So it needs to be obvious to everyone to qualify. So how is that magically transformed into picking up information everyone missed? So much that several people proclaimed this was the new must have skill?

Have you ever heard the Mr. Obvious radio skits? Evidently some things are not obvious to everyone, like garbage disposals, or how to cook a turkey. So by your reasoning it couldn't be used to state, "It isn't a raccoon or something living in there, it is a garbage disposal," or, "You need to kill the turkey before trying to cook it," because the guy "never made the connection".

It is stating things that they reasonably could have figured out for themselves, but failed to do. Such as catching on to the fact that the GM said that there's already a hole in the fence and they don't have to prepare the cutters.
How would a Johnson reasonably be able to figure out your rent, or a haggler your absolute top price?

You know it, so you state it as it is obvious and relevant to you. And it isn't how much rent is a month as much as it is past due. It could as well be any impending financial obligation that motivates runners to take a job, sometimes for less than they should because they are close to desperate for money.

I don't see how a skill of State the Obvious would be detrimental. The character could simply choose not tu use it at inappropriate times. Now, if it was a compulsion on the other hand...

Indeed. As a knowledge skill, it's a check to see if one can, indeed, state something that seems perfectly obvious, with the added bonus of the GM being able to use it to get information across to dim-witted players.

It's really not a valid Knowskill, but if the GM wants to play that way, of course he can. It's neither powerful nor detrimental: harmless, if silly.

I said knowledge which a reasonably intelligent human being could figure out on their own, given the time, desire, and Perception score to do so.
Example:
Cooking a turkey (find a cookbook, dimwit).
Using a garbage disposal (that's what the internet is for).
There is a hole in the fence (have you looked for it?)
Etc.

Um. But you've just described steps the characters could take… why do they need Obvious as a skill, then? Either it's something easy enough that they already thought of it, or it's *obviously* not obvious enough to qualify. That, and it's just not a valid area of Knowledge.

Again, just because it is obvious, doesn't mean it's apparent.

"There are two doors in this room"
"Yeah, and?"
"You asked 'How do we get out of here.' There are two doors in this room. We came in one of them and can't go that way."
-
"Tony the Tiger's nose is blue"
"What's your point?"
"That poster isn't an official 'Tony the Tiger' poster. They colored his nose black. You got jipped."

In fact, that's exactly what it means. The responses in both your examples are non-obvious, because the person didn't get it.

Re-read this thread's title.

We've moved far from that, Neraph. People are acting like Obvious is something serious.

When the person you're talking to is clueless about it, it doesn't make the obviousness of the fact less obvious.

The fourth line in both of those could easy be "I'm such an idiot" or "I can't believe I didn't notice." Which is the hallmark for pointing out the obvious to people who didn't see it.

"Where's my hat?"
"On your head"
"No, I know that, but what did I do with it? I can't find it anywhere." (when not actually listening to the response)

There are two things there. First, that person had their chance if it was obvious (2 doors). Obvious still exactly equals 'apparent', the person is just a failure, and they don't get a *new* chance because they have some nutty chameleon Knowskill. Second, it *wasn't* obvious that Tony the Tiger's nose shouldn't be blue if it had to be explained; it's not *apparent* that Tony's nose shouldn't be blue. That's specialist knowledge *and* attention to detail.

The earlier examples presented were things like 'a whole shadowrun team forgot there's a hole in the fence'; they had their chance, and the hole was obvious (== apparent).

Tony's nose being blue is actually fairly obvious. His nose is not small.
http://www.interactive.org/images/games/to...he_tiger-lg.jpg
Most people just don't care to remember that fact because it is irrelevant to their day-to-day life.

As for the hole in the fence, that's exactly where this skill comes in handy: for pointing out obvious facts that were overlooked or forgotten. They're still obvious.

Anyway, I'm done trying to make the point. It's ventured deep into "explaining the joke" territory to the point at which you're missing the obvious.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FailedASpotCheck

I am kind of over discussing State the Obvious, too. But your response about cooking a Turkey...

