I started playing BG and am enjoying it - thanks to GOG I now have a very hefty backlog of these games :)

Anyway, I recruited a couple of NPCs and thought I'd check to see what they were good at. Was slightly surprised to find them flaunting their neutral evil and chaotic evil alignments to anyone who'd bother to read. This seems a little bit spoilery - if an NPC's going to stab me in the back I want it to come as a surprise - so I was wondering if there's a setting or modtweak that conceals this information.

Hmm, not that I know of...
But know that evil and chaotic are not required for NPC's to attack you or other group members.

The best/easiest solution might be to seperate player knowledge from character knowledge. If you've ever played a pen and paper rpg you've probably been in situtations where you know something but your character does not.

Suppose, for instance, that you see a tower near the horizon. How long would it take to travel there. Of course we, the player, knows that we can calculate this by using our average travel speed, the elevation above sea level and the radius of the planet (assuming its mostly spherical) but does our character know?

The ranger could probably make the survival roll to estimate the distance from his years of experience, but does he know the radius of the planet? Or the exact trigonometric formula?

The wizard on the other hand probably knows the formula or at least the general trig relations, but does he know how to estimate elevation and has he memorized the radius of the planet?


So, in short, you'll know things your character doesn't but you shouldn't let that guide your characters actions. That's called metagaming and its exactly the same as using a game walkthrough.
Of course, if Korgan tells you he likes to drink ale from the skulls of orphan children then even your character would know he's evil.

Thanks for all the replies. The last game of this ilk I played was TOEE, so I think that was in the back of my mind when I posted; as I recall it's possible to get backstabbed by a treacherous NPC in that game.