I find that one of the biggest challenges I have when playing in a role-playing game is that I’m working from imperfect information. I don’t know everything that my character would know.

I often don’t know the big picture stuff – what are the nations, the names of the rulers, the countries we’re at war with. And I’m even less likely to know small picture stuff. What’s the name of the guy I buy my groceries from? Heck, does my character even buy groceries?

For the most part, this is stuff that I don’t need to know. It’s not going to come up in the game.

However, especially when I’m talking to other characters (player or non-player), I find myself often needing to know stuff I don’t know. The DM might have determined that the guards are unhappy and holding out for a better pay offer, and that’s something my character would know (because he’s interested in politics), but I don’t.

So, when I come up to a guard and try to persuade him to let the party past, I’m often left with a bare roll. “I make a Charisma (Persuasion) check to convince the guard to let us past.” This is often not very satisfactory. Yes, it works, but I think we can do better.

There are two basic approaches we can try.

The first – and one I personally find quite difficult – is to make stuff up. You’re creating aspects of the world previously unknown. As a DM, I struggle with saying “yes” to this creativity from my players; and there are times when it doesn’t gel with my concept of the world. This is the type of creation where it’s very easy for the DM to say “No” to, and thus reduce the chance of it happening again.

There are reasons why people who know more about this creative improvisation than I talk about “No, but” and “Yes, and” or similar variations. You want the player’s creativity to be rewarded, while keeping it within the structure of the campaign world the DM envisions.

The second – and this is one I need to enable more – is to ask the DM to make stuff up. If the DM says, “Two guards block the passage in front of you, pikes at the ready”, I’d like to be able to ask, “What do I know about the guards?” and get an answer. Occasionally this might be enabled by an ability check, but there are basic levels of information that the DM can impart without that.

The DM might have something prepared about the situation, but it’s far more likely they don’t. However, just by virtue of being a DM, they’re more likely to be able to come up with a satisfying answer to the question. “Well, the guards are very loyal to the king, but there’s been a few petitions lately to give them voting rights that have been denied”.

The point of getting that information is so that you can then formulate a solution to the problem. Typically, the DM doesn’t want to solve the problem for you – that’s not the point of the game. But they do want you to have enough information so you can play it!

It helps if you can give leading questions. Rather than “What do I know about the guards?” you might ask “Do I know if the guards have had any trouble with the king?”, “Do I know if any of the guards are corrupt?”, or “Do my friends in the thieves’ guild know anything about the guards that might help?”

The point with all of this is to give starting points for the interaction to happen.

This also applies to dealing with traps and tricks. You’re looking at ways to enable the collaborative aspects of the games. I just find it more of a problem when we get to role-playing.

There are likely other methods I haven’t considered, but those are a couple of starting points.