SPOILERS FOR DRAGON HEIST
Anne asks:
I want to run Dragon Heist for my group. Everyone is exited and we’ve already created characters, but I’ve just discovered that two of my players already know the Cassalanters’ secret. It’s not their fault, but I’m really frustrated. Is there anything I can do?
This is a really tough position to be put in, and it’s definitely something you have to think about when running a published campaign. Particularly when it comes to Wizards of the Coast’s official D&D adventures, a lot of this stuff just kind of leaks into the meme-sphere. Your players may not even realize they’ve been spoiled until they’re actually playing the adventure. For example, the secret identity of the big bad guy in Storm King’s Thunder is spoiled in a Magic the Gathering expansion. I’m currently facing similar concerns for running Descent Into Avernus, which are further complicated because (a) the title of the adventure is a spoiler in itself and (b) there are questions about how much Baldur’s Gate 3 spoils things.
Assuming that you don’t want to swap adventures or drop the players who are spoiled, there are, broadly speaking, three approaches to handling this.
First, talk to the spoiled player and ask them to be discrete and not spoil the experience for others. If you’ve got a really good player who’s willing to be responsible about this, particularly if they tend to play from the Author stance (and, therefore, immersion in their character’s POV is of less importance to them), this can work.
In my experience, though, this is still a diminished experience. It’s like working together to solve a crossword puzzle with someone who’s already solved it: At best, they can sit back and not participate in those elements of the campaign. (Which, in some cases, can be a tell in its own right and still ruin the experience for the other players!)
Second, change the spoiled element or give it a twist to surprise the player. For example:
- Change the Cassalanters’ name (and perhaps a few other pertinent details) so the PCs don’t recognize them.
- The Cassalanters are innocent! The story they tell (i.e., diabolists have cursed their children and they’re trying to lift the curse) is true. Take all the Asmodean elements and shift them to a different noble family. (Maybe the Gralhunds?)
- Since the twist won’t work, simply don’t have the Cassalanters approach the PCs as potential allies. They’ll be open villains when they appear, no different than Xanathar and his minions, and therefore the players’ knowing that they’re diabolists won’t be a problem.
(Can you think of other options for working around a Cassalanter spoiler?)
Making these changes will often mean choosing tradeoffs. For example, making the Cassalanters innocent victims means losing the “It was the parents!” twist. Obviously, you should try to choose tradeoffs that you can live with, and you should also look for ways to not only mitigate the damage, but also create cool new opportunities. (If you’d still like a big twist reveal for the cultists’ identity, for example, maybe it’s Renaer who’s the Asmodean cult leader?)
Something to consider here is whether or not the player knows that they’re spoiled. For example, they might know that the Cassalanters are diabolists because they’ve encountered them in a different adventure, but they might simultaneously have no idea that the Cassalanters are part of the Dragon Heist campaign. If that’s the case, then you might be able to get away with just quietly changing the Cassalanters’ names.
If a player knows that they’re spoiled, on the other hand, and you’re completely altering or removing the spoiled element, then it may be a good idea to tell the player what you’re doing (so that they don’t have to walk on eggshells or worry about it). If you’re twisting their expectations, on the other hand, that twist will likely be at least partly based on subverting the players’ meta-knowledge, so you wouldn’t want to double the spoiler by warning them that it’s coming.
Either way, though, you’ll likely want to combine this with Option #1, warning them not to discuss the spoilers with the other players, even if they’re no longer true for the current campaign.
The third option, however, is to turn the spoiled players into co-conspirators. Since the players know the spoilers, frame things so that their CHARACTERS also know the spoiler, but have a reason not to share it with the other PCs. (At least, not immediately.)
In this case, for example, what if the spoiled players’ characters were actually members of the Asmodean cult, sworn to secrecy? When the Cassalanters approach the group and ask for help (still under false pretenses), it’s at least in part because the cult members are part of the group and can vouch for them. (Note that, depending on how much the spoiled players know, you might still be able to keep some surprises – e.g., the true nature of the ritual the Cassalanters are planning – in reserve, or create new twists that are uniquely possible with the new framing.)
