Knowledge (Local) - How Does Your Group Use and Define It

[Whimsical]

I have a social bard who has his K:Local maxxed out. The DM has a very detailed game world which has seen several campagins, so it is rich with history and culture.

He has K:Local set up so that for every rank you get, you can select the region. The scope affects the DCs. So, you could take Forgotten Realms as a region for example, and you would be able to answer very general questions about the politics of the world, but questions about a certain continent would add +10 to the DC, a certain region +20, a certain major city +30, etc. But the smaller the scope of the regions that you select for your K:Local rank, the easier it is to recall specific information about any aspect of it.

My character started with four ranks and has his home region and three adjacent regions as his first four ranks. The party has traveled through other locations and my bard would pick up a region that we spent some time in. Then we were stuck in a desert oasis for a year, we leveled several times, and I picked up Patchwork Desert (large geographically-defined region), Yakka (the oasis, pop. 5000), Degimelheist (the capital of the region,) Yak Yak's tribe (1,000 tribesmen who took over the oasis,) Draco (home region of another character that he described to me,) & gnome slaves (100) before we moved onto new locations. This allowed me to answer just about any question about any of the people we dealt with in the desert that I could think of. As far as the microregion of "gnome slaves", I could list off the name of each gnome of the gnome (ex-)slaves "region", along with their family connections, their individual reputations, their skills and mastery, their deficiencies and weaknesses, their recent histories, their personalities, etc. One time I needed to make 1,000 copies of a notice that we wanted published throuout the city. I listed off exactly who was skilled in scribing, listed their order of expertise, and listed off several other gnomes who should be talented in scribing if trained right, and who would be the best gnome to train them. I then organized them to make the copies we needed in short order. This would have been a lot more difficult if I was just relying on the Oasis rank, which is where they were enslaved, or an epic challenge if I was relying on just the Patchwork Desert rank.

 

[stevelabny]

I've always used Knowledge:Local as a knowledge skill that incorporates every other knowledge skill, but for a limited area.

So rather than need nobility/royalty to identify a noble family by insignia
or history to know about a famous battle
or geography to know about a river/forest/swamp or a specific culture or customs
or religion to know about religious customs
or arcana to know about magic traditions or magical beasts
or nature to know about animals

you can get by with a knowledge: local, but only in ONE location. Usually a small kingdom or geographic area, or large city. For all other locations you would need to make the standard check.

Example:

Knowledge:local NYC means I can find Central Park, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden and other landmarks. I can ride the subway without getting lost. I can make checks to see if I'm familiar with some local customs from religious (like my jewish neighbors mezzuzahs) to the ridiculous (specific chants at yankee stadium) or to find other places. (the gaming store a block away from the empire state bulding) Etc Etc

This doesn't help me with Knowledge:Local:Boston or Knowledge:Local: Lichtenstein.
I will still recognize pizza, I will know about the longstanding Boston-NY rivalry (of course), and I will recognize other similar customs. But otherwise, I'd have to make specific checks.
In Boston, finding Boston Commons is a know:geography (or ask an npc or a map) check for me. (I dont consider something so simple to be a gather info) In Lichtenstein and other countries, I would need knowledge: history, geography and nobility to have a clue as to just about anything.

 

[Endur]

I treat it as Knowledge Local for a place, like a village like Hommlet or a country like Geoff. The idea is that it is Knowledge Local for everywhere the characters will go (when not on a distant journey elsewhere).

When the characters go somewhere else, they have to use Gather Information or other skills to find out stuff.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I'm still as yet not convinced. Any more thoughts on this?

If you're not finding the theory arguments decisive, take a pragmatic approach. Namely:

Do you care if the skill is useful to the player (i.e., worth the points spent)? If no, stop here and flip a coin as to how you play it. (It doesn't matter if the skill is worthwhile or not.) If yes:

Is a large portion of the campaign -- say, at least a third -- going to take place in the region in question? If yes, stop here and flip a coin as to how you play it. (The skill will be worthwhile either way.) If no, you'll want to choose the version of the skill that allows broader utility.

I treat Knowledge (local) as universal (to match every other Knowledge skill, incidentally). The character might know the customs of foreign lands, rather than discovering them the hard way. (And nothing screams, "I'm a foreigner" faster than using Gather Information to learn such things.) And, as had been said before, the skill also allows you to pick up information faster. You know how streets in Ophidizar are usually laid out, so you know that Asp Avenue is the first street in the city, and runs perpendicular to Sidewinder Street.

Indiana Jones has a lot of ranks in Knowledge (local). Marcus Brody does not.

 

[kanithardm]

KL is meant for knowing which merchant has the best prices on magic items in a city, or that the fish at the base of river X are smaller than norma, etc.

 

[Tonguez]

OK. Tell me what do you know of the city of Muenster, Germany
It's highly unlikely you know something about it except you read about it, you lived there, you visited it some time or you have seen it on TV.

um off the top of my head Hanseatic League, Westphalia, Bicycles.
(I use to cycle alot and looked up the Hanseatic league for gaming purposes once)

but then my K Local is very low

 

[Li Shenron]

Indiana Jones has a lot of ranks in Knowledge (local). Marcus Brody does not.

Absolutely (and a great analogy btw!), but this doesn't necessarily imply that KL should be one and only. Indy doesn't know about every place in the world, although he may have ranks even in regions where he hasn't been yet.

 

[Ottergame]

I've always seen it as a collection of infomation about the lower classes all over the globe. Rather the further water down an already weak skill by making it totally worthless, I perfer to leave it as it is supposed to be.

 

[Space monkey]

I always thought of it as understanding the similaritys between the places you have lived and other places. if your a human with knowledge local. It's not going to help you in the underdark.

it will help you to know that that symbol over the door is a universal symbol of healing. it crosses into some regions. proobly following culture's and races more then borders Amn and tretnasec (in Fr) have similaritys with each other and with the dragon coast. but your knowledge local won't help you in the jungles of Chult.

That was my understanding. of how knowledge local was spread out to more places.

 

[the Jester]

I treat it as a set of skills for individual locations. The scale depends on the scale of the campaign- for instance, in my low-magic campaign it would be a village and environs, with progressively higher DCs as you got further from home.