Do you know how to kill a vampire, a zombie , a werewolf and that's in a world where they don't exist. If they really existed folks would be scared of such and talk would go about how to kill said creatures now you know what they talk about in taverns and inns
And there would undoubtedly be a bunch of conflicting information.
We have no model for what life was like before instantaneous global communication. It's making fantasy gaming difficult. I'm sure there are useful resources out there, but no one has compiled one specifically for gamers, and we all know that gamers respond best to targeted gamer paraphernalia. I hereby request Bleepblorp's Guide to Pre-Global Societies from Wizards of the Coast.
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that the default D&D setting -- by which I mean any setting in which the DM doesn't remove content -- essentially has phones and/or proto-internet. Check out this hilariously self-contradictory text from the Equipment chapter in the PHB:
It might be possible to find someone willing to cast a spell in exchange for coin or favors, but it is rarely easy and no established pay rates exist. As a rule, the higher the level of the desired spell, the harder it is to find someone who can cast it and the more it costs.
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components).
Sending is 3rd level, which is outside the scope of that rule (though Sending Stones are only Uncommon, and I'm seeing them in Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Spelljammer Academy, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps they're not that uncommon, hm?). But Animal Messenger, Magic Mouth, and Skywrite are all 2nd level. If people exist who can be hired to cast these spells, then there's an information network. It's not as robust as being able to hop on Google and search for an answer in 5 seconds, but it's certainly sufficient to allow expert knowledge to be spread far and wide with relatively little degradation. (Also: Royal decrees, manhunts, apocalypse countdowns, and plenty of other things that would otherwise be complicated are now simple. Though, one does wonder about the role of Bards.)
It's as if the Fifth Edition writers looked at the "how do we imagine a world without phones" problem and said, why would we want to do that?
But sure. In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound. Experts are few and far between, and reside on mountaintops guarded by strange monsters of an appropriate challenge rating. Lost tomes of important knowledge lie unclaimed in dangerous ruins. Classic adventure stuff. But you don't want to go through all that just for a question like, "since wolves have Pack Tactics, do dire wolves also have Pack Tactics?" So you need a hand on the wheel, you need judgement I guess. Or you could simply use a rigid rules system for it, but we don't have one for this game, at least not officially. So judgement it is, then. And what do you get when you rely on judgement? Mistakes, sometimes. Thus, the complaints: My DM made me roll to know whether fire elementals are immune to fire! My DM said every character in the world knows that elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, and if the players didn't know, then it was just that their characters were stupid! And so on. These complaints are inextricable from a system that relies on judgement for these situations. (Also, if the rigid rules system you choose is an optional or third-party system, which it'd have to be if you're playing 5e, then guess what? You're still using judgement: You're choosing to include the system. You can't escape!)
We have no model for what life was like before instantaneous global communication.
Surely this is a joke? The internet is not that old.
No, but radio, the telephone, and telegraph are. Obviously they aren't perfectly analogous to instant global communication, but the fact is that information has been able to be swiftly communicated across vast distances and then widely disseminated for over a century. I suspect very few people who play D&D or write for it have any first or second hand knowledge of what it was like when information traveled at the speed of a fast horse at best.
We have no model for what life was like before instantaneous global communication.
Surely this is a joke? The internet is not that old.
The internet also isn't the original form of (near) instantaneous global communication. Telegraph machines enabled messages to be sent between continents by the 1850s.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Do you know how to kill a vampire, a zombie , a werewolf and that's in a world where they don't exist. If they really existed folks would be scared of such and talk would go about how to kill said creatures now you know what they talk about in taverns and inns
And there would undoubtedly be a bunch of conflicting information.
We have no model for what life was like before instantaneous global communication. It's making fantasy gaming difficult. I'm sure there are useful resources out there, but no one has compiled one specifically for gamers, and we all know that gamers respond best to targeted gamer paraphernalia. I hereby request Bleepblorp's Guide to Pre-Global Societies from Wizards of the Coast.
