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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6676843" data-attributes="member: 22424">Yep.It's about the focus of the game. If I were running a game with frequent interactions with an evil society of cobblers, then I would make sure to use a "Cobbler" skill in exactly the same way as I use the "Religion" skill currently. But, of course, that would be a pretty unusual game! For a more 'standard' game, issues of whether the character knows shoes are likely peripheral (if they come up at all), while evil cults are much more common.Ideally, I would prefer something a bit more granular than 5e's binary Proficiency system - at least three different levels of "I know about Religion". So the player gets to choose to just what extend his PC knows about such things, and gets to choose between a ~50%, ~70% and ~90% chance of knowing (with the trade-off of lower skills elsewhere).One of my self-imposed rules is that I don't mislead players and I don't deny them information they 'should' have (whether because they looked for the secret door in exactly the right place, or because they rolled high enough on their Perception check). Likewise, although an individual NPC may lie (or otherwise deceive) them, when acting in my role as impartial DM I won't do so.So, no, I won't choose to give the PCs partial information. If they're getting partial information it's because the dice have declared such.As for whether that's better, I can't really say. I prefer to play that way, and I've had some bad experiences with GMs who do things the other way, but I'd certainly file it under YMMV.The DM couldn't decide that the bad guys decide to take the PCs prisoner instead of killing them outright?Thus overriding the action resolution rules I'm using.The emphasis is mine, because there's possibly a key distinction I make here: it's not about what they learned in college, it's about what they recall at this time. After all, if they fail the roll then they have the option to go consult with their old lecturer, revisit their notes, head to the library, or otherwise run down the details.Because when the PC fails the roll there are many options for what they do next, each of which potentially has a different cost and consequences. If they choose the sage, that probably costs money. If they instead revisit an old lecturer, well oops, it turns out Professor Teabing was the BBEG all along. If they consult their underworld contacts they now owe a favour. And so on. Or if they decide not to chase it down at all, they have to work without that information - but that may be fine too, since there will be other clues out there.(And note that some or all of these chosen options may very well be dealt with quickly - for example "consult the sage" may be a matter of "he charges 500gp. Once you've paid he tells you..." Others may be more involved if, for example, the evil cult has infiltrated the library and you have to deal with their goons.)But if the PC makes the roll, they skip all of that - the information is a freebie.Ultimately, it's the story of "what the PCs do", and it's being told collectively by the group. It's likely that that story will turn out to be "investigate the cult" and/or "stopping the cult", but that's by no means guaranteed.A better, but by no means perfect, chance to access information. Just as the sword-master has a better chance to hit with his sword but not 100%.It's worth noting that almost* all of my backstory is locked in from the outset. A knowledge roll causes me to pull back the curtain, but the picture behind it is unchanged.* "Almost all" because I'm not going to pretend to do all of this with absolute purity. I've found that rigidly sticking to just about any playstyle leads to disaster.Hopefully, it changes it from "the story of how we failed to defeat the cult" into "the story of how we defeated the cult". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Both can be enjoyable stories, but let's be honest - people are going to enjoy a story where they are the all-conquering hero rather more than the one in which they all-too-often fail.(But, at the same time, although they'd prefer to win, they'll also feel much more satisfaction if they solve the puzzle if it's difficult than they will if the DM just gives them the answer. Personally, I would rather lose fairly than win because the DM declared it so. YMMV, of course... and of course there are a lot of variations in difficulty level between "murderously hard" and "trivially easy" - finding the right balance, now that's the trick. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )Ah, now that's about campaign design. If I'm going to be running an investigation-heavy game (which, incidentally, I'm about to be), I'll explain this to the players ahead of time, and encourage them to build PCs with appropriate skills. If they produce a party that's utterly unsuited to the campaign then that's probably an indication that they're not really interested in the game I was envisaging, so we'll do something else instead.But there may come some cases where a PC, or indeed the party, simply don't have the skills to solve a given puzzle in the 'standard' way - to use a 3e example, perhaps nobody is trained in the relevant Knowledge skill and you can't roll untrained (5e obviously doesn't have this feature). What that means is that the PCs have to find some other way to solve the problem (sage, library, underworld contacts; or this clue is useless so they need to find some others).That last case is obviously not ideal, but provided it's just one part out of several it's not a huge issue. It becomes an issue if too many of the paths through the adventure get closed off because the PCs lack the tools to interact with them. (And I've been lucky enough that this has only ever been a theoretical concern - the PCs have always had enough skills, and made enough of the relevant rolls, that they've been able to do what's required. But, as I said, maybe that is just luck.)</blockquote>

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