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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 1919373" data-attributes="member: 1129">For me, it depends on a few things.Campaign Setting. It may sound off the wall, but Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk commoners probably know more about monsters than most people. Adventurers are common in both settings. If I was running a campaign against trolls using a lot of 3rd party material, I'd say that the players would know about most of the troll types. Not their specific strengths or weaknesses, but enough to tell a stone troll from a forest troll for example.Knowledge Base: tied into campaign setting. Are you playing D&D or are you using the D&D engine to run some emulation of the middle ages? D&D assumes everyone reads and writes and that communication is much greater between areas than it actually was. Middle ages people rarely leave their farms and are ignorant and thus should know only about what they have directly encountered with everything else being rumors.Character's Skills: To encourage characters to take knowledge skills, I have no problem giving them higher DC checks for things that may be a bit vauge. "Give me a Noblity Check, DC 20. Yeah, you remember hearing about half-giants being conned out of their mercenary payment from one of the nobles here and that despite their non-giant size, they managed to wield weapons large enough to take down a standard giant."</blockquote>