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that the default D&D setting -- by which I mean any setting in which the DM doesn't remove content -- essentially has phones and/or proto-internet. Check out this hilariously self-contradictory text from the Equipment chapter in the PHB:
It might be possible to find someone willing to cast a spell in exchange for coin or favors, but it is rarely easy and no established pay rates exist. As a rule, the higher the level of the desired spell, the harder it is to find someone who can cast it and the more it costs.
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components).
Sending is 3rd level, which is outside the scope of that rule (though Sending Stones are only Uncommon, and I'm seeing them in Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Spelljammer Academy, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps they're not that uncommon, hm?). But Animal Messenger, Magic Mouth, and Skywrite are all 2nd level. If people exist who can be hired to cast these spells, then there's an information network. It's not as robust as being able to hop on Google and search for an answer in 5 seconds, but it's certainly sufficient to allow expert knowledge to be spread far and wide with relatively little degradation. (Also: Royal decrees, manhunts, apocalypse countdowns, and plenty of other things that would otherwise be complicated are now simple. Though, one does wonder about the role of Bards.)
It's as if the Fifth Edition writers looked at the "how do we imagine a world without phones" problem and said, why would we want to do that?
But sure. In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound. Experts are few and far between, and reside on mountaintops guarded by strange monsters of an appropriate challenge rating. Lost tomes of important knowledge lie unclaimed in dangerous ruins. Classic adventure stuff. But you don't want to go through all that just for a question like, "since wolves have Pack Tactics, do dire wolves also have Pack Tactics?" So you need a hand on the wheel, you need judgement I guess. Or you could simply use a rigid rules system for it, but we don't have one for this game, at least not officially. So judgement it is, then. And what do you get when you rely on judgement? Mistakes, sometimes. Thus, the complaints: My DM made me roll to know whether fire elementals are immune to fire! My DM said every character in the world knows that elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, and if the players didn't know, then it was just that their characters were stupid! And so on. These complaints are inextricable from a system that relies on judgement for these situations. (Also, if the rigid rules system you choose is an optional or third-party system, which it'd have to be if you're playing 5e, then guess what? You're still using judgement: You're choosing to include the system. You can't escape!)
I don't think the leading expert on vampires and vampire-like creatures is going to pay a Druid 250 gold and the breath of a fish per squirrel to get the fact that vampires only mind running water and that they're actually a-ok with garlic out to every tavern in the nation. Anyways, even with an effective long-range network, there'd be a ton of misinformation. See: the Internet.
I also think the problem you have with judgement is more a problem with systems. If a system says "you gotta roll a 15 or higher to know resistances or immunities," then suddenly nobody's got a clue whether or not fire elementals are actually immune to fire or if they've just got chronic pain. If a system says "ask your DM," your DM says "it's a goddamn fire elemental, it's made out of fire, why don't you yourself guess what it's immune to and I'll tell you if you're warm or cold."
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
We have no model for what life was like before instantaneous global communication.
Surely this is a joke? The internet is not that old.
No, but radio, the telephone, and telegraph are. Obviously they aren't perfectly analogous to instant global communication, but the fact is that information has been able to be swiftly communicated across vast distances and then widely disseminated for over a century. I suspect very few people who play D&D or write for it have any first or second hand knowledge of what it was like when information traveled at the speed of a fast horse at best.
We have good records of of what life was like when information traveled at the speed of horse.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
Wait - you sent the player information that their character specifically should know, but then when it came time for that information to be useful, you forced the party to roll for it anyway?
Yep. I'm a horrible person, and a bastard of a DM, who learned this game a long time ago, under different social rules than what is apparently the norm now. I provided the information that the player needed, in advance, and have a strong aversion to what I have learned is known these days as "spoon feeding" the players information, on demand. This particular player spends most of the time at this live table playing on their mobile, and regularly asks to be filled in on what's been happening, since their last turn. Give respect, gain respect. Be considerate of others, gain consideration from others. I'm not a computer game, here for others' pleasure at the expense of my own.
Play your own way, DM/GM your own way. I'll do the same.
