Restrictions on knowledge checks

[mehs]

My Gm is heavily restricting what I am able to make knowledge checks on and im not quite sure how to deal with it. Essentially, unless my character learned about the stuff im wanting to make a knowledge check on during the course of the campaign, then I can't make a knowledge check on it at all other than stuff like "You know it is a thing, you know pretty much nothing about it". Example, my character is from city state right between two big countries. Said city state is a major tourist destination/market hub. I am unable to make knowledge checks about the traditions/state of living/notable figures/anything more specific than the title of the ruler of the neighboring countries. It is really starting to bug me as being a wizard half my skill ranks are in knowledge skills that I apparently cant use except for the most general of information. I've tried buying books to read through to be able to make knowledge checks but I am only able to find them for the area im currently in and party is insisting on moving around a lot.



This is pathfinder

[Kayblis]

If the GM is heavily nerfing a roleplay skill, that skill is useless. You have three options:
1) Talk with your GM about how all your points are useless. Ask him to follow the books, and if he refuses, see the next ones.
2) Make the skill useful mechanically with no further GM interaction needed, in this case through the feat Knowledge Devotion to give you a bonus against creatures you have the skills for. All your knowledge is mostly useless anyways, so this will make a couple spells better(like rays).
3) Ask to reorganize your points. As a Wizard, you really only need Knowledge(Arcana). Then invest those points on partially useful stuff or cross-class skills like Tumble and Spot. You're not missing out on anything.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, I think knowledge checks are a horrible rule that ruins the game.

So, it's a good thing to not use them.

Even if you did use them...they are kind of pointless:

Your character walk into a place and makes a roll and says ''DM tell me general stuff"

So the DM tells you some general stuff. And then you keep playing the game.

Though you can just keep playing the game even without the general stuff.

[Kayblis]

The problem comes when a Wizard uses knowledge like it's supposed to be used - learning about nobles to contact, getting non-general info that's useful for the story, identifying monsters and its strenghts/weaknesses, knowing which plants are safe to eat and what can be used to make potions or different effects, and learning about deities that may or may not be related to that dark symbol you just found in the entrance of a dungeon(good luck diving head-first in a Lolth cult).

Of course, if the GM doesn't prepare anything more complex than "random monster table until the boss", they don't have much use, but not everyone plays tabletop videogames.

[weckar]

Well, I think knowledge checks are a horrible rule that ruins the game.

So, it's a good thing to not use them.

Even if you did use them...they are kind of pointless:

Your character walk into a place and makes a roll and says ''DM tell me general stuff"

So the DM tells you some general stuff. And then you keep playing the game.

Though you can just keep playing the game even without the general stuff. I guess? But that "general stuff" teaches me about the world I inhabit, which colors the story I am experiencing.

[Edenbeast]

Best knowledges to get as wizard are arcane, nature, and the planes. Maybe religion too. What you mention falls either under local, nobility or history. The first three or four mentioned are always worth investing in as they give you information about monsters and their weaknesses and such. For the other three you could always ask your DM whether they are worthwhile. To be honest, I wouldn't enjoy adventuring in a world that has the depth of a pancake.

(You do need to have ranks in a knowledge to able to recall information on that topic.)

[Mordaedil]

I guess? But that "general stuff" teaches me about the world I inhabit, which colors the story I am experiencing.
Another stellar reason to take anything Darth Ultron posts with a grain of salt.

[Mars Ultor]

Well, I think knowledge checks are a horrible rule that ruins the game.

So, it's a good thing to not use them.

Even if you did use them...they are kind of pointless:

Your character walk into a place and makes a roll and says ''DM tell me general stuff"

So the DM tells you some general stuff. And then you keep playing the game.

Though you can just keep playing the game even without the general stuff.


My character may know something about the political situation in Freedonia, or about where ogres live, or what components are necessary for a ritual, what kind of magic is being used, which armorer has the best reputation, is there likely a thieves' guild, are the politicians on the level, who's open to bribery, what's the biggest export of Otisberg, the diplomatic relationship between Freedonia and Otisberg, etc. Those are all things I don't know.

There are countless things that might be helpful knowing in situation that wouldn't come up otherwise and that I'd have no way of knowing as a player. We'd like to get the most famous knight in the kingdom on our side to help with the coup. Who is he, what do we know about him, what do people say about him privately? On a surface level we might have heard in passing that Bertold the Bold is the king's champion, but that's the extent of our in-game knowledge. A character with Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty or Gather Information becomes useful in finding out what we need to know and if it's even worthwhile finding Bertold and trying to bring him over to our side.

