It’s really as simple as asking your GM if your character would know this. “Hey GM, would my character know if the troll is weak to fire?” and you’ll either get “No, your character is unfamiliar with this region and it creatures” or “Yes, your friend in the town guard recited his tale of falling such a beast at your last posting”. A lot of people enjoy this game to role-play, and using knowledge your character wouldn’t have can take the fun out of it.

Forcing a whole table full of people to deliberately be ignorant and pretend to “discover” things that they already know isn’t fun, it’s tedious

That’s like, your opinion man.

Seriously, that is an opinion yet you write it as a general truth. Please don’t do that. There are tables that enjoy the role-playing aspect more, including “my character wouldn’t know that”. I would know, I’m part of one table like that.

“The read-aloud text spend a lot of time descrribing that door-”

fuck yeah we’re searching that bitch again. We call that media literacy, and that’s a good thing.

Wat? They absolutely are belittling people that play the game as it is written… You think “play let’s pretend with dice” is not meant in a derogatory way just because they said “that’s fine” after? Even then followed up with basically “you won’t catch me doing that”. Their entire post is absolutely “yucking the yums” of everyone that doesn’t play DnD as a combat only tactical board game.

I won’t deny that I’m being an ass, but I will point out that the conversation started with the original post effectively calling me a bitch. Me being somewhat of an ass is a measured and proportionate response.

I won’t deny that I’m being an ass, but I will point out that the conversation started with the original post effectively calling me a bitch. Me being somewhat of an ass is a measured and proportionate response.

Forcing a whole table full of people to deliberately be ignorant and pretend to “discover” things that they already know isn’t fun, it’s tedious. Even most “roleplay over gaming” types are still there to roleplay being a heroic skilled figure, not a dribbling moron that knows nothing about their own world.

Pretending to be a moron can be fun for some players, if they’re freely choosing to do it themselves. Being forced into it, especially if it happens multiple times, isn’t fun for most people. The guy on the right in that meme does not look like someone who’s having fun, just someone who’s briefly tolerating some bullshit so he can get on with the rest of the game.

This is the DM being thin-skinned about the fact that they wanted the players to have a challenge, and when it turned out not to be, wanting them to pretend like it was anyway so that they can tell themselves it was a good game.

Question. Do you know how to escape a car that’s upside down and submerged in water? Because if you don’t, there are a lot of things that are going to get you killed due to not being aware of what the issue is. it’s a danger that not everyone on the earth is familiar with despite the fact that it is a hyper common vehicle

This is a bad example. The point of the fire thing is that all experienced RPG players or readers of common fantasy literature know “trolls -> fire”. You’ve picked a scenario that would also be obscure outside of a hypothetical game outside of the real world. I’m not questioning the possible existence of a world where professional mercenaries don’t know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but I do question its value as a fun game setting.

If your playing a dumb character, then rolling through troll canyon without doing research first is exactly what that character would do…

Respect for the RPing…

because I love being told “your character knows nothing about subject that you personally are intimately familiar with”. Makes for fun game play, I promise.

in the remaster trolls have the humanoid trait, so they use society. GM can rule to change that, though.

EXACTLY.

People in this thread keep saying that they should be expected to keep the information that they as a player have because it’s obvious. No one is really giving an argument other than the fact that it hurts my fun. No one else who is making that argument is thinking about how the fact that that hurts other players fun because it makes it all about them.

You are hitting the nail on the head. You are able to have your cake and eat it too if you combine the roleplay with learning the information. You know you’re going to a place called Troll Canyon? Go do the research. Suddenly you now do know that they are weak to fire. No one can argue that fact, and everyone can prepare. Moreover, you’re also going to be in an area where you could probably get some extra fire stuff to help take care of them. It’s also the type of cleverness that a DM will actually reward instead of just going. Oh yeah, of course you would know the thing for no reason.

I really don’t know what is so hard to understand about this. You are playing a role-playing game. Part of the role-playing game is that you are playing a role due to, you know, it being role-playing game. One of those roles is that you are an inexperienced adventurer. The expectation is that you as an inexperienced adventurer would not know the detail of a monster that an experienced adventurer would know.

No one is saying you cannot use fire. Everyone is saying you cannot prepare only fire spells when going to this area because that would be you having information to knowledge that your character does not have. But do you want to know what every single DM would reward? You go into a library to look up trolls. If you know that they’re supposed to be trolls in a specific area because it’s called troll canyon, do some research. I guarantee you that the DM will actually reward you.

What you want is a reward given for no effort. You want to say that your character has the information because you as a player have the information, but again, this is a role-playing game and you are playing a role that doesn’t have the information that your player has. The limitations on you being an inexperienced character and not having access to that information is something that you should probably ask the DM at the start, but it also does mean that you’re going to be limiting pretty severely the role-playing aspect of the role-playing game. If you would like to have your cake and eat it too, then I highly recommend trying to do something in the game that would actually demonstrate that your character is trying to learn something about the various creatures, so that way you could not only get vulnerabilities from that, but also be rewarded in general and look like a team player trying to help out everybody by getting the information across to everyone instead of just assuming that they are allowed to have the thing themselves Just a general hint and tip from a DM who is tired of this shit.

Just a general hint and tip from a DM who is tired of this shit.

Try being a better DM that doesn’t unnecessarily put their players into unsatisfying situations where they have to play against themselves. Make the thing their characters learn actually be something the player has to learn, instead of scolding them and calling them “bitches” when they don’t jump through your hoops.

Just a general hint and tip from a DM who is tired of this shit.

Try being a better DM that doesn’t unnecessarily put their players into unsatisfying situations where they have to play against themselves. Make the thing their characters learn actually be something the player has to learn, instead of scolding them and calling them “bitches” when they don’t jump through your hoops.

In my experience, knowledge checks are for “My character has a high int stat and I can’t be bothered to think about this puzzle, solve it for me”.

Those are both great examples of why a character might try to throw anti-troll paste (tar) at trolls.

::: spoiler spoiler A red cape doesn’t mean anything different than a black cape to a bull, and sucking venom from a snakebite isn’t a thing outside of movies. It won’t hurt, but it won’t do much good either. One myth that will cause damage is putting ice on a pit viper bite though, so remember to avoid doing that. :::

Funny that you use those examples, since they’re both wrong. If anything, we should be running at the trolls with stinky socks because someone wanted to sound smart at a bar once and made up a factoid that spread like wildfire among the common folk.

The red is done for dramatic effect in rodeos; it’s movement they react to. Especially if they’re feeling agitated, as in a rodeo.

if your headed to a place called troll canyon you should probably do some research on what trolls are weak to beforehand

I feel like trolls are common enough that even a farmer would know they don’t like fire or acid. And yet, some DMs will make you roll a dungeoneering or other knowledge check to see if your adventurer knows.