For example, the Navis Nobilite appear as a Scholastic Lore whilst the Adeptus Arbites, Astra Telepathica, and Mechanicus appear as Common Lore. The Navis Nobilite also turn out to be a Common Lore as well.

On the surface they all seem like they same sort of thing: knowledge about a specific Imperial institution. What is it then that differentiates between Common Lore and Scholastic Lore?

Why is it Navis Nobilite are in both Common and Scholastic but the others are only in Common?

EDIT: It almost seems like Scholastic Lore should be another level of Common Lore rather than completely seperate. Like for instance knowing general information about the fire brigade vs being a member with skilled knowledge of the fire brigade.

It just seems a little obscure given the choices of Lore avaialable.

hellebore

Common Lore is general knowledge, information you have picked up on and haven’t necessarily had to go out of your way to obtain

Scholastic Lore is information you could only know from study of a particular subject

For example

Common Lore (Navis Nobilite) would allow a character to identify and differentiate between different navigator families but if the group wanted more information about a specific navigator family they would need someone who had actually studied the Navis Nobilite and had the Scholastic Lore (Navis Nobilite)

I suggest you read the skill section for Scholastic Lore as it mention there about the overlap between Common – Scholastic and- Forbidden Lores

Some things can only be known through study (like Tactica Imperialist) yet there will be an overlap with Common Lore (War) and Imperial Creed directly over laps in both - they need to be separated to represent the basics of something and the indepth.

Kordos said:

Yes I read that, but it doesn't explain why there is no scholastic lore Mechanicus when there is a scholastic lore Navis Nobilite. Do people that learn common lore mechanicus know everything about the mechanicus? Why can't you know everything about the nobilite but you can about the mechanicus, arbites, astartes etc?

Mechanicus knowledge I would think to be entirely Scholastic, not Common. Yet it is precisely the other way around. How does that make sense?

This is not a clear division because the same things are on both sides and things that are equivalent to each other are not on both sides.

You could make an argument that EVERY aspect of Common Lore would have a Scholastic component, because there is esoteric learned lore about everything.

Thus the given division between the two lores is not only illogical but also contradictory.

Hellebore

That's because the AdMech show up in Forbidden Lore. Unless you're a member, you can't learn their inner secrets and you have to make do with Common Lore.

Betwe the Lores and Trade skills, a player should be able to learn about whatever they want, but depending on how secretive and how well-taught the skills are he might have to make do with some gaps in his knowlege.

I personally handle the overlap by letting a player who has both Common and Scholastic Lore by letting the player roll both and take the best result. I also apply this to areas where Lore skills overlap, such as Forbidden Lore: Heresy and Cults.

I see this as representing the difference between someone who has a broad education covering many related schools of knowledge, and someone who simply studies one single subject in depth. Both could know the same facts, but the scholar with many skills to draw on has a better chance of knowing them.

St. Jimmy said:

But this again shows the rather haphazard way in which the knowledges are put together. Adeptus Astartes shows up in common lore and nowhere else. So does that mean you learn everything about every chapter from common lore? Knowing about the astartes is probably forbidden, but it's not in the forbidden lore section. Similarly the adeptus astra telepathica shows up in common knowledge and nowhere else. So when I get that skill I know the workings of the entire institution? How are the Navis Nobilite any more or less 'forbidden' than the mechanicus? They hide themselves away from everyone. Yet scholastic lore can be learned about them and not the mechanicus.

There is really no logical reason for the divisions as given. Because effectively there should be a scholastic knowledge for every common knowledge given and several forbidden knowledges for them as well.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Who is to say that there isn't?

Compare the Lore skill groups (or those for languages, or trade skills, for that matter) in the Dark Heresy rulebook to those in the Rogue Trader rulebook. There's a slightly different list in each case. Given that, I think it's safe to assume that there are a great many things theoretically covered by one Lore skill or another that don't have specific representation in-game as of yet. I imagine more Astartes-centric skills will show up in Deathwatch, for example.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the general lack of Lore skills for RT characters compared to DH ones?

The problem is that it confuses what is and isn't provided by the lores because they aren't evenly distributed.