I can get on the internet and learn something about Iceland if I need to, my character can't do that. Knowledge is incredibly useful if the DM and the players have a campaign where the PCs exhibit a little bit of forethought and planning.

[BassoonHero]

I guess? But that "general stuff" teaches me about the world I inhabit, which colors the story I am experiencing.
There's an important distinction to be made between the idea of character knowledge and the Knowledge skill.

I happen to agree with Darth Ultron that "knowledge checks are a horrible rule" (though to say that they "ruin the game" would seem to me to be an exaggeration). And though I have written about this at some length (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569896-Knowledge-Checks-In-Game&p=23393527#post23393527), Darth Ultron's post does capture one of my primary objections: enlivening the world with flavor and detail should not require a skill check.


My character may know something about the political situation in Freedonia, or about where ogres live, or what components are necessary for a ritual, what kind of magic is being used, which armorer has the best reputation, is there likely a thieves' guild, are the politicians on the level, who's open to bribery, what's the biggest export of Otisberg, the diplomatic relationship between Freedonia and Otisberg, etc. Those are all things I don't know.

There are countless things that might be helpful knowing in situation that wouldn't come up otherwise and that I'd have no way of knowing as a player. We'd like to get the most famous knight in the kingdom on our side to help with the coup. Who is he, what do we know about him, what do people say about him privately? On a surface level we might have heard in passing that Bertold the Bold is the king's champion, but that's the extent of our in-game knowledge. A character with Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty or Gather Information becomes useful in finding out what we need to know and if it's even worthwhile finding Bertold and trying to bring him over to our side.

I can get on the internet and learn something about Iceland if I need to, my character can't do that. Knowledge is incredibly useful if the DM and the players have a campaign where the PCs exhibit a little bit of forethought and planning.
I agree completely. This kind of in-character problem solving makes for great D&D games. But in principle, none of this requires a mechanic at all, let alone the specific mechanic of the Knowledge skill. In fact, I believe that the Knowledge skill mechanic is an impediment, not an aid, to this kind of effective roleplaying. The function of the skill isn't to support roleplaying, but to restrict it.

[Darth Ultron]

I guess? But that "general stuff" teaches me about the world I inhabit, which colors the story I am experiencing.

I understand that this is the ''accepted way everyone does it", but you really should not ''just do it" as all the other ''cool kids" do it.

Like the game is going along just fine...and then you crash the game to a halt and say "Ok, DM, lets spot playing the game. I want you to sit there and just tell me stuff."


.
I can get on the internet and learn something about Iceland if I need to, my character can't do that. Knowledge is incredibly useful if the DM and the players have a campaign where the PCs exhibit a little bit of forethought and planning.

I agree completely. The thing is getting that information.

The Roll Play Way:

Player: "My character walks into town and talks to people and stuff. I rolled super high on my check, so DM just tell me stuff".
DM:Game play stops as the DM takes at least several minutes to tell the player general stuff.
Player: Nods, and then *only* does whatever ''stuff'' the DM told them about

The Role Play Way
The players each have their characters go into a city and each one of them stops and talks to an NPC FOR REAL. The PC's ask questions, and the NPC's give answers based on who they are and what they think and such. Then the PC's get together and share notes and decide on a course of action.

The worst part is Knowledge checks are Interpreted by most as 100% true hard core unchanging facts. And that idea is just stupid and boring. The idea that a character ''rolls to know" perfect unchanging facts is bad.

I encourage real role playing. So, for example, each character would ask NPCs about things all the time, whenever they get the chance. And the player would keep notes. So each player would have a nice selection of notes about things after every game.

Then when ''suddenly'' the characters need to know ''who is the greatest armor smith in the land" they can check their notes..and maybe find something.

[Deophaun]

Another stellar reason to take anything Darth Ultron posts with a grain of salt.
It's a myth that salt counteracts cyanide.

[BassoonHero]

Game play stops as the DM takes at least several minutes to tell the player general stuff.


I encourage real role playing. So, for example, each character would ask NPCs about things all the time, whenever they get the chance. And the player would keep notes. So each player would have a nice selection of notes about things after every game.

Then when ''suddenly'' the characters need to know ''who is the greatest armor smith in the land" they can check their notes..and maybe find something.

To clarify, you expect that if the players 'need to know ''who is the greatest armor smith in the land"', then they would have already asked an NPC about that at some point before they knew they needed to know it?

I don't think that characters should be blank slates or that they should be limited to what the players know. Characters should have common knowledge of the world they live in and players should be able to use this knowledge. Unless the DM is prepared to write a complete setting bible, the players will have to ask the DM for information that their characters ought to already know.

