DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 47A: The Master of Two Servants

Tee babbled something about a letter and the shipment that Wuntad was delivering to Mahdoth. “And since Wuntad is a bad man, we just assumed that you must be—“

“Who the devil is Wuntad?”

“You don’t know who he is?” Tee, in her charmed state, was honestly befuddled. But those in their right wits were beginning to figure it out.

“Let me see this letter,” Mahdoth demanded.

Tee dug it out of her bag of holding. Mahdoth grabbed it with his telekinetic eyestalk and perused it with half a dozen eyes at once.

“Where is that traitorous halfling?”

When the PCs intercepted plans indicating that Mahdoth’s Asylum was being used to smuggle goods for the chaos cultists, they jumped to a conclusion: Mahdoth must be involved!

The assumption was reinforced by what seemed to be corroborating evidence: Mahdoth had been rude and secretive when they met him previously. More importantly, he was wearing a Pactlords’ ring, and they knew that the Pactlords were bad guys. This, in turn, caused even more conclusions to come spilling out: If Mahdoth was one of the Pactlords and he was helping the chaos cultists, then there must be a connection between the Pactlords and the chaos cultists. Maybe that double agent of the Pactlords they’d found embedded among the chaos cultists of the Old City hadn’t been a double agent after all; or maybe she’d just been scouting out the cultists for a potential alliance!

As we’ve now seen, none of this is actually true: The smuggling at Mahdoth’s was being coordinated by his corrupt staff members and has nothing to do with Mahdoth being a former member of the Pactlords. (Mahdoth is actually completely reformed and no longer has any contact with the Pactlords.)

When the PCs went haring off along this false trail, I remember being gobsmacked. It had not occurred to me that they would jump to the conclusion that Mahdoth was responsible, nor double and triple down on a course of action that would see them going toe-to-toe with a beholder.

(When I talk about not needing to prep red herrings for adventures, this is what I’m talking about.)

I also kept expecting them to course correct. (For example, by questioning Zairic or some of the other cultists involved.) In fact, the players had almost talked themselves out of precipitous action by the end of Session 46, but by the time we’d reconvened for Session 47, they’d worked their way back to, “Mahdoth must die!”

At no point, however, did I feel the need to correct the players in their mistake or somehow “fix” what was going on. This is because nothing was broken.

As long as the PCs are moving forward and with purpose, it doesn’t matter if they’re doing so due to a misapprehension: I had prepped a situation (in which chaos cultists pick up shipments of chaositech from Children of Mrathrach at Mahdoth’s Asylum) and the PCs’ actions were driving them to engage more and more deeply with that situation. Was that engagement different than I’d expected? Sure, and if I’d prepped a plot that might have been a problem.

THE REVERSAL

When running a situation-based scenario, in fact, these kinds of false assumptions are often desirable. They provide a completely organic, but dramatically satisfying reversal when the truth comes out.

A reversal, you see, is that moment when everything you think you know about a story is suddenly turned on its head: The private detective has been framed by the dame who hired him. The “CIA agent” who recruited the PCs was actually working for the bad guys. You thought you came to assassinate a beholder, but it turns out you’re actually here to help the beholder layoff some troublesome staff members.

There are techniques you can use to prep reversals, but they can be tricky to pull off in a satisfying way. Even when you do pull it off, the players will know you pulled a fast one on them, even if they appreciate the moment. But when the players know that they duped themselves? When they completely own the false assumptions?

That’s pure gold.

That’s a dramatic beat that lands and lands hard.

Or, alternatively, if the PCs finish the scenario without ever figuring out their mistake, it will likely generate all kinds of delightful complications and blowback for them to deal with later: Imagine if they had killed Mahodth and left the asylum completely unsupervised! What might the consequences have been?

Campaign Journal: Session 47B – Running the Campaign: Fighting With Monsters
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index