Player Notes vs. DM Notes: What to Share With Your Players (and What to Keep Behind the Screen)

You wanted to be helpful. Your players kept forgetting names, so you shared your campaign doc with the whole table. One link, everything in one place.

A week later, the rogue messages the group chat:

Three months of foreshadowing, gone in one click.

Every DM eventually runs into the same question: what should players be able to read, and what stays behind the screen? The answer isn’t “share nothing” or “share everything.” It’s keeping two kinds of notes that serve two different audiences.

Why One Notebook Isn’t Enough

Your notes have two readers, and they want opposite things.

• Players need memory. Who was that dwarf? What did we promise the captain? Where did we leave the cart? They want a short, readable record of the story so far.
• The DM needs machinery. What the villain is really planning, which NPC is lying, what’s behind the locked door, how many hit points the dragon has. Most of it should never be seen by players, at least not yet.

Put both in one document and something breaks. Either players stumble onto spoilers, or you start censoring your own prep because “someone might read it.” And players don’t want to dig through stat blocks to find the innkeeper’s name anyway.

The Table Truth Rule

Here’s the simplest way to decide where any piece of information belongs:

That gives you two layers:

• Table Truth: everything the characters saw, heard, found, or were told. This is the players’ layer. Share it freely.
• Behind the Screen: everything the characters haven’t discovered yet: true motives, future plans, hidden rooms, the real reason the bridge collapsed. This is yours.

The rule works because it’s about what happened, not about what you’d like players to know. You don’t have to decide case by case. Once a secret is revealed at the table, it simply moves from your layer to theirs.

What Goes Where: A Sorting Table

The Gray Zones

Most information sorts itself. These cases don’t:

When an NPC lies to the party

Player notes record what they were told, not what’s true. Write it as a claim: “Brother Aldric says the cult attacked the temple.” Your notes record the truth. When the lie comes out, the player notes get a satisfying “turns out…” moment.

Unidentified items

Players write down what their characters know: “a silver ring, cold to the touch.” The fact that it’s cursed lives in your notes until someone casts Identify or puts it on.

One character’s secret

Sometimes a player shares their backstory secret only with you, or their character scouts alone. That’s a third layer: between you and one player. Don’t put it in the group notes. Let the player decide when their character shares it.

Player theories

Theories are gold for a DM: they tell you what your players care about and what they expect. Read them, steal from them, but never confirm or deny them in writing. A theory that’s “officially wrong” in the notes is a theory nobody gets to enjoy being right about.

How to Write Player-Facing Notes

Good player notes read like a party journal, not a DM’s database. A few rules:

• Write from the characters’ point of view. “We,” “the party,” “we were told.” Not “the NPC is.”
• Use past tense. Player notes describe what happened, not what will happen.
• Keep it short. Players read a 200-word summary. They don’t read 2,000 words.
• Link names. If you use a wiki, link every NPC and place, so “who was that again?” is one click away.

Here’s the same NPC written for both audiences:

Same character, two jobs. The first helps players remember. The second helps you run him.

Who Writes What

The DM owns Behind the Screen. It’s your prep, your secrets, your contingency plans. Nobody else needs edit access, except a co-DM if you have one.

The players can own Table Truth. And honestly, they should. Notes the players write themselves stick better, and they show you how the table actually understood the session. A shared doc or a campaign wiki works well, especially with a rotating note-taker. More on that in how to remember what happened last session.

Your job on the player layer is light: fix factual mistakes about what happened at the table (“no, you let the gnome go”), and leave everything else alone.

Common Mistakes

• Sharing your prep doc “just for names.” One link, and the twist is gone. Make a separate player document, even if it starts as a copy with the secrets deleted.
• Spoilers in titles. A wiki page called “Aldric (traitor)” or a folder named “Act 3 Betrayal” spoils more than any paragraph. Name things the way the characters know them. More on structuring entries in how to track NPCs, locations, and lore.
• Correcting player theories. See above. Let them be wrong until the story proves them wrong.
• Player notes as your only notes. They show what the party knows, not what you planned. You still need your own layer.
• Saying secrets out loud. If you record your sessions, anything said at the table becomes part of the record. Discuss secrets with your co-DM before or after the session, not mid-game at the table.

How Kazkar Handles Player and DM Notes

The hardest part of all this is keeping the player layer up to date. Somebody has to write it after every session, and that somebody usually burns out by session six.

So the next time the rogue wants to know who’s who, they open the chronicle, not your prep doc. And the priest gets to keep his secret until the moment you’ve been waiting for.

Share the story. Keep the secrets.

Want the player layer written for you? Add Kazkar to your Discord: 10 free hours of recording, no card needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should a DM share their notes with players?

Not the full notes. Share a separate player-facing version that only contains what happened at the table: events, NPCs the party met, places they explored, promises they made. Keep secrets, plans, and stats in your own notes.

Should players take their own notes in D&D?

Yes, ideally as a shared group document or wiki with a rotating note-taker. Notes players write themselves stick better, and they show the DM how the table understood the session.

What should a player-facing session recap include?

What happened, who the party met, what they found, what they promised, and which questions are still open. Write it from the characters’ point of view and keep it under a page.

How do I share a campaign wiki without spoiling anything?

Only add information the characters have actually discovered, name pages the way the characters know them, and record NPC claims as claims (“he says…”), not facts. Keep a separate DM-only layer for secrets.

Can a co-DM see the DM’s secret notes?

Usually yes. A co-DM helps run the game, so they need the Behind the Screen layer too. Agree up front which secrets you share and which you keep for yourself.

Coming back after a long pause? Read how to restart a D&D campaign after a break.