What is the point of GM's notes?

[Maxperson]

Generally in most games if knowledge checks are a thing (not super crazy about them) I would expect a successful check to answer whatever question the player had about the fiction according to their established fictional positioning. I mean if you do not know what's in question how can you set a DC?

The most commonly used lore check is, "What do I know about this creature?" The DC's for that sort of check for my game are DC 15 for basic knowledge like, "It's a Githyanki." DC 20 gets you detailed information like, "Githyanki have mind abilities like X, Y and Z, and some use silver magical swords." DC 25 gets rare info like the name of the Githyanki queen and other very hard information to get.

Whether that information turns out to be useful will depend on what the party has available on hand.

 

[Fenris-77]

The most commonly used lore check is, "What do I know about this creature?" The DC's for that sort of check for my game are DC 15 for basic knowledge like, "It's a Githyanki." DC 20 gets you detailed information like, "Githyanki have mind abilities like X, Y and Z, and some use silver magical swords." DC 25 gets rare info like the name of the Githyanki queen and other very hard information to get.

Whether that information turns out to be useful will depend on what the party has available on hand.

That's a pretty narrow read on what lore checks do. They also give you clues and hints about what to do next, information and background on you enemies, etc etc etc. Lets not cherry pick our examples...

 

[Maxperson]

That's a pretty narrow read on what lore checks do. They also give you clues and hints about what to do next, information and background on you enemies, etc etc etc. Lets not cherry pick our examples...

Not according to the ability check section of the PHB with the lore skills. They just say recall lore. That's it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not according to the ability check section of the PHB with the lore skills. They just say recall lore. That's it.

What does the skill description have to do with anything? Mostly people aren't just randomly recalling lore. They recall lore because they need to know something. This isn't trivia night at the Yawning Portal.

 

[Maxperson]

What does the skill description have to do with anything? Mostly people aren't just randomly recalling lore. They recall lore because they need to know something. This isn't trivia night at the Yawning Portal.

Lore is what you know, not what you want to know. When you try to recall lore about an iron statue(iron golem), all you can learn is what you know about iron golems, not hints about what to do next. What you do with that information is what you can think of. Your view on what lore skills do is nice, but it's homebrew. Not what is written.

 

[Fenris-77]

It's what your character knows. And, mostly, when ypure rolling it you're hoping for something uaeful to the aituation at hand. If, you know, you make the roll. Repeat that except read planned for knows amd this might make more sense.

 

[Maxperson]

It's what your character knows. And, mostly, when ypure rolling it you're hoping for something uaeful to the aituation at hand. If, you know, you make the roll. Repeat that except read planned for knows amd this might make more sense.

That's not how D&D works by default, though. You hope to get something useful, but the roll does not determine that. It just determines what lore you recall.

 

[pemerton]

I think though the version of skilled play we are discussing here is very much the natural outcome of character viewpoint play. That is what you would do if you were that character. You'd plan because if you don't you might die.

I don't think this is true. In the history of the world there have been people who took risks - even life-threatening ones - without planning.

Those people also exist in literature and film. In D&D terms, two famous one's are REH's Conan and JRRT's Bilbo Baggins.

You see the character already knew about the flashback. So the player is learning about what the character supposedly already knows. The problem though is that clashes directly with the idea that the player is the character and knows what the character knows.

But this means that the player can never learn anything new about his/her PC's past. Which entails that the character is an amnesiac. Which seems wrong, and is not how any RPG I've ever played works.

Now your examples about minor details could go exactly as you say and most people just don't care about those things. It would not though be out of bounds if the player asked the DM what it tasted like and would he like it.

I don't understand why the player not knowing what the character knows suddenly becomes OK just because it is the GM who makes up the new bit of knowledge and tells the player about it, rather than the player doing that him-/herself.

 

[pemerton]

you, the player do not understand how to manipulate magical energy fields to conjure a ball of fire, call upon your deity to produce a miracle lifting a plague that devastates a village, have the physical strength and dexterity to flip and somersault across a room wherein vicious monsters threaten your life at every turn, or have the experience of a criminal mastermind in planning an infiltration heist into a high security vault. (I speak in the aggregate here; there may be some specific exceptions in some readers to some proposed examples.)

What rumours have you been listening to about me?!

 

[pemerton]

But terms mean things. Character view point for example means making decisions as if you were the character. If you make a decision your character cannot make then you've left that viewpoint.

But @Campbell's charcter can decide to make a plan in preparation for an anticipated contingency. Which is what a BitD flashback is!