If that's how they wanted it to be they should have written out a common, scholastic, and forbidden lore for each area so it was abundantly clear. But even then it's subjective because you get a tech priest having common lore admech, which you would have thought a normal person would have. A tech priest would (should) have scholastic lore admech and later forbidden lore admech as they unlock the darkest secrets of their institution.

It seems that in some instances the knowledge from a common lore isn't as 'common' as it sounds because it's treated like specialist lore that only practictioners would know.

The way it seemed to me from the naming of the lores was:

Common Lore

Any knowledge floating around the populace. urban legends, public information etc. Common knowledge astartes would be knowing that they wear power armour, that they are in chapters, that they are very scary etc. Even perhaps things like 'an astartes can kill you with a look' or 'they eat bullets for breakfast'.

Scholastic Lore

Any knowledge that actually requires research and/or training to know. Thus scholastic lore astartes would be knowing the names of a lot of marine chapters, some of their heroes, the organisation of the codex astartes, the names of famous and/or current chapter masters, the types of weaponry, armour etc used by them.

Forbidden Lore

Any knowledge that is only known by the astartes in question, or by high ranking adepts. Such as the number of traitor chapters, the types of zygotes used and the methods employed to put them in, their casualty rates, their weaknesses, chapter secrets (the Dark Angel Fallen would probably be beyond even this) like blood angels can go nuts and drink blood, space wolves have mutant geneseed that gives them massive fangs etc.

The thing is that originally it looked like common lores were general areas of knowledge, ie the whole arbites, whilst scholastic lores were specific, narrow areas of knowledge like judgement which is a subset of arbites (the actual LAW followed by arbitrators). But then they have lores with wider and narrower foci in both lists. Why is scholastic lore tactica imperialis a very specific subset of common lore War, but scholastic lore Navis Nobilite is just as general as common lore navis nobilite? The same goes for Imperial Creed, as there is a a common lore ecclesiarchy AND imperial creed, but only a scholastic lore imperial creed.

It just seems irritatingly difficult to codify what goes where especially when I'm trying to my own knowledges in. I may just have to rewrite the way lore works so I can get it to follow an obvious progression.

hellebore

if you do re-write how lores work for your game please do post them up here for us to read

If FFG listed lores and progressions for each subset it would take pages and pages - what they have done is cover the basics of what you will generally need for a game of RT and DH - you will never be able to put everything in, someone will always point out some aspect of the imperium that has been left out

Hellebore:

Your definition of Common Lore seems _very_ basic. I would say that Common Lore Adeptus Astartes (as an example) probably includes the names and heroes of the main chapters, insignia, major battles. Scholastic Lore Adeptus Astartes includes in-depth history, tactical doctrines, notable commanders and soldiers and geographical and political resources. Forbidden Lore Adeptus Astartes most likely involves covered up war-crimes, events during Horus Heresy, theories about bio-engineering etc

Hellebore said:

IMO, Scholastic Lores and Forbidden Lores generally go into similar levels of detail and accuracy... the difference is to do with context and availability. Scholastic Lore (Occult) and Forbidden Lore (Warp) cover similar subjects, but the Forbidden Lore covers things that a sane person shouldn't know, things that you can't read about under normal circumstances.

Personally, I'd not reveal the big secrets of particular Astartes chapters on a successful skill test, no matter how common the knowledge may be out of character.

Regarding Forbidden Lores of organisations, it's a matter of the oganisation's approach to information. While the Navis Nobilite may be insular, their purpose and nature isn't a secret, and consequently knowledge of them isn't particularly difficult to obtain if you know where to look (Scholastic Lore). The Adeptus Mechanicus is a mystery cult, in essence, where knowledge of their secrets and organisation are strictly contained... it is, afterall, an organisation that worships and hoards knowledge, so a heavy veil of secrecy is appropriate (Forbidden Lore). Same can be said of the Inquisition, the internal politics of which are almost entirely unknown outside of its ranks (even Acolytes of the Inquisition may be unaware of the depth and nature of Inquisitorial politics).

Etepete said:

Well that's down to the name. If it's common then logically the greater majority of people should already know it, otherwise it wouldn't be common knowledge. Everyone starts with common lore imperium because they all know something about the imperium. If you don't have that skill do you still know something about the Imperium?

