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<blockquote data-quote="theelkspeaks" data-source="post: 7461790" data-attributes="member: 6922784">I'm a newish DM who's run a few oneshots but recently started his first campaign, and I ended up with a couple things that came up in my first session and my planning for my second that I wasn't exactly sure what information to give my players.&nbsp; My current players are a lot more investigative than the ones I've had before, and I want to let them explore a bit without outright giving away answers but also without being misleading.1) During my first session, the players met a dwarf merchant on the road whose cart had been attacked and broken by a beast, and gave a poor description of the beast.&nbsp; My players wanted to roll a Nature check to see if they could get more information about the beast, and with a roll of 16, I gave them more information without telling them exactly what it was, in part because the dwarf describing the beast didn't have much knowledge of what it was.&nbsp; (It was an Auroch).&nbsp; How much should the quality of the NPC's description weigh into the information gained from a nature roll?2) My players stumbled across a clearing where a Green Hag and some Pixies had been the previous day, and my party's Warlock cast detect magic.&nbsp; I described the magic residue he found as being arcane magic, but I'm not entirely sure how to determine which type of magic to tell the party when they cast detect magic on an area.&nbsp; Is there a helpful summary somewhere of the different possible results of a detect magic ritual and how to easily distinguish what information I should give my players?3) With the point our first session ended, our party is about to stumble onto a battle-scene where the battle has already ended several days ago, and one side in the battle had ogre zombies and elf zombies, among other things.&nbsp; When my party inspects the battle scene, should they be able to tell that these had been zombies, or should they simply see ogre corpses and elf corpses?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="theelkspeaks, post: 7461790, member: 6922784"] I'm a newish DM who's run a few oneshots but recently started his first campaign, and I ended up with a couple things that came up in my first session and my planning for my second that I wasn't exactly sure what information to give my players. My current players are a lot more investigative than the ones I've had before, and I want to let them explore a bit without outright giving away answers but also without being misleading. 1) During my first session, the players met a dwarf merchant on the road whose cart had been attacked and broken by a beast, and gave a poor description of the beast. My players wanted to roll a Nature check to see if they could get more information about the beast, and with a roll of 16, I gave them more information without telling them exactly what it was, in part because the dwarf describing the beast didn't have much knowledge of what it was. (It was an Auroch). How much should the quality of the NPC's description weigh into the information gained from a nature roll? 2) My players stumbled across a clearing where a Green Hag and some Pixies had been the previous day, and my party's Warlock cast detect magic. I described the magic residue he found as being arcane magic, but I'm not entirely sure how to determine which type of magic to tell the party when they cast detect magic on an area. Is there a helpful summary somewhere of the different possible results of a detect magic ritual and how to easily distinguish what information I should give my players? 3) With the point our first session ended, our party is about to stumble onto a battle-scene where the battle has already ended several days ago, and one side in the battle had ogre zombies and elf zombies, among other things. When my party inspects the battle scene, should they be able to tell that these had been zombies, or should they simply see ogre corpses and elf corpses? [/QUOTE]

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