{"id":875,"date":"2024-06-01T06:13:07","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T11:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=875"},"modified":"2025-09-11T07:09:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:09:20","slug":"stand-by-for-pc-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=875","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Stand by for PC knowledge.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As I restart <a href=\"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?page_id=199\">Kaserne on the Borderlands<\/a>, one tweak I&#8217;ve made to my GMing style is in how I provide information to my players that their characters should reasonably have.  There&#8217;s little fun for anyone to find in me saying, &#8220;your character knows __.&#8221;  It&#8217;s narration without player agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;ve begun using Discord direct messages for shorter infodumps.  This gives the player a written reference (something I&#8217;ve found is helpful when I&#8217;m imparting domain knowledge that&#8217;s more in the PC&#8217;s lane than the player&#8217;s) and lets them rephrase (or elide&#8230;) it in a manner appropriate to their character&#8217;s persona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cautionary note here is that I need to say, &#8220;stand by for PM,&#8221; before I start typing.  Otherwise, the sudden GM silence is a bit awkward and can leave people wondering if we&#8217;re having a(nother) comms failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I restart Kaserne on the Borderlands, one tweak I&#8217;ve made to my GMing style is in how I provide information to my players that their characters should reasonably have. There&#8217;s little fun for anyone to find in me saying, &#8220;your character knows __.&#8221; It&#8217;s narration without player agency. When I had in-person gaming groups, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hobby-musings","tag-the-dark-arts-of-gming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}