The caller was using a cookbook. He stuffed the bird with bread crumbs. He rubbed butter all over the outside. He put it in the pan and got it in the oven. But it eventually comes out that the turkey keeps knocking the oven door open and getting out. The cookbook assumes people have a dead, dressed turkey to start, not a live one.

The garbage disposal is also pretty funny as the guy has this switch that doesn't seem to do anything, but every time he flips it, it sounds like something angry is under the sink. He is clueless that he has a garbage disposal, so how would he know to look for it on the internet? I'm not arguing about the skill, but Obvious reminded me of the Mr. Obvious show and so these examples came to mind as you were arguing what is and is not obvious.

If you get a chance, try checking out the Mr. Obvious Shows, they are funny. It's like you are getting as mad as Mr. Obvious listening to the caller.

I planned on letting this drop...

Does your GM not ask for skill checks from time to time? Is this not how in the best imagined sense of having this skill that the GM is getting across some overlooked piece of obvious information?

If the Player was annoying everyone by using this skill to amuse himself or abusing it as a substitute for the Common Sense edge, I know of no GM that would not put him in a situation and ask him for a skill check.

Like I said: these obvious (== apparent) things were overlooked or forgotten because people were stupid. They had their chance and they don't get another one. (And again, the blue nose is obvious, but that being relevant is *not* obvious.)

The whole point is that they *shouldn't* get something like this because it 'comes in handy'. It's like if you just had an active skill for 'Shadowrunning': gosh, that'd be handy.

No, it'd need to be a Knowledge Skill: Shadowrunning. Otherwise it'd get abused too much.

I'm not even going to try to tell you how wrong this is. You seem incapable of separating player knowledge from character knowledge.

You seem incapable of paying attention, then. I'm talking about character knowledge: the character had the chance to notice these things. If the GM didn't *reveal* them to the players, that's the GMs fault, so I'm assuming he did. Either way, an 'Obvious' skill is totally inappropriate. It should have showed up in a normal Perception test, or they should roll a real knowledge skill ('Knowledge: Cereal Mascots'), or even an appropriate Attribute-Only 'Sherlock Holmes' test or something. But 'Obvious Things' is not a knowledge, and its redundant with these existing options. If you want Common Sense, get Common Sense, but the GM should not be playing these characters for them.

If this existed in the game, what player *wouldn't* roll it constantly? What you describe is a 'read the GM's mind' skill. 'Hey GM, what's the point of this scene, is there a clue you specifically put here?' *roll* 'Oh, the poster is fake? Thanks. Btw, that was impossible to figure out otherwise…'

Agreed. yahoo tends to wield hyperbole with a blindfold on and a few shots in him , so I wouldn't take what he says too seriously.

That's rich, and amusingly incoherent. I wonder who you're talking about though, because that's certainly not my name.

Could be me. I get that blame very often, although I think it's wrong.

I never took you for a drunk-poster, Neraph, so it's hard to say if you fit the allegation. I think the psychologists call it 'projecting', because the only person I can remember recently admitting to drunk posting and deliberately saying unserious things was… 'almost normal'.

I think you guys are underestimating the power of common sence. If people had common sence, a lot of the problems in this world wouldn't exist. If anything the internet commlink in one's skull should make the breadth of common sense even larger. Especially for new players I'd want them to take common sense with a character, because unless the player knows shadowrun well, my opinion is that "if you don't ask the question, you don't get the answer". While new players may not have the knowledge a character might have.

When you come to a security fence and your team tech starts cutting a hole in it, but ignoring the fact that there is a pre-existing hole or the gate is open, that is obvious common sense. Now, I wouldn't point it out till afterwards for the hilarity of the moment.

"Okay you come to a fence..."

"I whip out my bolt cutters and cut a hole"

"Go for it..."

"Johnny, roll common sense"

"As you guys walk through the now open hole in the fence, you look about, only to realize the gate to said fence is about 10 feet away, completely ajar."


This would be prime for common sence... and I as a GM would call for it, not the players, unless they were doing it to see if they missed something and were stumped.

No, that's prime for a perception roll. Remember, the GM can call for perception rolls without being asked. Afterall: do the players ask for perception rolls to notice the dragon inside the 10 foot by 10 foot room? Typically not, as the dragon fills the damn room.

