How do you handle these? I personally hate to use them unless I'm running some sort of mystery plot and some integral clue is held in something not commonly known, but then on live-play podcasts from other GM's I'll hear them ask the group to roll a Lore [Xenos] roll to see if they know the name of that big, green hulking creature in front of them screaming "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!".

That, to me, seems like a waste of time and effort.

I tend to handle them on a case-by-case basis. If it's something that almost every guardsman knows; i.e. that big, green hulking figure in front of them screaming "WAAAAAGH!", I'll just give it to them. To make a player roll for knowledge that seems trivial is kinda stupid.

I handle Lore skills if it's something I need to know which character knows and which characters don't. It's mostly my players who ask to make Lore skills.
I've never had to actually have my players roll Literacy. They tend to pay other people to translate things or to read corrupted files.
I don't really have characters roll Speak, I figure that they know a language if they have the skill and they don't if they don't have the skill. It's worked so far.

Hope this helps.

-Mike C

My group has eschewed the use of a Seneshal, so my main use for these skill groups in social settings is irrelevant, but we have a 'toeing the line' style crew with a charismatic RT and a xenophilous Explorator (studious of, not friendly with) for whom such tests are likely to become an infrequent occurrence.

My plan for approaching these rolls is, in the case of simple interaction, to use the degrees of success on a speaking roll as either a direct modifier (say +/-5 or +/-10 per degree of success to the next interaction roll concerning the noblewoman who is so impressed/offended, by your articulation of high gothic). Such situations are rare, but it can help to spice things up and more directly impress the quirks and eccentricities of 'talky' NPCs without having to constantly reaffirm 'she is well spoken and seems to turn her nose up at common cant'.

As for lores, again these are highly situational, but I tend to require an initial 'Forbidden Lore(Xenos)' roll from any character wanting to evaluate the health (or other physical/behavioural state) of a xenos creature, or try and pair artefacts with their parent culture mentally.

A failure of the Lore roll indicates they have no knowledge of the parent culture/species at all to start with, and so any frame of reference will be couched in human terms (EG. The Kroot looks wiry and thin, by human standards even a little weedy for it's height. Or The Halo artefact looks battered and scratched with age, with the appearance of a cogitator with no recogniseable interface).

A success allows the character to gain one insight into the physical, social or mental state of a creature or object with regards to their parent culture, per degree of success, limited to a total of one 'aspect' per degree of success on the Evaluate roll (EG. Explorator Merrik gets two degrees of success on a Forbidden Lore Xenos roll, and passes his Evaluate roll by one. Concerning the Kroot, he could choose to use his one success at evaluation to get a basic reference of it's physical condition (wounded/healthy etc) or explore his knowledge of the species (their wiriness is deceptive and they are phenomenally strong). Similar examples would apply to social or mental suppositions on the creature. As for the artefact, he could again ascertain phusical condition, place it with a parent culture or make a supposition as to it's function. As per above, the one evaluation success is the gating factor to his obviously established knowledge of the species (he may know a lot as shown, but his cursory examination only brings so much to light)).

Of course with an extended evaluation the need for the evaluation roll may not be a gating factor, and the result of the Lore roll may be the final arbiter (the above system is intended to be a 'cursory inspection' not a dissection or archaeological profiling - actions which are better suited to a directed Lore roll).

Finally, Literacy rolls. They very rarely come up and being language specific, they are usually quite situational. I usually only require them for transitory and usually irrelevant (side 'quest') curios that add to the mood but do not distract from the direction of a game. Things such as 'the faded text reads, in a strange mixture of High Gothic dialects obviously written throughout the ages of this world, "The Gate of the North is made of no human hand, save that of His Glorious Self" (referring to an inert warp-gate that seemingly crashed to the northern pole of the world in question in pre-imperial times). A fun little bit of an interlude, worthy of a bit of post game 'but what if the Emperor DID make it!?' from the players, but by design not vital to the completion or failure of their current objective.

