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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8996821" data-attributes="member: 4937">Maybe?&nbsp; I'm fine to use your language as long as we both understand each other.&nbsp; I do think your description complicates the matter in ways I find unnecessary, but it could be that you don't find it unnecessary.&nbsp; So until I understand you more fully and until I'm certain we are on the same page, let's just use your language.But, real people don't actually talk that way, and in reality people can be and often are very confident when they are ignorant.&nbsp; One of the attributes of real ignorance is that you are also unaware that you are ignorant.&nbsp; Experts are often much more uncertain than people with only limited understanding.&nbsp; It's unrealistic for a clerk to behave like one of Heinlein's expert witnesses and state everything based on their own firm awareness of their limited perceptions being careful to never affirm anything that they can't know for certain.So for example, if the PC's ask the Clerk:Player #1: &quot;Did you see King Gowrie come into this counting house with the Chancellor of the Exchequer this afternoon&quot;?Clerk: &quot;Yes&quot;But strictly under the no hidden gotchas rule as you are using it, the Clerks answer is false.&nbsp; He actually saw Prince Killup.&nbsp; King Gowrie was actually at the time playing with his four-year-old niece in the Royal Gardens, who was quite unware the large yellowish toad was her uncle the King or that her father was not actually named Gowrie.&nbsp;&nbsp; If I the GM give a convoluted answer to a simple question such as, &quot;I saw a man whom I thought to be King Gowrie&quot;, this actually passes metagame information to the players, as the clerk has no way of even suspecting that the man wearing the royal robes is not King Gowrie.I think there is real value in the players learning that information they previously had was not in fact accurate.&nbsp; That's where good twists come into play.&nbsp; You want as a GM for the players to have that real &quot;Aha!&quot; moment based on clues picked up in play and not based on clues learned from passing information through the metagame.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8996821, member: 4937"] Maybe? I'm fine to use your language as long as we both understand each other. I do think your description complicates the matter in ways I find unnecessary, but it could be that you don't find it unnecessary. So until I understand you more fully and until I'm certain we are on the same page, let's just use your language. But, real people don't actually talk that way, and in reality people can be and often are very confident when they are ignorant. One of the attributes of real ignorance is that you are also unaware that you are ignorant. Experts are often much more uncertain than people with only limited understanding. It's unrealistic for a clerk to behave like one of Heinlein's expert witnesses and state everything based on their own firm awareness of their limited perceptions being careful to never affirm anything that they can't know for certain. So for example, if the PC's ask the Clerk: Player #1: "Did you see King Gowrie come into this counting house with the Chancellor of the Exchequer this afternoon"? Clerk: "Yes" But strictly under the no hidden gotchas rule as you are using it, the Clerks answer is false. He actually saw Prince Killup. King Gowrie was actually at the time playing with his four-year-old niece in the Royal Gardens, who was quite unware the large yellowish toad was her uncle the King or that her father was not actually named Gowrie. If I the GM give a convoluted answer to a simple question such as, "I saw a man whom I thought to be King Gowrie", this actually passes metagame information to the players, as the clerk has no way of even suspecting that the man wearing the royal robes is not King Gowrie. I think there is real value in the players learning that information they previously had was not in fact accurate. That's where good twists come into play. You want as a GM for the players to have that real "Aha!" moment based on clues picked up in play and not based on clues learned from passing information through the metagame. [/QUOTE]

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