The great thing about this approach is that it once again unifies the player and character experiences, so that the player can enjoy the immersive experience of their character’s POV; the puzzle-solving aspects of game play; and the dramatic satisfaction of surprise and payoff.
In this particular case, of course, it’s also creating potential inter-party antagonism between the PCs, which can be problematic. (And some groups may be uncomfortable with any hidden knowledge, even if the knowledge isn’t inimical to the other PCs’ interests.) A full breakdown of how to handle these concerns is a discussion for another time, but a few things I would think about for this specific scenario are:
- Noting that it doesn’t immediately make the PCs antagonistic with each other. Even when the Cassalanters approach the group, the group’s interests can still remained aligned.
- If/when conflict does arise, making sure it remains clear that the diabolist PCs always have the choice to swap their allegiance. (This would be another strong reason to keep the true nature of the ritual hidden from them, in my opinion.)
- Set up replacement characters in the supporting cast that the diabolist players can easily step into if a rift in the party forces the diabolist characters out. (And making sure the players of the diabolist characters are aware that this is a possible outcome.)
Generally speaking, I’ve found that it’s usually possible to set up this sort of dynamic in a way that’s fun and thrilling for everyone. But it’s also useful to remember that there are other ways to set up motivated hidden knowledge that doesn’t create party strife. For example, I ran a campaign where one of the PCs had access to secret lore through their clan… but the clan’s beliefs also meant that they were honor-bound to keep it a secret. When circumstances and trust resulted in them finally entrusting their fellow PCs with the secrets, it was just a cool moment; nobody felt betrayed or at odds.
>Can you think of other options for working around a Cassalanter spoiler?
Lean on the fact that the kids are genuine innocent parties here, and make them the important thing by going for an immediate reveal.
So the Cassalanters make their approach with the sob story, but then have someone else tell them they’re devil worshippers immediately after the meeting. If they can’t get that information from one of the NPCs who know their reputation, maybe one of the kids’ nannies turns up the night of the story and spills the beans about the real plan. Or tries to slip a note into a PC’s pocket while they’re there.
The GM still might have to deploy the talk-to-the-spoiled-player strategy to get them to keep shtumm until after the meeting, but the effects of them knowing then become irrelevant before it can affect anyone’s fun.
Indeed you appeared pretty close to that in your own playthrough when the Cassalanter approach came when Renaer was present and he warned Kittisoth. I presume that made them suspicious from the start, but did they follow up with Renaer before the meeting and walk in already “spoilered”? Or how long did it take them afterwards to find out?
My wife and I have spent the last few days trying to figure out the solution to this exact problem (she wants to run Kingmaker and I’ve read the AP). The third solution to this is exactly what we’ve been looking for and we’re now happily brainstorming ideas. Thank you so much!
@Tom F
When I was going to run Kingmaker I was going to drop the last book entirely; have the southern province secede to the PC’s kingdom and have the conquering Dragon make a return for an epic Game of Thronesian conclusion.
I suppose it’s possible that I just wasn’t subtle enough, but for what it’s worth, my players are completely unspoiled about Dragon Heist and I just got past the part where the Cassalanters are offering to work with them… they pretty much immediately suspected that there was more to the story and the parents were actually part of the Asmodeus cult. (Though they still agreed to work with them! I think the twist in our case will be the specifics of the sacrifice the ritual requires.)
On the other hand, in the Curse of Strahd game I’m a player in, two of us knew a variety of miscellaneous spoilers for the adventure and we mostly just went with “agree not to metagame.” As one of those two, I think it’s worked fine, since also our DM knew about it and was changing up and adding things to the game so even when the spoiler I knew was correct, I was always unsure whether she might have tweaked it for our table. It has resulted in a funny situation though where we’re almost at the very end of the campaign but there’s one particular secret (the true nature of the Abbot in Krezk, for those who know) that our characters never found out but somehow ALL the players got independently, accidentally spoiled for! We’ve brought it up a couple times and we ultimately just decided to say that one of our NPC allies had told us about it because it was silly to all keep pretending we didn’t know haha.