In closing, I like these rolls to give a measure of the depth of the characters involvement and understanding of the world, and by that measurement define their actions. An ignorant, uneducated group of characters can monodominantly purge their way through a story, but a single educated member may be able to appeal to their humanity in ways that they would not usually be capable of doing themselves. It adds a vital role for the more 'talky' or 'scholarly' characters, one of assisting in the mutual characterisation of the group as a whole.

All the best,

Sokahrthumaniel

In my games, I am a big fan of the Speak Language skills, especially High Gothic, to be able to communicate with long lost colonies of Man. After all, on a botched roll I can have the rogue trader married to the big-chiefs daughter before he knows what has hit him. :-)

Same with the lore skills, not to the extent of "ooh, thats an ork!" but more at the level of "ooh, that's a nob of the Goff clan, forget negotiating JUST GET IT OFF ME!!!" or "ooh, that's a Bloodaxe boy, we might be able to talk to it..."

As far as language go, I'd use them as limiters on the other skills - basically that with speak [language] +10, no communication skill using that language gets more than the same +10 bonus. You might want to fiddle with the numbers a bit to reflect the non-verbal part of the deal (allowing an extra +10 maybe), but the basic idea is that your communication skill can't get much better than your ability to speak the language.

Manunancy said:

I would not recommend this approach since many Careers provide +10 and +20 advancements to numerous interaction skills (the ones where language is likely and issue) while very few (if any) provide advancements to the Speak Language skills. This means that you'd have to either modifiy the career advancements or require elite advances just to make use of what the career is already supposed to be able to pick up. Either way, you've added a surcharge (the cost of advancing the Speak Language skills) to characters that focus upon interaction skills.

We use lore rolls all the time. Usually to allow me as GM to tell my players stuff their characters might know.

e.g. "Your ship is hailed by the naval squadron commander who identifies himself as Admiral Walken, anyone got lore: War, tactica Imperialis or something similar?

My players tell me what they have and i let them roll. Low success might mean they recognise the name as a famous hero, high success might mean they recall his exploits in detail. Lore: war might remember his campaigns, while Tactica Imperialis might realise its a little unusual to have a rear admiral in commander of an escort squadron and all might not be as it seems.

I love the various lores as my players PCs are quite diverse and for any given situation they might be rolling two or three different lore skills between them, each finding out something (assuming they roll well) relevant to that lore. It also makes the non-combat buzzsaws much more involved in the game and rewards those who specialise in knowledge. It also encourages the Arch-militant to go beyond simply being really hard and makes him skilled with tactics, a military history buff, etc.

As for speak languages, we don't really use the +10, +20. We just say that if you have it trained you can speak it. Most of my PCs used High Gothic to talk about the Arch-militant behind his back as he didn't understand te lingo. He is now working on redressing this.

We too use High gothic as the literary, religious language that many imperial and non-imperial worlds share, whereas low gothic can vary tremendously across worlds. Many places my explorers have visited speak an unidentifiable verion of low gothic but can communicate with the explorers in high gothic.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

See, but the one thing that I feel really would be integral to that, the idea of an admiral leading a small detachment, I would think is something that would either be out of character knowledge seeping into the game, or common sense. And usually it seems like most lore rolls are optional, telling players things they would have eventually found out anyways through some in-game narrator character (see every Rogue Trader adventure printed for examples of this)

I support the idea of using Lore rolls as sort of a nudge for newer players or players that need a hint, but otherwise I don't know why people who own every sourcebook would use it. I'd want to maybe use Lores to reduce a modifier to skill rolls and alert PC's to things that don't seem quite right.

Fortinbras said:

I have every sourcebook, and they are all open to my players (adventures I plan to adapt to my campaign excepted), but my players don't really bother to pour through them. There is a lot that they would rather discover in-game, whether through an external (NPC) source, or an internal (Lore skill) source.