Err, what? I'm still genuinely confused by that sequence of events at your table
If you were going to ask for a roll, there was no reason to provide the information in advance -- the character knowing it would have been conditional on the roll
But if you thought the information was important/fundamental enough to send it to the player in advance, I'm not sure why you didn't also provide it in the moment at the table when the player admitted they hadn't looked at what you sent them. I mean, you had already "spoon fed" it, to use your term. Why waste that effort? I don't get it
Unless the whole point was just to create a test for what you perceive to have been a problem player that you figured they would fail... in which case, congratulations on proving your point, I guess? That doesn't seem to me like a route that's actually going to solve the problem or make the game more enjoyable for anybody, yourself included, but what do I know, I'm only a n00b who's been playing since Red Box
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Sending is 3rd level, which is outside the scope of that rule (though Sending Stones are only Uncommon, and I'm seeing them in Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Spelljammer Academy, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps they're not that uncommon, hm?). But Animal Messenger, Magic Mouth, and Skywrite are all 2nd level. If people exist who can be hired to cast these spells, then there's an information network. It's not as robust as being able to hop on Google and search for an answer in 5 seconds, but it's certainly sufficient to allow expert knowledge to be spread far and wide with relatively little degradation. (Also: Royal decrees, manhunts, apocalypse countdowns, and plenty of other things that would otherwise be complicated are now simple. Though, one does wonder about the role of Bards.)
My homebrew world has a relatively expensive network linking the major cities and towns that's somewhere between the Pony Express and UPS in terms of efficiency, which utilizes galder's speedy courier
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Sending is 3rd level, which is outside the scope of that rule (though Sending Stones are only Uncommon, and I'm seeing them in Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Spelljammer Academy, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps they're not that uncommon, hm?). But Animal Messenger, Magic Mouth, and Skywrite are all 2nd level. If people exist who can be hired to cast these spells, then there's an information network. It's not as robust as being able to hop on Google and search for an answer in 5 seconds, but it's certainly sufficient to allow expert knowledge to be spread far and wide with relatively little degradation. (Also: Royal decrees, manhunts, apocalypse countdowns, and plenty of other things that would otherwise be complicated are now simple. Though, one does wonder about the role of Bards.)
My homebrew world has a relatively expensive network linking the major cities and towns that's somewhere between the Pony Express and UPS in terms of efficiency, which utilizes galder's speedy courier
Eberron has a similar system, but with gnomes using sending stones.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Sending is 3rd level, which is outside the scope of that rule (though Sending Stones are only Uncommon, and I'm seeing them in Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Spelljammer Academy, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps they're not that uncommon, hm?). But Animal Messenger, Magic Mouth, and Skywrite are all 2nd level. If people exist who can be hired to cast these spells, then there's an information network. It's not as robust as being able to hop on Google and search for an answer in 5 seconds, but it's certainly sufficient to allow expert knowledge to be spread far and wide with relatively little degradation. (Also: Royal decrees, manhunts, apocalypse countdowns, and plenty of other things that would otherwise be complicated are now simple. Though, one does wonder about the role of Bards.)
My homebrew world has a relatively expensive network linking the major cities and towns that's somewhere between the Pony Express and UPS in terms of efficiency, which utilizes galder's speedy courier
Eberron has a similar system, but with gnomes using sending stones.
Mine has similar too, but through a portal system that is actually a major plot thread (both problems within it and use/misuse of it).
I should do more with mine, really. I only whipped it up originally because one of the party wanted to send a drunken love letter back to the naiad she had a bit of a fling with
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Err, what? I'm still genuinely confused by that sequence of events at your table
If you were going to ask for a roll, there was no reason to provide the information in advance -- the character knowing it would have been conditional on the roll
But if you thought the information was important/fundamental enough to send it to the player in advance, I'm not sure why you didn't also provide it in the moment at the table when the player admitted they hadn't looked at what you sent them. I mean, you had already "spoon fed" it, to use your term. Why waste that effort? I don't get it
Unless the whole point was just to create a test for what you perceive to have been a problem player that you figured they would fail... in which case, congratulations on proving your point, I guess? That doesn't seem to me like a route that's actually going to solve the problem or make the game more enjoyable for anybody, yourself included, but what do I know, I'm only a n00b who's been playing since Red Box
You're right, I shouldn't have done it that way.
