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scsimodem
2013-07-31, 09:30 PM
While I can see the GM aspect of this, I'm mostly thinking about this from a player perspective, and that is: How do I avoid bringing in OOG knowledge that my character wouldn't have? While there's always the problem of experienced munchkins who have the monster manual memorized who carry multiple weapons/damage types and know the exact weaknesses of monsters their characters would never have heard of, but that's not the real problem I'm trying to address (you can usually get away with beating those guys about the head with a source book or having their character beaten up by a deus ex machina...or just changing the monster stats before combat starts).

I'm talking things more closely related to real world knowledge. I'm always tempted to use my knowledge of chemistry, physics, advanced mathematics, etc. to help work complicated and creative solutions to problems, but where it really comes into play is when I'm playing a game set in the modern world or the future, and I can actually justify my character having *some* of that knowledge. How many dots of science gives my character the same level of knowledge I have of ballistics, electromagnetics, acidity, or biochemistry? How many dots of computers gives me the knowledge to make SQL injection attacks or to protect against such attacks? How many ranks of knowledge (local) would it take for my character to know the ins and outs of the drug dealers and gangs I know from neighborhoods I've actually lived in? I've also played with veterans who have extensive knowledge of real world military hardware and tactics.

This hasn't really been a huge problem in any games I've played in or run, but it has come up, especially given the level of education my typical circle of friends has (nearly all of them have finished college, mostly with hard science or technical degrees, and about half of them have graduate degrees). Usually, we brainstorm ideas as a group and ascribe the idea to the person most likely to have come up with the idea (e.g. if the chemist (player) of the group comes up with a series of common household chemicals that can be used to disarm a trap, it's ascribed to the character with points in chemistry), but where do you draw the line?

elliott20
2013-07-31, 10:34 PM
if you're able to use your RL knowledge in a game that is fundamentally using abstraction, you're already using the system wrong.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-07-31, 10:56 PM
Most of these things are functions of skills-- Knowledge, Craft, Computers and the like. The game should have rules for that sort of thing. "So you can make thermite by WORDSWORDSWORDS? Cool, good to know. Book says it's a DC 30 Craft (Chemistry) check, roll it."

faircoin
2013-07-31, 11:04 PM
I can think of very few applications of real world academics to D&D that would work by RAW without it being abstracted to a dice roll.

Maybe one of the few is noting the average mineral composition of the ground, and then figuring out what you can make using fabricate.

Using physics or chemistry to work things out? Eh. Physics and chemistry model real world phenomena, not D&D world phenomena. What about math? Math could work, but all the math in D&D is relatively simple, so unless you were doing a large agent-based computation, like running some extended form Markov decision process, I don't see what kind of advanced math you could possibly bring into this game.

MukkTB
2013-07-31, 11:23 PM
I just don't see the problem as all that serious. Your character doesn't know modern chemistry, physics or mathematics if its not setting and character appropriate. If you want to try anyway you'll need to roll a skill check. If you can succeed at the skill check, your character is that good and he knows. Its not very complicated. I've never run into this problem in actual play.

erikun
2013-07-31, 11:35 PM
I'm generally fine to allow this to happen.

The first thing to consider is that I'm not going to go through and calculate how much hydrochloric acid it takes to dissolve the magical crystal, or what the structural stability of a fifty-foot mithral-reinforced tower is. If the players want to go through the effort to determine that a particular course of action will work, then I'm not inclined to stop them if it makes sense. It's just another form of player problem solving.

And second, the goal of the game is to have fun. If players and enjoying putting together the physics of the thing? Then yeah, I'll allow them to do it. That doesn't mean they get free jugs of acid to pull off their plans, of course, but I'd allow the characters to come up with a plan that would work if they can piece it together properly.

Mastikator
2013-08-01, 02:52 AM
I've never had this problem myself, I always question where my character got his information and if I can't come up with an answer then I decide he doesn't have the information. If I'm DM then I do that to all the players, or rather I ask to look at their character sheet, then I ask if I'm not satisfied.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-01, 07:28 AM
In dnd, when you think of something that's unlikely for a person in the setting to know, come up with a DC to have him know it, taking into account whether or not the requisite science exists. Like 30 for making something like thermite, or 80 for creating a black hole with water-powers.

