How do you handle campaign history knowledge?

[eris404]

Hey all,

I'm full of questions this week.

I'm curious about something. How do you handle player knowledge of history in the campaign world? For example, in our group one DM has a homebrew world and he has been giving us handouts about historical events (wars, etc.). In another game, the DM is using the Forgotten Realms setting pretty much to the letter. Now, some of the players have read the handouts/FR books, but not all, and sometimes this knowledge comes up in game discussion between characters.

In our group, the people who have read the background information tend to make knowledgeable characters (for example, I read the FRCS and I'm playing a bard/cleric of Oghma, someone who would probably know a lot about the Realms anyway). This sort of knowledge hasn't been a problem in our games, because I can't think of situation where a character was acting on information that he couldn't possibly know. But I was curious how this kind of situation was handled in other games.

Do you count setting background information/history to be player knowledge that is off limits, even if the DM provided it as a handout? Do you require a character to make a knowledge/intelligence roll even if the player knows a certain campaign detail from his reading? Do you penalize players who don't read handouts or reward those that do?

 

[WanderingMonster]

Start writing you history on 3x5 cards and handing them out at the beginning of each session. Have everyone make a Gather Information roll (or Bardic Lore if appropriate) and hand out the paritcularly pertinent info to the winner of that roll. Everyone else receieves an essentially random yet easily digestible bit of information that their character might happen to know.

If they say, "DM, I want to know more about the The Sundering War," smile to yourself and feed them what they want.

 

[EricNoah]

It's tricky... on the one hand, you want the players to be involved, to read up on stuff about the campaign setting because it may help them be better role-players. On the other hand, you don't want them having unfair knowledge particularly about NPC abilities, secret alliances, etc. I would say let the players use what knowledge they have, and if you find someone who has "too much" just take them aside and ask them not to spoil it for the others.

 

[rushlight]

I have a fairly rich homebrew campaign that I run, and background/history is very important.

First off, I'm actually running the second campaign set in this world - the first ended some 1500 years ago. However, there is still one PC playing who was alive then (he's effectively immortal) so he has a good grasp on people/places/events from that age. It's something that has made the current campaign much more detailed. I can drop a reference to some older place or person, and usually he'll recall it (just like his character would). If it's something I think his character would know, then he'd get a roll on his Knowledge Ancient History to recall the bit of lore.

It's very rewarding when some tiny bit of information put in for detail (basically for my sake) gets spotted by a player. I have pages of history and all sorts of things about my world - about only a third of which has ever been given to the players. Once it's given to the players it's there for them to use. I feel that a player would get alot more out of my games by listening and using that information. A few of my players don't really bother though, but I suppose they are having fun their way and I try to give them some of what they like too. But when the players who care can figure out WHY the trade guild is attacking only caravans from Elden - and what that has to do with the dragons from the west and their allies from the plane of Fire... that's when it all comes together!

I have to say that it is most rewarding to hear the players, when talking on nights where there's no game, relate stories about their character's history and the various persons, places, or events that I had created. That tells me that some of my creations really did leave a mark somewhere. That's awesome!

 

[Cor Azer]

The campaign history hand-out I gave at the start of my face-to-face campaign just gave broad strokes of history, so few specific details were in it. That said, the players who read it also wanted to make characters knowledgeable in that history, so several took ranks in Knowledge(History) which they occasionally use to get more information (I love campaign histories and the like, even if they never get used). Of course, it turns out that the document they read was written as if by a present time historian, so facts were written from the 'victors' point of view, which caused some details to surprise the party.

My PbeM game is decidedly different. At the start, I told the players the name of the village and kingdom they were starting in and nothing else. Almost everything else about the campaign world (geography, history, religion) came from their backgrounds. On several occasions, when a player has wanted in-character reasons to do something, or to motivate others, they've had their characters 'recall' old stories, fables, or histories, and made up some story that helps show their argument. It's really cool to learn about my campaign world this way . Of course, as time went on, I've added my own stuff to the history of the world, but again, several players have ranks in Knowledge(History) so it's easy to pass this information on to them.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'm curious about something. How do you handle player knowledge of history in the campaign world? For example, in our group one DM has a homebrew world and he has been giving us handouts about historical events (wars, etc.).

Hey, that would be me! My reasoning on this is that the information I provide in handouts is equivalent to what an average person would know. I don't go into big details on my handouts - because I know that will make it less likely that they will get read. The info in my handouts is the "common knowledge" about that thing.

To use a real-world equivalency example, my handout on World War II would mention the reasons for war, the involved parties, etc. It might even mention certain key individuals, like Eisenhower, Hitler, or Rommel. It wouldn't mention Rommel's involvement in a plot to kill Hitler. That would take further Knowledge (history) checks.

This sort of knowledge hasn't been a problem in our games, because I can't think of situation where a character was acting on information that he couldn't possibly know.

Like I said, I assume that all the characters could know that information. If the player decides that their character (for wahtever reason) might not have paid that much attention to that sort of thing, that's cool.

Do you count setting background information/history to be player knowledge that is off limits, even if the DM provided it as a handout? Do you require a character to make a knowledge/intelligence roll even if the player knows a certain campaign detail from his reading? Do you penalize players who don't read handouts or reward those that do?

No, no, and no. I've taken to giving relatively flat XP rewards, not giving XP for all the little extra things players can do. Chances are that paying attention to the handouts, roleplaying well, and so on already gives that player and their PC an advantage, and extra XP just compounds that.

Some players simply aren't big readers, or don't have the time to do that, or aren't comfortable "acting" in front of a group. I don't necessarily want to do anything to discourage them from playing. Different people get their fun out of gaming in different ways, I don't want to penalize them just because they don't have the same game-view as I do.