I just heard the order 66 podcast # 32 to the topic knowledge checks. One tpic the guys were discussing was Knowledge and how it should be used to differ between player and character knowledge.

The hosts were suggesting that knowledge checks shouldn't be used to limit a players knowledge about the Star Wars universe. Main reason for taking this approach is, that in star wars many players have their intense background knowledge to drive their passion for the whole topic and maybe the roleplay itself.

While I find this a valid reason to handle it that way, I still very much disagree with this approach. Infact this topic was that much out of question for me that didn't even think about not limiting player knowledge by knowledge skill checks. So basicly the podcast episode got me thinking about this and I still try figure out how to tackle this problem in the future, because in my group I also have a player with extensive knowledge about the star wars universe.

As I said: At the moment I still dislike the approach from the podcast for the following reasons:

• general problems with characters knowling far too much about some events in the universe which might get in the way of prepared stories or characters
• contradiciting knowledge in case GM and players are not on the same level with the EU or want to change certain events.
• Advantages for the well informed player, while players with limited expertise have to rely on their knowledge checks. Allowing a player to fully present & take advantage of his knowledge makes knowledge skills for him much less usefull to invest into
• highly informed players would have more possibilitys to avoid negative consequences of failed knowledge checks
• It takes away the niche for high intellect characters like scolars, politicos and the like and gives the intellect 2 wookie marauder far too much room to avoid the negative aspects of being rather simple minded.

Of course one could differ between the kind of knowledge presented by a player and if it fits his character background.

So I just wanted to discuss these points with you. How yre you handling this on your table?

I for myself am still thinking about the issue and might come up with some ideas to the topic later on.

I have a particular player who metagames to some extent with every game we play. For instance we were running "Under a Black Sun" several months ago and the players had to meet with a Faleen. His character warned the others that Faleen have pheromones that could be used to manipulate the party. My first reaction was frustration, but in the end I shrugged it off. Mostly I remind them and the rest of the party that their characters might not know that.

There are many times that I will use my players metagaming against them and to that end, the easiest way for me to limit out of character knowledge is two-fold:

1. Lie to your players. Yep. As a GM you can give your players false information as long as the character would reasonably come to that conclusion. If they want to know the real truth, that's when your scholars can step in with their wonderful knowledge rolls.

For instance you can tell your players that a village on a backwater planet was attacked by a band of mercenaries in advanced armor with iconic helmets. Your problem players will assume they are mandelorians. It's only later that they find out that...

2. You break tropes and turn them on their head. So the PCs spend their time trying to track down a group of Mandelorian raiders to bring them to space justice. The party is lead to a flotilla only to find out that the supposed Mandelorains were really a band of traveling performers spending a few months getting into character for their recreation of "The Rise and Fall of Deathwatch". They didn't hurt anyone and they intended to repair any damages with the proceeds from their shows. Oh did your group just kill have the troupe before they found that out? Ouch! A successful Knowledge (Outer Rim) check might have told them that Mandelorians never attack planets with little military value and small populations. Especially planets this far outside of Mandelorian space.

The above example was a little extreme, but I hope it helped to make my point.

I don't worry too much about it as I just say "you wouldn't know that." and it seems to handle it. In the Falleen example if someone said they wanted to put on a respirator to avoid the pheromone effects, that's when I would call for a Knowledge Xenology check, and if they failed they wouldn't 'know' to do that.

In regards to events in the Star Wars universe proper, like the destruction of Alderaan, it would have very much been in the Rebellion's interest to get the facts out, and very much in the Empire's to repress the truth, so there would be general knowledge of its destruction, tough to hide the loss of a planet, but all manner of rumor and false information flying about in regards to how and who, at least early on. As time went by more details would emerge, but it's the fog of war that adds nice flavor to the background.

Yep, I'm in the "your character wouldn't know that crowd" too. Just listened to that same podcast this morning, and completely (and very rarely) disagreed with GMChris, and from the sound of his voice, I sensed that GMPhil wasn't totally sold in it either.

