Lessons from the Table - Info Hoarding Players

So I've been around for awhile and have encountered many things in my time as both a player and a DM, and I continue to run into things that often trip up newer DMs. I thought I'd take the opportunity presented to me in a recent session of one my groups so that I can show ways to handle it. One of the things I want to do with this blog is provide the resources for DMs to grow and learn so if you have any situations at your table as a player or a DM please feel free to pop over to my Contact page and ask!

You're party has split up, okay not the best or smartest move but it turns out pretty well for them. The teams have each found information that is needed to solve the mystery that is afoot. Except one of those teams never shares the information. The players on the team know the information and how it all fits together but the characters know nothing. This is a tough one to handle on the best of sessions but can absolutely kill any mystery story arcs or investigations your players currently have going on. So how do you handle information hording?

Its not too off from 'Missing Out on Plot' which I've talked about before. However there are some big differences that handle the way you need to navigate the situation at the table. First navigating the problem of players not sharing important information with each other. That's a potentially big problem not just for the current session but for future story arcs you may want to put your players through. But labeling it as a problem also comes with figuring out the why behind it. If it really just was that the character couldn't figure out a way to share it or maybe they thought it was about their backstory and wasn't ready to share that yet. Those are two situations that you'd handle in a very different way from the assumed - "I just didn't." or "No one asked or engaged politely with my character."

Not knowing how to share something in character or assuming it is about your character are easy things to spot and correct course on with some practice. In general when the cause is the connection, wither true or not, to the character's backstory you can tell because of two main things - the player is suddenly alot more engaged in whatever you are saying or describing AND there is that attempt to have a poker face while conveying the covert confirmation to you the DM. Its kind of hard to explain but after running games for awhile there is this look that players will give you when they are picking up the hint and things you are laying down. When I'm on the other side of the screen and I'm in that situation I tend to nod while furiously scribbingly notes and muttering 'coolcoolcoolcoolcool'. Of course my characters also tend to have sus backstories so I just assume everything from them is trying to kill me. This is really easy to course correct through a few methods - the skill check and confirmation, the bait and switch description, and the narrator voice are my personal favs.

For the skill check and confirmation its just as it sounds. Call for an appropriate skill check - History, Insight, Perception, etc and feed them answers to redirect them back onto the right path. Now if they fail terribly at a roll you may have to lean into their misunderstanding of things and roll with it. I've done that a few times to great affect where what I had planned was completely different but between wild player leaps, pour rolls and letting the players conspiracy talk amongst themselves it turned it a way better storyline. This is of course easier for those DMs that prefer to lean towards the improv styles of running a game. Generally that gets easier to do the more comfortable you are with the system you are playing around in and the world that you are running things in.

If you go with the bait and switch description method you need to keep in mind a few things. But first lets back track a second to what I mean by bait and switch description. Let's say your players are investigating a wizard's tower that is now abandoned, you have a wizard in your party. You start describing things they find in the tower not thinking about it and noticed the signs we talked about earlier - the player is suddenly alot more engaged in whatever you are saying or describing AND there is that attempt to have a poker face while conveying the covert confirmation to you the DM. That flag goes up in your head and you've decided you want to lean into this being the teacher from the character's backstory. Where you had been a little vague on some of the details in rooms you can now fill it in - a picture of a young wizard and teacher together, a toy from the tower's familiar, a room decorated as if by a teen, etc. Where the character wasn't tied into the investigation suddenly they are. That is Door A, but we can hard left turn as well. Instead you could go with Door B which would mean keeping the same descriptions and let the player/character freak out more and more about it AND~ then make it about an NPC so there is an emotional tie in to either find out what happened or to resolve the situation. You are baiting the character's backstory, using it as an emotional hook to the current storyline and NPCs and switching the focus back to them.

Now as the DM you are obviously already narrating all of the things as both god and the living embodiment of box text. But what I mean is more those scenes from shows and movies where the character is like "its all going to be okay!" and then a voice cuts into the audio and corrects them with a "it was not all okay". As the acting world for your players it is okay to cut in with the narrator voice to help them. I am in no way saying railroad (though there is a time and place for railroading) your players into everything all the time with an ever present narrator voice. Instead what I am saying is to recognize that sometimes players miss what characters wouldn't, or misunderstand what the characters might understand. I don't know about you but I am not a wizard studying enchantment magic or a cleric with proficiency in medicine. Both those characters would know and could do things I as an unfortunately mundane completely normal human person who is not the main character of my own fictional plot can not. So if the group came across a murder options would be available to their characters they may not think of. Its our jobs as DMs to poke and prod in those case to give them every chance to know and learn what their characters could. At the very least provide them with the opportunity or the chance to even if they don't know to ask for it. I find even just asking the simple base questions in a situation gets the players thinking enough that from that jumping off point I can help them navigate to how they could get the right info. Things like - "you are all now in the room, is there anything you'd like to do?" "the blood still drips slowly to the ground, would anyone like to examine the body?" "papers and books cover everything in this room with drawings and quickly scrawled notes, what would you like to do?". These are very leading but most of the time that is all people need, a little jumping off point to get going. Decision paralysis is a big thing in and out of game and with a TTRPG with a seemingly infinite number of options a helpful hand from the DM to give some focus can help players new and old.

If the player just is at a lose for how to share that information in game with the rest of the group that's pretty easy. I try and provide opportunities for RPing as a group when they come back together after splitting up. Sometimes you still need some of those leading questions we just talked about above. But I've found when you get the group in the habit of taking drinks together and talking things over, or having campfire talks to figure out next moves those potential pitfalls of not knowing how to convey it go away. Though I will say I also don't force my players to RP how they share that information if they aren't sure how to, I just let them describe what info they give out of character. I do encourage them to RP it out since it leads to situations where they play a game of telephone or leave things out I can take advantage of later. If they are doing a heist and the rogue clocked the manor's security and gets back to RP out what they saw and forgot that the grounds had patrolling guards AND dogs well then surprise attack pup when they hop that manor wall. After awhile you'll also get a handle on what information sticks out to your players which will help you better craft information that is important to the story arc. But again that's a larger discussion for later.

We've covered the best case scenarios in the info hoarding situation and some ways you can handle it if that is the case. Its now time for that unpleasant sentiment of "I just didn't." or "No one asked or engaged politely with my character." This is generally coming from someone playing a character either at odds with the group, who is paranoid (character not player), or is a spot light hog. By that last one what I mean is someone who always needs the scene to be about them RP or otherwise. So since no one engaged them, and why would they if they didn't know the character had important information, they won't engage with anyone. Frustration nation for sure with that one. This can be one of the harder things to deal with in game. Most of the time this instead needs to be a conversation with the player outside of game about the difference between being true to what their character would do and remembering they are playing a game with a group of people to all have fun together. TTRPGs aren't a solo embarking effort (unless its that specific subgenre but still) and we need to remember to balance that with the characters that exist in that space. I've played dhamper bard's from the college of eloquence who are part of spy organizations so super secret collector, but still managed to leverage that to help not only my fellow players but the DM. (great source for a DM to get info to the players by the way if you have a player who wants to do that) I've also played clerics with crazy high passive insights who just read NPCs like a book from the corner who is brand new to the group and doesn't have the relationship built with any of them to openly share things yet. What I'm saying is that its the job of both DM and players to work together to figure out the balance between RPing characters and playing the game. Cause that what we are all doing at tables with dice, playing a game together. Its always going to be a see-saw game between the two that is only navigable through communication in and out of game. Talk it out between sessions to help fix the upset to that balance when they pop up.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.