It's no different from describing a scene. The player can't see what their character sees, hear what their character hears, or remember what their character remembers. One of the chief roles of the DM is to bridge this gap by communicating proactively. If the DM thinks that a character would know something and the player would care, the DM should tell the player rather than waiting for them to ask. No one likes asking the DM twenty questions to find out what a room looks like. A DM who withholds such information until their players ask for it will be deluged by boring, repetitive questions. On the other hand, if players trust the DM to tell them what they need to know if their characters would know it, then they will only ask further questions when they want more detail or when they're considering something novel. Information should flow smoothly and pervasively and not, as a rule, in question-and-answer infodumps.

Then comes the essential question: what should a character know? Common knowledge, certainly, but players often want or need information that is uncommon or specialized. The Knowledge skill tries to represent specialized knowledge, but it falls short in several ways (detailed in the essay I linked before). Without the specific implementation of the Knowledge skill, how should a DM determine whether to provide specialized information? The simplest, most lightweight answer is to handwave it based on the character and their background. Is it subjectively likely that Bob the Fighter would know this information? Then tell the player. (The Knowledge skill is equally subjective because the DC is made up on the spot. Adding a d20 roll does not make the skill less subjective.) If you prefer a more formal system -- and myself, I do like systems -- then you can go as simple or as elaborate as you like. For example, let each player write down two "backgrounds" for their character representing specialized knowledge or expertise. Each old Knowledge skill could be replaced with a background. You could use the same system to replace the Profession skill, and perhaps some other skills as well.

[Darth Ultron]

To clarify, you expect that if the players 'need to know ''who is the greatest armor smith in the land"', then they would have already asked an NPC about that at some point before they knew they needed to know it?

Yes. After say two game sessions in any geographical area, the players should know the 'general' lore about the area all through role playing game play.



I don't think that characters should be blank slates or that they should be limited to what the players know. Characters should have common knowledge of the world they live in and players should be able to use this knowledge. Unless the DM is prepared to write a complete setting bible, the players will have to ask the DM for information that their characters ought to already know.

I have characters start as 'blank slates', and assuming they pay attention and role play, they learn about the world they are in.



It's no different from describing a scene. The player can't see what their character sees, hear what their character hears, or remember what their character remembers. One of the chief roles of the DM is to bridge this gap by communicating proactively.

Agreed. I just don't think that communication should be roll playing a knowledge check.



If the DM thinks that a character would know something and the player would care, the DM should tell the player rather than waiting for them to ask. No one likes asking the DM twenty questions to find out what a room looks like. A DM who withholds such information until their players ask for it will be deluged by boring, repetitive questions. On the other hand, if players trust the DM to tell them what they need to know if their characters would know it, then they will only ask further questions when they want more detail or when they're considering something novel. Information should flow smoothly and pervasively and not, as a rule, in question-and-answer infodumps.

The big flaw with this method though is the DM Railroading. If the DM is just going to say "Oh, your character knows person Y is at location X, so your character goes to location X" then what exactly is the player doing? Just sitting back as the DM railroads their character along the DMs tracks?

Worse once the player characters ''know everything", the only thing left to do is combat. So then you just have a pure combat game.



Then comes the essential question: what should a character know? Common knowledge, certainly, but players often want or need information that is uncommon or specialized.

This would be my big point. The players ask and find out what they want to know in my way. As opposed to the DM just giving the players the next stop on the railroad.


The reason knowledge skills exist is they are made to be a ''quick and dirty" fix for unattentive, casual, roll players to use so they can ''rush through the fluff" of a game and get to the pure roll playing combat.

Like:

DM: The goblins of Gol have kidnapped princess Buttercup!

DM: Ok, Bill, your character Rikki the Ranger knows all about the goblins of Gol and that they live in the Caves of Chaos exactly seven miles to the north. So...you guys want to go there?

Group: Yup, we go there.

DM: Ok, roll initiative to fight the goblins!

[ExLibrisMortis]

Knowledge skill DCs are poorly laid out. The skills function fine in premade adventures and default monster stat blocks (though the DCs based off of HD are stupid), but approximately nobody writes up a table of facts and assigns DCs ahead of time. There are some ways to play Knowledge mostly as-is without nerfing it into the ground, though, and it is part of good GMing to play it that way. For example, setting a minimum DC for "knowing more than the average", and then letting the player pick one true answer to a question for every X points by which they exceed the DC.

[tyckspoon]

Like:

DM: The goblins of Gol have kidnapped princess Buttercup!

