Knowledge (Local) - How Does Your Group Use and Define It

[FreeTheSlaves]

Knowledge can't be rerolled while Gather Info can; you can use Gather Info to track someone who is using Gather Info, but you can't do that with someone using their Knowledge. Of course you can Gather Info on people with good knowledge.

They both can achieve the same result but by differing means with differing drawbacks; my 1/2 socio-political adventure features both heavily.

 

[The Shaman]

I imported Knowledge (local) into my Modern games, and here's how I've defined it for my players: "The player must specify a discrete location such as a city or other similar geographic area: ‘Seattle' or ‘Mt. Rainier National Park' is acceptable, but ‘the state of Washington' or ‘the Cascades' is not."

It's usefulness depends entirely on how much your campaign revolves around certain locales: for our Modern military game, the characters will be visiting the city of Algiers many times over the course of the war, so the skill itself and its synergy with other skills like Gather Information, Diplomacy, Disguise, and Bluff will make the character who invested skill ranks pretty darn useful over time.

I also added Knowledge (local) to my d20 CoC character - in the event that our expedition passes through Punta Arenas, Chile (a not improbable occurance, actually) then I will be able to lend a definite hand in obtaining supplies, finding important people, and so on. I think it's a good flavor skill, and it's a good skill for NPCs, if you're the sort of GM who actually uses the dice to determine NPC skill check results (like I am).

 

[Jarrod]

Yeah, it's definitely internal knowledge about an area. Gather Info is asking someone, and there are times you don't want people to know you've been asking; on the other hand, you can always ask someone else (G Info retry) but you know what you know (K(L) no retry).

The question then becomes how do you learn about multiple locales. There are two options from other WoTC material:

Each point is put in K(L)(Somewhere). I have 3 ranks in K(L) El Paso, and 1 in K(L) Madison, WI. Very precise, but you spend a lot of points.

Each rank gives you a new area to access. I think Perform in 3.0 was like this: I have 5 ranks in K(L), and know about El Paso, Madison, Los Angeles, Maui, and Bonaire.

Lastly, you immediately have local knowledge anywhere you go -- K(L) is K(L), and wherever you go there you are.


The third option is incredibly unrealistic. The first is the most realistic, but I didn't like how it turned into a point sink. The second is just eh. That's why I went with number 3, but the GM decides if you've been there long enough. So a character with 6 ranks in K(L) will know a lot about his hometown, and 1 rank-worth about the town he got to last week.

 

[reveal]

Thinking about it for a bit, it might make more sense to go with a broad definition of "local," as outlined in the skill description. If you think about it, all the Knowledge skills are pretty vague. For example, you use Knowledge (nature) to learn about fey, giants, and plants. You don't have a Knowledge (nature-fey), Knowledge (nature-giants), and Knowledge (nature-plants).

Looking at it that way, why should Knowledge (local) be any different? It would up to the DM to determine the DC based upon if the character had been there before, had prior knowledge, and/or other factors.

I think I may have to change this in my current campaign.

 

[Armadon63]

Why have KL for certain spots. I always assumed you where always reading about different locations or hearing info from your travels. I mean I know stuff about places from places Ive never been just from stories friends tell me. To me KL is just Wilderness Survival for city folks.

 

[Tonguez]

Lastly, you immediately have local knowledge anywhere you go -- K(L) is K(L), and wherever you go there you are.

The third option is incredibly unrealistic. .

I don't think its unrealistic to me K (local) is the general knowledge of tourists check and as the PCs are either globetrotters or hobnobbing with globe trotters then they are likely to pick up stories, rumors sand legends

take for instance the writings of Marco Polo and how they affected Europe in his day. Those educated few who read his writingsa could tell you stuff about China even though they had never been there.

as another example I can tell you that in New York stands the Statue of Liberty a place called the Bronx and Central Park. It has a mayor, is in the state of NY, has yellow taxi cabs and a mixed population of italians, irish, jews, africans, etc. But I have never been to NY (and my information may be out of date)

As an ancient example I know that Alexandria in Egypt features a major library and a large jewish and Greek population (I assume people living at the time would know more)

So for a fantasy example um Ankh-Morpork is a city with a mixed population of humans, dwarfs, trolls and even undead! It sits on the River Ankh and is ruled by the Patrician. It is the seat of the Unseen University (the leading school of Wizardy on the Disc) and has an efficient Watch lead by the famous Sir Samuel Vimes.

contrast that to Gather Information Ankh Morpork - "you want anything go so old Nobby he can fix you up", "oh and don't buy any of Dibblers pies or his sausages on a stick"....