If you do, then what governs that knowledge? What's more common than common? Basic? Are you assumed to have basic knowledge of everything and then common knowledge is more indepth than that?

This is I think the problem. If common lore is common, then it shouldn't be as hard to get as scholastic lore because it's effectively 'untrained' knowledge, you just have to be told this stuff by someone because everyone knows it; no research is involved.

N0-1_H3r3 no one knows the real truth about navigators except themselves and perhaps some inquisitors. That was highlighted in wolfblade. The slow degeneration of them into mutant abominations (well more than they already are...). There are definitely things that would be 'forbidden' for non navigators to know about them.

I see forbidden knowledge as two very specific things: 1 Lore the Imperium declares illegal to know. As this is subjective Forbidden Lore: Fruitier may be common lore in one part of the imperium and outlawed on a specific planet, thus for people on that planet it is virtually impossible to learn because it's forbidden. Then there are the more mainstream xenos, radicalist thought, and warp knowledge which are forbidden due to their association with things the Imperium deems 'bad'. 2 The other type of forbidden is like admech and navigator knowledge, information that isn't illegal to know but that the group in question refuses to let you know, or attempts to keep secret. Perhaps the most extreme example is the astartes Fallen which afaik not even the inquisition knows about. To gain that forbidden lore you'd have to be a member of the Deathwing.

Scholastic lore can't be forbidden, just require extensive research or supporting knowledge/training to deduce or learn. So it will be out there to find.

Kordos, of the top of my head I just thought of an idea whereby you treat Lore as a Skill and Talent combination analogous to Weapon Training. IE you have Ballistic Skill and pistol weapon training: bolt but not SP. Similarly you have the Skill Adeptus Arbites Lore which grants basic knowledge of the organisation and its purpose and then the talents: Specific Lore Training: Arbites, Scholastic Lore Training: Arbites, and Forbidden Lore Training: Arbites. I say specific lore because I think that Common is a misnomer, having the starting skill Adeptus Arbites Lore means you already have common knowledge of the institution, in the truest sense of the word 'common'.

This then becomes very easy to follow as the talent simply modifies how much information about the organisation you know. If you have all 3 talents then you know pretty much everything there is to know (within reason, perhaps not being able to recall the arbites roster system on Scintilla vs Garanak IV).

Anyway, that's just an idea that follows the same paths as other mechanics in the game and would (hopefully) make the system of knowledge and lore far more logical.

Hellebore

Well, what's in a name? Common just means that it is common, or commonly available. The proper parallell to draw on is probably Common Knowledge, which is to say hearsay. So Common Knowledge is basically what you can pick up on a subject without properly studying it, scholastic knowledge is those studies, and forbidden knowledge is anything that is proscribed.

I wouldn't be too worried about that basic knowledge that everyone is supposed to have: if you're raised in a certain environment you're likely to have gained some basic orientation: there's no need for a skill to reflect that. With Common Lore you should actually be able to pick up on some facts - it covers everything you can learn without studying after all, which is lots!

I think it's more important that these skills are usable in game, than that they somehow represent the totality of knowledge out there.

I don't really see the problem here.

If a character got some 'Common Lore' skill, he got some general knowledge about the given subject. In case of lets say 'Adeptus Astartes' this means he would know most Chapters by name, about their heros and important battles.

If a character got 'scholaric Lore' about a subject, lets stay with 'Adeptus Astartes', he invested quite some time into studies about Space Marines and would also know about their ranks, their doctrines of battle and much more of such 'insider knowledge'.

'Forbidden Lore' about 'Adeptus Astartes' might include knowledge about the horus heresy, lost legions, knowledge about special traits and mutations among space marine chapters and the like.

By the way, those lists of different 'lores' are way from comlpete. You can add whatever subject you and your GM see fit. Just keep some common sense and everything should be fine.

