To the Courts: On the witness stand

A major problem that DMs have with mystery and intrigue situations, is the question of liars.

Players tend to believe information NPCs tell them, even when its bad guys, because all of the information being provided by the NPCs, in a way, comes from the DM. As the DM is the one who provides the world for them, it’s understandable that they have trouble taking into account that a mouthpiece of the guy who basically is their eyes and ears, might be totally BSing them.

In my experience, I’ve noticed that players have a binary approach to the prospect of lying NPCs as a result. Some decide if a guy is trustworthy or not, some think that evil people always lie, and some just assume whatever information they hear is somehow correct. What a lot of players really have trouble with, is inconsistencies.

The Innkeeper’s daughter from our prior scenario, she might genuinely not know where the Accused was while she was being visited by the town guard who claimed to see him. She might lie and say the guard was at his post, not wanting him to get in trouble or reveal their relationship. She thinks she saw the accused sneaking around outside at 7am (it was actually someone else). She’s entirely certain that the accused isn’t guilty though because she saw him in a situation where he could’ve used the supposedly stolen item. She does however think he was under a charm spell.

 She might be entirely ignorant about some details, lie about one topic, be wrong about another, be entirely forthright with a third, and be honest but mislead on a fourth.

This is because information is a webwork. Especially in a court case scenario where you have to figure out the holes in people’s stories and prove them. The daughter’s statement that she saw the accused at 7am for example might be grabbed onto by the party as a lifeline (tying in with the timeline stuff I mentioned before) only to have it organically yanked out from under their feet by the king’s prosecutor. This might wrongly lead the party to believe the character is lying about everything though, and that’s again, where the problem comes up.

The DM really, really needs to try to make it clear that characters know what characters know, and their personalities, worries, and relationships effect how they convey and interpret information they see. It’s important to get a handle on this because this is where the real meat of a mystery, intrigue or court scenario is.

In your notes, it’s helpful to make entries about characters indicating what they do know, don’t know, and what they’ll say or lie about. This is because players may interrogate on topics besides what you planned for, and those topics, unexpectedly, may in fact give the players the edge they’re looking for.