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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6676155" data-attributes="member: 22424">I would have them make the most relevant roll. If it's an icon associated with an obscure cult, I'd have them roll religion to identify the cult. If the icon itself has some hidden detail to it (for example, this icon has a notch on it allowing it to be used as a key), then I'd have them roll Perception. If it's both (for example, it's an icon of The Raven Queen but with a hidden detail that identifies it as belonging to some hereitcal sub-sect), I might call for either.(But I wouldn't call for both checks in the last case because that's one roll too far - it turns a ~70% chance of success (my normal level) into a ~49% chance of success.)If I choose not to give the players all the information that is tied to the icon then I'm deliberately choosing to force them to make choices based on bad data. I don't do that - hence the roll.But there have been instances where some elements of a PC's backstory might be randomly generated. It's not generally done, because PCs are usually placed under the player's control, including backstory, but that's not absolute.Because on the one hand you're talking about the PC's backstory and on the other you're talking about the setting's backstory.Note, though, that if the campaign featured amnesiac PCs (for whatever reason), then their access to their backstory might well be gated in exactly the same manner.Actually, they're exactly the same. In both cases the players are making a bunch of choices, some or all of those choices result in dice rolls, and if those dice rolls go bad then the game ends.The only real differences are that in the combat case those dice rolls come in quick succession and lead to a definitive end (TPK), while in the investigation example they're considerably more spread out and probably don't - very likely there is at least something the PCs can still try to get back on track.(In the investigation case, it's vastly more likely that if the PCs blow all their rolls they'll find themselves with no obvious way to proceed and have to revisit some locations and/or go visit some helpful NPC for more assistance. It's very seldom that missing all the clues will actually end the game.)Playstyle choice.Would it help if I said it was due to a simulationist, rather than narrativist, approach? That is, we're not rolling to determine how much of a "backstory ration" the PC gets; we're rolling because the PC knows a certain amount about religion which may or may not include the facts tied to this icon. So we roll to determine whether he happens to know these particular facts. That these facts tie into the story being told is incidental to the process - we'd roll just the same if the scene instead just happened to take place in a (completely unrelated) church and the PC chose to look at the stained glass windows.</blockquote>

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