I've been embroiled in a discussion of late about a published adventure in which a particular group are accused of some crimes. A whole bunch of villagers proceed to accuse them, indicating that it's typical of members of that group, while one particular NPC suggests that perhaps there's more going on here than meets the eye.
And, sure enough, it emerges that there is indeed more going on - the group in question are responsible for the crimes they're accused of, but they have a motive beyond the standard "we're evil; it's what we do".
Leaving aside all of the other stuff that surrounds the adventure, it does highlight something that a lot of adventures do... or rather something that too many adventures don't do enough - talk to the DM.
An awful lot of adventures are written and plotted like novels - they're telling a story where you are introduced to a bunch of characters, those characters tell you a bunch of things, and later on it turns out that some of those things aren't entirely true. Which is okay, I guess.
But published adventures aren't novels. They're game products that the DM is supposed to be presenting to his players. And as such, the DM really needs to be briefed on what's really going on. If the villagers are not being objective because they're being racist then the adventure should say that to the DM. Don't leave it to be implied, and don't leave it as a revelation to be discovered on page 32. Likewise for a mystery adventure, the players should perhaps be surprised by the big reveal of the bad guy at the end, but the DM should not.
And, actually, it's pretty much as simple as that: at the start of the adventure text, and potentially at key points later on, the DM should be comprehensively briefed about what's going on and why.
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