DM: Ok, Bill, your character Rikki the Ranger knows all about the goblins of Gol and that they live in the Caves of Chaos exactly seven miles to the north. So...you guys want to go there?

Group: Yup, we go there.

DM: Ok, roll initiative to fight the goblins!

..completely ignoring all the other decisions the players might make as they approach the caves, including scouting the area and preparing for how they are going to assault a goblin warren, plus possible encounters or changes in plans due to things that happen along the way. But sure, just because the players don't want to spend an hour each game session accosting random NPCs and asking questions on the off chance something they ask about will later turn out to be relevant, that means everybody else is going to jump straight from 'ok, roll a Gather Information or Know: Geography to find out if you know where that is' to 'And now you're in a fight.'

[BassoonHero]

I have characters start as 'blank slates', and assuming they pay attention and role play, they learn about the world they are in.
I once played in a campaign where the PCs were infiltrators from a foreign land. What little information we had about the nations and cultures was badly out of date. We had to try to blend in while learning everything from scratch. Mundane interactions with the authorities and with ordinary citizens were challenges unto themselves. This was an excellent campaign and lots of fun.

Most campaigns are not like that. Most characters are not blank slates; they have histories, experiences, and ties to the setting. Any citizen of the imperial capital knows the name of the emperor, and his sigil, and the common laws of the empire. They know about the war with the neighboring kingdom a generation ago. They know what the predominant religion is, and where to find a church, and what gesture the priests and devotees make to ward off evil if someone mentions the Ancient Enemy. They know what coins are circulated and what each is worth. They know the tune to that annoying-but-catchy drinking song that some bard inflicted upon the city last winter. (They probably know the words too, though they might not admit it in front of their priest.) They know that wine is brought in from the east and cider from the west, but that the best ale is brewed in the city.

There's nothing wrong with doing the tabula rasa thing every once in a while. There's nothing wrong with doing it all the time, if that's what you and your group enjoy. But it's not what most players want to do most of the time.


Agreed. I just don't think that communication should be roll playing a knowledge check.
You may recall that I disapprove of the Knowledge skill and of Knowledge checks. I'm not sure what you're arguing against here.


The big flaw with this method though is the DM Railroading. If the DM is just going to say "Oh, your character knows person Y is at location X, so your character goes to location X" then what exactly is the player doing? Just sitting back as the DM railroads their character along the DMs tracks?
The lack of specifics in your hypothetical make it hard to evaluate. You say that the DM has judged that a PC would know that Person Y is at Location X. Why is this? Is Person Y the queen, and Location X her castle? That sounds like common knowledge to me. Is Person Y a wizard of repute, and Location X the city they live in? That sounds like something that a character with a relevant background would likely know. Is Person Y the kingdom's lost prince, and Location X the dark temple where he is imprisoned? That doesn't sound like something that anyone would know (except for a few villains who would keep it to themselves).

Suppose we're talking about the queen in her castle. The characters, longtime residents of the capital, know where the castle is. It's not secret, and it's not subtle. Even if they've never been there before, never imagined going there, they've probably seen it a hundred times at a distance. Unless the characters are amnesiacs or distant travelers, if the DM tells the players that they'll have to ask around to find out where the queen probably is, then they're liable to get pissy. If the DM tells them at the critical moment that they should have asked someone the previous session where the castle was, then I wouldn't be surprised if they quit on the spot.

If a player asks where the queen is, and the DM tells them that she is probably in the castle (which the characters could find easily), then would you call this railroading? Is the DM depriving the players of agency by not requiring them to embark upon a side quest to figure out that the queen is probably in the castle? If so, then why is this railroading if the information comes from their own characters via the DM, but not if it comes from a random person on the street via the DM?

I hope you haven't interpreted this as saying that the DM should always give out whatever information the players want regardless of whether their characters would know it. I thought I was clear on that point. To assume that the characters know everything would be as foolish as assuming that they know nothing.


The reason knowledge skills exist is they are made to be a ''quick and dirty" fix for unattentive, casual, roll players to use so they can ''rush through the fluff" of a game and get to the pure roll playing combat.
This is a pretty remarkable claim. Why do you say that? Did the designers say at some point that this was their intent? Or are you generalizing your own opinions of the mechanic to a moral judgement?


DM: The goblins of Gol have kidnapped princess Buttercup!

DM: Ok, Bill, your character Rikki the Ranger knows all about the goblins of Gol and that they live in the Caves of Chaos exactly seven miles to the north.
In light of the vague scenario above, I'm glad to see something concrete. You say that "Rikki the Ranger knows all about the goblins of Gol". Why is this? Is this common knowledge? For instance, have these goblins been raiding the town for years? If they have, then sure, probably everyone knows about the goblins of Gol. Or is there some other reason that Rikki would know this? Does he have personal history with the goblins of Gol? Does he know where all of the goblin tribes are? Is he himself a goblin of Gol?

