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A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7578433" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>From the 4e PHB (pp 9, 18, 24):</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Your "piece" in the Dungeons & Dragons game is your character. He or she is your representative in the game world. Through your character, you can interact</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">with the game world in any way you want. . . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about taking on the role of a character in the game. . . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">[T]hinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.</p><p></p><p>The question of what knowledge a player is able to impute to his/her PC is not explicitly addressed.</p><p></p><p>Huh? I'm not making anything up. Here's the 4e PHB (p 269) on declaring attack actions during a combat:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">During your turn, you can take a few actions. You decide what to do with each, considering how your actions can help you and your allies achieve victory.</p><p></p><p>This is entirely consistent with the fact that 4e D&D is a game, in which players use their cognitive capacities to make "moves" in the form of action declarations. If a player believes, based on his/her accumulated knowledge, that a good move to declare against a troll is a Fire-attack, because s/he knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, then s/he can declare such a move. Conversely, if a player is uncertain about what would be a good move, s/he is always entitled to attempt a monster knowledge check (which does not require an action). If this is successful, it may help the player choose an action which s/he believes will help him/her and his/her allies achieve victory.</p><p></p><p>As I said, the 5e rules on this are not something I'm very familiar with, but the 4e rules are crystal clear: the player character is the player's "piece" in the game, and the player gets to decide what his/her PC does, and when it comes to declaring attacks is expected to consider how a declared act will lead to victory in combat.</p><p></p><p>The GM doesn't get to "force a check" in these circumstances.</p><p></p><p>Knowledge checks are used "to remember a useful bit of information in [a skill's] field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it . . . [or] to identify certain kinds of monsters" (4e PHB p 179). That is (as I've already said), knowledge checks are a mechanical device that a player can use to oblige the GM to provide more information; they are not a gate on the player's use of information s/he already has.There's simply no such rule in 4e. It's not a game in which the GM is allowed to gate player action declarations in the way you are advocating for, and in the way that [MENTION=6888436]sd_jasper[/MENTION] appears to suggest here:</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7578433, member: 42582"] From the 4e PHB (pp 9, 18, 24): [indent]Your "piece" in the Dungeons & Dragons game is your character. He or she is your representative in the game world. Through your character, you can interact with the game world in any way you want. . . . The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about taking on the role of a character in the game. . . . [T]hinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.[/indent] The question of what knowledge a player is able to impute to his/her PC is not explicitly addressed. Huh? I'm not making anything up. Here's the 4e PHB (p 269) on declaring attack actions during a combat: [indent]During your turn, you can take a few actions. You decide what to do with each, considering how your actions can help you and your allies achieve victory.[/indent] This is entirely consistent with the fact that 4e D&D is a game, in which players use their cognitive capacities to make "moves" in the form of action declarations. If a player believes, based on his/her accumulated knowledge, that a good move to declare against a troll is a Fire-attack, because s/he knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, then s/he can declare such a move. Conversely, if a player is uncertain about what would be a good move, s/he is always entitled to attempt a monster knowledge check (which does not require an action). If this is successful, it may help the player choose an action which s/he believes will help him/her and his/her allies achieve victory. As I said, the 5e rules on this are not something I'm very familiar with, but the 4e rules are crystal clear: the player character is the player's "piece" in the game, and the player gets to decide what his/her PC does, and when it comes to declaring attacks is expected to consider how a declared act will lead to victory in combat. The GM doesn't get to "force a check" in these circumstances. Knowledge checks are used "to remember a useful bit of information in [a skill's] field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it . . . [or] to identify certain kinds of monsters" (4e PHB p 179). That is (as I've already said), knowledge checks are a mechanical device that a player can use to oblige the GM to provide more information; they are not a gate on the player's use of information s/he already has.There's simply no such rule in 4e. It's not a game in which the GM is allowed to gate player action declarations in the way you are advocating for, and in the way that [MENTION=6888436]sd_jasper[/MENTION] appears to suggest here: [/QUOTE]
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