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I've been doing this for years already, I usually have something prepared prior to the gaming night for two or three player characters some bit of information for their ears only. I would record it on cassette tapes and at the appropriate time put in the cassette tape relevant to that player and that player would hear with headsets .
But like the above mentioned issues of keeping track I then would have to document what they knew . if there was a searchable memory file of what information I have given to each player, and that each player had a memory file that they could search, and the DM could send that information to their memory file.
For some examples:
1. I would provide each player with a map of their hometown and a list of notable NPC's, as they grew up in that area and were familiar with that town, with all sorts of little extras, like a childhood hideout place little local secrets that become helpful to the party. Then I would always make sure that town would be visited by the party somewhere in the campaign, so that player becomes the guide in that area.
2. I would make notes on what a significant successful perception roll would reveal and hand the player with the successful role the information. again I would have this prepared prior to the gaming session but to have it available in a file that I could just hit send to this player would make life so much easier.
3. players would often be unconscious and near death in my campaigns, so I always had a inner planes narrative with Erie Otherworld sound effects for each player, sometimes it was their life flashing before them adding new information that will be useful in some future encounter or event in the story plot. Sometimes more whimsical and bizarre, sometimes a continued conversation with a NPC from the other side. there was this one campaign where there was almost a separate inner planes campaign going on and one player had gotten so excited about what he was learning that he would get happy when he rolled poorly.
most likely I will still, use this process regardless of what realm works does or does not come up with but if I could send an audio file to that player instead of handing him a tape recorder and headsets that would be more efficient.
But the bottom line is the more information you can share individually to player characters the more those player will be motivated to role-play with the other players characters instead of meta-gaming.
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