I can definitely see a risk of an overlap from Common and Scholastic Lore (less so Forbidden) since there is distinctive tendency for GM:s to just "spill the beans" when the players pass a Lore test, which then beggars the question what the value of having the more specialized Scholastic Skill is. I think the way out of this conundrum is to modify the style of the information gleaned - information about a hive city gained from Common Lore will give you a rough idea of the reputation of the city, its rough size, some rumours and hearsay and the names of the people with the most media coverage. With Scholastic Lore you will get population, crime statistics, key government officials etc. Of course, there will be cases where the information requested is more specific: if you want to know something specific about a certain historic battle through Scholastic Lore: Astartes for example. But again, my experience is that the GM will spill most of the intel even with a more general skill.

Hellebore said:

But at the same time, just because an organisation or group has secrets (and, in the 40k universe, it's a rare group that lacks secrets) does not inherently mean that there must be an associated Forbidden Lore skill. Navigators are heavily involved in warfare and commerce on a galactic scale and while they have a number of skeletons in their closet, that is nothing compared to the institutionalised secrecy of the Adeptus Mechanicus or the Inquisition, whose stock-in-trade is secrets.

Hellebore said:

Does every dirty little secret and grand conspiracy in the Imperium and beyond need its own Forbidden Lore skill, then? Because that's just ludicrous. Must every little bit of information be covered by a skill, or are we allowed to assume that there are things beyond those covered by the rules and the contents of character sheets that characters are able to know?

Lore skills cover supplemental knowledge (that is, knowledge which can be used to inform a character's decisions and investigations), and the means to acquire greater knowledge (this is, in particular, a facet of Scholastic and Forbidden Lore - knowledge enough to know where to look to get more, the means to allow for research in-character). From a purely narrative perspective, having knowledge that is beyond those skills is necessary, because it enables investigations and the active search for information.

On the one hand, it's a safe assumption that the Lore skills that exist are not the be-all and end-all of Lore within the setting; there are things not covered by the existing skill groups, and logical places where hypothetical skill groups should exist but which are yet to be written about. On the other, it seems to be a frankly obvious notion that there are some things covered by no Lore skill - both because it'd cheapen the 'big secrets' of the setting, and because there are many things that characters should have to find out by themselves rather than simply knowing it because they passed a skill test.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Well thats's an inherent problem of defining knowledge within the setting through specific skills without also describing what is 'untrained' knowledge and what isn't. One would assume that possessing a skill or talent would mean you have some understanding of the theory behind it. But the line between assumed and mechanically represented is only clear if it's outlined as such.

But your assertion that it's only possible for the admech to have forbidden lore over the navis nobilite simply highlights the subjectivity of the problem in the first place. I've already described things that lie within the same 'forbidden' zone of the nobilite as the admech and could even argue that it's easier to learn the forbidden knowledge of the admech because there are a) hereteks out there who would sell that knowledge and rogue tech priests who have the secrets b) they store their knowledge obsessively on their planets (the old inquisitor rulebook has a short story of an inquisitor breaking into one of their data banks and being stopped by a techpirest and servitors) making it possible to steal or access. The nobilite's forbidden knowledge on the other hand is far less catalogued, information about a great house that they have tried to suppress - rogue elements, previous heretical affiliations, illegal financing. That sort of thing is not covered by Scholastic lore, you can't read a book on House Juretyl's heretical past.

Hence why I started this thread. The 'level' of lore vs the subject is rather subjective and the description of the two is far less clear cut than you make out. Some scholastic lores are very specific, others are not. So why out of all the institutions was navis nobilite given a scholastic lore and not arbites or guard? Given the logic behind the other scholastic lores where they are very narrow in focus (only a single 'field') the navis nobilite scholastic lore stands out as odd. It's a skill about generalised information rather than specific information.

This is part of the problem I saw with the division between the two lore types. I can't divide them into 'generalised' and 'specialised' knowleges because there are things in both that do not match the 'level' of the other laws.

One could argue that scholastic lore Imperial Guard would give some (common) information about the tactica imperialis, cryptology, legend, perhaps numerology because it is a blanket skill covering the educated knowledge of the institution of the imperial guard which makes use of and includes all of the above in their training and history.

Just as scholastic lore about the navis would include other specific things like astromancy, legend and occult because those things are tied up in the existence of the great houses.

