Knowledge[Local] : How Local?

[Tonguez]

here's the thing: if the rules mean Local *anywhere*, how's that supposed to work for a character who's been in the town and continent less than a week, places he's never heard of before?

Rumour, news, tourist


For instance I can tell you that you will find the Acropolis in Athens even though I have never been to Greece. I can also tell you it features a number of temples dedicated to Athena. - Local Knowledge:Athens

As another example my brotherinlaw was recently in Iraq a place I've never been, but after talking to him I now know a little bit more about life in Iraq (atm)

Because of the News I now know that the majority of people in Iraq are Shia muslims although Sunni held the political power before the war, and Kurds live in the north ...(Local Knowledge:Iraq)

(there were Tourist in Roman times who wrote about there travels and the wanderings of Adventurers means that a lot of news and rumour probably circulates in DnD worlds (afterall why wouldn't a retired bard start telling tales about his many adventures in Waterdeep, Cormyr or Hommlet)

 

[aco175]

IMHO, it's 100% clear, RAW, that ONE knowledge skill covers all the categories listed under each type of Knowledge skill. Look at Perform - do players have to buy Perform (string:Fiddle) and Perform (String: Harp) as different skills? Or just Perform (String)? I mean, they are totally different instruments, right? (sorry for the sarcasm)

The perform skill does break down the whole skill into groups. The skill perform doesn't just give one skill mastery over every form of instrument. I mean there is at least a dozen seperate instruments that fall under the heading of String, Percussion, Wind, not to mention non-instrument ones such as sing, juggle, storytelling, fable, hip-hop, whatever.

I'm not sure this is realy different from each of the Knowledge skills. I agree that each of the skills could be broken down into many different headings, but the whole problem is deciding how big or small the piece of pie is that you want to chop the skill down into.

I have always tried to make some of this stuff as simple as possible. For Perform, I'd like to have something that you get to pick one instrument or 'artform' for each rank. For knowledge skills maybe give one region for each rank, although now you have to decide how big each regin is. I would give each roll outside this a penalty of 2 or 3 just to keep everything simple