D&D 5E Player knowledge and Character knowledge

[Mallus]

My first concern when creating a new PC is designing a personality that will be fun to play over a period of time. I don't spend much time calculating how much ignorance I'm going to feign; I've been gaming for over 30 years now. I'm not going to approach a new campaign as if it were my first. Practically-speaking, that's not possible. It's at odds with how human memory & consciousness work. Likewise, I can't read a book as if I've never read a book before.

Of course my prior experiences will affect my new PC. This, however, includes all the good things I've learned about playing in an RPG group & how to make the experience better for everyone involved.

If I've read the module before, of course I'll a) let the DM know and b) keep my mouth shut during play.

Most of my experience, though, comes from running campaigns for long-time players. Their assumptions, habits, and play experiences are simply more grist for the mill. Things I can engage with and use when designing adventures. Writing for a genre-savvy audience is just another kind of writing. You do have to surprise them by actually surprising them -- which is enormously satisfying when you pull it off.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Like I said in some other thread a few weeks ago...I let my players decide if their characters would know something or not. However... ... I also tend to describe a monster and let the players decide what it is they are facing.

Based on if these particular PC's have encountered/seen this creature before...if they have, I can just tell them "You see two trolls". If they haven't, I say "You see two huge creatures. Perhaps 8' tall each. They have massive shoulders, long arms, with hands going down to their knees. Tipping their finders are long, 3" or more, black talons. Their heads are elongated, almost cone-like, with a pointed and prominent nose, and wide, shark-like teeth under it. Eyes are black as pitch, with no colour or white. Their grey-green skin is covered with knobby protrusions, almost like a leathery armor". (OK, maybe not quite so eloquently put...but that's the gist of it).

If they players think they are ogres...so be it. If they think they are bugbears...so be it. If they say "What in the stinky arm pits of Beelzebub are those!"... so be it. They will learn later on, maybe, what "those things" were.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Guest 6801328]

It's no more artificial than your character may be trained in Arcana and you are not. Your character has abilities and skills. They don't overlap with your knowledge. I can tell you how to make gunpowder but that doesn't mean my character can.

I think I'm using "artificial" a little bit differently than you. What I mean is that I have to put on a pretense of not knowing something. I'm pretending.

Let me give a couple of examples. When I was in college, I had a DM who ran multiple different groups in the same world at the same time. Things happening in one group could affect others. Plus time would not be perfectly sync - group A could spent 3 weeks traveling in half an hour while group B was in a dungeon crawl for four sessions before taking some downtime and resyncing. Several people were in multiple of groups depending on availability.

If one of us would suddenly start looking for anti-undead items and stocking up on holy water because we knew that a wraith scare in another group blew up and was spreading towards our location that would be really cheesy.

Another example - we had one DM who read and ran modules for his group and was a player in a group I played in. If he suddenly knew the traps, and that under the fountain was a secret treasure cache, and the BBEG had weakness if we smash these statues in another room, that would have sucked the life out for the rest of us.

But there are times you really need to keep what you know as a player off of the game for the enjoyment of everyone in the group.

I believe all of your examples fall under the disclaimer I put at the end: that if I'm the only person at the table with the information then for the sake of the others I'll keep my mouth shut.

But if everybody at the table knows the BBEG's weakness or where the trap is or whatever...why on earth is the DM using it?

If ignorance of details is important to the game then the DM should just change the details, imo.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think I'm using "artificial" a little bit differently than you. What I mean is that I have to put on a pretense of not knowing something. I'm pretending.

You're pretending. As you should be. That's RP 101: Pretending to be an Elf.

So just pretend to not know that trolls are weak to fire. Do what you would otherwise do, if it was actually the case. Just like you are doing what you would otherwise be doing, if you were an Elf in a fantasy world. This is just one more minor detail of the character you are pretending to be.

 

[ccs]

I decide on a case by case basis & dependent upon the campaign background.
For ex:
My current 5e character is Bree Burrfoot: a 10 year old 1/2ling warlock (fey, chain). She's a kid. She DOESN'T know most of what I, the player of 30+ years, do.
*She knows specifically what she's encountered up through 3rd lv. - no checks needed.
*She knows "stuff" learned through stories, overheard tavern talk (her dad runs an inn), etc. Exactly how accurate most of that is....? If the DM tells me I've got some info I roll % to see how inaccurate what I'm about to say will be.
*Sometimes she can consult her patron for info. Roll vs skill DC & give accurate info if I succeed, know I don't have the answer if I fail.

 

[GreenTengu]

I am surprised by all the people who replied on the first page who openly and proudly declared that they don't like to roleplay on a roleplaying game forum.

