delericho
Legend
Without the back and forth, though, the player just says, "Okay, I'm going to roll my History to see if I know anything about the cult, and if that doesn't work, I'll take it to a sage and roll Persuasion." That doesn't make for much of a story, in my mind.
Indeed not. But I wouldn't be telling the story of how the Cleric learned about the icon; I'd be telling the story about how the Cleric defeated the evil cult (or whatever) - finding out about the icon is only a tiny part of that. And, again, the process of finding that information is less interesting (to me at least) than the question of what the PCs do with it if/when they have it.
(Ultimately, of course, this all boils down to a matter of taste, and there's no one true answer on this. So, as always, YMMV.)