There's also the matter of figuring out whether what you're trying can theoretically work, given different physical laws in the setting. Here's a method I've heard of in a previous thread: if you aren't certain whether something will work, you could just boil it down to a yes-or-no question, roll a d6, and if it comes up 4 or higher, then the answer is "yes" (although you can fail in the implementation). It gives a fast, easy, impartial method that keeps the game flowing.

valadil
2013-08-01, 08:42 AM
I'm talking things more closely related to real world knowledge. I'm always tempted to use my knowledge of chemistry, physics, advanced mathematics, etc. to help work complicated and creative solutions to problems

How I handle this depends on the setting. In a D&D sort of game, if a player decided to scrounge for charcoal, sulphur, and saltpeter I'd ask him why he's doing that. I'm okay with a PC who is into alchemy, but not one who immediately gravitates towards the right components.

If the player got that and was willing to stick it out, combining two elements at a time till he'd gone through all of them and noting the results, I might actually give him gunpowder eventually. It's never happened, so I'm not sure if that's actually what I'd do.

But if they don't get it, I'd probably fiat that science and magic don't mix and that a world with magic is unlike our own world.

In a more modern game I think I'd compare the player and the character. If a player is suggesting SQL injection, I'd want to know what the player's score in computers was. Then I'd want to know the character's score. I'd probably tell the player that knowledge about an SQL injection attack comes from that 4th dot he has in computers and that his character only has 2 dots. Obviously player scores in are subjective so there might be some arguing here.

I'd also try to point out to the player that hacking is easier said than done. They may know the name of the technique and they may know the theory (and if they don't, 5 minutes on wikipedia will fix that), but actually making it happen is the hard part. I've been programming professionally for 7 years. Do you know how many SQL injection attacks I've been part of? 0. Even though I should have enough dots to attempt this attack, doing so is non trivial for me.

Finally, just because you know an attack does mean it's something your target is vulnerable. If you have just one attack you're going to throw it at as many servers as you can and see if it works on any of them. But if you're trying to take down one server (which is more likely in an RPG IMO) you have to poke it from all angles to find a weakness. Unless you're extremely lucky, that weakness isn't going to be the one attack you have real world knowledge about.

Kalmageddon
2013-08-01, 09:54 AM
Most of these things are functions of skills-- Knowledge, Craft, Computers and the like. The game should have rules for that sort of thing. "So you can make thermite by WORDSWORDSWORDS? Cool, good to know. Book says it's a DC 30 Craft (Chemistry) check, roll it."

Agreed.
Otherwise it would have to be also acceptable to use one's knowledge of martial arts or fencing to have an advantage in combat, and so on.

The Fury
2013-08-01, 10:58 AM
Agreed.
Otherwise it would have to be also acceptable to use one's knowledge of martial arts or fencing to have an advantage in combat, and so on.

Not that I've never seen a player try this, silly though it is.

I can definitely see how this would be a much bigger concern in a modern or futuristic setting. In the case of a player trying to render some kind of explosive in a D&D setting the DM can say: "Hey, player! Nobody in this setting has ever made that! How would your character know which ingredients to use?"
In a modern or futuristic setting it's a fairly simple handwave: "My character has a copy of the Anarachist's Cookbook."
I guess if your characters knowledge in science is decent, then coming up with solutions like that is at least believable. Though if these kinds of solutions start making the game less fun for the DM or the other players it's probably time to tone it down.

ClockShock
2013-08-01, 11:55 AM
It probably depends on the setting, because if someone with martial arts experience could describe a hold or throw that would be much more effective at what they were trying to achieve, then heck, I'll give them a circumstance bonus or something to the roll.

Life's more interesting when players are thinking about how they'll attack instead of just 'Roll to hit, roll for damage'.