 

[Scion]

Way into houserule territory here, but here is how I do it.

For every point you put into knowledge (local) you get to choose one area. You can pick a city, a country, a region, or a continent. The wider the area the higher the dc will be.

You can pick the same area more than once, if you do so then all checks on that area gain an extra synergy bonus for each point beyond the first (so if you have 2 points in 'area X' then you get your normal roll with a +1 synergy bonus).


So that is how I run it. So far it has worked very well. We'll see if it conitinues to do so

 

[Li Shenron]

We use Knowledge(Local) as a set of skills, each of which is a specialized but broad knowledge of a single area.

It's specialized because it obviously answers questions only to its area. How large should the area be is the real key problem, and we don't know if we're running it in the best way. The only campaign (of 3) where some characters have this skill is set in the Forgotten Realms, and we pretty much all agreed to use a separate Knowlege(Local) for each area which falls into a regional book. This may be anyway very large! You can take Knowledge(Unapproachable East) and cover everything in that general area.
We did this because it was easy, and because Knowledge(Underdark) seemed effectively a precedent.

At the same time it's broad because it covers topics of other knowledge skills, first of all Geography, but it is also used to get hints to local monsters, local NPC, and it also covers History and Nature albeit always on the local neighbourhood only.

So far it's not a common skill to take, but it seems very useful this way, because most of the time the characters spend points in the KL of the starting campaign location, and if the campaign seems to bring the party far away, they stop spending points to it.

 

[Li Shenron]

And by the way, it's very different than Gather Info! GI can provide "instant knowledge" to any place you're in, but

(1) it takes time - you can't gather info about a monster you're fighting against, unless you gather info before you meet the monster

(2) it requires source of information (people) - you can't gather info in a marsh, on a rocky mountain, in a desert or deep forest, since no one is around

 

[isoChron]

I don't think its unrealistic to me K (local) is the general knowledge of tourists check and as the PCs are either globetrotters or hobnobbing with globe trotters then they are likely to pick up stories, rumors sand legends

take for instance the writings of Marco Polo and how they affected Europe in his day. Those educated few who read his writingsa could tell you stuff about China even though they had never been there.

as another example I can tell you that in New York stands the Statue of Liberty a place called the Bronx and Central Park. It has a mayor, is in the state of NY, has yellow taxi cabs and a mixed population of italians, irish, jews, africans, etc. But I have never been to NY (and my information may be out of date)

As an ancient example I know that Alexandria in Egypt features a major library and a large jewish and Greek population (I assume people living at the time would know more)

So for a fantasy example um Ankh-Morpork is a city with a mixed population of humans, dwarfs, trolls and even undead! It sits on the River Ankh and is ruled by the Patrician. It is the seat of the Unseen University (the leading school of Wizardy on the Disc) and has an efficient Watch lead by the famous Sir Samuel Vimes.

contrast that to Gather Information Ankh Morpork - "you want anything go so old Nobby he can fix you up", "oh and don't buy any of Dibblers pies or his sausages on a stick"....

OK. Tell me what do you know of the city of Muenster, Germany
It's highly unlikely you know something about it except you read about it, you lived there, you visited it some time or you have seen it on TV.
Your point of view is very modern and people nowadays are more educated than people in earlier times.
Your examples show you learned something via books or other media and therefore you have 1 or 2 ranks in Knowledge (Local, New York). But what do you know about the behaviour of squirrels in the central park. What words to say in the bronx to not get beaten up. Which area to visit and which is better left out.
That's what Knowledge local does. Gather Information may give you a specific info but it takes 1d4+1 hours to get that info (if the check is high enough).

Just my point of view. It works well if you keep your campaign area down to two or three regions. As soon as you are hopping around toril and the planes it's seldom wise to spend points in Knowledge (local).
Greetings