How do you deal with players being overactive in their theories about your campaign?

How do you deal with players being overactive in their theories about your campaign?

My players talk together a lot outside the game days, and they basically come up with every possible outcome to every situation. "Oh what if the lair is actually under the town?" "Oh what if this box turns out to be evil?" Etc etc. It's almost always just fun joking about the characters and the world, but they do it so much that they inevitably hit the mark and know what's coming beforehand.

I don't want to tell them to stop having fun, but what can I do as a DM to keep the campaign interesting with this going on?

Most recently, I described a sack of rings as a piece of look. All were unique and seemingly very valuable, and there was some magic romantic from the bag. Immediately a player says "If any of these are cursed, I'm chopping off whosever hand puts it on." And of course one was, and that just takes a lot of the suspense and surprise out of the situation. If they had found out by putting one on, or by getting in trouble for selling a cursed item, or anything that could lead to interesting character development or a fun subplot. Instead it's just some jokes that remove all seriousness so I either skip it entirely, or just let it happen quickly and move on.

As a GM, this is the lifeblood of my campaigns. Half the time my players will come up with shit I couldn't even have imagined, weird connections or links between things I just threw in there to flesh out a particular location or NPC.

My advice? Use them. Player speculation like that is an amazing asset. Instead of being attached to your particular version of the 'truth', remain flexible. Have a general idea you can fall back on if nothing else suits, but at the same time actively encourage player discussion to make use of. Drop in random elements and see what they imagine they could mean, actively spur on their discussions at times with 'maybe's' and 'what if's'.

The final part of the puzzle, though? Try to avoid letting them be entirely right. It's no fun if you go out of your way to make them wrong, but even if a player has an awesome idea, it's always a good idea to twist it, just a bit. Toss in some unexpected element that changes the context or takes them by surprise, and they'll both have the satisfaction of putting together the clues (they don't need to know you're making shit up as they go along) alongside having to cope with interesting and unexpected elements that can force them to think on their feet.

This.

If a player says 'ohhhh shit I was close', or some variation, it means they're engaged. You want that.

>they do it so much that they inevitably hit the mark and know what's coming beforehand.
I've got the exact opposite problem - with one player, at least.

He's a literal autist and always comes up with these bizarre plans and theories and assumes they're 100% correct and will always work, and when they don't he just fucking shuts down and has no idea what to do and starts losing interest in the game.

I play into that. What are you 12?

That just seems like an interesting jumping off point for a further surprise.

'The severed hand falls to the ground... And then rises again, its fingers acting like legs as it scurries away at amazing speed for some unknown purpose'

Or the curse being on the bag itself, cursing anyone who in their greed takes more than one ring from the bag without leaving a replacement.

Or all the rings being 'cursed', but there being a certain logic to it. While each ring is unique they might have a few common patterns, gemstones and materials. This isn't just aesthetic, it's a mystical warning system. If you don't wear rings with proper resonance with one another, they can react badly and cause magical mishaps.

The predictability doesn't make everything seem shallow and stale? I feel like I lose engagement whenever they call something out, even if there were 9 wrong guesses first.

Why would your players know which of their guesses was right or wrong? If a player makes one guess and it's dead on, that's one thing, but if they're just throwing out wild theories left and right that just means they don't know shit.

>give the players any kind of ring
>act flabbergasted when they suspect it might be cursed
Are you retarded?

STEAL! Steal their ideas! They like finding out they were right, and you get to use whatever the best thing they came up with was. It's a win-win.
Hell, you don't even have to prep the solution for these guys, save your time and just throw some stuff out there and let them figure it out for you!

Then bask in the feel of knowing what a lucky DM you are!

Here's a secret to storytelling, user:

Sometimes, things will be predictable. The whole premise of a narrative structure means by design some aspect of the story is predictable. Writing that is never predictable is its own kind of stale. The goal is to keep everyone engaged, which doesn't mean every single thing has to be a surprise.

This sort of sounds like you want your players to stroke your ego about how clever and skillful you are are PLOT, and that's bad. Don't do that.

Your party cares about your campaign, just cherish that for what it is.

Also

This. OP seems like the kind of guy who has the whole game written up already and thinks his original donutsteel story is the reason people are playing.

"Stop spoiling the plot" has become a catchphrase among my playgroups, when someone says something better than what I was going to do.

>Etc etc. It's almost always just fun joking about the characters and the world, but they do it so much that they inevitably hit the mark and know what's coming beforehand.
Do you have so shit a pokerface that you immediately signal which one of the silly theories is the right one?

This might be a part of the problem.

It's more that I want to make sure they're having fun, and it always seems like they're more entertained by making theories than they are by the game. It's not about my ego, it's about trying to keep the game engaging for the players.

In that case you're over thinking it. The day your players stop coming up with wild theories is the day your game isn't interesting anymore. That's just what they like to do so play along. Throw some red herrings at them which they can speculate on without you worrying about them coming close to spoiling any surprises you have coming.

I guess that's as simple an answer as it gets. Okay.

>Dice of random everything. Random encounters, random enemies, random town, random loot...
>And you change the list regularly so is harder to know what they will get.

Granted that removes a lot of the storytelling part, but is great if you love improv.

>Immediately a player says "If any of these are cursed, I'm chopping off whosever hand puts it on."

At that point I would have had one of the rings shoot out of the bag and around that PC's finger.