DM Secrecy
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asheraryamDM Secrecy
Uploaded by
asheraryamDM Secrecy
The DM Lair: 5 Dungeon Master
Secrets to Keep Behind the Screen in
D&D
The Post-Session Temptation
It's so tempting to reveal to your D&D players metagame information after
the game session is over. What would have happened if? The secret loot
they missed. And so on. But the counterintuitive truth is that revealing
certain out-of-character information to your players will worsen their game
experience and make it far less satisfying. Today's deep dive on this topic
will include a rule of thumb for what you should reveal to your players, five
things you should never reveal to them, and a note on exceptions to these
rules.
The Golden Rule of Player Knowledge
If the character doesn't know it, the player doesn't know it. This is the rule
to rule all rules. Most of the other specific things we're gonna go over
follow this single guideline. It's a simple rule, too. If the player's character
in the game doesn't know something, then the dungeon master should not
tell the player that something.
Five Things You Should Never Reveal
Okay, I know that was a mind-bending deep truth right there, so let's look
at five specific things that I think game masters are prone to tell players
that they probably shouldn't. These are the things to always keep behind
the screen and not tell your players.
Number 1: Things they Missed in an Adventure.
Loot and secret doors and secret areas are the most common things
characters will miss in an adventure. The rationale around sharing this
information with players goes something like this: "If they already played
through that adventure, there's no harm in telling them what they missed,
right?" And you'd be wrong. Let's ignore the fact that players could just
then decide to go back later and take another look just in case. Filthy
metagamers might attempt that, but not your players. Who knows? It'd be
a whole new level of sleaze, but I wouldn't rule it out. Sounds like
something I might do in a game if I'm a player. I'd be like, "Yeah, you just
told me about the magic item back there. I'm gonna go back and look for
it."
But there are two other reasons to avoid this. First of all, you might reuse
some of that content in a future game. Yes, that's right, fellow dungeon
masters: welcome to the world of recycling your unused content for future
adventures. The second reason I'll get to in my next point.
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Number 2: What Would Have Happened If...
Players love doing this. After the game session, they come up to you and
are like, "Say, Luke, what would have happened if we had let that goblin
go free and try to make a deal with his tribe on our behalf? I mean, I know
we murderized him, but would it have worked if we had tried?" My advice
to you is to keep your lips sealed when your players approach you with
these hypothetical "what if" questions after a game session. I usually just
respond with something like, "I guess you'll never know," while smiling,
and my player is like, "Oh crap, come on!" (laughs)
Even though your players want to know, it's way more fun for everyone if
they don't. And why, might you ask? Luke, Luke, why? I'm melodramatic
and over the top at times. I do apologize. You're just gonna have to live
with it. You're gonna have to live with the crazy man on the YouTube.
Anyway, to this I say, don't underestimate the power of mystery and the
unknown. Not knowing drives our curiosity and stokes our imaginations.
Some things are better left unknown, and indeed more fun if unknown.
Furthermore, not knowing the "what ifs" for past decisions makes their
future decisions that much more interesting and important for players. I
don't know how to explain this, really—it's just something I know
intuitively.
Number 3: If you fudged anything.
Never, ever, ever reveal fudging of any type to your players. Let's say you
were fudging your dice rolls behind the screen to avoid a TPK. Nobody's
ever done that before, have they? Or you allowed their solution to the
riddle to work even though it wasn't the correct answer. Here's the
problem with your players knowing that you're doing this: it demeans
player agency and tells them that their choices and actions don't matter in
the game. It doesn't matter that you all picked a fight with an ancient black
dragon; your dungeon master made sure you won regardless. It doesn't
matter that you gave the wrong answer; your DM's got your back.
When your players know that you are fudging things to affect outcomes,
and especially if it's to tell the story you wanna tell, it can straight-up ruin
the game experience for them. They'll know that your world is not a living,
breathing world where their choices matter; instead, it's a highly curated
world where you simply decide what will happen when, and your players
are powerless to affect it. I've discussed in prior videos the importance of
player agency and making their choices meaningful, so I won't belabor the
point. But what I will do is give you a better solution than not telling them
that you're fudging things: stop fudging things, mostly.
He's yelling at me. Don't fudge things mostly. Luke, I don't know.
(splutters) All right, calm down. Let's just calm down. (laughs)
In my games, my dice rolls are public except for specific ones, such as
death saving throws, that I intentionally hide for very specific reasons. I
want my players to see the dice. I want them to know that I'm not
changing things behind the screen. For the record, I never fudge death
saving throws, but I sometimes do fudge other dice rolls that don't have a
discernible impact on outcomes and don't affect player agency, such as
rolling for random encounters, let's say. Sometimes you need a random
encounter, or another random encounter is the last thing you need.
Believe me, I have been in game sessions where, by the luck of the dice,
we've rolled up random encounter after random encounter after random
encounter, and it's not that fun.
Number 4: Monster Stats.
Yeah, don't share these with your players. I go so far as to not even share
the real name of the monster with my players, unless it was obvious. All it
does is ruin the mystery of things. There is zero benefit in telling your
players after the game session the stats of the monsters they fought.
Okay, I get that it's satisfying in the moment and during your post-game
debrief where everyone is standing around talking about the game
session. I get that; I do. But you'd be trading a brief momentary gain for a
long-term loss, in my opinion. Instead, allow your players to experience
the mystery and suspense of not knowing what the crap that crazy thing
they fought was or everything that it was capable of.
Number 5: What You Planned vs. What You
Improvised.
Dear fellow game masters, guard this information closely. Never reveal it
to your players. Don't let them see what the wizard does behind the
curtain. It's far better for your players to believe that everything was
prepared in advance and that the world is what the world is before they
come into contact with it. That cave full of gremlins existed before they
decided to walk into the cave. Those gremlins have been there for years,
working their nasty alchemy business. It was fortuitous that the characters
found and stopped them when they did. Let your players believe that. Let
them feel proud that they decided to wander into that random cave just in
time.
If you tell them after the game session that you made it all up on the spot,
you are cheapening the game experience for them. Everything they did to
stop those gremlins now loses its flavor and excitement because they
know that if they hadn't walked into that cave, nothing would have
happened, 'cause those gremlins didn't really exist. They didn't really
exist. Again, this has to do in part with player agency and their choices
mattering. But it also has to do with suspension of disbelief. You want your
players to believe that the world is what the world is, and that there isn't a
wizard behind the curtain creating everything. When you tell them that you
improvised anything on the spot, you shatter that suspension of disbelief.
Exceptions: Maintaining Peace at the Table
I rarely break these 'do not share' rules, but when I do, it's almost always
for the sake of maintaining the peace, so to speak. And what I mean by
this is that if a disagreement arises at the game table and revealing
something behind the screen is the best way to resolve it, I will do so. For
instance, if my players are upset that a flying monster is coming close,
attacking, and flying away, but they don't get an opportunity attack, I might
say something like this: "Some monsters have abilities that get around
opportunity attacks." Or I might just straight-up say that it has the Flyby
Attack feature. And honestly, this is probably the only exception I make to
rolling back the dungeon master screen. If it's not to maintain the peace, I
simply avoid sharing out-of-character information with my players.