I have to emphasize that your hypothetical DM has come to a judgement that Rikki would possess this knowledge. If you, Darth Ultron, intend that to be a reasonable judgement under the circumstances that you imagine, then what's the problem?


So...you guys want to go there?

Group: Yup, we go there.

DM: Ok, roll initiative to fight the goblins!
Here you have wandered far afield of the knowledge question. I think that tyckspoon's reply is appropriate.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Darth Ultron's post does capture one of my primary objections: enlivening the world with flavor and detail should not require a skill check.
It doesn’t. Flavor and detail should be exactly what the DM hands out freely, and general knowledge should be assumed if a character is local or easily obtained otherwise. Skill checks are for when there’s a chance of failure/not knowing.


I agree completely. This kind of in-character problem solving makes for great D&D games. But in principle, none of this requires a mechanic at all, let alone the specific mechanic of the Knowledge skill. In fact, I believe that the Knowledge skill mechanic is an impediment, not an aid, to this kind of effective roleplaying. The function of the skill isn't to support roleplaying, but to restrict it.
Sure, asking someone after the fact shouldn’t require a check (except maybe Diplomacy), but why doesn’t my hypothetical character, the headstrong sorceress daughter of a local petty noble, know anything about magic or the nobility without acting out asking someone during the session? Knowledge checks determine past learning and things you already know.

[Darth Ultron]

..completely ignoring all the other decisions the players might make as they approach the caves, including scouting the area and preparing for how they are going to assault a goblin warren, plus possible encounters or changes in plans due to things that happen along the way.

Right? But why?

The players Demand to know the exact location of the goblins and refuse to take even a moment to do anything else. Oh But as soon as the players Know where the goblins are they will ''suddenly" want to stop and play the game?

So why is that? If your willing to skip all the non combat information gathering role playing with one roll, why not skip everything else except the ''cool combat"?




The lack of specifics in your hypothetical make it hard to evaluate.

Right, it is always a problem with ''just saying" what a character ''knows". A player (or player DM) will say a character should know (almost) ''everything" . A good DM will have some type of limit to what a character knows. But you will never get a good middle when one side is crazy ''character must know everything".

The even ''basic" of 'knowing about an area", would (or should) include all the common things, plus all the ''open" secrets. In other words, roughly a novel of information. It is simply impossible to fake, so I say just don't do it.

Of course, also knowledge checks also have the silly "I rolled a 100 so I know The Tell Tavern is at 1 main road.....but, um, rolled a 2, so my character does not know what is at 2 main road"

[tyckspoon]

The even ''basic" of 'knowing about an area", would (or should) include all the common things, plus all the ''open" secrets. In other words, roughly a novel of information. It is simply impossible to fake, so I say just don't do it.


Yes. After say two game sessions in any geographical area, the players should know the 'general' lore about the area all through role playing game play.

Either these are contradictory, or you and your players have the greatest tolerance for random NPC discussion time I have ever heard of. Do you actually consider it reasonable for your players to play out interacting with NPCs, asking assorted general-knowledge questions, to the point of asking about and writing down a novel's worth of miscellaneous information? Keeping in mind that you profess that they must actually in-character, 'on camera' ask about something in order to know about it - no shortcuts, no montages of "you make the rounds of the local taverns catching up on the gossip, here's what you heard about", no condensing anything into an anathemic RollPlaying skill check.

[BassoonHero]

It doesn’t. Flavor and detail should be exactly what the DM hands out freely, and general knowledge should be assumed if a character is local or easily obtained otherwise.
I agree that this is how it should work, and I have little doubt that this is how most people actually play. I doubt that there's a DM out there who would actually use the Knowledge skill as written in the majority of cases that it purports to cover. I once read a comedic story where a character drove an NPC mad by pointing out that without a single rank in Knowledge (Local), that NPC could not possibly know what race they were (human). The Knowledge skill, like the U.S. interstate speed limit, is tolerated because practically everyone ignores it most of the time.


Skill checks are for when there’s a chance of failure/not knowing.
This is something I talk about at great length in the essay I linked earlier. When a character jumps over a pit, there is a chance that the character could fail and fall short. A Knowledge check does not represent any action that can succeed or fail. When the player rolls the check, the result does not determine something that happens in the game. Rather, it retroactively determines something that is presumed to have happened at some distant point in the past. Either the character knew the thing all along, or they never knew it. In the fiction, there is no chance at all. That dice are rolled anyway is purely an artifact of the system.


