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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7612324" data-attributes="member: 996">My thoughts do go in strange directions, sometimes. The point of exposition is to present the audience with information the characters have that they can't be expected to have.  Players, like an audience, do not know everything their characters might or should know, especially when the DM is mak'n stuff up as he goes along (which is not exactly a bad way to run some RPGs). Sometimes the DM should obviously just present the players with that information directly, sometimes he can do it through an NPC, an inscription, or whatever.  It's just like regular authorial exposition in those cases.But, for whatever reason, we have mechanics available to test whether a PC has a specific bit of knowledge.  If the PC passes the check *ding* he remembers/deduces something (and presumably relays it to his friends) in a fit of exposition.  Sticklers for continuity might also point out that exposition /establishes/ that the characters know something, at a certain time, and that informs what they do from then on, or that, contrarily, delaying exposition until after actions informed by it are complete is retconning.  The same dissatisfaction such viewers might have with a retcon or twist like that, might be felt by a player or GM confronted with blatant use of 'player knowledge' to drive PC decisions.I don't think it's a popular way of thinking about RPGs - usually it's realism/"verisimilitude" vs playability or the like - but I often think of RPGs as modeling a genre story, rather than imaginary characters in an imaginary setting that may or may not have a genre story happen to them in the course of play.  So if there is a mechanic designed to impart character knowledge onto players, it should end up providing something like exposition in the narrative.  Including doing so like /good/ exposition, that's not intrusive or pointless, and maybe even enjoyable.   ...the rest of this is more me agreeing with you, if, again, maybe strangely so... Which is really a different version of the /same/ game.  It's not unreasonable to expect some continuity from one ed to another - that was a major issue for some players with 4e, for example, and thus exactly the kind of thing 5e has tried to avoid.  Yes, different prior eds handled skills differently from eachother, so 5e needed to be flexible enough in its handling - that is, the Empowered DM's handling - of skills, to let different past-ed styles port over more or less seamlessly.  It's far from perfect, the DM can make it work. This is my sticking point, as well.  The rules in 5e support a lot in the sense of giving the DM plenty of latitude, they don't close off much of the possible universe of play styles.  They don't support much in the sense of forcing you to play one way.  They definitely don't force anyone else to play iserth's way (even though it's a way that works really well with 5e, it's not the only way, and the rules don't prescribe or require it, nor do they proscribe other approaches).</blockquote>

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