How to always give your players information (even if they roll a 2)
It’s a frustrating thing to not have a straight answer for your players when they ask “Do I know anything about [blank]?” It comes up more often than one might expect, and if they roll to remember and end up with a 9, the rote response is usually “No.”
This sucks. A. Your players might feel dumb for not knowing something about their area of expertise, and B. you might have information to give them, but it’s not common knowledge that they could just pick up from a backwater barfly. This is one of the drawbacks of the binary pass-fail success system D&D is still married to, and it can really be a drag when trying to tell an effective story. Not to say D&D is bad for stories, but there are other games like those that use PbtA or Pathfinder 2e that use variable degrees of success that allow for more possible outcomes than simply “Yes.” and “No.” and allow for leniency in the face of adversity.
My solution to the question of “Do I know [x]?” is a little involved, but it always gives an answer, even on a 1. It breaks knowledge into 4 categories—rumors and hearsay, common knowledge, esoteric knowledge, and secret knowledge. Depending on what a PC rolls when they try to recall information on a topic, they gain one of these types of knowledge based on the total of their roll. It requires a bit of planning for the information you make yourself, but it’s also pretty easy to distinguish what part of a creature’s stat block or an adventure’s storyline would fall into each category.
1-8: Rumors and Hearsay“I once knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy…” On a 1-8, players gain a bit of erroneous knowledge. There’s probably a nugget of truth in it somewhere, but it’s been filtered by the vernacular of local superstitions or misinterpreted by an unreliable narrator—or it might just be outdated. The information isn’t wrong per se, but it can’t be taken at face value.
9-16: Common Knowledge“Duh, everyone knows that!” On a 9-16, players learn what anyone with their wits about them would know. This could be information like a troll’s weakness to fire or a vampire’s need for permission to enter a house, but probably not that fire suppresses a troll’s regeneration or that being forced across a threshold causes physical harm to a vampire. The information is accurate but basic, and might lack the context that would let the players make the most of it.
17-24: Esoteric Knowledge“I think I read this in a book once…” On a 17-24, players gain information that would be outside the sphere of general knowledge. This can include general knowledge, but also gives context and deeper meaning. Things like the names of members of the Council of Eight or relevant factoids of ancient history or even the name of the last knight who wielded a legendary weapon qualify as esoteric knowledge. As long as someone somewhere knows this information, it’s probably been written in a book that the player could have stumbled across at some point.
25+: Secret Knowledge“I think I might know just the witch who can help us…” Secret knowledge is a special case; players don’t normally have access to secret knowledge unless they can find a Primary Source (i.e. someone that actually knows the information or their personal account, and not some random book in a gift shop). If, while attempting to recall information on a topic, a player rolls a 25 or above, instead of the knowledge itself they get an idea of where the information could be found. Perhaps there’s a hag who trades in stories and secrets in a nearby swamp, or maybe a lost vault full of tomes and spellbooks belonging to an ancient lich was unearthed recently. Note: Secret knowledge is usually the kind of information that makes or breaks a campaign, calling for a quest or dungeon in itself to obtain from the primary source. While it can be fun to go adventuring looking for the pieces of a demon’s name to bind it, secret knowledge shouldn’t be overused to the point that every roll to recall information leads to another list of chores from the local temple.
This basic building block could also be used for things like Investigation while trying to gather information in a city or Persuasion/Intimidation when trying to get information out of an NPC. There’s room to play in it too, adding more categories or expanding or shrinking the margins to give more for less.
The next time someone asks if they know something, give it a try!
Recognizing
abusive friendship is really hard once you get invested. I’ve been in so many
and I still never recognize it when it starts. Abusers looking for targets will
aim at someone who’s generally not very-well accepted in their community,
struggles with isolation and desire to be acknowledged, is lonely or desperate
for friends, because it’s easy to make someone believe they got something they
desperately want to have.
They will share
your interests and opinions, immediately have tons in common with you, make
fun, engaging, supportive coversations, tell you stories that make them look
good and sweet, make you feel safe and like you have a real chance in having a best
friend in them. They will also want to test your compassion by revealing some
vulnerabilties and painful events, to see if you will rush to comfort them and
try to make them feel better. Once they know enough about you to use your weak
spots against you, and to always be able to play the victim and make you feel
sorry for them when they hurt you, it’s a game of time - either you will
eventually realize this person has no empathy for you and is willing to put you
thru horrible shit and feel nothing about it, or they will take the last piece
of your energy and patience they can and then abandon you brutally, when you
need them the most. They will of course, frame it as your fault, because how
could you expect them to be your friend.