Player knowledge of the SW universe is a fun and cool thing, and it keeps them fired up for whatever's next, and can be great for a little out of game banter.

BUT at the end of the day this is ROLEplaying, not rollplaying, and I expect them to play their respective characters to the hilt (especially if they want those extra juicy XP). So if that means your character doesn't have the skills to make the obscure knowledge role, then so be it. Y'all play it like you don't know it.

another vote for "your character wouldn't know that".

quite often player knowledge enhances the game with specific info or detail, but when a player wants to gain an advantage from out of game-knowlegde, there's only one sensible solution.

say no!

I don't use to care about players knowledge level because my games are focused on their PC's stats/skills, not the player ones.

Some people (of course is their choice and they are free) us to think that RPG games are a competition about GM vs players.

In my games, players are merelly actors that interpretate (previously designed) PC wishes. Rolls/stats make the rest and help GM to know the "what happened" effect.

I don't use to put knowledge or intelligence tests on players. If they don't know I just make them roll. I can be awful at maths, but my PC is one of the best physician among the galaxy. GM doesn't need to challenge my "skills"... thats my PC work! XD

As I said, in my games players only have to care about make awesome performances and let their stats and rolls (and sometimes GM ) to the rest.

Focusing on the knowledges aspect is the same. I first consider, based on characters past and background (education level, place of birth) and taking consideration about actual galactic situation (several net/info censorship due to Imperial politics) I choose what a PC can know or not without caring about PLAYERS knowledge. Only SKILL and previously mentioned counts for me.

Sometimes I prefer that players doesn't know something so this way I have the oportunity to surprise them inside and outside, its a funny thing but generally I prefer players that have a good SW Knowledge because this helps a lot to put on situation their characters and saves me from explain that doors uses to slide to a side instead a common door XD

Luke knew what a Wookie was before he saw Chewbacca. It's pretty easy to assume that anything the player knows about Star Wars is what his character learned in school. Unless the player is specifically playing an uneducated or isolated character, of course. All but the most rabid Star Wars fan only spends a small portion of his life reading about Star Wars, whereas the character is living there and spends every waking moment learning about stuff. So the character knows significantly more about the places and species of the SW galaxy that 99% of players. Knowledge skills are there to allow the player to learn things the character knows, not limit what the player can know.

The best way to avoid any problems is to create a new aliens or worlds the player has never heard of. This is the main reason I'm disappointed in all the published adventures so far. They seem almost Forest Gumpian in how you move from famous SW location to famous SW location. I can see, from a marketing perspective, why FFG does this, but as a player it seems forced.

Thank you all for responding.

@ hedgehobbit:

Of course you are right that every character knows much more about star wars than a player could. Especially when it comes to daily life, technology, behaviour and what not. But some events and circumstances are not nescessarily known to a random character in starwars. Also certain persons and their role in the lore would be likely unkown to a random character. One example would be Blacksun. I would imagine a character that has no ties in his backstory to blacksun and has no knowledge Underworld to be only very roughly and even falsely informed about anything related to blacksun. Of the player of said character is a fan of the EU he will most likely have a quite an understanding on what blacksun is, how they work, hierarchys, persons involved, tactics etc.

In that situation I think it is justified to limit the player knowledge by a skillcheck,

After I gave the topic some more thought I still think the aproach to limit character knowledge by skill checks is nescessary.
So in general I would require skill checks to see if people know something or not. However during a session more often than not you get some player to have an idea which may be based on his player knowledge. So in my group they usually just throw an idea arround that they know should be valid based on the players knowledge.

In those cases I usually ask the player if his character background would justify such knowledge. (The characters have a rough backstory but this doesn't cover all places and events a character might have experienced)

If it is reasonable and the advantage is not that big deal I would probably accept it. If the knowledge means some measurable advantage in the situation or the cause why the character would know such things isn't that convincing I would require a check.