Personally I would just play it as it is, and make the spoiled players just know it. The Casslanters would assume nothing is awry and put on false faces, and tell the players they are free to do what they want as a result. They could say it to their faces, they could play with it and tell the others after the encounter ( I may suggest this, the players might like the dynamic of dropping the bomb).
To me knowing the secret gives the players a chance to play the antagonists early on, instead of the other way around, and it’s a rare empowering experience in my group. It’s a bomb beneath the table kind of thing.
There was an famous replay I watched with a player who watched the replay of the module a long time ago, but forgot most of it. However, he did remember the inciting incident too well, and that was game changing. The kp worked around this and firewalled it in the beginning so the rest didn’t change.
A part of the reason why this happened was because there were two extremely new players with a strong personality, and the kp wanted a familiar friend to help him hold the group together.
It ended up a rewarding experience for them and a high quality replay, with the spoiled player’s character one of the fans favorites.
The point is, early firewalling of altered material, and flexible use of game dynamics are useful, and then that it is perfectly possible to have a game in these circumstances.
As someone who likes to see/enjoy other people’s interpretation of an adventure, I have been playing quite a few where I had DMed or at last read it beforehand. And quite often the “secrets and surprises” are complete turds and make no difference whatsoever. But I would ask/speak to the players beforehand and also if you have someone that likes to do the “neh-neh-neh …I know the answer and will spoil any attempt to find it out in game” person, you might want to change it. Basically, know your players and enjoy the ride.
Why not reverse the plot the following way : the children are the actual diabolists, and the final sacrifice will target the adults and cultists who believe they are conducting the ceremony… the children somewhat tricked/mentally manipulate the parents, maybe with the help of some devils. In this way, the “co-conspirators players” are in for a surprise and something to discover before it’s too late!
Thinking of ways to change the Cassalanter storyline to deal with spoiler knowledge, I kind of love the idea of inverting things and make the young children the devil worshippers and the parents the innocents, although it’s been a while since I’ve read Dragon Heist so I’m not sure how much extra work doing that creates.
As someone who tried multiple times to replay Abomination Vaults after I left the first (amazing, first time I had a character come within a hair’s breadth of death and it was exhilarating to overcome that) game at around level 4, I have something to say about option #2. Namely, be careful about taking a “reveal the secret right away” approach. The party I joined had party-wiped last time and thus were all starting from scratch, so I got to join again from the beginning and “why on Golarion are you having the first quest-giver NPC tell us WHO THE VILLAIN IS in our first talk!?!?” We’d never even confirmed their involvement during my first game, although it was obvious out of character. Granted, the rest of that session confirmed that this was mostly just a GM with, to be kind, different story-telling expectations than my first one (and to be unkind, he plain wasn’t good at GMing), but I could easily imagine a situation where someone did that deliberately in a misguided attempt to let me skip the “drudgery” when the atmosphere created by the mystery was the best part (and the atmosphere of everything else. Again, first GM was amazing). Basically, talk with your players regardless, and even if you don’t tell them exactly what you are changing at least tell them the category of changes you may or may not make.
Justin,
I really like the way you formulate both 2 and 3 here. But I do want to still throw some more love for 1. One of the surest fire ways I’ve seen some folks (myself included at times) as “forever DMs” is a tacit assumption by other DMs that they cannot run for someone who “knows the campaign.”
I firmly believe in being up front about what I know before joining a table, and I’m no great roleplayer — at least no better than many I have played alongside — but it’s not that hard to just stick to character knowledge and character motivation. One of the best Strahd APs on YT is all DMs of CoS with basically no deviation from the printed book. There are a lot of places within TTRPG social media where it’s seen as impossible or cheating to know what happens in a story. Let’s all work hard to try to change that mentality. I need a break!