In fact, I never did. I created a hypothetical situation, to gauge the responses of the people within this forum. You see, I do love the lore, the puzzles, the intrigue that can build behind the scenes. I enjoy the tidbits of information and, since the mid-70s, I have always taken any information offered to me by the DM as useful; quite possibly needed in order to succeed in the adventure. These responses from folks here, including you, have made it clear to me that I am an outlier; not among the typical players of RP games these days, if ever.
As a player and DM who enjoys building a story above all the mechanics play of the game, I learned long ago that players who pay attention, take notes, and read the information provided, tend to keep the flow going better than those who would rather be told what they need to know, as they and their character needs to know it, do their thing, then occupy themselves with outside distractions until their next turn. One at a table I sit at truly does that, and the magic of the moment gets broken almost each turn, while the DM (sometimes me as DM) gives them a short rundown on what everyone else has done, since that player last paid attention. This does bother me greatly. With you folks' help, I have now come to the conclusion that many at current tables believe this acceptable, or at least tolerable behavior in today's gaming sessions. This player is a friend of two others at the table, so for me it is a take it or leave it situation.
I must decide whether to continue gaming like this, continue with my search for a more compatible group, always a challenge, especially for a 60-year-old autistic person like me, or abandon the game again, like I did 20-odd years ago. My gaming friends all had young children to raise, and other obligations, and we all drifted apart.
I think that's all the explanation that I'm willing to give on this subject. Please forgive my deception, but for my part I learned a great deal of valuable information from y'all. For that, I thank you. I will make no further replies on this thread.
If this line explanation still makes no sense to some of you, please keep things easy on yourself, and simply fall back on what I said earlier: I'm a bastard of a DM.
Does anyone know how much a character knows about certain monsters? If you say it's a common monster. Does he know the chalance rating or resistances or does my char always have to attack / spallatack and see if it does dmg?
Or say an army/monster could easily kill you. Does my character then get a hint about it?
Are there any rules or is it up to the DM to decide how much my character knows about it?
Thx :)
For my table we basically have three levels of knowledge based around general world knowledge, a characters backstory and experience, and how good a case for their characters knowing something they can make.
Basically when the question comes up I decide what would be a reasonable level of knowledge for the characters to have about something just by existing in the world and interacting with society. That level of information I would share freely with the party, or the specific character as stuff they just know about the world. For example, my players characters all originate, roughly, in the Northern Sword Coast, but at the start of the campaign, none had been to Neverwinter. Even though none had been to neverwinter, given the immensity of the event, I decided that they would all would know about, in general details anyway, about the Mt Hotenow eruption and destruction and rebuilding of of Neverwinter, and about Neverwinters general position/standing in the world, but they wouldn't know anything about the details of the city itself like its wards and layouts and culture, etc.
After that, for more specific information about something we take in to consideration backstory and experience and then start rolling dice for what they can "remember". As DM I set a CR for how much they remember based on that experience and backstory. For example, a little while back the party came across this cavern full of mushrooms and fungus and spores. The druid is a circle of spores druid and she developed the character as obsessed with mushrooms and has spent her entire life studying and growing mushrooms. So I set the CR pretty low for what she could remember about the fungus she could see. Conversely, if someones backstory and experience doesn't provide that much of a realistic reason to know more the CR is higher, or I may even decide it is just something they would not know at all.
The last aspect of our approach is where it can get really fun and creative. If a player really wants more information or thinks their backstory should grant them more information, I give them a chance to make the case and convince me why, and depending on how well they make their case, staying true and realistic to their character and backstory, things that have been established in the campaign, and how creative and clever they can get about it, I will adjust the CR or how much information they "remember", if they sell me on it. It is a lot of fun and we have a great time debating finer points of their arguments for and against and they can get really creative and clever with their ideas. I try to be as fair and realistic with deciding if its a good enough argument or not so that they aren't just getting their way all the time, I'd say they manage to convince me only about 40% of the time.
