How to Share Information with Your Players
As the mouthpiece for the world, the Game Master is the single source of information players have for the world. Without the Game Master, players are blind, deaf, and incapable of interacting or reacting to the world.
Because of that, it is up to you, the Game Master, to be an effective communicator and ensure that your players know exactly what you need them to know.
Providing Information
First and foremost, if you have any information that the players absolutely need to know, just tell them. There is no sense hiding information behind a roll or obstacle that the players have to guess or luck themselves in.
If you want your players to know that the Big Bad is over in the Plane of Shadows in a big Shadow Castle planning to summon a horde of undead to decimate the material world. Tell them that information. Don’t make them roll an Investigation check to decipher a cryptic journal that uses the names of flowers as a hidden codex that can be cracked by spelling your name in reverse.
If the players need a specific piece of information to continue the plot and campaign, they learn that piece of information. The only thing that will happen if you don’t provide this information is that they won’t know what to do next and be frustrated. Or they’ll tell you they got a 1 on their Investigation check and you come up with some excuse for why they know this information anyways.
Save yourself, and your table, the headache and provide crucial plot information to your players.
Providing Secondary Information
But you don’t have to share everything with the table. I like to have certain DCs for how much information the party can have.
For example, when the party defeats a boss and searches the room for magic items, I first tell them relevant plot information (go to the Plane of Shadows) they find in a journal without them even saying they pick up a journal to read. I just assume the adventurers are looking over the room and tell the players that a journal they find has the relevant information.
If they want to try and search for more information in the room or in the journal, at that point I have them roll Investigation checks and then I provide more information the higher they roll. For example…
Crucial Information The BBEG is in the Plane of Shadow in a castle made of shadow and is planning to overwhelm the world with an undead horde.
DC 5 The BBEG’s plans are nearing fruition and it seems like they are planning to launch their attack soon.
DC 10 The BBEG is within a large, well-defended castle and is surrounded by powerful undead bodyguards.
DC 15 One powerful undead guard is an ancient dracolich, named Dragothoth (separate roll to learn information about Dragothoth). In addition, the BBEG has made a pact with death giants to act as defenders.
DC 20 There are two competing factions within the amassing force. The death giants dislike a group of elite shadar-kai who serve the BBEG. They are often fighting with each other and the BBEG must work hard to keep them working together.
DC 25 Reading between the lines in the journal, there may be a secret entrance into the castle that the BBEG uses often (party will have to search the area, but will have advantage on such checks to find entrance thanks to the information they find in the journal)
As you can see, the higher the players roll, the more information they get and the more specific that information is—however, none of it is required knowledge that they need to continue the campaign. They automatically know where to go next and partially what to expect.
Everything else they learn is simply bonus and something that they can use to help them bring down the BBEG if they decide to pull at those threads.
Passive Knowledge
One of the best things about Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition is passive ability checks. This is simply your ability modifier plus 10. This saves you from having to ask for Perception checks to notice a trap every 10 feet, it saves you from having to ask for an Insight check after ever sentence to detect a trap in language, and you can use it to help you determine the average knowledge of the party.
You can simply give players the above information based on their passive Investigation check, but in these situations, I still break out what information they would learn at each DC. This is especially handy if the party is spending significant time pouring over documents and trying to learn as much as possible.
No sense in punishing the players if they roll poorly from getting access to knowledge about the game. They are actively engaged in the game and learning more information instead of just moving from combat to combat. Reward their investment by giving them information to keep them invested in the plot.
The other thing you could do, instead of keeping track of their passive History, Arcana, what-have-you ability is simply remember who is proficient with those skills and automatically give them information.
If one of the players is a noble and is proficient in History, just tell straight up tell them, “Since you’re a noble and proficient in History, you automatically recognize this sigil. It belongs to the Carloman family who are known for being adventurers and were given noble status after saving the king from a dragon attack.”
Not only are you rewarding different backgrounds and proficiencies with free rewards, it keeps the game moving forward.
Unless there is something interesting that could happen if a player fails their knowledge check, and it makes some sense that they would have any knowledge about the event, person, or information, just give it to them and reward the character they have created.
Monsters and Abilities
I’ve talked before about how you should let players use knowledge checks to learn information about monsters, and this isn’t about that letting players roll checks to learn useful information about the monsters they are fighting (though you should totally let them!).
