Club all feature narrators with a partial or skewed view of reality. But you may be asking yourself, Jeremy, isn't there magic or technology that can detect

lies? And so couldn't the PCs walk around with that spell up all the time? Sure. Isn't there technology to guarantee you'll never be exposed to a virus like a full-body hazmat suit with a filtered respirator? Sure. You wear that all day? I don't. I mean, in game terms, for the original question, yes, you could have the spell detect lies or discern lies in 5th edition up, but wouldn't those you interact with treat you with distrust if your actions made them think that you didn't believe what they were telling you? Why are you waving your hands like that all the time while we're talking? Oh, I'm casting detect lies.

Well, then we're done talking. Plus, this type of magic usually doesn't detect a lie that stems from a lack of knowledge. Also, most of those spells, the duration are fairly short, 10 minutes or so, depending on the game system. So you'd be casting it, okay, let's see, you only need it for eight hours a day. That'd be six casting an hour,

48 copies of the spell. That's going to get expensive when it comes to scrolls or spell slots or whatever. So now to the payoff pitch. DMs, how do you use lies in your campaign? I use lies in my campaign for the following reason. One, to further the plot. Sometimes a lie can reveal something about someone or somewhere,

and that revealed fact through a lie is central to the main plotline. Two, sometimes I use lies to open up new avenues for quests. Now, not only are they looking for the head of the sanguine raiders, they also need to find out why the blacksmith just lied to them. 3. Add a touch of realism to your world. As we discussed, there are lies on Earth. There would be lies in space adventures as well. 4. Identify truly reprehensible and untrustworthy NPCs

so that the players realize that they're being lied to multiple times by this one NPC. And then five, as a method of revealing motivations of groups and NPCs to the players and player characters. Or at least point the party towards finding out their motivations. DMs, sprinkle in the occasional lie, half-truth, and fact that's true depending on your point of view and your world will begin to blossom. It'll look more realistic to your players.

It makes your players think about where the information comes from, why they heard it from the NPC that told it to them, and I'll bet that you and your players will have fun doing it. As a peek behind the curtain, I sat down to write this episode thinking it'd be fairly easy, but the onion just had layer after layer after layer after layer, and it took way more work than I anticipated. While this podcast is a labor of love, it does take a lot of time to research,

write, record, and produce. There are hosting and audio production costs associated with it. If you'd like to support the podcast, I would love it if more people would. Please consider making a recurring or one-time donation over at ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast. I'm probably down a couple hundred dollars in the whole of the production of this podcast, and I promise not to take the donations that you give me and fly off to Bora Bora or anything. Every dollar donated goes towards the cost of the podcast, and if you've already donated, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

You're helping to keep this podcast alive. Finally, once more I want to encourage you to head over to 3dcraftsandcurios.etsy.com and buy a dice tower, DM screen, dice jail, or any of the other myriad 3D printed items offered at Brenton Galbraith's store. Use the code TAKING20, that's TAKING20, before the month ends to get 10% off any one item you order. Thank you again, Brenton, for sponsoring this podcast and the giveaway. I will forever be in your debt, sir. Before I go, though, I want to thank this week's secondary sponsor, Blankets. If you're upset, take a few minutes to cuddle with your blanket.

After all, it is a down comforter. This has been episode 133, how DMs can use lies to make your campaigns better. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2022. I'm Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.