It is definitely not an approach that would work for a lot of tables, certainly not ones where the players are trying to use their metagaming knowledge in bad faith, but for our table where everyone is on the same page about only using knowledge their characters would have and trying hard to avoid malicious metagaming it works really well and is a lot of fun.
In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound.
Rumors and unproven theories abound on the Internet. Having global information networks make it worse. People can instantly spread their nonsense across the globe.
In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound.
Rumors and unproven theories abound on the Internet. Having global information networks make it worse. People can instantly spread their nonsense across the globe.
It was that way before too, just not as much bad info had to be sifted out. Most if not all civilizations have/had folk tales, "ghost" stories, mythology, fables... While those things are not how to guides or bestiaries they do provide a way to convey information over regions, and time. Then there are other tidbits like this rhyme I have heard everywhere there are coral snakes “Red on yella, kill a fella. Red on black, a friend of Jack.” While not completely correct it does give some good advice to lay people and children when it comes to potential danger and is pretty effective, as it turns out modern day bites from coral snakes are very limited compared to other venomous snakes and most of those are received by adults that have been drinking and pick the snake up.
No degree in herpetology or hours spent studying. Most people just see a snake with black, yellow and red bands and give it a wide berth or kill it by cutting off its head. I wonder why they cut the head off?
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound.
Rumors and unproven theories abound on the Internet. Having global information networks make it worse. People can instantly spread their nonsense across the globe.
Lying on the Internet is free and anyone can do it at any time. Lying via Animal Messenger requires you to go bother the local Druid.
In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound.
Rumors and unproven theories abound on the Internet. Having global information networks make it worse. People can instantly spread their nonsense across the globe.
Lying on the Internet is free and anyone can do it at any time. Lying via Animal Messenger requires you to go bother the local Druid.
Who said anything about lying? People believe rumors and pass them on. They think they're helping others.
Speaking about lying, in a fantasy world spreading false information about how to kill vampires would be useful to vampires.
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We have no model for what life was like before instantaneous global communication. It's making fantasy gaming difficult. I'm sure there are useful resources out there, but no one has compiled one specifically for gamers, and we all know that gamers respond best to targeted gamer paraphernalia. I hereby request Bleepblorp's Guide to Pre-Global Societies from Wizards of the Coast.
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that the default D&D setting -- by which I mean any setting in which the DM doesn't remove content -- essentially has phones and/or proto-internet. Check out this hilariously self-contradictory text from the Equipment chapter in the PHB:
Sending is 3rd level, which is outside the scope of that rule (though Sending Stones are only Uncommon, and I'm seeing them in Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Spelljammer Academy, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps they're not that uncommon, hm?). But Animal Messenger, Magic Mouth, and Skywrite are all 2nd level. If people exist who can be hired to cast these spells, then there's an information network. It's not as robust as being able to hop on Google and search for an answer in 5 seconds, but it's certainly sufficient to allow expert knowledge to be spread far and wide with relatively little degradation. (Also: Royal decrees, manhunts, apocalypse countdowns, and plenty of other things that would otherwise be complicated are now simple. Though, one does wonder about the role of Bards.)
It's as if the Fifth Edition writers looked at the "how do we imagine a world without phones" problem and said, why would we want to do that?
But sure. In a setting where you don't have such information networks, you would certainly have a degree of unreliability in supposed common knowledge. Rumors and unproven theories abound. Experts are few and far between, and reside on mountaintops guarded by strange monsters of an appropriate challenge rating. Lost tomes of important knowledge lie unclaimed in dangerous ruins. Classic adventure stuff. But you don't want to go through all that just for a question like, "since wolves have Pack Tactics, do dire wolves also have Pack Tactics?" So you need a hand on the wheel, you need judgement I guess. Or you could simply use a rigid rules system for it, but we don't have one for this game, at least not officially. So judgement it is, then. And what do you get when you rely on judgement? Mistakes, sometimes. Thus, the complaints: My DM made me roll to know whether fire elementals are immune to fire! My DM said every character in the world knows that elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, and if the players didn't know, then it was just that their characters were stupid! And so on. These complaints are inextricable from a system that relies on judgement for these situations. (Also, if the rigid rules system you choose is an optional or third-party system, which it'd have to be if you're playing 5e, then guess what? You're still using judgement: You're choosing to include the system. You can't escape!)
