Hi Everyone,

So I thought i might post a idea i had that I use for my SWRPG sessions with my friends that seems to of been well received and even one of my friends taking it to the DM of his pathfinder games and it was quickly adopted. So maybe it may be handy for you guys too.

So here it is; As we all know there is a gap between player knowledge and character knowledge and sometimes when you are the GM you can be banging your head against a wall because your group isnt remembering something that their characters have a good chance of remembering and could really help move the story along.

Now there are may reasons why the players may not remember something, might not of thought it was important, forgot about it due to time between sessions or not realize that the information is useful in the part of the session they are in now.

In those situations my idea was to give them a opportunity to have their character remember with a appropriate knowledge check with the difficulty and even which character should take the check (as that character may have discovered the information) to be all determined by the GM. On failure if the characters still want to remember increase the difficulty by one and allow anyone to take the check.

This can even be used if the players want to initiate a check to remember an event, something or someone that they may have forgotten.

So there you have it, feel free to adopt it into your games if you think it helps =D

Naw, I'd never roll in instances like that. I'd just point out that information to the players, the "You probably forgot this plot point from last week, but. . . ."

If it's important enough to point out, it's probably important enough to not leave up to the random chance of fate.

We have a designated scribe in the group and there is a session preamble before diving back into the next session in regards to what has gone on and what PCs have been told.

The only time I make players roll to recall facts is if I think there's a possibility that their character might not have thought it was important at the time (or it was a long time ago in-game).

But like Desslok said; if I think it's something that the character would have found important, then I'll just remind the player.

I tried doing the recall a fact thing when I first started with some knowledge checks. I do not like it. I just remind the players of what they should know out of character.

Now regarding information the PCs don't have yet...

I had a group recently ask why can't they simply look up information on the "holonet" (wookiepedia) about places & creatures? I said because that would negate an entire list of skills & would negate even some specializations such as Scholar, if you just look up stuff about creatures, places, etc...

I'll remind them next session that narratively, they might actually be looking stuff up but the information I'm giving out to them is tailored towards the situation, what they might encounter and their goals, similar to how you're not going to look up unimportant data such as how many bathrooms a courthouse has when all you need to know is what street it's on & how to get there.

Never have the players roll for something that needs to happen to move the story forward. If the story stalls because the players forget a clue and they sit their twiddling their thumbs is a bad use of gaming time.

Sometimes players can sit there and twiddle their thumbs even after the PC leader of the mission explains to them their EXACT goals...

That's always fun.

The closest I’ve gotten to a “Reminder Roll” is to have all the PCs do a competitive roll of a certain type. Maybe a Knowledge roll, or something.

The winner of that competition is the one that gets the information I had in mind, and if there are other spectacular results (like Triumphs or something), then I’ll come up with other things to also give them.

So, it’s not a matter of if someone will remember the information, but who will remember it.

Of course, I take them to the side and give the information to them in private, and then it’s up to them to decide how to reveal that information to the rest of the party.

You could suggest they flip a DP if you think there should be a cost. But generally I would not and just give them the information.