I am planning a set piece that involves some NPCs deceiving my players. The short version is that my players will meet some simple farmers trying to bring their crops to market, only to find that they’re actually smugglers in a Hatfields and McCoy’s type feud, which the party then gets messily swept up into. I generally don’t trick my players; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it but I imagine some tables would take to it more than others. Do you trick your players? Are there some tricks you find acceptable and others that are unacceptable? For me, I have no qualm getting my players swept up into the seedy underworld of drug or artifacts smuggling, but I don’t think I would run a plotline on human trafficking. That I think would be difficult in an unpleasant way for everyone involved.
Most players are only half paying attention, and are badly trained by video games to assume every NPC is telling them the truth.
I had a player once I think of as the worst player I’ve ever had. Easily confused, impulsive, and very bad at sticking to a coherent character. They’d be all “I’m a soldier I follow orders!” in one scene, and “fuck what my commander said I’m going awol” the next.
I think a lot about one time I had an NPC lie to her PC’s face. The NPC was in faction mildly unfriendly towards the PC’s faction, and the PC was looking for one of theirs. The NPC told a mildly implausible lie about the guy’s whereabouts, and the player’s brain just ground to a halt when following up on it was a dead end.
“So no one here has heard of the guy?”
“Seems so.”
“But other-guy said he was here.”
“He did.”
“So where is he?”
“Not here, so far as you can tell.”
“But he said he would be.”
“He did.”
“And no one here has heard of him?”
“Seems so.”
The other players lost their patience and pointed out that maybe the NPC was lying, and it wasn’t the GM making a mistake or misunderstanding.
I don’t think it was especially worth it, but maybe lying would work better with a better player.
Anyway. You also don’t want to train your players to go “INSIGHT CHECK” during every interaction, and if you have someone lie once they’ll probably be paranoid for years. Same problem with traps, once. You burn them with a floor trap once, and then they’re all 10’ poles and chickens
If a player asks if they can use a skill to solve a problem I almost always roll with it, but my rule is that dice rolls are only binding if the DM asked for them. but there are some situations where the roll wouldn’t impact the game (e.g. trying to jump to the moon). I think being suspicious of NPCs is reasonable, and I think it’s good for the story if some characters are good at sniffing out lies and some trusting souls are just as pure as the driven snow.
As for the players not paying attention, I have been on both sides of the screen and sometimes, though I am trying really hard to pick up what the DM is putting down, the plot is just impenetrable. Still fun, but I have no idea what’s going on despite the world-shaking consequences of our actions. Effectively telling a story is hard at the best of times and making it collaborative doesn’t do anything to make it easier. If I spin a sprawling epic and the players miss 90% of it, I think that’s just the result of a bunch of folks just trying to relax and play a fun game. And if you want your players to remember something, you better be prepared to repeat it a few times.