Anyway: I still will encourage my players to share their Starwars knowledge. I think that even if it is ruled that a character does not have the presented knowledge about X, the player can still share it with everyone at the table in an out of character style. That way everyone benefits from the knowledge of said player and the player has a nice opportunity to show his commitment to the topic.

What do you guys think about this?

I felt like Chris's heart was in the right place in that he didn't want to try to prevent players who love Star Wars and have studied it all their lives from having fun with some of that knowledge.

I played in the convention game he described and I can testify that he did actually enforce a bit of a distinction between player and character knowledge. He showed us a logo that all the players recognized as the symbol of the Black Sun, however our characters didn't know what it was yet.

At the end when Guri appeared, we all loved it because we knew who Guri was, even though our characters had no reason to have heard of her.

I think it would have been a different story if, for example, Guri was trying to deceive our characters. The fact that we'd read Shadows of the Empire in that case shouldn't be enough to automatically know that Guri is a droid, that she's very powerful, etc. Our characters would just think she's a lovely human woman and would interact accordingly.

One of my buddies runs into this issue with D&D. He GMs enough that he has a hard time being a player because he knows all of the monster stats. He's good about not spoiling things for the rest of the players and tries to role play it right. Although he keeps saying that he should play a character with a background for knowledge about all of those monsters so that he can bring his real life knowledge into play.

In our games we commonly say "I know X, but my character doesn't, so he does Y." Personally, I think it's fun to keep the metagaming in check. It's like when actors wink at the camera and break the fourth wall in a TV show or movie. We all know something but it'll be fun to watch the characters figure it out.

I think part of what any GM has to do when they have the Star Wars encyclopedia at the table and is having this issue is to use their own imagination. Make something new, it's your table and your game. We are all making our own personal canon at every table, or at least should be. Make your own stuff up to challenge the players who know all the published material.

I'm opening my campaign along the lines of...

'Rebel terrorists have stolen an experimental mining lazer and used it to destroy the peaceful planet of Alderann. The heroic forces of the Empire led by Lord Vader pursued the criminals to the Yarvin system where the weapon was destroyed after an intense space battle. The Emperor has promised more troops are being raised and more ships are being built in order to combat this growing menace to the peace and stability of the galaxy.'

I'm hoping this inspires the players to remember that they are seeing the Star Wars universe from a different perspective than that of the movies or books. They may be just as annoyed at the Rebellion for stirring up trouble as they are at the Empire for the crack down after the Battle of Yarvin.

In our games we commonly say "I know X, but my character doesn't, so he does Y." Personally, I think it's fun to keep the metagaming in check. It's like when actors wink at the camera and break the fourth wall in a TV show or movie. We all know something but it'll be fun to watch the characters figure it out.

I'll ditto this. I'm of the opinion that this issue really is this simple:

1) If a player uses their knowledge to make a character act, they have to come up with a damned good narrative justification for knowing something if they don't make a successful check. Otherwise, they act IN CHARACTER because it is an RPG

2) Don't play with dicks. The kind of people who try to play 'against' the GM by metagaming are not taking part in the spirit of a role playing game, and just shouldn't be playing. If they want to play a gamable game, play board games. They are tons of fun and I own enough to fill a truck. They have a time and a place (any time I friggin' can), but the tabletop RPG ain't it. Hell, have them play the X-Wing miniatures game, if they like that kind of gaming it'd be right up their alley and still be chock-full of star wars.

I have this issue all the time. Myself and one of my players are very knowledgable, and often something will pop up thats 'out of adventure'. We normally have a minute or so of trying to outdo each other before I say something like "anyway, this isn't Star Wars trivial pursuit, so what are you doing?".

It's generally not a problem unless it's every five minutes, which I make sure it isn't. I have no problem with "your character doesn't know that."

I have one player with an unfortunate habit of metagaming. He's new to tabletop RPGs, so I have been pretty leniant about it.

But I've decided to encourage him to spend points into Lore and Education to reflect his knowledge of the Star Wars universe as a whole. He's pretty reasonable, so it should go over well.

I might recommend other GMs to take a similar tactic.