Having just read over that again I've also realised that some scholastic lores are also like more traditional skills rather than knowledges. Cryptography for example allows you to make and decipher codes. Now when i said that scholastic lore imperial guard would grant knowledge of cryptography I didn't mean you could decipher codes, rather you have an understanding of cryptography as used by the guard. ie you could walk into a guard command tent and immediately recognise the enigma cogitator used for scarmbling codes as well as the master key and the type it is. You couldn't use it, but you wouldn know what it is.

So now I can see 3 'types' of scholastic lore. Specific (chymistry), general (navis nobilite), and specialist (cryptography). None of them are equivalent to each other in terms of range of coverage and practicality of knowledge but they are all under the same name, Scholastic lore. Hence why I've had difficulty actually categorising what knowledge goes where as there is a wide range of 'type'.

Arguably, from a game perspective it doesn't really matter because common and scholastic are both Advanced Skills and so are only learnable if available. So you could just put your specific, general, or specialist lore into either field as they both have representatives of all three (common lore arbites gives you basic knowledge of imperial justice so you could use it to answer limited questions on imperial law). Common Lore Tech is as specific as scholastic lore beasts in its application, but beasts is supposed to be more academic than tech because of the type of lore they are. Hence why I said that you could have a common lore and scholastic lore for each type of knowledge because common lore beasts is definitely a possibility whilst scholastic lore tech is something that the admech would be able to research.

However I would prefer a clear cut definition between the two for ease of use and for ascertaining the correct position of other knowledges should I wish to add them.

Hellebore

You come back to subjectivity as if that were a weakness: but subjectivity is inherent in a rules set. You write what's usable and gameable, not an objective simulation of the game universe.

Of course you can reshuffle categories. Common, Scholastic, Forbidden is a compromise between playability and reflecting the array of knowledge out there. If you break them down further, or try to impose your own logic on them the game will just get clunkier. Furthermore, the division between the three categories reflects the way knowledge is available in the 40k universe: you pick it up on the street (or on duty), you study it or you are initiated into it (or pick it up in eldritch tomes).

The problem is that the designers have not illustrated HOW they approached it. If they did I wouldn't need to dissect it myself. It would be like trying to figure out how they decided on weapon costs. There are no rules printed for that.

I can't see much of a pattern in the way the lores are laid out. If I could it would be easy to put new lores in because the parameters are self evident. But there are lores as skills, lores as general knowledge and lores as specific knowledge in both common and scholastic lore.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

I think the best way to view it is from an in-game perspective. Scholastic Lore actually tells you what subjects can be studied at an academic level. In that perspective, if there is a Navis Nobilite Scholastic Lore skill then that is because the study of the navigator families actually is a wide-spread academic discipline. Not an unlikely proposal considering their value and importance to the empire and to interstellar communications.

That contradicts previous posters' assertions that these aren't all the lore skills, just some of them. If they were all the lore skills you could learn then it wouldn't be a problem, I'd have to try and fandangle a lore out of a preexisting one.

The problem is, if these are all the lores then you can't learn everything there is to learn, but if they aren't all the lores then you can't tell what will show up in scholastic or common lore when they introduce new ones. We could theorise over what would go where and be totally wrong because of the way they are laid out.

So it just seems to come down to 'guessing' where a lore should fit.

Hellebore

Well, if you have to guess you could assume that the more academic sounding fields of knowledge would require a Scholastic Lore skill. And I don't think that it IS self-evident which fields are actually academic from the fluff. So you're looking at it from the wrong perspective: it is actually which skills are presented that tells something about the setting, not the other way around.

Nowhere does it describe that from a setting perspective either. I gave an example previously of exactly what you describe. Forbidden Lore could be different on different worlds due to strange local customs. An old 40k short story has Grimm the squat (later changed to Grill the techpriest) on a world where they outlawed the wheel. So on that planet Forbidden Lore: Wheels would exist (well, one would assume forbidden lore: knowledges around the creation, application, and function of wheels).

So I know that the position of these lores is subjective. But even subjectivity can be placed within boundaries and have parameters, internal consistency.

Hellebore

But..?! The rules aren't a reflection of every single planetary system, it's a snap-shot framework of the world of 40k. I'm glad the game doesn't try to be completionist: this is space over the top gothic opera, not hard sf!