Sure, asking someone after the fact shouldn’t require a check (except maybe Diplomacy), but why doesn’t my hypothetical character, the headstrong sorceress daughter of a local petty noble, know anything about magic or the nobility without acting out asking someone during the session? Knowledge checks determine past learning and things you already know.
To reiterate, I strongly disagree with Darth Ultron's position that characters shouldn't know anything that the players don't. Under the minimal background system I suggested, the character you describe might possess the backgrounds “Noble” and “Arcane Scholar”. (I'm working on a more formal system with a proper list, but honestly just making up backgrounds is probably fine in most cases.)


The players Demand to know the exact location of the goblins and refuse to take even a moment to do anything else.
In your effort to construct a suitably ridiculous caricature of the opposing position, I think you've lost sight of what we were talking about in the first place. It's clear that you're not engaging in good faith with this part of the discussion.


Right, it is always a problem with ''just saying" what a character ''knows".
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply via the scare quotes. Yes, it is a “problem” in the sense of a question that calls for an answer. How should the DM determine what a character knows? You suggest one answer: characters know nothing unless they have learned it “on-page” with their player present. You then present a silly position that no one is taking:


A player (or player DM) will say a character should know (almost) ''everything" . … But you will never get a good middle when one side is crazy ''character must know everything".
Again, this is a position that you have invented out of whole cloth. No one holds this position. No one in this thread has suggested anything that remotely resembles this position. It is a strawman entirely of your own creation.

So you've put forward two ideas: that the characters know nothing and that the characters know everything. Is there a middle ground? Yes. Perhaps characters know some things and not other things. This approach has the benefit of being realistic, because in reality most people don't know everything but nevertheless do know some things, even in some cases many things.

But then if the answer is not always the same, then how does the DM adjudicate it? As with anything else, based on the in-game circumstances. The DM must weigh the nature of the information, its obscurity, and the character's general knowledge of information of that sort. If you want to establish guidelines to make outcomes more consistent and predictable, then you can use a simple mechanic like the one I've suggested.

[death390]

so one way to get around this, is for during downtime in a location with a library. go to said library tell the DM i am researching things in the library (specify what kind of things: creatures, dieties, local politics, ect) and make a note of it on your character sheet with the out of game date that way you can actually say that you spent time looking up this information. generally Knowledge checks are a character remembering something they either experienced or researched in the first place anyway so he shouldn't have that issue if you actually take in game time to do so?

[Darth Ultron]

Either these are contradictory, or you and your players have the greatest tolerance for random NPC discussion time I have ever heard of. Do you actually consider it reasonable for your players to play out interacting with NPCs, asking assorted general-knowledge questions, to the point of asking about and writing down a novel's worth of miscellaneous information?

Yes.




Keeping in mind that you profess that they must actually in-character, 'on camera' ask about something in order to know about it - no shortcuts, no montages of "you make the rounds of the local taverns catching up on the gossip, here's what you heard about", no condensing anything into an anathemic RollPlaying skill check.

Yes.


So you've put forward two ideas: that the characters know nothing and that the characters know everything. Is there a middle ground? Yes. Perhaps characters know some things and not other things. This approach has the benefit of being realistic, because in reality most people don't know everything but nevertheless do know some things, even in some cases many things.

Right, so how do you do ''the middle'?

The DM can sit back and decide what a character knows...and yes, this includes the DM deciding what the character should know bases on what they think the character would know.

But at some point, the DM will have to get to some point and say a character would not know something. So where is that point? The DM just makes it up on a whim right? The character knows ''fact a", but not ''fact b".

And this puts the DM in the bad spot of spoon feeding the player the perfect dish of railroad. And it's just amazing what a character knows....and it's exactly what the DM wants the character to know.

But then you get the player side. And even IF you get a reasonable player...they will still draw the line at a different place then the DM does. The player would say their character would know ''fact b", but the DM says "Nope your character does not know". And the DM is just always right and what they say is rule and law, then?

So see, it quickly falls apart unless the character does know everything.



But then if the answer is not always the same, then how does the DM adjudicate it? As with anything else, based on the in-game circumstances. The DM must weigh the nature of the information, its obscurity, and the character's general knowledge of information of that sort. If you want to establish guidelines to make outcomes more consistent and predictable, then you can use a simple mechanic like the one I've suggested.

Though then you get into the adversarial mini game of DM vs player.

My way, has the DM to never make a ''high horse decisions" of what a character knows. All characters know nothing...until they role play in the game and find out something(and hopefuly write it down).

