A long while back I took a stray comment on this forum to heart (paraphrasing): "Though betrayal is a staple of fine literature for a reason, even one NPC betrayal poisons your players' future interactions with all other NPCs for many, many sessions, possibly even multiple campaigns."

Now this is just anecdotal, but I really do thing my players' willingness to invest in and fully interact with NPCs has improved since I secretly implemented the "no NPC betrayals" policy.

What do you folks think?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846585A long while back I took a stray comment on this forum to heart (paraphrasing): "Though betrayal is a staple of fine literature for a reason, even one NPC betrayal poisons your players' future interactions with all other NPCs for many, many sessions, possibly even multiple campaigns."

Now this is just anecdotal, but I really do thing my players' willingness to invest in and fully interact with NPCs has improved since I secretly implemented the "no NPC betrayals" policy.

What do you folks think?

I don't have it as a policy, I just don't do it except under special conditions*. But yes, the first NPC screw job is usually the last.

* For example, if the group mistreats an NPC, or if one infiltrates the group. The former is self-inflicted, so the players have no business complaining. The latter is very rare, and the PCs should at least have a chance to smell the rat.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846585A long while back I took a stray comment on this forum to heart (paraphrasing): "Though betrayal is a staple of fine literature for a reason, even one NPC betrayal poisons your players' future interactions with all other NPCs for many, many sessions, possibly even multiple campaigns."

Now this is just anecdotal, but I really do thing my players' willingness to invest in and fully interact with NPCs has improved since I secretly implemented the "no NPC betrayals" policy.

What do you folks think?

What if it's one of the known villains who tricks them into a deal that screws them later.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846585A long while back I took a stray comment on this forum to heart (paraphrasing): "Though betrayal is a staple of fine literature for a reason, even one NPC betrayal poisons your players' future interactions with all other NPCs for many, many sessions, possibly even multiple campaigns."

I've occasionally had NPCs betray the PCs. I don't recall it ever poisoning future interactions with NPCs. Perhaps this is because I run games with lots of NPCs (including hirelings, henchmen, friends, acquaintances, enemies, etc. -- and what camp an NPC falls in changes with PC actions in the game.

Players are often wary of NPC motivations and that's okay to an extent. My favorite NPCs are those the PCs know they can't trust, but they need them anyway. Those are fun for me.

Anything that could happen in an adventure story could happen in one of my games.

If the players allow the very occasional betrayal to make them bitter and paranoid, that's their problem. Nothing is off the table just because it might make somebody whine.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846585What do you folks think?

It depends on the tone of the campaign. I'll have more NPC betrayals in a Dark Sun or Cyberpunk campaign, where I think the tone of not trusting NPCs fits.
For a more Paladins and Princesses, or Space Opera campaign, I'd reserve NPC betrayal for very rare and memorable situations.

I think the core of the advice, that trusting/not trusting NPCs is a very different concequence in an RPG, because you have an interactive scenario with participants and aren't just relating a story, is a very good one to make. The players make decisions based on the situations they find themselves in, and trusting NPCs when previous experience tells them this is a bad idea, is going to impact gameplay.

Absolutely, the PCs can be betrayed.  An especially devious nemesis is going to fund ways to gain an advantage, and gathering info from within is a great way of doing it. The only rule I use for myself is that I must drop hints along the way at what's going on.  If the players feel they could have caught on, then all's fair, sez I.

"NPC betrays PC" is the second most overused trope in gaming.

The problem comes in when any NPC who is more than a simple shopkeeper ALWAYS betrays the PCs.  I've seen more campaigns than I can remember over the last 40 years where literally every NPC was treacherous.  In cases like that it's no wonder players acquire a "kill first and let the referee sort them out later" point of view.

I was in one game session where it had gotten so bad that the PCs, IN CHARACTER, were sitting at a dinner party discussing when, how, and why the host was going to betray them.

Which, of course, he did.

Much easier for NPCs to get vengeance for stuff the PCs do. PCs do plenty of things to piss off NPCs without you going out of the way to make NPCs want to hurt them.

Some of my favorite adventures was a Ravenloft campaign where the DM left plenty of rope lying around and when we saw the gallows we could only thung about how much we had this coming.

I have NPC's betray my players, but I also have NPC's who are staunch allies who would willingly die for the PC's as well. It really depends on the genre and what type of game you're playing.

My players have a long running gag to immediately shoot anyone who offers them food in my Deadlands games, as they've been poisoned a number of times. This started back in the 90s and early 00's because many of the pre-written Deadlands adventures have the PC's get poisoned when they're offered food by NPC's ((Really like 5 of the Adventures have this happen)).

