As I restart Kaserne on the Borderlands, one tweak I’ve made to my GMing style is in how I provide information to my players that their characters should reasonably have. There’s little fun for anyone to find in me saying, “your character knows __.” It’s narration without player agency.

When I had in-person gaming groups, my usual solution (when I remembered to do it) was passing a note or pulling the player out of the room for a moment. Discord enables me to do the latter with multiple channels, without anyone having to leave their chair, and I do still use it for things that require a conversation. In the last couple of sessions, though, I’ve begun using Discord direct messages for shorter infodumps. This gives the player a written reference (something I’ve found is helpful when I’m imparting domain knowledge that’s more in the PC’s lane than the player’s) and lets them rephrase (or elide…) it in a manner appropriate to their character’s persona.

The cautionary note here is that I need to say, “stand by for PM,” before I start typing. Otherwise, the sudden GM silence is a bit awkward and can leave people wondering if we’re having a(nother) comms failure.