Yes, for the first game or two the characters are ''so dumb they don't know the sky is blue", you know until their character *looks up* and they discover ''oh, the sky is blue".

[Erloas]

So the town is in the plains and the goblin camp is in the forest, so we're going to ask every NPC in the town about every single potential creature we might run into in plains or forests so that we might know if the random encounter we run into might be more than we can handle or if there is some known ability or weakness of said potential creatures? Either that or we just metagame it and assuming the players know the bestiary well enough they can just go with that for anything they might run into.


That sounds like a boring use of limited game time. Especially if you happen to have a ranger that grew up in the area and probably saw and or heard about many of the creatures in the area in the 20 years of growing up there before he started adventuring.

Like all other stats, skills, and abilities, what a character knows and can do is not the same as what the player(s) know and can do. It isn't perfect, but it has it's uses. Not being able to use Knowledge (local) when you're in an area you've never been to before makes sense. But especially in a homebrew or more obscure setting the characters should know a lot more about the world they grew up in than the players do. It just seems like a waste of time to have the DM just spend hours and hours giving world background before anything happens or for the players to just come up with random questions to ask NPCs in the off chance that they might need said random piece of information at some indeterminate time in the future.


What you actually get out of a knowledge check can vary greatly too, it doesn't have to the date of birth, name, and exact stats of each gnoll in front of them, but it could be nothing more than what the characters can physically see to more detailed information like: the likelihood of more being close by, or how likely they are to signal for help, or if they're likely to have magical powers. How much is up to the DM's discretion, but at least the knowledge skill/roll gives the DM an idea of how much they might or might not know, seeing as how the characters are not the players and they shouldn't know the same things.

[Remuko]

I agree that this is how it should work, and I have little doubt that this is how most people actually play. I doubt that there's a DM out there who would actually use the Knowledge skill as written in the majority of cases that it purports to cover. I once read a comedic story where a character drove an NPC mad by pointing out that without a single rank in Knowledge (Local), that NPC could not possibly know what race they were (human). The Knowledge skill, like the U.S. interstate speed limit, is tolerated because practically everyone ignores it most of the time.


This is something I talk about at great length in the essay I linked earlier. When a character jumps over a pit, there is a chance that the character could fail and fall short. A Knowledge check does not represent any action that can succeed or fail. When the player rolls the check, the result does not determine something that happens in the game. Rather, it retroactively determines something that is presumed to have happened at some distant point in the past. Either the character knew the thing all along, or they never knew it. In the fiction, there is no chance at all. That dice are rolled anyway is purely an artifact of the system.


To reiterate, I strongly disagree with Darth Ultron's position that characters shouldn't know anything that the players don't. Under the minimal background system I suggested, the character you describe might possess the backgrounds “Noble” and “Arcane Scholar”. (I'm working on a more formal system with a proper list, but honestly just making up backgrounds is probably fine in most cases.)


In your effort to construct a suitably ridiculous caricature of the opposing position, I think you've lost sight of what we were talking about in the first place. It's clear that you're not engaging in good faith with this part of the discussion.


I'm not sure what you're trying to imply via the scare quotes. Yes, it is a “problem” in the sense of a question that calls for an answer. How should the DM determine what a character knows? You suggest one answer: characters know nothing unless they have learned it “on-page” with their player present. You then present a silly position that no one is taking:


Again, this is a position that you have invented out of whole cloth. No one holds this position. No one in this thread has suggested anything that remotely resembles this position. It is a strawman entirely of your own creation.

So you've put forward two ideas: that the characters know nothing and that the characters know everything. Is there a middle ground? Yes. Perhaps characters know some things and not other things. This approach has the benefit of being realistic, because in reality most people don't know everything but nevertheless do know some things, even in some cases many things.

But then if the answer is not always the same, then how does the DM adjudicate it? As with anything else, based on the in-game circumstances. The DM must weigh the nature of the information, its obscurity, and the character's general knowledge of information of that sort. If you want to establish guidelines to make outcomes more consistent and predictable, then you can use a simple mechanic like the one I've suggested.

DU tends to speak in hyperbole and tends to debate with strawmen and bad faith arguments. its generally better to just never engage with him and just pretend he doesnt exist most of the time.

[BassoonHero]

Right, so how do you do ''the middle'?
I don't know why you spent all of these words bemoaning the impossibility of such a task when the next paragraph you quoted is the answer to the question.


Though then you get into the adversarial mini game of DM vs player.

