this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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You have other people to manage wildlife, often times, and are probably not likely to encounter said animals. If you are then you know to carry bear spray, for example.
Now imagine you’re in a world where bandits on the road are threat you actually have to consider. Trolls might live down the road and your town sends out memos saying “if you see these signs, run, and if you absolutely must then fire is the only thing that will be effective.” It’s perfectly plausible, you just need to be the littlest bit creative/steal stuff like wildlife advisories from the real world.
You don’t even need an NPC. My first character was a sorceror who didn’t know what he could cast but his will, muscle-memory, and being in certain situations brought it out of him. Any “puzzle fight” should have enough room for players/characters to realize there’s a problem and the discover the solution. You can’t plan ahead, maybe, but there’s no reason you can’t have one roleplay turn and then “get lucky” choosing a fire spell next to see what happens.
Trolls only come out at night. As a city dweller who doesn't go out at night you may only know children's stories about how if you go out at night you may be eaten by a troll. If your monster lore roll is good enough, maybe you heard the story where the guard killed the troll with burning pitch when the child escaped back though the gate and the troll got too close to the city wall
Buddy we’re playing adventurers who are by their nature main characters. We can’t Dues-ex everything but we can know things. Also who’s to say we’re city dwellers? Both my last characters lived well outside city limits. And when you live in a world with actual trolls you don’t think their children’s stories would have key information like that? How many of our own children’s stories include warnings? How many myths and legends? Hell the bible likely said to not eat pig because it made people sick and everyone thought it was some will of god shit so they stayed away.
If I made a player roll for it, say their character really probably wouldn’t know, then I’d make that shit a DC 5. Like, “everyone else knows it but you missed that lesson, sorry.”
Making characters stupid for “realism” based in a misunderstanding of how either world works is just boring for nothing.
A lot of systems include character backgrounds. I'd definitely use your background to work out whether you might know stuff. In d&d I'd definitely look at how many ranks you have/whether you have proficiency in relevant skills
They do include them, but I only use backgrounds as ways to pad out the mechanics and that choice is heavily influenced by the background I’ve already created. My current character is using the custom option because none of the backgrounds really fit.