Surely this is a joke? The internet is not that old.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
No, but radio, the telephone, and telegraph are. Obviously they aren't perfectly analogous to instant global communication, but the fact is that information has been able to be swiftly communicated across vast distances and then widely disseminated for over a century. I suspect very few people who play D&D or write for it have any first or second hand knowledge of what it was like when information traveled at the speed of a fast horse at best.
The internet also isn't the original form of (near) instantaneous global communication. Telegraph machines enabled messages to be sent between continents by the 1850s.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I don't think the leading expert on vampires and vampire-like creatures is going to pay a Druid 250 gold and the breath of a fish per squirrel to get the fact that vampires only mind running water and that they're actually a-ok with garlic out to every tavern in the nation. Anyways, even with an effective long-range network, there'd be a ton of misinformation. See: the Internet.
I also think the problem you have with judgement is more a problem with systems. If a system says "you gotta roll a 15 or higher to know resistances or immunities," then suddenly nobody's got a clue whether or not fire elementals are actually immune to fire or if they've just got chronic pain. If a system says "ask your DM," your DM says "it's a goddamn fire elemental, it's made out of fire, why don't you yourself guess what it's immune to and I'll tell you if you're warm or cold."
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
We have good records of of what life was like when information traveled at the speed of horse.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Err, what? I'm still genuinely confused by that sequence of events at your table
If you were going to ask for a roll, there was no reason to provide the information in advance -- the character knowing it would have been conditional on the roll
But if you thought the information was important/fundamental enough to send it to the player in advance, I'm not sure why you didn't also provide it in the moment at the table when the player admitted they hadn't looked at what you sent them. I mean, you had already "spoon fed" it, to use your term. Why waste that effort? I don't get it
Unless the whole point was just to create a test for what you perceive to have been a problem player that you figured they would fail... in which case, congratulations on proving your point, I guess? That doesn't seem to me like a route that's actually going to solve the problem or make the game more enjoyable for anybody, yourself included, but what do I know, I'm only a n00b who's been playing since Red Box
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
My homebrew world has a relatively expensive network linking the major cities and towns that's somewhere between the Pony Express and UPS in terms of efficiency, which utilizes galder's speedy courier
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Eberron has a similar system, but with gnomes using sending stones.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I should do more with mine, really. I only whipped it up originally because one of the party wanted to send a drunken love letter back to the naiad she had a bit of a fling with
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
You're right, I shouldn't have done it that way.
In fact, I never did. I created a hypothetical situation, to gauge the responses of the people within this forum. You see, I do love the lore, the puzzles, the intrigue that can build behind the scenes. I enjoy the tidbits of information and, since the mid-70s, I have always taken any information offered to me by the DM as useful; quite possibly needed in order to succeed in the adventure. These responses from folks here, including you, have made it clear to me that I am an outlier; not among the typical players of RP games these days, if ever.
As a player and DM who enjoys building a story above all the mechanics play of the game, I learned long ago that players who pay attention, take notes, and read the information provided, tend to keep the flow going better than those who would rather be told what they need to know, as they and their character needs to know it, do their thing, then occupy themselves with outside distractions until their next turn. One at a table I sit at truly does that, and the magic of the moment gets broken almost each turn, while the DM (sometimes me as DM) gives them a short rundown on what everyone else has done, since that player last paid attention. This does bother me greatly. With you folks' help, I have now come to the conclusion that many at current tables believe this acceptable, or at least tolerable behavior in today's gaming sessions. This player is a friend of two others at the table, so for me it is a take it or leave it situation.
