Do you let your players know your House Rules?

[cignus_pfaccari]

Folklore is most often wrong, occasionally incomplete, and rarely accurate.

I don't accept this as a reason to change things on the characters.

PCs have multiple ways of discovering details about monsters' strengths, abilities, and weaknesses:

* - Divination spells
* - Trial and error
* - Dissection/vivisection

This information can be transmitted in many fashions, most often through professional organizations, like wizards and thieves guilds, city guards and other military outfits, and temples...all of whom have a vested interest in having correct information. After all, it will often make a difference between life and death not just for members of the organization, but the goals and existence of the organization.

Some of that information may not be common knowledge, yes, either because of the rarity of the creature or inability to transmit or act on that information. A peasant isn't going to be able to act on the knowledge that he needs a magic or a cold iron weapon to really hurt that lemure, since he'd have neither. However, one can assume that trained adventurers (and most would be) should have at least general system information (i.e. what DR is, what energy drain is, etc.), and know how to access what they don't know.

Brad

 

[Umbran]

This information can be transmitted in many fashions...

In theory, yes. In practice... well, even in the modern world, what with it's electronic communication and scientific method, and all that, dissemination of basic facts is often dicey. Now remove clear communication and the scientific method from the scene, and what do you think happens?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Information is changed in transmission, pure and simple. People hear things wrong, people deliberately mislead... It happens even now, as Umbran said, with communication techniques a lot more reliable than word of mouth.

Plus, why assume every campaign has adventurer's guilds? Or that every monster is common enough that anyone has had the chance to study it?

If the DM wants to allow a Knowledge check, that makes sense. Simply assuming that every adventurer automatically knows how damage reduction works is, IMO, not only unnecessary but damaging to the feel of the game. Obviously, that's not going to apply to everyone, but I wouldn't want to play in a game where I knew everything about the monsters ahead of time, or where the DM told us things like remaining hit points of the guy we're fighting, and I certainly wouldn't run one that way.

People today don't know everything about the world around them, even in their areas of expertise. Why assume characters do?

 

[rangerjohn]

Well I see no reason to be a craftman in your worlds. I'm going have to investigate every single monster it seems, so no planning ahead.

 

[Zappo]

Your character, unfortunately, was duped.

No: I was duped. Metagaming is still metagaming, whether an in-game justification can be found or not.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Well I see no reason to be a craftman in your worlds. I'm going have to investigate every single monster it seems, so no planning ahead.

Never said that. Most of the time, a character can research what he needs--just like most of the time, an expert on a given topic in the real world is correct in his studies/assessments.

It's just not accurate 100% of the time. People seem to be treating this like it's an all-or-nothing issue, and it's not.

 

[Zappo]

Knowing whether a vrock is hurt better by cold iron or by silver is a hard-to-come-by information that many characters can't conceivably have. However, we aren't talking about this. We're talking about knowing the general rules for DR. "Certain monsters are especially vulnerable to exotic materials" or "certain monsters can only be fought effectively by weapons of extraordinary enchantment" is an information which anyone with a few ranks in Knowledge (planes or religion or arcana or a bunch more) must certainly know, and which any adventurer should know by the time he can afford +1 weapons and adamantium.

 

[Pagan priest]

I generally do not tell the players exactly what they are facing, unless it is something that the charcters would know. I sometimes change cerain things about some of the monsters, and I write up my own as well. I've had players upset because of things that could not be revealed ("how could just a goblin have that many hit points?") due to magic or other effects.

On the other hand, any changes made to the rules need to be discussed and approved by the players. Anything else is cheating on the part of the DM. I am not saying that you need to spell out which monster gets what, only that the players need to know that the rules have been changed. Having these rules written down and accessable by all is a very good idea.

As things currently stand, there are a couple of DM's in this part of the world that I will not game with because they have consistantly changed the rules, often without warning or preamble in the middle of a game. Usually without thinking about the consequences of the change either.

 

[rangerjohn]

Never said that. Most of the time, a character can research what he needs--just like most of the time, an expert on a given topic in the real world is correct in his studies/assessments.

It's just not accurate 100% of the time. People seem to be treating this like it's an all-or-nothing issue, and it's not.

Knowing this you would spend valuable resources, especially Xp! To have it wasted?

It's like ranger favored enemy at that point, with the bag of worms that entails.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Knowing this you would spend valuable resources, especially Xp! To have it wasted?

It's like ranger favored enemy at that point, with the bag of worms that entails.

Hardly wasted. That +4 adamantine flaming burst greatsword is going to come in handy a lot. It just might not work against one or two particular creatures you thought it would.

And it's not like my players are ignorant of the fact that there's some risk. Sure, if I had a brand new player and sprung this on him with no warning, that would suck. But I tell people from the beginning "A few details are changing on monsters, and that might include weaknesses/vulnerabilities." So they know not to count anything as a given.

This is one of those areas where I, and my group, prefer to try to make the world as emersive as possible--and that means that not even the experts get everything right. Sometimes you have to try a few times to see what works.