The DM always has the right to throw curveballs at the players, and screwing with player precconception is part of what makes dming fun. The player is responsible for figuring out how the setting is different from expectations, and plan accordingly.

because I love being told "your character knows nothing about subject that you personally are intimately familiar with". Makes for fun game play, I promise.

It's an opinion that I agree with and therefore it is absolute fact and is not to be questioned. Please send all complaints to file 13.

So you read that entire message and you only boiled it all down to that one single response despite going on forever about your own problems? Zero allowance of criticism against you, but all of the criticism against everything else? Sounds familiar. Yeah, the last paragraph I wrote in that other message? Yeah, that seems to be way more relevant to this now than I thought it was initially. Have a good day.

I never said it wasn't derogatory, and yes actually, acknowledging that different ways to play the game are fine does absolutely make it okay. "Tell me ahead of time and I won't play at your table" "You won't catch me doing that" ya bro they want to play the game the way they have fun and not force themselves to play it a way they don't enjoy for the benefit of others. And instead of letting that be, you have to whine and okay the victim.

No, the conversation did not start out with you being effectively called a bitch. A meme was posted that you decided to take incredibly seriously and incredibly personally. But you are 100% being an ass.

I mean, yeah absolutely and I agree. I didn't say you were being nice, but the double standard where they think they get to tell people who they accuse of metagaming (whether they are or aren't) that they're playing it wrong and to do something else when they would go absolutely insane if it was the other way around has always triggered me immediately. Just let people play the game they wanna play it

I really don't know what is so hard to understand about this. You are playing a role-playing game. Part of the role-playing game is that you are playing a role due to, you know, it being role-playing game. One of those roles is that you are an inexperienced adventurer. The expectation is that you as an inexperienced adventurer would not know the detail of a monster that an experienced adventurer would know. No one is saying you cannot use fire. Everyone is saying you cannot prepare only fire spells when going to this area because that would be you having information to knowledge that your character does not have. But do you want to know what every single DM would reward? You go into a library to look up trolls. If you know that they're supposed to be trolls in a specific area because it's called troll canyon, do some research. I guarantee you that the DM will actually reward you. What you want is a reward given for no effort. You want to say that your character has the information because you as a player have the information, but again, this is a role-playing game and you are playing a role that doesn't have the information that your player has. The limitations on you being an inexperienced character and not having access to that information is something that you should probably ask the DM at the start, but it also does mean that you're going to be limiting pretty severely the role-playing aspect of the role-playing game. If you would like to have your cake and eat it too, then I highly recommend trying to do something in the game that would actually demonstrate that your character is trying to learn something about the various creatures, so that way you could not only get vulnerabilities from that, but also be rewarded in general and look like a good player. Just a general hint and tip from a DM who is tired of this shit.

EXACTLY. People in this thread keep saying that they should be expected to keep the information that they as a player have because it's obvious No one is really giving an argument other than the fact that it hurts my phone No one else who is making that argument is thinking about how the fact that that hurts other players fun because it makes it all about them. You are hitting the nail on the head. You are able to have your cake and eat it too if you combine the roleplay with learning the information. You know you're going to a place called Troll Canyon? Go do the research. Suddenly you now do know that they are weak to fire. No one can argue that fact, and everyone can prepare. Moreover, you're also going to be in an area where you could probably get some extra fire stuff to help take care of them. It's also the type of cleverness that a DM will actually reward instead of just going. Oh yeah, of course you would know the thing for no reason.

It genuinely does. You might know a lot about the current state of speed running an obscure N64 game that was only released for a week in a single store in Japan, but your dnd character certainly does not

So, Nature or Survival, then. Different rolls for different outcomes, but the point stands. 🫡

That absolutely makes sense. I don't do tabletop, but when I start a new game and am playing it the first time, I don't go around reading guides. This gives me the fun that people say they don't get from games nowadays. e.g. Playing DOS2:DE, it was from reading something in-game that I realised that Trolls were regenerative and weak to fire. Then I proceeded to splotch poison on them and then fire up the poison puddle. And of course, I hadn't played a game with trolls before and didn't know about their special characteristics. But even if I had played such a thing, I would go into another game with a fresh mind, because just having the same name doesn't make the the same entity in 2 different worlds.

> Just a general hint and tip from a DM who is tired of this shit. Try being a better DM that doesn’t unnecessarily put their players into unsatisfying situations where they have to play against themselves. Make the thing their characters learn actually be something the player has to learn. It’s not difficult.

> don't jump through your hoops > *looks inside* > *The hoops are basic gameplay mechanics*

Damn you really think that only your vision is the acceptable one. To the point where your "argument" devolves into insulting those that don't see it like you do. Stop it. Get some help.

Ah. We tend to give players a DC to beat (usually 10+HD), with success giving you the description blurb in the MM and the accurate answer to one question (typically: vulnerability, best/worst save, special ability). Extra questions for every 5 above the DC. So a Wizard or Bard or equivalent typically knows that trolls are weak against fire and illithids eat your brains. A low skill/int character will struggle to recall anything useful.

Huh, TIL on the snakebite thing. I was pulling that from an old boy scout manual, just remember something about cutting the wound site first. The red of the cape setting off a bull is a myth, sure; but you still don't want to wave *any* capes around in front of a pissed off bull! I'll stand by how I phrased that claim

The red is done for dramatic effect in rodeos; it's movement they react to. Especially if they're feeling agitated, as in a rodeo.

"Don't worry, it's just a name!" Gets attacked by trolls. "I thought it was just a name!"

Trolls are only common if they're made common, though. Like, they're common in the Forgotten Realms, or Golarion, or whatever, but commonality is out the window in a homebrew setting.