How much information should the GM provide

[t0m]

when my players roll lore i look at the source of the skill and give lore based on it. example - a mage/scholar learns monster lore in a school. he rolls and learns that this particular creature is from dyval, tends to be a leader of smaller units of lesser creatures, and he controls fire magic. now a monster hunting adventurer can learn lore through experience and his roll would tell him the offensive/defensive capabilities, along with the easiest/most reliable way to kill the thing.

when they encounter the same creature a few times i leave it up to them to remember (the players that is). usually after doing research or successful lore roll ill describe the creature and show any pics i have. after that they are on their own for knowing if they have seen it or not.

[Kelorin]

How do guys handle Demon / Monster Lore if the party gets moved or rifted to a different geographics location? For example, a mage growing up in suburbs of Lazlo, and attending a prestigious mage academy will have been book-taught all there is to know about the commonly encountered beasties in the Lazlo area, the Xiticix for example. Now, take the same character, and he gets Rifted to the wilds of Russia. How good is his Demon / Monster Lore skill going be for the local monsters & demons there? What if he then travels to Japan? etc.

Seems to me that if general population know little to nothing about a given geographic region, a character certainly can't be taught the lore of that region without actually going there.

Personally, I use reflect this in game play as a significant to huge negative modifier to the skill (anywhere from - 10% to -80%), until the character can research the regional mythology / demonology from a local expert.

In a recent campaign, an NPC mage with the character group originally from Lazlo, was travelling around the country to learn more about regional demons / monsters, in order to compile that information into a book the mage was writing, which would eventually go back to the University of Lazlo.

[dragon_blaze_99]

I'd say if they pass there roll let them know what it is in the future if alot of in game time elapses and they don't encounter another for a couple of weeks in game then make them re roll

unless the keep the little paper you wrote down the info on, I have hand players use that on me two or three time.

[mobuttu]

i would go with that, but i would go alittle further... make the amount of information based on how well they beat the roll... if they beat it by leaps and bounds.. just let them read the monster discription :-p

but if they beat the roll by like... 5% then give them the name of the critter... and maybe one or two tidbits... like one of the common attacks, or a clue as to it's tactics or weaknesses

I would go a little farther here. Take the whole information it is available for such demon (that would be the 100% of the information). Now, get the number rolled for the PC on a successful roll. That number would be the % of the information known by the PC. Thus if the player had a 62% and rolled a 50 in a d100, then that PC knows the 50% of the information available. In this way, a PC with a skill of 100% who rolls a 96 knows almost everything about the demon (in Rifts it's always a 4% of failure, which would represent very obscure lore-facts).

[jade von delioch]

i explain the situation from the view point of the pc. People do not always notice everything about a scene right away so i have them make a perception check:10-15. the number depends upon how small the detail is.. the more unnoticeable the higher the target number.

any person who rules high enough will receive additional information.

[Carl Gleba]

Don't worry about revealing too much information. The key is will that information further your game? You don't want the game to stall or get boring or overly technical. Provide the information necessary to overcome a hurdle or provide clues.

Carl

[DocS]

I treat lore skills as rules by which a person evaluates things.

For example a Shifter looks at a creature, and makes his lore check, I will say "you'd estimate, this creature is a very powerful, but very unintelligent thing. It will rely on brute force, of which it probably has a lot of. It may have magical abilities, but they will be few, and it absolutely is unable to cast spells. Creatures like this tend to be vulnerable to Holy Symbols or Fire"

That way, I've given the character enough information to make him feel like the roll was worth it, but I've preserved a bit of the monster's mystique by not mentioning its name and there's a little room for surprises.

It also prevents the fustrating thing of a GM who says "you don't know, you've never seen one before". This is poor GMing. If the character has the lore skill, he not only has a shopping list of demons he knows, but he also has the ability to evaluate demons upon experiencing them. Much like a Chemist has molecules he knows very well, and the tools to, within a very short time, get a passing idea of the properties of new molecules he may encounter.

Moreover, if the creature is a *spriggan*, and the shifter uses Demon/Devil Lore, I will give information anyway, information such as "This creature is not a Demon. It might perhaps be a fairy, or illusion, but you're sure that it's not a demon."

The most subtle aspect of lore skills is that 'lack of information' has to be presented as information. In the above example, instead of me looking at the lore character and saying "you just don't know", I've given him information, made him feel useful, but in the end, I've told him "you don't know" in a way that he can actually do something with.

Also, as skills are PB's weakest trait, I frequently give my players automatic skill successes in things like this.