[RPG] How much information about NPCs and enemies is appropriate to show players

gm-techniquesnpcsystem-agnostic

I am a first-time GM trying to run a short Dragon Age campaign. During our first game, I hid the character sheets of the NPCs and enemies from the players. Is this appropriate? Should I give the players information as to what the enemies' abilities are before the enemies' turns in battle, or exact amount of health left in combat?

Best Answer

Usually speaking (without going into specific systems, where it might differ) what you share with the players regarding the character sheets and information of NPCs is roughly the following:

Anything that any person would notice

These are things that anyone should understand about their current situation. Yes, the Dragon is bigger than you are. Yes, it has wings and can probably fly. It has tough looking scales. According to the stories, it will breathe fire, too.

The soldier is wearing armor and a large sword. His cohort is wearing a massive banner with a skull and crossbones in it. They look hostile.

Your players are playing real, living characters. The obvious should always be shared; after all, they have eyes, ears, noses, etc. Whatever they can pick up with their senses should be made known to them.

However, other than a picture and maybe some mechanical terms like race and class you should not show any stats about these things. After all; these things aren't clearly visible. Just because you meet someone in the street doesn't mean you suddenly know anything about their fighting style.

Anything your characters would know, even if your players don't

Is one of players a Ranger trained in the art of tracking and hunting Orcs? Then the character probably knows a lot more about Orcs than the player does. In this case, you can share information that the character would reasonably have picked up, even though there's no immediate sign of it.

"Orc shamans favor spells that summon fire and increase the size and strength of their followers", for example, can be shared with a character who is familiar with the fighting style of such creatures.

You can, or can not, depending on your personal style, either describe these abilities in mechanical terms (that is; showing part of the npc stats to the player(s) involved, or reading from them) or just describe these things in more thematic terms. It depends mostly on the kind of game you play and where your focus is.

Anything your players researched ingame

If your players take time to ask around about the Black Guild of Thieves, then they suddenly bump into members of it, you can share more details that your characters learned in their research. For example; "The guy to the left has the special kind of curved dagger use to paralyse its target."

Here, again, based on your personal style you can either describe the effects of this gruesome poison, or simply explain the mechanics. Your characters would have very indepth knowledge of this poison and these characters based on research, so they can have a lot of information.

Sharing an entire sheet

The only reason I could see you sharing an entire character sheet with the players is if the players do extensive research towards a very specific creature. Once you hit the point where the players, before meeting a person, know everything about him, sharing the sheet might be by far the easiest way to convey all the information they would learn.

But I think this would require a special kind of occassion and enemy. Normally speaking, don't share too much. It might even ruin the fun, because knowing everything that might happen can quickly become boring.

Sharing health amounts and mechanical effects

As for sharing things like health amounts and other ingame statistics; that's usually up to personal preference. Sharing it freely allows players more control over what they do, but will also turn the experience into more of a game, while keeping all the information hidden will turn the game more into a story but will also make it harder for the players to win.

That part, I think, is really up to the GM and their own group to decide. It also depends somewhat on the kind of game being played by the way; some are more focused on mechanics than others. But I cannot really help you there as I do not know anything of the Dragon Age RPG.

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