"My Character Would Know That"

Good to know.

bloodtide said:

And most of them are the same skills that a person in 1300 ish would have had: hunting, fishing, and general survival off the land.

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I don't think you know much about how people lived in the medieval era. Peasants did not know how to hunt because hunting by peasants was largely illegal. Nor did they live off the land. Rather, they toiled in fields from dawn until.dusk. some may have fished but the aristocrats controlled as much waterways as they did forests.

My point is "people in 1300" were not these badass survivalists. They were oppressed, illiterate peasants whose lives were centered around and usually locked to the lord's fields.

overgeeked said:

Right. And not having any of them prevents using them to start a fire. If you handwave gear, in most non-absurd example, then you're always going to have something to start the fire. That's the point. That explicitly prevents skilled play. Skilled play is not "we get to do the thing regardless but get to describe it happening in different ways based on what we wrote down." Skilled play is thinking ahead and spending limited resources (gold, carrying capacity, etc) to decide what you have ahead of time, then having to improvise in the moment with what's already on your sheet. Having a "anything you need" set of ambiguous gear short circuits that.

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The handwaving prevents skilled play, and also complex play. If the characters just always have whatever items they need and are always experts, then this takes the whole Exploration Teir of play to just about Zero. A big part of exploration is survival. Without it, your just on a Disney Tour.

There is also the big problem that if you handwave it all the time....well, there will be times when you don't want to hand wave it. Like for a nice plot where the characters loose their winter gear and get trapped at a snow lodge. In the handwave game that can never happen because as soon as the characters step out side they just "have" all the best winter travel gear ever.

overgeeked said:

Yes, exactly. Ambiguous "have anything you need" items in your equipment explicitly prevent that. The players don't need to check their gear, come up with a creative solution, and try to solve the problem when they can just point to an "anything gear" button on the character sheet. Unless, of course, you as the referee go wildly out of your way to orchestrate bizarre scenarios where they have no relevant equipment at all. Far, far easier to simply have the players track their actual gear and learn to use it creatively.

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Anything gear really only has one big thing going for it: It allows games to skip over everything to get to combat quicker. So the characters start the day----SKIP----oh look a monster to fight.

Reynard said:

Because I am explicitly not talking about things on the sheet. I am talking about plans, strategies and operations. I am talking about the GM dinging you because you did not say you were packing wagon wheel repair kits because you assumed it and the GM expected you to write it down.

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My favorite part about this in most games is the cherry picking. The DM and players will randomly decide what is "cool" and what you can randomly say a character packed. A potion of healing? A potion of life? Oh, no...you can't have a character remember to pack those. Oh, but a crowbar or a saw....oh, sure every character remembers to pack those. Of course they only "remember" that they packed them when they suddenly need them. And if they might have a need for them, you think they might have packed them.

overgeeked said:

In the sense of leveraging the environment and the equipment the PCs happen to be carrying. It’s a cornerstone of skilled play and old-school gaming.

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As I've said before, a big part of many Old School gaming is pages of equipment. The characters start off with a bunch of stuff they got in town, but then as the adventure rolls on, each character picks up items. Characters are always looking for items that they might be able to use. And the DM, by carefully detailing most places, will give the character's lots of chances to use all that equipment. MacGuyvering was very common.

Committed Hero said:

Not allowing a PC to have unwritten expertise would make it nigh impossible to play a character with high mental ability scores.

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It already is.

A high ability score character will act like the player. So unless the player can act like a high ability score character...well, the character will just be played as the player. Arnzo the wizard would never buy a "book of powerful magic" from a goblin in an alley for just 1000 gold.....but Bob the Player who works at the Zippy Clean car wash will fall for that.

Reynard said:

I don't think you know much about how people lived in the medieval era. Peasants did not know how to hunt because hunting by peasants was largely illegal. Nor did they live off the land. Rather, they toiled in fields from dawn until.dusk. some may have fished but the aristocrats controlled as much waterways as they did forests.

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Sure I do, I'm a Historian. But anyway....

Now your description is accurate for some peasants, in some parts of Europe, at a set time or two. Of course, most RPGs are not exact recreations of Earth History.

And the average person living in the America's in 1300 sure knew how to hunt and fish. And the same is true in a lot of places world wide in 1300. Really, nearly everyone before the 20th century had to know basic survival....just to live. Sure there where lazy aristocrats, drone peasants and clueless people....but everyone else had to know how to survive.