I’ll try to list
some of the things I’ve noticed repeat in abusive friendships:
1. Lack of boundaries. This person will find one way or another to have
problem with your boundaries, they might act like your boundaries are hurting
them, or criticize you for “not trusting them” or “not caring
for them enough” if you want to keep some things private. They will also
make you feel like taking distance and space from them is hurting them, and act
as if it’s an act of aggression or betrayal, and you were supposed to be there
for them at all times.
2. Very fast progression. They will want to have won you over in shortest
amount of time possible, so they could start getting what they want. They could
start acting very affectionate, as if you’re already close for a long time, reveal
too intimate, too vulnerable details about themselves, and get you to do the
same, talk as if they already know all about you, or plan things as if it’s
already settled that you’ll be friends for a long time. They will convince you
that they’re a perfect person for you right away, and you’re the perfect person
for them.
3. Feelings of obligation. You feel as if you’re the only one who
can help this person, only one who they trust to never abandon them. You feel
as if you lead this person on to rely on you, to count on your friendship, and
you cannot bring yourself to take this away from them. You are the only one who
knows how hard they’re struggling, how badly they need your help and
friendship, and it feels like they’re always in some kind of a crisis and desperately
in need of you. Even when they hurt you, you feel obligated to care about their
situation more than yourself, and put your own feelings in the back to focus on
what they’re going thru.
4. Fear of being the bad friend. You’ve heard so much about how others
have hurt this person, and you grow scared that you’ll become one of those bad
people. After comforting this person about their bad experiences, it would feel
really bad to cause them another one, and make you look like a hypocrite. It
gets so bad that you have to watch out what to say, how to put boundaries, and
how to call them out on anything, out of fear that you will hurt them, they
seem too fragile and too easily hurt to ever be able to handle even an
implication that they’re doing you wrong. In the end, you let them get away
with anything, convincing yourself they would never be doing it on purpose, and
finding yourself unable to let them know out of fear that it would hurt them.
If you do tell them, you end up having to listen about how bad they felt about
having to hear it.
5. You can’t live up to their standards. This person has expectations of you, and
if you fail them even a little, there’s consequences, and you might find
yourself at the receiving end of criticism, verbal abuse, insults, humiliation
and blame. There’s a narrow frame of who you’re allowed to be and how you’re
supposed to act and feel, and you’re not allowed to exist outside these
criteria, and you can tell that your friend will either hurt or abandon you
completely if you grow and branch out beyond what’s acceptable for them. You
end up fretting their backlash at any risky action you take, and end up hiding
your opinions and general state of mind just to stay safe. You might end up
changing for them, subtly, and feeling constant anxiety that they will abandon
you if you don’t act as required. (Just to be clear, standards of “no
racism, no homophobia, no sexism, no trashing minorities, no supporting
dictatorships, and being against rape, fascism and genocide” are good standards. All of you should be
having those standards. Bad standards are about how you look, what you weigh,
what grades you have, how much you earn, how much abuse can you take without
breaking, how much shit can you tolerate, which ones of your interests are good,
what you’re allowed to feel and talk about - nobody should be inflicting those
on you. None of that is for your own good.)
6. There are repeating periods of good and bad
times. Even abusive
friendships can have periods where everything seems just fine, calm, your
friend is in a good mood, so you are allowed to be in a good mood as well, you
get to have fun and you start to forget there ever was a time when this
friendship made you feel awful. These periods are essential for keeping up the
friendship, because any person would get away from a friend who made them feel
horrible at all times, and abusers know this, and make sure you get nice and
relaxed before they decide it’s safe to lash out at you, or throw another
crisis at you. Friendships are not supposed to have intense ups and downs,
they’re supposed to be your refuge, your safe place where you can count on
things remaining stable.
7. You are getting stressed, insecure, upset and
sad. Friendships should
not make you feel this way. Of course, there’s always a possibility in long
term friendships that something happens that gets you upset once or twice, but
a new friendship, short friendship or any friendship should never be able to
cause you repeated stress, pain, insecurity and drama. If a friend is cause of
all these feelings, it is very likely they don’t have compassion for you, and
don’t actually care what kind of effect they’re having on your life - which
means they’re not your friend. Actual friend would care deeply about what
they’re causing you, and would go far to avoid making you stressed, upset and
sad - after all, don’t you make sure you’re not making their life filled with
stress and anxiety?