Instead, let’s talk about giving players information about the monster they are fighting and how they can best respond. Dungeons & Dragons, for melee combat, quickly devolves into two people swinging away with swords, with little to no interaction with tactics. Nobody bothers to move around once they hit melee. They just swing over and over.
The problem, besides a lack of meaningful mechanical opportunities, is that there is no incentive for players to move. If all you do is claw, claw, bite — why would a player need to move? What is motivating them to use all the cover and terrain you’ve carefully added to the encounter?
To overcome this, you should be telegraphing your monster’s next turn. Are the players fighting a dragon and you know you are unleashing a breath weapon on its next turn? In between player turns, talk about how the party can see the internal fires of the dragon growing brighter. That the great winged kobold is rearing back and the sounds of crackling lightning, roaring fire, or bubbling acid can be heard from its maw.
You aren’t explicity telling them that the dragon is about to use its breath weapon, but you are providing fair warning that the ability that the creature is known for is about to go off. Of course, you are playing with novice players, then you could always include that the dragon looks like it is about to use its breath weapon soon.
Give your players reason to think strategy and how to avoid powerful abilities. And if they don’t move? Well, its not your fault that they get to make a death saving throw. You fully telegraphed your monster’s ability.
And this goes for any type of monster. When fighting a basilisk, talk about how its eyes gleam with menace and adventurers can feel their skin growing tough. When fighting a banshee, describe how it sounds like it is speaking through the worlds and that its very words cause their ears to bleed.
Think about how you would describe an ability, and then start describing it before the monster’s turn so that the players have time to react and do something to thwart it. And if the monster has already used its ability before, just straight up tell your players, “You hear the roar of fire within the dragon’s throat as the interior of its mouth begins to dull like burning coals. You can tell that the red dragon is about to use its breath weapon on its turn. Barbara the Barbarian, your up.”
Now, you don’t need to describe a standard attack. No sense in describing how the dragon is sharpening its claws or chomping in the air if all you’re going to do is its standard multiattack action. You want to save these descriptions for important abilities that can shake up the encounter.
Traps, Hazards, and Dangers
There is nothing more frustrating, as a player, than walking down a corridor and being told you triggered a trap. If the Game Master did nothing to describe the corridor but as a ‘stone hallway’ like all the others you have been walking down this dungeon, then it just feels bad—like the GM is just purposefully being mean.
We don’t like it when things happen that we weren’t warned about. And now, you may be saying that if you tell players about the trap, then that defeats the purpose of the trap, but I’d argue otherwise. Traps are there, not to surprise your players, but to challenge them to come up with fun and interesting solutions.
No one cares about a trap that just shoots a poisoned dart at you and there was no time for you to react, to do something, or even try to disable it. It’s just a few hit points and you move on with the game, probably forgetting about it before the night is even over with. Just an annoyance that added nothing to the game experience.
However, if you make the trap a skill challenge to overcome or give the players warning that the trap is there, now it becomes something that the players can interact with and decide how they want to handle the problem. Not only is this more interesting as a player, as it gives them agency, but it becomes memorable as a challenge because any failure is their fault (not just GM fiat) and they can laugh and joke with each other about the story that the trap created like the fighting deciding to use the gnome as a meat shield and bust down the trapped door with the gnome’s head or the barbarian deciding for themselves to simply take the damage from the trap because that is what their character would do, giving the players agency on how they take damage.
The more information you provide the players, the more they have the chance to interact with the trap, hazard, or danger. When they go down a corridor, describe the corridor as a stone hallway, but with something feels off. Or describe how several tiles in the hallway aren’t the same shade of gray. Or that the stones are unevenly placed here. Or anything that gets the players thinking.
Part of this information should be coming from whoever has the highest passive Perception or Investigation. They can be rewarded with extra information and then, in the fiction, give that information to the rest of the party. If the rogue is known for being an expert at traps, it makes sense that they can spot the tell-tale hints of traps.
It’s all about agency and giving players a chance to write their own story, not be forced to hear about how dumb they are for not asking to make a Perception check to notice a trap on the hundredth stone corridor they’ve gone on (and when they normally ask to look for traps but you punish them this one time because they didn’t bother to ask for the hundredth time).
Be an Effective Communicator
It’s all about being an effective communicator. Communicate to your players, and you create an exciting and interesting adventure. You are giving your players agency, you are giving them knowledge of what will happen next in the story, and you make sure your game is engaging and interactive.
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