Player Paranoia and Character Surprise: How to GM

[Ogo]

It's kind of a cliche that players are a little paranoid. their characters are always over-prepared and overly cautious. You know the story: "the old gentleman invites you to take a seat--" "I check the couch for curses/spikes/landmines etc!!"

The problem is, if the GM tries to set a scene as innocuous, it always looks like a trap. The more innocuous it is, the more it seems like an excuse to strip characters of their resources: "You're at the grocery store one morning after a night out--" and the player thinks "oh great, something is going to happen, and I've got no gear, and he'll probably tell me I'm hung over, too. No fair!"

There are tons of examples in fiction of heroes being caught off guard in a crummy situation and having to suffer through. "Die Hard" comes to mind; can you imagine as a GM, announcing "ok there's broken glass everywhere. Wait, did I mention you don't have shoes on?"

Similarly, there are tons of great stories where the protagonists walk into a trap. Not just a simple ambush, but that they follow the wrong clues for a long time, or someone is lying to them, or promising something to them, and they end up being suckered into something really terrible or dangerous. In the latest James Bond film, his contact sells him out. He ends up being drugged, wrecks his Bondmobile, and gets tortured. It's good cinema, but losses like that are frustrating to players who are generally happier detecting or resisting poisons, using their gear rather than destroying it accidentally, and escaping from bonds. It's hard to GM this kind of unfair situation without just looking like an unfair GM. It's hard to have an important NPC do something sleazy and not have your players treat every NPC as sleazy: every bartender is an enemy agent, every messenger is a spy, every local priest is an underground cultist.

So how do you do it?

A few thoughts: for the unprepared situation, "terror at the grocery store" scenario, I think GMs just have to make clear that if players are caught with their pants down, s/he still, as GM, has their interests at heart. It might be rough but the situation is designed for them to get through it. I can't think of another way of doing it.

For situations of betrayal or entrapment I think GMs should allow some chance, however remote, for the players to figure out the ruse as it's going along. Preferably this should be something beyond a secret check, so that when the sh*t hits the fan, the GM doesn't just say "oh well you failed a [something] roll 3 hours/months ago." S/he should be able to point to some turn in the plot where they went wrong.

Additionally, GMs could be extra generous whenever players have survived something particularly harrowing. We tend to reward success (discovering a plot) but some consideration should be given to dealing with suffering and failure as well! (getting caught in a plot and extricating oneself at great cost).

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thought on this, and how you've played with situations like these.

[EDIT: apologies for the use of "he" for GM's.]