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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 5571104" data-attributes="member: 20323">Funny you mention coins... The other day I was brainstorming a side quest where the PCs have to track thieves who've broken into a mint to steal the first run of coins minted with the new king's image. Great minds <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Exactly. Know what your players go for and aim to draw them into the setting through that as the portal. For example, similar situation but with a "hack n slash" player... A real rat bastard half-orc screws them over, and at some point PC gets disarmed or their weapon pinned. Let them have the option of using the half orc's belt pouch as a momentary weapon to daze/blind/knock prone the half-orc. If they do, cue the bit about rough/sharp-edged Orcish coins "filling the rotten mouth of the half-breed traitor." Later at camp PC washes blood from coins and notices a new fact about them, and you drive home the point that Orcish coins are sharp and heavy!I agree and that's exactly how I run Knowledge skills in my game. Its like layers of an onion. Theres the common stuff that everyone knows - it may or may not be true - that I use to frame a scene. Then there's a baseline of knowledge about the topic at hand before a PC trained in a skill makes a check. Finally there is specialized knowledge learned when a successful check is made. Sometimes I add an extra layer of knowledge in the form of old tomes or sages which must be consulted to gain a secret or open up new use of a knowledge skill.When the party is on a PC's home turf, like a dwarf's mountain stronghold of birth, I give the player narrative leeway about the setting if they wish. Often this would be through the form of "can I? / do I?" knowledge checks, to which the answer on a successful check is "yes."Did we used to game together? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I did exactly this in my last game, waited after first session or two to give setting one-page handout. I think the first thing players learned about setting was the map they saw in the lord's secret chamber where they met. And of course it was a prop.Show THEN tell? That sounds like a good approach for any level.</blockquote>

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