How do you handle player knowledge and the Mists?

[Razan de Ullapool]

I've started my first RL campaign with me as DM. My players are all vets but none have ever played in RL before. All players got copies of the RLPHB and as such know a lot about the Mists.

Some of my players are natives, some are outlanders. I dragged the outlanders in first and they behaved as I expected - "where am I? what's going on?". The players were fine. Then I brought in the natives who were drawn in from OTHER areas of Ravenloft. One of them played it right as well - "what happened to me? I was asleep as my room filled with this choking mist and here I wake up!"

The problem is the OTHER player started spouting knowledge about the Mists. "Ah ha! We must have been sucked up by the Mists. They do that kind of thing, drag people from all around and position them someplace else. That must have happened to us!"

The other players played it as though this guy was just being a Bragard but I'm having a problem with this approach. ALL players are level 1.

Do you have any thoughts about how I should handle this bragard character?

Furthermore, ignoring my own personal problem I'm in now, how do you handle issues of players being dragged around in RL? Are PCs really supposed to just wake up someplace new and not freak out? Sure, my characters are upset, but after they get to town and find out they are in someplace different what do you expect characters to do? Since the villagers don't know they are on a demiplane called Ravenloft, what do you expect PCs to do? Are they to spend their entire existence in RL asking people "where the eff am I?"

It seems to me they need to have their location explained to them at some point so that they can actively quest to get OUT of there (though we know that only the Dark Powers will release them and my natives would probably just want to get back towards home).

Any thoughts from you vet DMs would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Ravenloft natives aren't entirely unfamiliar with "outlanders" -- i.e. folks who've been Mist-led from other game settings -- but as they only know about their own little pocket universe, they assume that lands described by such new arrivals are other realms adrift in the Mists, not worlds in their own right. Even the well-traveled wouldn't necessarily grasp what the PCs are talking about, when they claim to be from some other world. ("Toril, you say? My word, I've never heard of that one; it must be further off than Souragne, even! Or is that the place with all the sand and the folks in funny robes?")

While the native PC who blabbed about the Mists might've been a bit too smug about it, it's not unreasonable for a native to have heard stories of people carried off by them and deposited elsewhere. It wouldn't hurt to remind the player not to be too casual about it, though: getting Mist-led is not a common event, unless you're foolish enough to wander across a Misty Border, and the majority of people who've disappeared that way weren't ever heard from again. So, any satisfaction the PC might feel in having figured out what happened should be leavened with a healthy dose of awe, and probably fear as well.

Early on, queries by the outlander PCs about a way home will probably earn them a suggestion to seek out the Vistani, as locals will assume that "home" lies somewhere out in the Mists, not on another plane. (The Vistani might take some time to find, depending on which domain you've sent them to and how soon you're willing to move on to the next step.) Once they do meet the Vistani, and manage to get on their good side, the raunie whom they speak with can prophesize that they're destined to accomplish something important -- i.e. to fulfill whatever sort of campaign goal you've got in mind -- before they see home again. Until then, they must have courage, and trust that the Mists' actions are never so capricious as giorgios believe them to be.

BTW, while "Ravenloft" is the title of the product line, it's not a name that the residents of the game-setting use among themselves, any more than the natives of Krynn call their world "Dragonlance". Their world is the "Land of Mists", or simply "the world"; "Ravenloft" is a big castle in Barovia.

[Razan de Ullapool]

Thank you for the ideas and clarification.

[Paladyn]

("Toril, you say? My word, I've never heard of that one; it must be further off than Souragne, even! Or is that the place with all the sand and the folks in funny robes?")

It reminds me a quote from Planescape Boxed Set: "Waterdeep? Waterdeep? Never heard of..."

As to "wise" one, I'd counter his assumptions on some occasions by proving them wrong and on some proving them right.

When I ran 2nd edition campaign, I forced two my players (wizard and priest) to count casted spell levels (needed that for xp) and roll a two dices. They varied from session to session with no apparent reason and were with nothing but they kept wondering, what's going on. My favourite theory was, that they had only few levels of spells left and were afraid what will happen next.

Anyway, led him off track by sowing the seeds of doubt.

[Igor the Henchman]

The problem is the OTHER player started spouting knowledge about the Mists. "Ah ha! We must have been sucked up by the Mists. They do that kind of thing, drag people from all around and position them someplace else. That must have happened to us!"

In my experience, this isn't a big deal, as long as it doesn't affect the flow of the adventure itself. If the player derives enjoyment from knowing the tropes of the setting - why not? Note that many people in Ravenloft have heard fireside tales of the big mysterious Mists shifting people around. If the player has chosen to play his character as a bragging know-it-all, why spoil his fun?