Dinos; Lore from owner-glorantha_at_hops.wharton.upenn.edu on 1995-03-03 (Glorantha Digest Vol 01)

From: owner-glorantha_at_hops.wharton.upenn.edu
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 16:20:42 -0800

The dinosaur debate reminds me of my Griffin Island campaign. Someone had managed to get a pack brontosaur from the slarges, and was trying to train it. He had markedly less success than the slarges (who I decided had special magic to help control it). The local elves complained that it was devastating the local vegetation, and he ended up holding a huge barbecue in honor of his temple.

Paul Honigmann opines

> It is my firm opinion that Lores should never have been introduced. If a
>PC has never heard of X in the game, he's never heard of it. If there's a
>chance he's heard of Malkonwal / broo fertility ceremonies / inner secrets
>of obscure cults then fine, the referee should decide on the chance (often I
>just decree "None, there's _No Way_ your 16 year old peasant could know that
>Krarshtkids are vulnerable to poison gas combined with Skin o'Life"). Hiding
>behind Lore Rolls is poor role-playing and if referees allow them, they
>may as well just hand over the enemys' stats and a plot summary to the
>players. To summarise:
> ROLE-PLAYING = GOOD
> DICE ROLLING = BAD
The Lore skills represent abstraction. Let's say I want to create not a 16 year old but a 30 year old character. Presumably he knows stuff. It's difficult to say he only knows stuff he's heard of in the game, because he's a "new" 30 year old. Lore helps here.

This doesn't mean Lore successes give full knowledge, even on a critical. The GM could even ask the lore skill and give that percentage of the information (or information that truthful).

BTW, when I ran my cyberpunk game, I used a rule that if you'd been a policeman for 7 years, and needed to know something police related, you rolled d20 of 7 or less. Again, simple stuff like how to put on handcuffs would be assumed, this was for more complex stuff like how another city set up their criminal records department.

> What's with all this netiquette crap, anyway?
> Half the fun of the Digest is watching Alex and Nick having a Flame War.
>They do it with such erudition and finesse. Let's have a bit less of this
>dry, "actually I think CA's may not be Veggies in the strictest sense of the
>word" and have a bit more raw vitriol!

Regretttably, most people aren't as erudite and fine about it. However, most people who engage in flame wars _think_ they are.