Reynard said:

My point is "people in 1300" were not these badass survivalists. They were oppressed, illiterate peasants whose lives were centered around and usually locked to the lord's fields.

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Only in some places. The world is a big place.

As the typical Western European Dark Ages does not make for a great setting for adventure....you can see why games like D&D go for more a 17th century America setting.

Reynard said:

What's your take? Do you expect the GM to inform the player when they are making a bad plan that differs from what the GM expects the PC to know? Or should the GM adjust to fit what the player believes their character should know to be a solid plan?

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I don't do "gotcha" gaming as DM or as a player. It depends on how stupid the PLAYER is being as to how much rope I'll just keep giving them to hang their PC's by. It's a fantasy world that the PC's live in and I'll be fairly generous with what the PC's might know (or at least suspect) while studiously avoiding making knowledge a detailed MECHANIC within the game, but only while their players aren't being abusive of my generosity. We'll ultimately play the game that the players want to play. Now whether that's a game that they CLAIM to want, or the game that their behavior insists is ACTUALLY what they want is up to them. One of them will surely be more fun and rewarding than the other. When the players start trying to tell ME what details of the fantasy world their players know and don't know (funny how it's really NEVER what they don't know...) then they'll learn which game they selected for play.

bloodtide said:

And the average person living in the America's in 1300 sure knew how to hunt and fish. And the same is true in a lot of places world wide in 1300. Really, nearly everyone before the 20th century had to know basic survival....just to live. Sure there where lazy aristocrats, drone peasants and clueless people....but everyone else had to know how to survive.

Only in some places. The world is a big place.

As the typical Western European Dark Ages does not make for a great setting for adventure....you can see why games like D&D go for more a 17th century America setting.

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You specifically said "the D&D era of 1300", which makes the above quite the backpedal.

In any case, O don't think talking about historical survivalist skills is much use in regards to D&D since there has never been any era like D&D in human history, anywhere.

Reynard said:

You specifically said "the D&D era of 1300", which makes the above quite the backpedal.

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Well, the "era" of D&D has always been wacky. The full plate mail, heavy crossbow and galleon put the time at more 16th century....but no guns.

Though the point is before the 20th century the vast majority of all people world wide had to know how to do everything they needed to live as they had to do it everyday.

Reynard said:

In any case, O don't think talking about historical survivalist skills is much use in regards to D&D since there has never been any era like D&D in human history, anywhere.

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True. Like I said, country folk have a big leg up here as they have lots of piratical skills that can translate into the game.

So not only do a lot of players not know even simple survival stuff, they have no chance of knowing anything about nearly any lifestyle or profession. Though too, most DMs won't know either.

So in an RPG you just have to make it up. Of course, just like the above many players and DMs can't do that. It's a skill that not everyone has.

And even most DMs are not so much smarter then their players to check them every time they do something wrong. The DM won't know it's wrong either.

The answer is to keep the game Simple and Easy: the character does 'stuff', and all the player needs to focus on is the fun stuff...like combat. Such a player should seek out like DMs for such games. Then none of the 'stuff' should even come up. That 'stuff' is for the Complex and Hard games. Don't cross the two.

I may err in the other direction here. I try to not suggest actions to players, but sometimes I just call for a Perception check rather than having the player say they are looking about, even if the situation obviously calls for it. Speeds things up, But I try to hold back so not to infringe on player agency.

Reynard said:

What's your take? Do you expect the GM to inform the player when they are making a bad plan that differs from what the GM expects the PC to know? Or should the GM adjust to fit what the player believes their character should know to be a solid plan?

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As a GM, I try to warn players when they are doing something I think the character would know not to do. I've had few complaints about that from players.

I've had occasions where "I should have been able to avoid that outcome" ... but that's usually because the player had details in excess of what I would read, let alone could remember.

I've tried to create a culture where it's ok to ask "would my character know..."

Reynard said:

Sure. Stuff happens. I am talking more about something like "You just walked 12 miles carrying full gear in the summer heat. You need to rest 8 hours before you can dig in."

No, no I do not.

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Where you able to do that on your first day? Or did it take a lot of training and practice to be able to do it? The vast majority of PCs are not trained that way.

Maxperson said:

Where you able to do that on your first day? Or did it take a lot of training and practice to be able to do it? The vast majority of PCs are not trained that way.

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We don't have a good sense of what 1st level characters are supposed to be able to do, in any edition. People talk about the "off the farm" trope but no edition has really had characters start as the equivalent of untrained peasants. 5E characters in particular are very competent in the beginning, so it's hard to say.