Quote from: jibbajibba;808154
...no reason why a guy living in a city making his way as a petty thief or whatever would know any more about goblins or kobolds...

Like everything related to this question, it depends on the setting. In a number of fantasy settings (e.g. Glen Cook's Garrett P.I. series) cities included different humanoids all living together. So in that setting the thief would know about goblins and kobolds. Other settings, not so much.

Quote from: jibbajibba;808154no reason why a guy living in a city making his way as a petty thief or whatever would know any more about goblins or kobolds and in a medieval setting more likely to know a lot less and lots of folklore mixed in too.

So in the fiction think People of Westeros vs dragons or white walkers, or giants. Or the Hobbits of the shire vs everyone else. Or the people of the Union vs the Shanka (blade itself).

This depends on how common monsters are. If the city is like Tolkien's Shire, where nothing strange ever happens, then I'd agree.

On the other hand, if there are random monster encounters in a city or just outside it, such as those in the 1e DMG, then those sorts of monsters should be reasonably well known - not the stuff of rumor and legend.

Reminds me of the Sunwolf and Starhawk series, where undead were exceedingly rare, and nobody had any clue where they came from (which ended up being ... very unusual).

Quote from: jhkim;808163This depends on how common monsters are. If the city is like Tolkien's Shire, where nothing strange ever happens, then I'd agree.

On the other hand, if there are random monster encounters in a city or just outside it, such as those in the 1e DMG, then those sorts of monsters should be reasonably well known - not the stuff of rumor and legend.

that was, back in the elder days, sort of my guideline.  I'd look at the frequency in the MM to figure out the odds of anyone really knowing stuff about them.

In my experience, having the players feign ignorance is likely to be frustrating to the GM, players, or both. I find it usually works better to arrange for ways that the characters have roughly similar information to the players.


I would also point out that the characters generally have vastly more expertise in their world in general, more expertise in monster-fighting, and vastly more sensory data than the players do. Especially for creatures without overtly magical abilities like a goblin or wyvern, the characters should be able to see all the details of how the creature looks, moves, and fights - and can draw conclusions based on that.

Quote from: Old One Eye;808108You seem to like lions as an example critter to talk about more than orcs or trolls.  OK.  Lions are a fine example.  Do you suppose that people who live in an area where lions are a genuine threat to life would know a few things about lion habits, or would they be just as clueless as a zoo-goer like me?

(shrugs)  I used lions, anyway.  I could've used any one of a thousand different critters, and don't read anything particular about having chosen the first one that came to mind.

To address your exact question, it depends.  Do any of us really need to be told that human beings are very good at (a) thinking we know more about a subject than we really do, (b) swallowing the POV of the loudest, or the first, or the cutest, or the most eloquent speaker on a subject over that of acknowledged experts, and (c) blathering our inflated, flawed views to anyone who'll listen, except when they're (d) deliberately lying about the subject to get a rise out of the listeners?  How many parents, for instance, have rejected the all-but-unanimous advice of thousands of pediatricians, doctors and researchers on the subject of vaccination, on the strength of the word of the likes of Jenny McCarthy, whose credentials are that her boob job got her into Playboy a couple decades back?

Sure, I'd figure that a veteran herder or livestock farmer on the verge of lion-infested country would probably have a good handle on the habits of lions -- otherwise they wouldn't get to be veteran herders or livestock farmers.  I would presume such skills of no one else.  A number of folks might have such skills.  A number would not, beyond the basics of what you do if you see a lion lurking about.

But you're still talking about common threats.  Of course someone in orc-infested country will have a good handle on how tough orcs are and what you're likely to expect.  This thread wasn't about that: it was about the unusual.

I think some of the stuff we've mentioned about lions is a good metaphor for other D&D monsters, actually.

Big furry cats who hunt. Are they social? Do they have a special diet? Are they different from those OTHER stories of cats? Fuck if we know.

Consider oozes. Most people who aren't up on MM reading know oozes are big blobby things in various colors that generally burn and live underground. And often have quirky weird abilities.

Now, remembering EXACTLY what a pudding is from an ooze from jellies from...

At that point, you could expect even underdark residents to be a bit hazy.

Quote from: jhkim;808163This depends on how common monsters are. If the city is like Tolkien's Shire, where nothing strange ever happens, then I'd agree.

On the other hand, if there are random monster encounters in a city or just outside it, such as those in the 1e DMG, then those sorts of monsters should be reasonably well known - not the stuff of rumor and legend.

Entirely.

The setting and the background of the PC in the setting are the factors that determine their knowlege.
You could be playing a Noble who though the city is full of half orcs has never met one because they are scum. Plenty of medieval examples where the ill educated elite thought all sorts of things about the poor and especially the poor from different human races/cultures.

In my current game there has been an ongoing war between humans and they fey allies and the goblins and orcs for 100 years. the humans know a lot about orcs and goblins so do the Fey. The humans know next to nothing about the Fey however, even to the point where they class all fey races (from Hobbits to trieflings) as one group. Now a few people know more but not many.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;808147I can see both sides of this. On the one hand, you want to be as true to the character as possible for immersion of the group (if you care about that). Yet, you have situations that could be deadly and the only way you decide to avoid them is that you know as a player that a monster is a walking can of whoopass.

What do you do then? Go and die for the sake of keeping PC/Player knowledge apart, or do the rational thing as a player? I know some GMs that would be pissed if you did the rational thing.

Treat every monster (and every object, just in case) as "a walking can of whoopass". It's the only way to be sure.

One DM introduced grendels from The Legacy of Heorot but gave us no background information, so we (who had not read the book) named it the Zippopotamus (lived in a river, very fast). That showed him, even if it did kill several PCs.

