I am looking for some new suggestions on questions to ask during campaign gameplay that will really make the DM think and reveal better information. I am not looking for campaign-specific scenarios but just good questions that can fit any scenario during encounters or dialogue.
Use open ended questions rather than asking simple yes or no questions. “What did you see?” rather than “Did you see a man?”, that sort of thing.
Asking more than one NPC the same question(s) might prove to be repetitive but sometimes you get a different POV, sometimes different NPC’s have access to different information. The bar maid will likely tell you different things about that shady-looking troupe of bards than the captain of the guard.
It almost never hurts to ask something along the lines of “Do you, <NPC>, think there is anything we should know or have any ideas/information we haven’t mentioned/considered?”
If you can get access to it (it’s quite a few years old now) I really like the TV show “Burn Notice” as an example of the various ways to elicit information from people. Jeffrey Donovan plays an unemployed spy who, with a small team of other characters, pull off what amounts to heist after heist, mainly using disguises and trickery while leveraging their relatively reserved violence. The scams are pretty wide and varied. It has been good inspiration for me; I often think “What would Michael Westen do?” when I don’t want to brute force the group through a problem. It prolly won’t help you much in a monsters-ravaging-the-countryside-hack-and-slasher but if you do adventures with lotsa humanoids and intrigue, guilds and nobility and merchants and such to interact with and manipulate, it’s great for that.
Hello Fellow Adventurers,
I am looking for some new suggestions on questions to ask during campaign gameplay that will really make the DM think and reveal better information. I am not looking for campaign-specific scenarios but just good questions that can fit any scenario during encounters or dialogue.
Many thanks!
Trynnicus The Outlander
Use open ended questions rather than asking simple yes or no questions. “What did you see?” rather than “Did you see a man?”, that sort of thing.
Asking more than one NPC the same question(s) might prove to be repetitive but sometimes you get a different POV, sometimes different NPC’s have access to different information. The bar maid will likely tell you different things about that shady-looking troupe of bards than the captain of the guard.
It almost never hurts to ask something along the lines of “Do you, <NPC>, think there is anything we should know or have any ideas/information we haven’t mentioned/considered?”
If you can get access to it (it’s quite a few years old now) I really like the TV show “Burn Notice” as an example of the various ways to elicit information from people. Jeffrey Donovan plays an unemployed spy who, with a small team of other characters, pull off what amounts to heist after heist, mainly using disguises and trickery while leveraging their relatively reserved violence. The scams are pretty wide and varied. It has been good inspiration for me; I often think “What would Michael Westen do?” when I don’t want to brute force the group through a problem. It prolly won’t help you much in a monsters-ravaging-the-countryside-hack-and-slasher but if you do adventures with lotsa humanoids and intrigue, guilds and nobility and merchants and such to interact with and manipulate, it’s great for that.
This is great info, thank you so much!