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<blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 6671588" data-attributes="member: 32659">I will sometimes restrict the people capable of rolling: if the question relates to Dwarven history, then I would naturally only let the Dwarven PCs roll. I would allow anyone else to roll as well, if they could explain why they should be able to. This means that someone who feels that his character spent some of his mercenary career working in Dwarven lands (an eminently reasonable and interesting element of his backstory, even if devised ad-hoc) could also roll. This tends to prevent the whole table rolling; even attention hogging players won't want to pile in if they have to justify it, and you can always regretfully announce that their suggestion isn't compelling enough. Mind you, I often don't make players roll. One character in my group is a Dwarven Monk (which we reskinned to be a pugilist, in my Norse-themed setting). His backstory is that he grew up in the wilds, and wandered around the setting for a long time, before entering into the service of Heimdall and getting his magical abilities (i.e. the Monk class features). So when he asks me, &quot;Do I know where that town is?&quot;, very often I'll simply say, &quot;Do you think that your guy would?&quot; Sometimes he thinks so, sometimes he thinks not. You can replicate this with anything, really; if you feel that the Cleric should be the one to know about the religious artifact, then just let him/her succeed without a roll! That way you guarantee the required result, and when you show why the player didn't need to roll, they tend to find it just as satisfying. With good players this system works very nicely: it allows you to let the right player shine, you keep the game moving along, and you don't need to worry about attention-hog players dragging the spotlight away, since you can select other players to receive the limelight.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charles Rampant, post: 6671588, member: 32659"] I will sometimes restrict the people capable of rolling: if the question relates to Dwarven history, then I would naturally only let the Dwarven PCs roll. I would allow anyone else to roll as well, if they could explain why they should be able to. This means that someone who feels that his character spent some of his mercenary career working in Dwarven lands (an eminently reasonable and interesting element of his backstory, even if devised ad-hoc) could also roll. This tends to prevent the whole table rolling; even attention hogging players won't want to pile in if they have to justify it, and you can always regretfully announce that their suggestion isn't compelling enough. Mind you, I often don't make players roll. One character in my group is a Dwarven Monk (which we reskinned to be a pugilist, in my Norse-themed setting). His backstory is that he grew up in the wilds, and wandered around the setting for a long time, before entering into the service of Heimdall and getting his magical abilities (i.e. the Monk class features). So when he asks me, "Do I know where that town is?", very often I'll simply say, "Do you think that your guy would?" Sometimes he thinks so, sometimes he thinks not. You can replicate this with anything, really; if you feel that the Cleric should be the one to know about the religious artifact, then just let him/her succeed without a roll! That way you guarantee the required result, and when you show why the player didn't need to roll, they tend to find it just as satisfying. With [b]good players[/b] this system works very nicely: it allows you to let the right player shine, you keep the game moving along, and you don't need to worry about attention-hog players dragging the spotlight away, since you can select other players to receive the limelight. [/QUOTE]

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