Role playing means playing a role. And the role you are playing is a person who does not have your scientific knowledge, who doesn't know the name of every deity and their realm of influence and their symbol nor the ruler of every country and their deepest, darkest secrets you learned by reading the campaign setting guide. The rule doesn't have the monster manual memorized from front to back, doesn't know the special weaknesses of every creature... nor does the role know where every trap and secret door is hidden, what every NPC's weakness and hidden motivations are and knowledge of the overhead map with exactly what is in every room because you read the adventure beforehand... but your role didn't.

Although, on the flip side, there are likely quite a few things that your role would likely know that you would not. After all, the role you are meant to be playing is almost certainly a denizen of the world you are exploring and no campaign guide is detailed enough to give you all the information they would have collected over a lifetime of living in the world. Much of what they know may not be applicable... but it is very likely that some thing that you think are natural and logical would not seem so to those who live within the world. So what happens if you as a player decide to do something that would be fine in many game worlds, but would come with dire consequences in this one? Do we just go ahead and hit you with the full consequences of the actions you have the role take when your role, the denizen who has lived in the world all their life, knows that the laws and rules etiquette make that choice a very bad one that no sane member of that society would undertake? I imagine you would want to be informed that your character would have knowledge that this action was a bad idea and the chance to choose a different action.

Although there must surely be overlap-- unless you decide to make a character who is functionally yourself and playing the game as though you were transported into this other world which you may or may not have read up on to full familiarize yourself with it ahead of time, there are going to be large areas of your knowledge that the role does not have and large areas of knowledge the role has that you do not have.

The goal of role playing is to become that character with both their advantages and their weaknesses for the duration of the game. Physical, mental and social-- not simply the first as so many so-called "roleplayers" solely utilize of their characters-- that isn't roleplaying, that is action gaming. You may as well go play your X-Box if that is what you are going to do, because the mechanics of the pen and paper style are simply slowing you down from doing what you really want-- to slice/blow up an object and get your points as a reward to slice/blow up more impressive objects.

 

[Mallus]

I am surprised by all the people who replied on the first page who openly and proudly declared that they don't like to roleplay on a roleplaying game forum.

I'm surprised that it took to page 2 before someone proudly implied they know the One True Definition of Roleplaying!

Role playing means playing a role.

Role-playing means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. We could probably make a big mutant Venn diagram. If we were so inclined. For the record, I'd say "role-playing means creating a fictional character and then performing them within the game's fiction/play environments". This definition says nothing w/r/t/ any previous play experiences or what affect they have on your current PC.

... but your role didn't.

Your role didn't do anything prior to you creating it. Any speculation must begin and end there.

The goal of role playing is...

... up to each player to determine for themselves. Trust me, I'm an experienced player and DM. It's just easier this way!

edit: ... and there can be multiple goals, and these goals can change & shift in priority over time, or within a single session, and... really, this is kinda complicated. It's much smarter to catalog all the different activities & behaviors done by gamers during a game session that it it is to talk about a single, correct goal/way to approach role-playing.

 

[Guest 6801328]

You're pretending. As you should be. That's RP 101: Pretending to be an Elf.

So just pretend to not know that trolls are weak to fire. Do what you would otherwise do, if it was actually the case. Just like you are doing what you would otherwise be doing, if you were an Elf in a fantasy world. This is just one more minor detail of the character you are pretending to be.

I am surprised by all the people who replied on the first page who openly and proudly declared that they don't like to roleplay on a roleplaying game forum.

Role playing means playing a role. (Etc.)

No.

I mean, sure, that's how you like to roleplay, and if you're having fun you're doing it right. But it continues to amaze me how many people think that this one type of roleplaying...and honestly a kind of trivial, simplistic version of it...is The One True Path of roleplaying.

Those same people often think that "immersion" is when everybody stays in character. "Oh, no, Fred used an anachronistic word...my immersion is broken."

I compare this to speaking in pig-latin for the entire session: sure, it's kind of tricky to remember to do it all the time, but is it actually challenging in an interesting way? (Maybe for some?)

When I roleplay I don't even remotely try to stay in-character all the time. It just bogs things down, and frankly most "acting" I've seen from gamers is pretty terrible. If you don't have something that actively contributes to the development and portrayal of your character, if you're just making everything more complicated for the sake of not breaking character, then you're wasting precious table time.

What I appreciate is when, after a number of straightforward "Um, I roll attack. 10 Damage" and "Can I use Investigate?" and "Yeah, I'll spend the 200g and upgrade my armor", somebody does one thing that's just beautifully in-character.

And often "in-character" takes a while to develop. You start off with a fighter and some kind of backstory, but you don't really know who he/she is yet. But as the game evolves you slowly figure it out.