Same thing for noticing the gate 10 feet away from you when you're trying to get through a fence.

Technically, the dragons Skeleton fills the Room, because the Dragon could not move enough to actually eat and thus survive.

Also, technically, no player ever rolls Perception. As per the Rules, the GM rolls Perception for the Players and tells them what they see.
And on a Roll of all 1's, the GM LIES to the Players. At least, that's how i remember it from the SR3 Rules . .

I suppose, then again I'm the type of GM that supports telling the story rather than just rolling dice, if my team knows what it wants... and is direct in that nature I'm not gonna stop them. Especially if it's funny enough.

Correct; however, for expediency, most tables allow their players to roll their dice themselves and trust them not to metagame. I don't know how many times I've done something with my character that I didn't want to because my character, with his inaccurate information that I know properly because of meta-gaming, would have done so.

Stay classy, yahoo.

The go-to at our table is player rolled perception. When I've got time at work though, I'll make a few baseline perception checks for each character and write them down, then as the situation dictates, I'll check the list and tell the player what they'd see. Of course, with some groups, if you tell one character out of 5 that he sees something glimmer out of the corner of his eye, suddenly 3 people are 'observing in detail' when they had no reason to otherwise. That's more a complaint about poor roleplaying then the rules, I suppose, but it is an annoyance with making perception a check, as opposed to a flat, leveled ability.

Reference to an old Knights of the Dinner Table strip* where the GM told the players that inside the 10x10 room was a pile of gold and neglected to mention the ancient red dragon perched atop it until after the players started looting.

And yes, your complaint was theirs as well. "How does it even fit! It can't even squeeze into the room, much less fit through the door!"

Point being: sometimes things are so painfully obvious that if the GM doesn't tell you, he needs to be smacked, and if the players forget about it after having been told, a nice comedic use of State the Obvious is more fun than Common Sense.

Although, that said, there's a TV show I need to go find where the house the main cast lived in had no front wall (so the film crew could film the inside). The husband however played this up for laughs by never using the front door. All the other characters played it strait and pretended there was a wall there.

*Don't ask me to go locate it. The archive is not as easily searchable as XKCD.

Do you also account for their modifiers? I have craptons of Perception modifiers, which is why it is important that I at least aid in the dicepool building for my Perception Tests.

I agree, Draco18s. In Jeremiah's example, the GM's duty was to tell them about the gate (in his example, the player seemed to interrupt the GM?). So they would never have not noticed that, and a mandatory Perception test would have been appropriate for a less obvious thing.

It's definitely funny, but also distracting from the actual game (like Monty Python jokes at the table).

Again, almost normal, I don't see anyone here by that name. I'll thank you not to make fraudulent quotes, either.

Those are the groups that you start issuing mandatory secret note passing in. You tell the group the stuff that's common to everyone, then pass a note to the Special People.

Failed checks can generally be public. "Steve. You notice that your hands aren't the same size. Everyone else..."

That in itself is a reference to an early published D&D adventure module, which if you read it clearly has parts of the dungeon designed by rolling on random tables.

I ran that one myself, back in the day, without giving it a thorough read-through beforehand. At the point I came to the 10x10 room with the ancient red dragon in it, I had to stop and just stare at the page for a minute.

I told them, "You open the door, and see a gigantic angry looking eye filling the doorway."

The players elected to just quietly shut the door and move on.



-k

If someone asks to observe in detail, I'll roll the extra dice there and then.

As far as modifiers, I asked each member of the group to send me their pools for visual and unmodified perception. Hearing and scent I tend to ignore the dice on. More thematic, I guess. I'll still get arguments about my interpretation of what a visual modifier is, mainly because I believe that visual modifiers won't help you notice things that a normal person could see as well. If you've got vision enhancement times eleventy, that will give you great resolution images, but it won't jump the gap between seeing something and noticing it.




If the person doesn't exist, there is no undue fraudulation.

