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.
I don’t know what it says about my friends but their highest fantasy aspirations appear to revolve mostly around two things: petty larceny and profound larceny.
Profound larceny sounds like some fun fae shit. Like stealing someone’s ability to desire material things, or their ability to speak the letter H.
Funny you should mention it, because one of my campaigns involves stealing, and destroying, a Platonic Ideal. if the ideal is destroyed, that concept ceases to exist in reality. No one knows if it’s ever been done, because no one would be able to remember the concept after a successful heist.
But with the right team and a portal to the realm of Pure Thought, it could be done.