Quote from: rawma;808228Treat every monster (and every object, just in case) as "a walking can of whoopass". It's the only way to be sure.

One DM introduced grendels from The Legacy of Heorot but gave us no background information, so we (who had not read the book) named it the Zippopotamus (lived in a river, very fast). That showed him, even if it did kill several PCs.

Yay, we killed that big bad ol' monster. Hey, where did all the tasty samlon go?

F$@#!!!

Quote from: Will;808194Big furry cats who hunt. Are they social? Do they have a special diet? Are they different from those OTHER stories of cats? Fuck if we know.

And beyond that, there'll be the guy who is absolutely convinced to the marrow of his bones that he knows All About Lions, based on a dimly remembered conversation he overheard between two panther hunters a few years back.

My classic "confirmation bias" adventuring anecdote comes from a combat LARP session.  We had a Raise Dead spell, and a second-event newbie (unable, per the system, to have the spell at all before his fifth event) was absolutely convinced that the spell worked a particular way.  Me, I was a "magic marshal" of twelve years experience and the Grand Master of the guild that taught the spell, I set him straight.

So I thought.  The guy just wouldn't take my word for it.  Soon three other veteran magic marshals joined the conversation, all of whom had ten years or more experience teaching and adjudicating the system.  One of those guys had invented the magic rules then in use.  Another was the guy who'd invented the previous magic system the then-current system had replaced.  

The newbie just didn't care -- he was just one of those types who Knew What He Knew and no one could ever tell him any different -- and wound up being escorted off the event site when he started throwing punches.

Honestly, I figure that your average PC, without a background in such lore, has as much chance of getting the stats of the Smegma Monster not only wrong, but disastrously wrong, as otherwise.

Ha!

I remember an online text game that was starting up, run by a couple. It was just starting up, Liverpool by Night.

Now, my experiences with WoD MU*s is that, as a rule, they suck horribly. Between the late 90s and around 2004 or so when I finally gave up on the feeble hope of finding one that didn't suck, I'd probably tried out several dozen.

ANYhoo... this game was promising. Mortal+ focus, which is cool (I don't really like the big stuff).

I'm writing up a character and I'd really like to do a whole fortune-teller thing. So I'm looking over Divination... now, obviously, 'reading the future' is a problem on a MU* unless it's really vague. There's already a fortune telling enhanced skill or something for vague stuff, Divination would be precise.

So I suggest to the guy running the place that maybe I could have Divination limited only to retrocognition, scrying past events.

And he informs me that that's not 'divination,' divination is only reading the future.

... Huh? That's... not what the text said.

He repeats his assertion.

I point out that's not what the _dictionary_ says.

He repeats his assertion.

I squint. Right.
At the time I was hanging out with a bunch of the WoD writers on an online chat group. I grab _the guy who wrote that book_ (well, the developer, anyway) and ask him.
He's puzzled and says 'well, duh, like it says, divination reads the future and the past.'

He repeats his assertion.

Ooo k. Another WoD MU* in the bin.


Also, I am reminded of Monty Python's Llama sketch.

Quote from: Ravenswing;808238The guy just wouldn't take my word for it.  Soon three other veteran magic marshals joined the conversation, all of whom had ten years or more experience teaching and adjudicating the system.  One of those guys had invented the magic rules then in use.  Another was the guy who'd invented the previous magic system the then-current system had replaced.  

The newbie just didn't care -- he was just one of those types who Knew What He Knew and no one could ever tell him any different -- and wound up being escorted off the event site when he started throwing punches.

Honestly, I figure that your average PC, without a background in such lore, has as much chance of getting the stats of the Smegma Monster not only wrong, but disastrously wrong, as otherwise.

I absolutely agree that such people exist. However, I generally prefer it in games if the GM does not assume that the PCs are ignorant dumb-asses, but rather are well-informed, competent people.

In most games, I feel like the players are lacking information, not knowing many basic things that well-informed, competent characters should. So I always tend to err on the side of giving the players and PCs more information.

Quote from: jhkim;808273I absolutely agree that such people exist. However, I generally prefer it in games if the GM does not assume that the PCs are ignorant dumb-asses, but rather are well-informed, competent people.

In most games, I feel like the players are lacking information, not knowing many basic things that well-informed, competent characters should. So I always tend to err on the side of giving the players and PCs more information.

Agreed. Also, including unreliable narrators as a source of information in RPGs can be problematic on a number of levels.

First players are missing much of the information in the game world that is present in the real world (and would be available to the PCs) to help sort out the unreliable information sources. Second, as a player my game time is limited. I don't want a lot of time spent in play having an unreliable NPC  bullshit my character so that every time I talk to one NPC I then have to go talk to 4 more NPCs and ask the same damn question just so that I can conclude that 4 out of 5 dentists say that dragons do have pointy teeth as long as a dagger.

Once in a while, in solving a mystery or for figuring out crucial or important stuff that level of duplication may be interesting enough to play out, but as a usual course of events...no thanks. I get to do that enough in real life and it's not that fun that I want to spend must of the time in my game session doing that.

Quote from: jhkim;808273I absolutely agree that such people exist. However, I generally prefer it in games if the GM does not assume that the PCs are ignorant dumb-asses, but rather are well-informed, competent people.

In most games, I feel like the players are lacking information, not knowing many basic things that well-informed, competent characters should. So I always tend to err on the side of giving the players and PCs more information.

But only if the player chooses to play a well-informed competent character. there are lots of character options where that is not the case.
This is what I mean by the player knows how much information their PC should have based on the character of their PC.

If the GM wants to throw in something that the competent well-informed PC won't know about then they need to create their own challenges.