She from my point of view it's disruptive to the game to go any other way. Let the players choose their path, even if that means not asking about the situation. IF the players are given a floor plan and choose to cut a hole in the wall instead of using the door, then someone points it out after the fact, that's part of the common sence of it. And sometimes the "techy rigger" is gonna want to blow the door off its hinges instead of just opening it.

I ammount it to players who assume that everything is locked and trapped. You roll the dice, look at your player deadpan and say "Doesn't appear to be" which always leaves them wondering, is it trapped?

There was a game I was in where the group I was in blew a 10 story building off it's foundation. The ironic part is that every single player thought the building was only two stories tall at the time.

I still to this day have no idea how that idea got into our collective heads as the GM insists that it was 10 stories tall the whole time.

(Admittedly, we'd probably still set the basement on fire the way we did)

That's not really what I meant. Unless their *character* is literally someone who would act so quickly the wouldn't see the door, it just seems like the bad play in your earlier example will only mess things up. It *is* the player's fault for interrupting the basic room description (especially because the other players probably wanted to hear it? ), but the GM's job is to ignore them and finish the description. No good can come of the GM allowing someone to run into the room, and *then* mention 'you die because it's on fire', no matter how just or hilarious.

Now, if they actually do get the complete information (no interruption, no GM errors), then it's a whole different situation. (It's still not one in which an 'Obvious Things' knowskill is appropriate.)

--
Wait, why would you feel bad about 10 stories and not 2?

Common sense says... this is a bad idea. Then again most shadowrunners don't have common sense.

Which is why it's a Positive Quality.

I never said we felt bad for it. We just weren't expecting it to fall over into another building. We still totally vacated the scene just as quickly though.



What's a bad idea? Setting the basement on fire with C4* of a building that houses a mob that you were hired to kill and/or disrupt their activities of?

*This happened twice in two different games, and I'm conflating the two. The "the building jumps five feet, then settles down 10, before leaning over and coming to rest against its neighbor" story might've actually been the "use a earth spirit and an air spirit to funnel natural gas (from a gas main, lucky us!) into the air-tight basement, then summoning a F1 fire spirit and telling it to 'go have fun'" story. The other was a "leak gas into the basement and plant C4, but the furnace came on early, setting the place on fire and the demolitions man jumping out the second floor window and barely making it into the van before falling unconscious as he triggers the C4" story.

Have you ever had the occasion where the GM has told the players are all the relevant information and they sit there, talking and conspiring about it save for what SHOULD be the really obvious piece of information? This is where state the obvious could come in as a humorous way to both get the player's minds on track and move the game along without necessarily railroading it. Players will often times focus so much on the minutia (I like to think we all have OCD as shadowrun players) that we oft times miss the big picture. It shouldn't be used to point out information from failed checks of any sort. It would be more akin to someone going to pick the lock on a door without first trying the handle, or pulling on a push door.

Aw, man, I have to get the orc driver to get into gear with his demolitions skill. Just in case...

Another funny bit is negative consequences for not testing the obvious... When the hacker tries to break the node of an unlocked electric lock (open during business hours), and fails... an alarm goes off, etc. Best thing would be to lead them back around to said door in a round-about fashion during combat, have them open the door out to where they were originally and give them a "Really?" Moment.

X-Kalibur, totally, but that's not a function for an 'Obvious' knowskill. The GM should use an existing Knowskill, another Perception test, or maybe some kind of Logic+Intuition test, (or just OOC remind them, 'Uh, guys?')… anything but a chameleon 'things that are obvious in the universe' skill.

Was it actually stated to be a knowledge skill? I thought it was listed as a quality, like Common Sense? I could look back but I'm really quite lazy and I imagine it to be more of a 5 BP +quality

The originating post listed as "skill" but doesn't say "active" or "knowledge."

Hm, it looks like I got it from Halinn ("As a knowledge skill, it's a check to see if one can, indeed, state something that seems perfectly obvious, with the added bonus of the GM being able to use it to get information across to dim-witted players."). As an active skill, it could almost be okay (more expensive, and not constrained by the limits of what-is-Knowledge). I would call it something like (but less wordy than) 'Situational Deduction' or something. Intuition or Logic? Strong arguments for either one.