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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ReiDuck" data-source="post: 678031" data-attributes="member: 10207">Really?To start with alignment, our DM finally got tired of people not playing their alignments and did it on a percentage basis - we'd roleplay for a while, and he'd work out our alignments.  We'd discover what we actually counted as when we tried to do an alignment-based action.  For example, my tiefling rogue racked up some major evil points by finding nothing wrong with armor made from human skin.  Later in the session, when the players were taking refuge in a Sanctuary of Good, she barely managed to avoid being smited.  Later in the campaign, a paladin joined the party.  By this point, we'd developed our characters a good deal more (I usually come up with a general concept to begin with, then come up with details later.  It infallably works out into a firm character background, although a few early predictions often turn out to be false) and the paladin wasn't instantly required to kill her for being evil, due to the cause of her anti-lawful sentiments.  The DM and I had a very long conversation about how this all worked, and in the end, it worked out beautifully.Onward to the three "mental" stats.  To be honest, I'm a firm believer in playing by those little numbers written on the page.  You're the one who put them there, so don't go crying to mama when your 19 Str, 6 Int half-orc barb can't identify a species of shrub, despite the fact that you personally know damn well that it's a blackberry bush.In fact, we've had a good deal of problems on this topic.  I as a person know a vast array of useless (to me) knowledge - everything from the medicinal qualities of chamomile to the wootz method of making watered steel.  On the other hand, my characters often know things that I don't.So, it all works out.  My character is unable to tell by looking at a rock formation whether the nearby volcano is going to erupt soon, and I can't tell you the long and dry details of the god Pelor.  Still, if my cleric has high ranks in Knowledge (religion), I would certainly expect to know about the god.I've read the Monster Manual over many times, and when our party was jumped by a bunch of ethereal dogs I knew we'd been attacked by shadow mastiffs.  However, my character was unaware of this, so I said nothing.  In our group, we draw a very firm line between player knowledge and character knowledge.  To give another example, in the campagin I'm currently attempting to DM, one of the people exploring in the sunken volcano crater discovered a patch of shiny glassy rock, that had ripples of green and purple running through it.  The character, a fighter, probably had no idea what it was.  The character recognized it as being the fairly valuable rainbow obsidian, and brought a few good-sized chunks back with him.  Since at that point in the game we'd already introduced a few metagame concepts (like setting up with sunken volcano as being a tropic resort hotel and spa) I let it pass.  On the other hand, if one of them tried to manufacture gunpowder, I would have objected.As I mentioned before, our group once played a game where we translated our real-life selves into D&D characters - aka, into those little numbers on a page.  It was quite interesting, because there was no difference between player knowledge and character knowledge.  However, our knowledge of the D&D world was quite limited.  Eventually, that game lost steam because playing ourselves just wasn't that interesting.The whole reason why we play D&D is that we can pretend we're doing things that would be impossible in real life.  So, if we've admitted that our game-selves are not our real-selves, why are we trying to make them the same?  You swapped a cushy life in suburbia for the ability to swing a sword.  Deal with it.</blockquote>

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