8. Your instincts are telling you something is
wrong. You might be
getting surges of anger or feel trapped and repressed, you might notice you’re
not able to express how you feel, and always have to play down your reactions
and responses, you don’t feel free to take your time for yourself as you’d want
to, you always feel guilty or like you failed your friend, and you know this is
not how a friendship should make you feel. Still, you feel a lot of affection
and care for this person so you can’t just walk away from them, even if things
do feel wrong, and you want to give it another chance or wait to see if it gets
better, so you bear with it and try to ignore your instincts, at least for a
while, because the alternative has became scary for you.
9. You’re
scared to leave. Even
when you realize this friendship is adding stress and pain onto your life, and
that it’s became toxic for you, leaving it becomes a big, almost impossible
task. You’re worried about how your friend will cope, how will they react if
you tell them, if there will be backlash, if they’ll be in the middle of crisis
and you’ll add onto that stress, if they will start insulting you and telling
you that you’re just as bad as anyone else in their life, if they’ll badmouth
you to other people, and worst of all, you’re worried if you would deserve all
that by leaving the friendship. And no, you wouldn’t. You don’t have to nurture
anyone who hurts you, and you’re allowed to walk away from anything that harms
your life.
If you thought of
someone while reading this, I hope you will know that you have the right to be
upset with this person, regardless of weather it would hurt or upset them. You
have the right to consider that maybe this person isn’t the ideal friend for
you, and that you don’t owe them your friendship no matter how obligated they
make you feel.
I need to mention
that you don’t have to prove or know that someone is abusive in order to cut
them out of your life. There are bad friendships that aren’t abusive, sometimes
two people just don’t mix well and if supporting one person is harming another,
that’s not working out well, and shouldn’t continue. You have the right to
demand only good friendships, only positive ones, that bring warmth and care to
both you and your friend. You don’t have to struggle thru bad ones, you don’t
owe anyone to make their life better at your own expense. Needing different
type of friend is reason enough. There are friendships that are good for both
people, and that’s the only type you should strive for.
This time around I did a
piece of our Kingdom Hearts couple, with my OC Mina and her OC Brone!
The two have a very sweet platonic-turned-romantic relationship that I
love and adore dearly! 💖💙 Just like I love & adore you, Dee! 💕
I’ve been trying to collect anyone’s info for other sites, twitter whatever anything really in case everyone leaves tumblr. I’ve gone through most of my follows list, but not everyone has left info on their blogs.
There are a few mutuals that I only really follow here. I’d love to keep in touch with you even if we never really talked.
My twitter handle is: TheDeedleDee Its the only thing I really use right now other than the very rare moments of Deviantart.
I’m gonna keep reblogging this til the 17th just in case. Even if we weren’t mutuals stop by and say hi! <3
I’ve been trying to collect anyone’s info for other sites, twitter whatever anything really in case everyone leaves tumblr. I’ve gone through most of my follows list, but not everyone has left info on their blogs.
There are a few mutuals that I only really follow here. I’d love to keep in touch with you even if we never really talked.
My twitter handle is: TheDeedleDee Its the only thing I really use right now other than the very rare moments of Deviantart.
I’m gonna keep reblogging this til the 17th just in case. Even if we weren’t mutuals stop by and say hi! <3
I’ve been trying to collect anyone’s info for other sites, twitter whatever anything really in case everyone leaves tumblr. I’ve gone through most of my follows list, but not everyone has left info on their blogs.
There are a few mutuals that I only really follow here. I’d love to keep in touch with you even if we never really talked.
My twitter handle is: TheDeedleDee Its the only thing I really use right now other than the very rare moments of Deviantart.
My Twitter
I’ve been trying to collect anyone’s info for other sites, twitter whatever anything really in case everyone leaves tumblr. I’ve gone through most of my follows list, but not everyone has left info on their blogs.
There are a few mutuals that I only really follow here. I’d love to keep in touch with you even if we never really talked.
My twitter handle is: TheDeedleDee Its the only thing I really use right now other than the very rare moments of Deviantart.
