Nobody Likes a "Gotcha" Game Master

The rule of a good mystery story is that all of the puzzle pieces need to be in front of the reader the whole time. If they're clever, perceptive, or just gain a moment of insight, then the reader might even manage to figure out who committed the crime before the protagonist does. However, a good sign of a subpar mystery is that the author keeps important details behind the scenes so the reader couldn't possibly figure out what's happening no matter how attentive they are. Or worse, in the conclusion of the story they pull a Scooby Doo and introduce a character the audience has never met and couldn't possibly suspect as the culprit of what's happening. It preserves the mystery, yes, but it's cheap, and sucks out most of the satisfaction a reader could have gotten from the story.

What does this have to do with being a game master? Everything, because there is no surer way to irritate your table than to try to pull a "gotcha" moment to make them feel stupid, or to show how clever you are.

There's a lot to unpack here, but don't worry, we'll get into it.

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What Is (And Isn't) a "Gotcha" in Gaming?

Since I can already hear throats clearing, let's make this clear right up-front. I'm not saying that game masters should abandon subtlety and guile. I'm not saying you shouldn't hold some things back for the purposes of keeping a little mystery in the plot, nor am I saying that if players miss something (or choose not to investigate) that you need to lead them back to it by the nose.

What I'm saying is that, as a GM, you shouldn't specifically engineer scenarios that exist only to screw the PCs. Nor should you refuse to divulge information when the dice say it's something the PCs should know, have seen, etc. because it might mean the players get a peek behind the curtain.

Let's discuss the most traditional example, shall we?

Perhaps the most tedious example of a "Gotcha" move is when a GM consistently attempts to force paladin characters into situations where no matter what they do they will violate their oaths, and thus lose their powers. To be clear, this isn't a situation where the moral choice is merely difficult, or where the requirements of an oath make things harder for the paladin, or when the player stumbles into a situation all on their own; it's when the GM has done something specifically to force the player's hand to undercut the character.

As a very stupid example, say the paladin is forced by a villain to murder a helpless hostage, or the villain will in turn murder two of them. It's a cartoonish situation on its face, but if the GM makes it clear there's no way around this (the paladin can't tackle the enemy, can't fake the murder attempt, can't use diplomacy, intimidation, or any of their powers to affect the situation, can't sacrifice themselves to save the hostages), then it's a pointless scene. They kill the innocent, they violate their oath. Through inaction they allow the innocent to be harmed when they could have stopped it, they violate their oath. Either way, the player gets screwed.

You can replace the paladin with a cleric, a monk, a druid, and you can alter the situation to suit the oaths and alignments of the character in question... but the point remains the same. If you put a road block in front of the players that exists for no reason other than to screw someone, and there is no way to avoid it or accomplish their goals without metaphorically cutting off a finger, that's a "gotcha" moment.

The close cousin of the born-to-lose scenario is when the GM plays cagey with the rules of a given encounter. If a player who is standing toe-to-toe with a huge, roaring troll asks the GM if the creature has the reach to threaten the square they're standing in, the GM should say yes, or no, because that's something easily observable. Just shrugging and saying something like, "You think you're out of range," then waiting for the player to begin casting a spell to just take the troll's attack of opportunity and splat the wizard is bad form. Play it straight with your players if you expect them to trust anything that comes out of your mouth.

What about that other thing you were talking about?

The second most common "Gotcha" I've seen from game masters is when they out-and-out refuse to provide the puzzle pieces to the players (even when the dice say they should have them) because they want to preserve the mystery around a big twist. As an example, say the GM wants the PCs to investigate a murder, and the big twist is that the victim was poisoned at dinner, but the body was grievously stabbed afterward to throw off suspicion. If someone with a high score in the Heal skill rolls well, this is not the time for the GM to just flap their hands and say there's too much blood, or they can't tell what happened. The player did good, give them a cookie. The same holds true if someone casts detect poison and finds remnants of it in the body, or the necromancer casts speak with dead and we find out the ghost has no knowledge of any sort of violence because it happened post-mortem.

If the players did the thing, let them have their victory. Even if it means the Wizard of Oz mis-stepped, and they caught sight of the man behind the curtain that you were saving for an act three twist reveal.

Set Your Players Up To Win

I've said it before, but I'll remind folks that If You Don't Want Players To Win, Get Out of The DM Chair! Your whole job is to facilitate challenge, and to make sure people have a fun time... the best way to do that is to give your players as much freedom as you can, and to let them win when they've earned it.

Even (and I would say especially) when they do it unexpectedly.

Not what I had in mind, but go for it!

And for all the folks out there who are arguing that letting something slip too early, or allowing the players to drive the narrative too completely, I'd counter that if you remove the linear nature of a situation you take a lot of the work off your hands, and put the power back in your player's court.

What do I mean by that?

Let's go back to the murder mystery. A linear plan would have the party investigate, and find the horribly brutalized body. If you plot out where you want them to go from that point on (they follow the false trail to the gang of assassins who use a particular kind of blade, the assassins inform them they refused the contract, the lord's maid comes forward and claims she saw something, PCs then follow this tip to a potions dealer, potions dealer rats out the duchess, duchess was acting on orders from a secret cult, etc., etc.).

Instead, take a step back. Lay out the entire situation as it happened before the PCs showed up. A cult dedicated to an evil god had one of its members, the duchess, poison her husband because he was proving to be a problem. To cover her tracks and throw off suspicion, she tried to mutilate the body, and then hired mercenaries to exact "revenge" on the hired killers whose style of murder she'd imitated. The idea is that this whole thing is because the cult is trying to further its own goals, while staying in the shadows.

Once the party is on the scene, take your hands off and let them run around to see what they do.

Maybe, upon seeing the body, the rogue connects the weapon to the assassins associated with it, and the party follows the path you originally envisioned. But maybe the cleric finds out there was poison, or the ranger points out the wounds were inflicted post mortem, leading them to the conclusion that the wounds were a cover-up for a poisoning that happened the evening before. If the duchess is in the room, she now knows that the PCs are onto the truth of what happened. She knows cutting them loose would make her look guilty, so she tells the cult they've become a problem, and the cult attempts to eliminate them. The PCs track the cult back, and uncover the plot that way.

If you stonewall the spells, skill checks, etc. during the scene where the PCs investigate the body because you want them to go to the assassins rather than figure things out too fast, you're just going to frustrate your players. If you let the players discover things organically, following where they lead instead of trying to control their direction, they're going to enjoy the game a whole lot more. And by getting a top-down, full story view of the whole plot, the players can't step off the path. There is no path; just where they are, and where you want them to be. How they get there is up to them!

This also helps ensure that if they wind up in a scene where they are forced to break their oaths, violate their faith, etc. that they wound up in that situation because of actions they took rather than you pushing them into the trap.

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