I must decide whether to continue gaming like this, continue with my search for a more compatible group, always a challenge, especially for a 60-year-old autistic person like me, or abandon the game again, like I did 20-odd years ago. My gaming friends all had young children to raise, and other obligations, and we all drifted apart.
I think that's all the explanation that I'm willing to give on this subject. Please forgive my deception, but for my part I learned a great deal of valuable information from y'all. For that, I thank you. I will make no further replies on this thread.
If this line explanation still makes no sense to some of you, please keep things easy on yourself, and simply fall back on what I said earlier: I'm a bastard of a DM.
Cheers
For my table we basically have three levels of knowledge based around general world knowledge, a characters backstory and experience, and how good a case for their characters knowing something they can make.
Basically when the question comes up I decide what would be a reasonable level of knowledge for the characters to have about something just by existing in the world and interacting with society. That level of information I would share freely with the party, or the specific character as stuff they just know about the world. For example, my players characters all originate, roughly, in the Northern Sword Coast, but at the start of the campaign, none had been to Neverwinter. Even though none had been to neverwinter, given the immensity of the event, I decided that they would all would know about, in general details anyway, about the Mt Hotenow eruption and destruction and rebuilding of of Neverwinter, and about Neverwinters general position/standing in the world, but they wouldn't know anything about the details of the city itself like its wards and layouts and culture, etc.
After that, for more specific information about something we take in to consideration backstory and experience and then start rolling dice for what they can "remember". As DM I set a CR for how much they remember based on that experience and backstory. For example, a little while back the party came across this cavern full of mushrooms and fungus and spores. The druid is a circle of spores druid and she developed the character as obsessed with mushrooms and has spent her entire life studying and growing mushrooms. So I set the CR pretty low for what she could remember about the fungus she could see. Conversely, if someones backstory and experience doesn't provide that much of a realistic reason to know more the CR is higher, or I may even decide it is just something they would not know at all.
The last aspect of our approach is where it can get really fun and creative. If a player really wants more information or thinks their backstory should grant them more information, I give them a chance to make the case and convince me why, and depending on how well they make their case, staying true and realistic to their character and backstory, things that have been established in the campaign, and how creative and clever they can get about it, I will adjust the CR or how much information they "remember", if they sell me on it. It is a lot of fun and we have a great time debating finer points of their arguments for and against and they can get really creative and clever with their ideas. I try to be as fair and realistic with deciding if its a good enough argument or not so that they aren't just getting their way all the time, I'd say they manage to convince me only about 40% of the time.
It is definitely not an approach that would work for a lot of tables, certainly not ones where the players are trying to use their metagaming knowledge in bad faith, but for our table where everyone is on the same page about only using knowledge their characters would have and trying hard to avoid malicious metagaming it works really well and is a lot of fun.
Rumors and unproven theories abound on the Internet. Having global information networks make it worse. People can instantly spread their nonsense across the globe.
It was that way before too, just not as much bad info had to be sifted out. Most if not all civilizations have/had folk tales, "ghost" stories, mythology, fables... While those things are not how to guides or bestiaries they do provide a way to convey information over regions, and time. Then there are other tidbits like this rhyme I have heard everywhere there are coral snakes “Red on yella, kill a fella. Red on black, a friend of Jack.” While not completely correct it does give some good advice to lay people and children when it comes to potential danger and is pretty effective, as it turns out modern day bites from coral snakes are very limited compared to other venomous snakes and most of those are received by adults that have been drinking and pick the snake up.
No degree in herpetology or hours spent studying. Most people just see a snake with black, yellow and red bands and give it a wide berth or kill it by cutting off its head. I wonder why they cut the head off?
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Lying on the Internet is free and anyone can do it at any time. Lying via Animal Messenger requires you to go bother the local Druid.
Who said anything about lying? People believe rumors and pass them on. They think they're helping others.
Speaking about lying, in a fantasy world spreading false information about how to kill vampires would be useful to vampires.