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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9345868" data-attributes="member: 86653">I can't remember a time when it wasn't relevant. It's permanently relevant after about six months of regular play. Once the players have encountered some puzzle once, they now know about it and know how to overcome it easily. The first time they encounter a regenerating troll, they're freaked out and challenged. The first time they solve the puzzle, i.e. figure out that fire stops the troll from regenerating, they're elated and feel great. The second time they encounter a regenerating troll, they're nonchalant and not challenged in the slightest because they've already solved that puzzle. The referee is presenting them with an already-solved puzzle. That's boring. So the referee has to constantly come up with new stuff to keep challenging the players.After you've worked through the Monster Manual once, those are all solved puzzles (if they are puzzle monsters, like regenerating trolls' vulnerability to fire). So the trick becomes using them in new and interesting ways, new and different combinations, reskinning, home-brewing monsters, swapping powers, giving wholly new powers, etc. Another way to think about it is chasing novelty. Once the novelty wears off, it's done.It is very much an arms race of creativity between the players and referee. But not in an antagonistic sense. I think this is one of the core reasons why the stuff in the OSR is so wildly creative and the DIY spirit permeates the scene. Every player is constantly tasked with creatively solving puzzles and the referee is constantly tasked with introducing new creative puzzles. Again, puzzles here standing in for all the stuff whether literal puzzles, unique monsters, traps, etc.There are a lot of ways to explain the PCs having the knowledge that players do. The simplest is playing in pawn stance. The PC is a gaming piece. The style is all about challenging the player, not having the player pretend to be challenged by something they already know exactly how to beat. If you have a continuing campaign with rotating characters due to PC death, players coming and going, etc you can explain it by the PCs talking to each other and passing on the knowledge they gained. One PC died to a mimic, so now the rest of the party knows to be careful of random chests. When the player makes a new character who joins the party, the survivors tell the new character about the PC dying to a mimic. Multiply that across generations of PC parties who survive and pass their knowledge along. Oral traditions, adventurer's guilds, writing things down, folk tales, etc. Did anyone survive a given encounter? Chances are that knowledge is out there somewhere, even if there's a price tag attached.</blockquote>

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