My way, has the DM to never make a ''high horse decisions" of what a character knows.
I don't know what to tell you. DMing is hard. DMs make subjective decisions that affect the game. This is an unavoidable part of the job. In the case of character knowledge, you choose abdicate this responsibility in favor of a solution that everyone else on this thread seems to think is unfun and immersion-breaking. That's your decision as long as you can find players who will put up with it. And if your players do enjoy that style of play, then why should I object?

It should be clear at this point that you're not going to convince anyone else to start doing that. Nor have your idiosyncratic notions of roleplaying found any support. This will be my last reply on the subject. If you want to continue to advocate for your unique philosophy, then I would suggest that you get your thoughts in order and start another thread.

[Darth Ultron]

It should be clear at this point that you're not going to convince anyone else to start doing that.

Well....maybe, but maybe not.

If I opened even just one person eyes even for a moment....that is something.

[Mars Ultor]

I agree completely. The thing is getting that information.

The Roll Play Way:

Player: "My character walks into town and talks to people and stuff. I rolled super high on my check, so DM just tell me stuff".
DM:Game play stops as the DM takes at least several minutes to tell the player general stuff.
Player: Nods, and then *only* does whatever ''stuff'' the DM told them about

The Role Play Way
The players each have their characters go into a city and each one of them stops and talks to an NPC FOR REAL. The PC's ask questions, and the NPC's give answers based on who they are and what they think and such. Then the PC's get together and share notes and decide on a course of action.

The worst part is Knowledge checks are Interpreted by most as 100% true hard core unchanging facts. And that idea is just stupid and boring. The idea that a character ''rolls to know" perfect unchanging facts is bad.

I encourage real role playing. So, for example, each character would ask NPCs about things all the time, whenever they get the chance. And the player would keep notes. So each player would have a nice selection of notes about things after every game.

Then when ''suddenly'' the characters need to know ''who is the greatest armor smith in the land" they can check their notes..and maybe find something.


The issue with that is the same as with the other mental skills. If I give an fantastic speech in character and roll a two, which do you count? What's the benefit of roleplaying if a bad roll can negate everything? If the rogue is going to role-play Gather Information and asks stupid and repetitive questions, but rolls well, is the DM required to give him the information?

When I play I keep a notebook full of stuff, contacts, relationships, events, places. There's another player who does the same thing and also chronicles every adventuring day and what happened. But if we never encountered something what do we know about it?

Maybe we've never had cause to find the greatest armorer in the land. Maybe I have a list of the best horse breeders, the guy who repaired the paladin's sword, and the five top archers in all of Freedonia, but we never needed that armorer. I'd say it was probably common knowledge, the fighter or the cleric wear armor, they've probably heard a few names, but that's it. Knowing the name Arnolf the Armorer is one thing, knowing something about Arnolf is something else.

There's also history, nobility, religion. The Knights of Nee have a shrubbery on their shields, and those other guys have a grail, but does anyone remember anything about the Ancient Order of Cervidae and what's on their coat of arms? If it's never been mentioned there aren't any notes to review. You can't ask around at the tavern or washerwomen, the PC with a decent knowledge check might remember having heard something, he recalls a few things and he knows they were associated with a particular god, we need to find a temple to Silvanus.

[Pleh]

For me, knowledge checks are meant to represent that my character is a part of the world past their sheer mechanical skill. They know things because people who live in places know things about their corner of the world.

Now, some people are saying, "that shouldn't be mechanical," but I'd argue that a TON of skill checks can be totally unnecessary, but that doesn't make all checks worthless. A good DM will have an idea for what counts as Universal Knowledge (don't need a check), Common Knowledge (don't even really need special training), and Special Knowledge (requires training and a tougher check roll).

If you're not going to bother having Special Knowledge in your game, you should tell players not to bother putting points into it. Remove the skill by houserule at session 0 and be done with it.

[Darth Ultron]

The issue with that is the same as with the other mental skills.

I disagree.




If I give an fantastic speech in character and roll a two, which do you count? What's the benefit of roleplaying if a bad roll can negate everything? If the rogue is going to role-play Gather Information and asks stupid and repetitive questions, but rolls well, is the DM required to give him the information?

The thing here is that ''role playing" is too vague to be useful. You need to break it down into:

1.Character Role Playing- This is the one your talking about: a player role plays a character for real to do something for real in the game. This is very similar to acting. If the player can give a real fantastic speech, the DM will count that as happening in the game world.

2.Descriptive Role Playing -This is the other way. This is where the player can descriptively describe what and how their character does something....but they do not act it out in any way shape or form.


And see, that is why knowledge checks are not like the other social type checks. A player can't use Descriptive Role Playing for a knowledge check.