The games I play tend to be quite light on combat rules, however.

TheStranger
2013-08-01, 11:56 AM
Not that I've never seen a player try this, silly though it is.

I can definitely see how this would be a much bigger concern in a modern or futuristic setting. In the case of a player trying to render some kind of explosive in a D&D setting the DM can say: "Hey, player! Nobody in this setting has ever made that! How would your character know which ingredients to use?"
In a modern or futuristic setting it's a fairly simple handwave: "My character has a copy of the Anarachist's Cookbook."
I guess if your characters knowledge in science is decent, then coming up with solutions like that is at least believable. Though if these kinds of solutions start making the game less fun for the DM or the other players it's probably time to tone it down.

Sure, but what's wrong with a modern character knowing how to make explosives? Explosives are a legitimate part of the modern game setting; that's like a D&D character knowing how to make a sword. As long as the character has the relevant skills, what's the harm? Other characters, with the right resources, could presumably buy explosives anyway.

As for how to enforce some mechanical basis for using OOC knowledge, that's what skills are for. The rulebook should have some guidelines for the DC of various things. If not, assign a DC that sounds reasonable based on the relative difficulty as appropriate to the setting (and obscenely high DCs are appropriate for low-tech settings). There's a world of difference between knowing the theory behind how to do something and actually doing it. If the player describes exactly how they're going to make thermite (or whatever), have them roll the appropriate check. If they fail, they got the proportions wrong, or added ingredients in the wrong order, or their hand slipped and knocked over a beaker, or whatever.

If the player insists that it has to work because they described it perfectly, they're missing the point of the game. If a player says, "I stab the orc in the eye," then they roll a 2, they don't get to complain that they should have hit because they described a successful attack. You say what you're trying to do, then you roll to see if you succeed.

That said, if it's reasonable in the setting and the player makes the check, they succeed. If that results in the players solving a problem in an unexpected way, that's part of being a GM.

Raimun
2013-08-01, 04:24 PM
Yeah.

Only if the setting is appropriate. Modern is fine. D&D is not.
Also, the character has to actually have the required skills.

Either way, it has to be rolled. I wouldn't take someone's word for it that it should be an automatic success. It would be too cheap.

scsimodem
2013-08-02, 07:08 PM
Even with 'roll to make explosives,' even if you can describe the process perfectly, some situations still come up, such as knowing the result of what would normally be considered a diceless action or an action not necessarily related to the knowledge. Here's a good example, though the knowledge isn't exactly obscure:

In my first NWoD game (Werewolf game, but I was playing a mage, as the GM knew that was the best way to convince me to play at all), I was playing an Acanthus mage, but due to plot reasons, he was switched to Moros, and I took primarily matter. The party was in the spirit world and stuck in a fight with a lake monster that sat at the bottom of the lake, lashing out with tentacles. Murdering tentacles wasn't doing much and with the main body at the bottom of the lake, getting at it with bullets, claws, or blades. As a player, I knew that metallic magnesium could be ignited fairly easily, burned rather hot, wouldn't react violently with water (unlike, for example, sodium, which would last all of 5 seconds in a lake), and would sink. I had a rote which I could use to transmute the lake water to a chunk of magnesium. Another party member readied an incendiary weapon, I used the rote, and the white-hot metal sank on top of the thing, murderizing it.

Now, as I said at the top, this wasn't exactly obscure knowledge, but what if it was? If you were the GM, how would you adjudicate that?

Grod_The_Giant
2013-08-02, 07:29 PM
Now, as I said at the top, this wasn't exactly obscure knowledge, but what if it was? If you were the GM, how would you adjudicate that?
I don't know oWoD rules, but... are there rules for inflicting damage with magic? If 4 dots of fire magic lets you do, oh, 10 lethal damage with a spell, and you had 4 dots of transmutation...there you go.


Putting it in another system, if this was M&M, and you'd used a Transform power to do the same thing, I'd have modeled it as a power stunt, creating a Damage alternate effect. (I wouldn't have made you use extra effort to do so, though)