Out Of My Mind

The concept of disagreeing authorities as described in the last entry is personified in the character of Arthur. This was intentional. It’s easier for players to compare and contrast facts when they come from a limited number of sources. Arthur was created to be a living conundrum, a walking contrast. At times, he displays god-like abilities, other times he seems to get what he wants with clever words and bluffing. He seems to be at once extremely knowledgeable and woefully ignorant. He speaks with a London-esque gutter accent, and is often crude. This makes him look ignorant or petty.
Arthur was a fascinating tool for a GM. At times the players desperately needed his help, at other times they wanted to throttle him. I will confess here that I used a very rarely invoked and unfair technique with him. Specifically, I broke the GM/Player Compact of Trust. Players pick up on GM body language and cues constantly. If you briefly describe a room, but make note of a green candlestick with the name Sigfried written on in it reverse type, that candlestick immediately becomes the focus of the room. Regardless of whether their characters would show interest in this one item, the fact that the GM pointed it out means that it must be significant. This is the Chekov’s Gun technique. GM’s and players use it all the time. It keep the game moving in the direction of greatest fun. If the players ignore the candlestick, they fear they may miss a plot-hook or vital clue. The GM knows this and mentions the candlestick for precisely that reason.
When I say I broke the compact of trust, I mean specifically that I used cues designed to lead the players astray. Persia is kidnapped. I want the characters to buy her back along with fellow-slave Arthur. By making him the only NPC I name, and having him be the only one who talks to her during her incarceration, she naturally vouches for him with the others. Thus I used GM trust to insinuate him into the party.
Whenever Arthur needed an excuse, or wished to impart information to the players, he did it in a roundabout way that gave them no hint of his intent. He would convince others to present his information so that it had the ring of truth. By convincing a sole character, and then having that character make the statement for him or even back him up, he had the scent of GM approval. I would spend a great deal of time coming up with rationales for his requests for party goals (such as which ruins to explore, or whom to confront or when to retreat), or with excuses or explanations for his odd behavior that sounded plausible, and even seem to further the interests of his questioners. I had the luxury of setting up the situation and figuring out his explanations out of game. The players would get no such benefit. I would make sure their time to act on information was limited, so that Arthur’s plans or reasons would always seem the best. This is what I mean by breaking the trust.
I would employ every trick of rhetoric, acting and body language that I knew to make him sound reasonable. Many GMs telegraph lies or villainy without realizing it. This comes from a lifetime of watching movies and TV shows where the villain is revealed to the audience by sinister overtones or chilling music, though the heroes remain unaware. Whenever they questioned Arthur, I would always convince myself of his innocence before trying to convince them. While I was talking to them, I did my best to really believe his stories as if they were what I had written in the game notes. It was very effective.
Thus for about six adventures, the party was pretty much led by Arthur, and their suspicions always came to nothing. My crowning achievement came when he had stolen a valuable artifact, angered a colony of bat-people, fled the party and taken off in the direction of their enemies. This time they were mad. They were convinced that he was playing them. They approached him with the mantra, “Just hit him. Don’t listen to him, just hit him.”
Inside of fifteen minutes of carefully crafted excuses, enticing lies and reasonable entreaties, they were once again going where he wanted them to go, back in the good graces of the party. My wife (one of the players) nearly hit me the next day, saying “How did you do it? We were going to nail him! You didn’t even roll a die, or use mind control powers! How!” She nearly accused me of using real mind control powers on the players, not the characters. Player Trust is a valuable tool. Break it only at great need, and if possible do so without letting them know.

“That’s fascinating Keith, but what does this have to do with maintaining mystery?” I hear you say. (Or maybe not, but I’m going to pretend you said it so I can go on with the pretense that anyone is reading this…)
By setting up Arthur as a deliberately controversial, and ultimately untrustworthy figure, I can use him to present information that has at once the ring of authority and the stink of a con game.

At the climax of his appearance, Arthur gives several conflicting tales of his origins. Up until this point, I had carefully been taking notes on each player’s pet theory on who he was and what he was up to. Now, I’m not really cheating. All along, I personally have known exactly who he was and what he was up to. But true to his character, he presents valuable information filtered through perception. Each player simultaneously hears his pet theory echoed back to him with tantalizing bits of extra knowledge. Each story has elements of truth, but are obviously irreconcilable. He claims to be a proto-Demon King, to be one of their servants, to be a spirit-ghost of a Demon King, and so on.
He tells them something of the origins of Iron John, of the enigmatic Church of Last Days, the Circlet of Gitche Manito, ending with the frightening hint that the Demon Kings are not gone, merely banished and may some day return.

Arthur was a unique creation, and a useful tool. Through him I guided character actions to places where knowledge could be given to them in great quantity, and at the same time kept them from achieving absolute truths. The characters found quite a lot of answers, but the essential mysteries stand preserved.