But more importantly, when you limit roleplaying to just trying to pretend to be your character for the sake of some kind of external pseudo-immersion, you're forgetting the more important form of roleplaying, which is to feel like your character. See the difference? One is putting on a mask for other, and the other is wearing the mask for yourself.

And when you pretend to not know something, you're not really being your character because you're not feeling like your character. Your character is thinking "gaaaaah.....what are these things that keep regrowing limbs!" but YOU are thinking "I wonder how long we have to keep this up before we can use fire?"

Not very immersive.

Again...sure, don't give anything away to other players who genuinely are immersed. But that's not roleplaying...that's courtesy.

Do you see the difference? Painting a portrait of an interesting character is...interesting. Slavishly pretending to be the character is...not. At least not to me.

Fine roleplaying is like makeup: if you can see it, it's too much, and any more than that is just garish. The right amount is just enough to accentuate the features you want noticed.

 

[GreenTengu]

Role-playing means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. We could probably make a big mutant Venn diagram. If we were so inclined. For the record, I'd say "role-playing means creating a fictional character and then performing them within the game's fiction/play environments". This definition says nothing w/r/t/ any previous play experiences or what affect they have on your current PC.

Put a little more thought into it and you would realize your last sentence is just plain absurd.

A fictional character within the fictional environment of the game would not inherently have any knowledge of what your previous characters did. Nor would they have previous detailed knowledge from the monster manual of all creatures likely to show up nor their number of hit points and special abilities. They would also not know everything found within the campaign setting guide, nor would they have precise knowledge of the future and details about NPCs you encounter as a result of you, as a player, having played or read the adventure previously. Not unless special allotments were made for each of these things.

Your own definition specifically includes regards to one's previous play experience by the two elements inherently being a "fictional character" and the "game's fiction" as both elements naturally create a set of bounds within which you are expected to choose your actions. Abusing player knowledge is far more egregious violation of the two principles you set forth than listing your characters a "Lawful Good" and then molesting, robbing and killing all NPCs you come across and have the ability to do so.

If you have a character act on knowledge of these things that the fictional character within the fictional environment would not have knowledge of, then you are not taking on the role of a fictional character within the rules of the fictional environment. Therefore, by the definition you yourself gave, you are in fact not roleplaying if you use player knowledge.

You are simply utilizing a set of stats against other blocks of stats in order to earn points. You may as well simply be playing an electronic game with the game guide revealing all the games secrets open at your side and all the game cheats activated.

No.


I mean, sure, that's how you like to roleplay, and if you're having fun you're doing it right. But it continues to amaze me how many people think that this one type of roleplaying...and honestly a kind of trivial, simplistic version of it...is The One True Path of roleplaying.


....

I notice that in nothing you wrote, not one single solitary sentence of it, did you remotely come within the general region of actually debating the topic at hand. You went off on some weird tangent about people only talking as though they were in character.

The topic at hand it using player knowledge in character.

Reading the monster manual and using knowledge of its stat blocks to easily overcome the creatures.
Using knowledge from the campaign setting guide in order to gain an advantage or dismiss challenges.
Reading the adventure ahead of time and using that knowledge to avoid all traps, extort NPCs and prepare for all surprises and twists well before they are revealed.

That is the topic at hand. Not only speaking as the character, not limiting ones dialogue to "period proper" speech. The topic is abusing player knowledge in order to avoid character challenges.

If you want to debate against me that abusing player knowledge in order to maximize character advantage without limits is still somehow roleplaying, that is what I am talking about. I am not your imaginary strawman who is saying you need to reflect your character's mannerisms and dialogue at all times.

This is a very specific point. If your character does not have knowledge of an easy win mechanic, a coming plot twist, NPC motivation, trap location, etc... you should attempt to feign ignorance about it as much as possible.

Imagine if you were watching the first Star Wars and in the first scene when Luke meets the droids he said "oh!! Hey! You guys are running from my Dad, right? You got that message from my sister! Well, let's go give the message to Ben Kenobi. That's Obiwan. But first I need to tell my aunt and uncle to go to the city for a while so that they don't get killed by the Stormtroopers or Sandpeople or whatever later. And then we can to to the Cantina to meet with Han and Chewbacca, they are the ones who will fly us to the Death Star. But we need to make sure we don't split up inside or Obiwan will die. We'll meet up with Biggs on the rebel base later."

Yeah... that's such a worthwhile story you have there. It is SUCH a good thing that Luke's player read the adventure ahead of time to make sure he maximizes his success.

 

[Jackdaw]

I leave it up to my players do decide what their character knows, based on their background and skills. If I can't trust them with that basic level of roleplaying I probably shouldn't have them in my game.

If I have a player who I feel is regularly challenging that trust, I'll just go way off-book and design all sorts of bizarre opponents to trip them up. It's fun.