Really, if you're going to do betrayal just make sure the NPC has the right motivation to do so...My favorite tactic when I do a betrayal is to have the NPC doing it against their own will...maybe a family member is being held hostage, or they have some dark secret they're being blackmailed with...

My players end up having sympathy for the character and feel less screwed over by it..

Having an NPC who stabs them in the back and then laugh manically about how stupid they were is just more likely to piss your PC's off and not want to play more than anything else.

It's like oregano, a little goes a long way. Some play groups have real trust issues, both against play mechanics and setting. You can't fix that through play, but it also cannot be completely hashed out through table talk either ("Trust me! We good now, yeah?").

I can see the reasoning behind offering a larger period of NPC trust. I understand this is not an all-or-nothing situation, more of a currently-unavailable situation. When your players learn to unclench their sphincters I can imagine you may return to reevaluate this decision.

edit: Adventure modules are HUGE offenders in this area. It's one of my biggest red flags for bad writing. It ain't clever if everything betrays eveyone all the time forever...

I don't really use NPC betrayal all that much. Rarely does an NPC get enough screen time to really get comfortable in the PC group and then BAM, stab them in the back.

That doesn't mean the NPCs can't be ambiguous in their wording, not tell the whole truth or manipulate the PCs as it fits their own ends. I've had lots of fun with NPCs that are all working towards their own goals, and the PCs trying to guess and maneuver their way through the situation.

I've also seen the PCs betray and kill a friendly NPC. Having them confront his grieving widow later was a great roleplaying experience, much fun was had

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846585A long while back I took a stray comment on this forum to heart (paraphrasing): "Though betrayal is a staple of fine literature for a reason, even one NPC betrayal poisons your players' future interactions with all other NPCs for many, many sessions, possibly even multiple campaigns."

I've mainly seen this advice in a more extreme form:  "NPCs must never lie to the PCs, or else the players will distrust the GM."  In either form, this strikes me as a failure to draw a distinction between the GM and the NPCs he plays.  Playing a lying NPC doesn't make the GM a liar and more than playing Hannibal Lecter makes Anthony Hopkins a serial killer.

So, yes, as a general rule, it's possible that my NPCs may lie to or betray PCs, but it doesn't happen often and I don't think I've ever noticed any of my players taking it as an indication that I was any less trustworthy as a GM.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846627"NPC betrays PC" is the second most overused trope in gaming.

What's number one?  "You all meet in a tavern"?

I just pay a lot more attention / thought to my NPCs than I used to.

It's certainly possible that my NPCs will do one or more levels of betrayal to others, but it's going to be consistent with a lot of things, not just a random undetectable PC-centric thing, like it might've been when I first started out.

For example, I ran an adventure where some NPCs were part of a grand deception plot. I expected either the PCs would discover it and foil the plot, or at least there would be a great dramatic reveal at the moment the plot unleashed itself (upon other NPCs, but with the PCs probably present). What happened in play, was the PCs ended up creating so many of their own intrigues, that they were mostly focused on trying to solve the mysteries being created by other PCs (which they couldn't tell I wasn't doing, due to careful note-passing etc), and when the plot did get unleashed (twice, actually), no one (PC nor NPC) figured out who the plotmaster was - they convinced themselves of another explanation that they invented, and continued to act as if they were right about that. That enabled the plot to succeed wildly beyond the original plan.

I think my NPCs tend to be varied enough that they're in different categories and the PCs tend to relate to them more or less appropriately except when the players are being especially paranoid. That is, most of my NPCs behave normally and many are very useful and valuable resources or allies - treating those as backstabbers would tend to be a bad idea. The ones who might "betray" in one way or another, will also at least be consistent in how and why they do what they do. But yeah there may be some nefarious agents and wackos with weird plots out there, or possibly at your side. I almost never have anything like I see in some (usually D&D, it seems) game stories I've read where characters (it seems, as often PCs as NPCs) where someone is attempting some grand betrayal actually directed at the PC group, where they all get poisoned or led into a trap or whatever.

I think a few times an NPC spear-fodder got eaten by a bear while peeing alone in the woods, and the PCs decided he must've been a spy.

As mentioned in some of my morality comments, though, if my PCs act like decent folks and make friends, and then start acting more like murderers or something, then their NPC friends are likely to "betray" them by either intervening or leaving, or something, depending on the nature of the atrocity. Unless the NPC friends also start descending into dreadfulness, which sometimes mirrors to the players what goons they've been, and may have them want to abandon the NPCs for doing what they themselves were doing...