It would depend on several factors, but the primary one is your GM. I would suggest taking this up with him/her.
This is just me personally, but I think Genre Savviness falls more under Wis than Int.
Mostly because it's generally "Ive seen this happen badly before. Let's not do that." sort of common sense, which seems more Wis based than the more analytical Intelligence stat.
It's based more on experience than logic, basically.
I know our GM didn't object when we walked into a room and saw a bunch of skeletons lying around and we dealt with them. Having been fighting various undead, including Skellies, the Barbarian took a hammer to them before they could get up and hit us.
Keep in mind the source of your knowledge; as you point out it is because your GMs have been big on foreshadowing (repeatedly in campaigns you have experienced multiple times) and because you read fantasy and know all the tropes (from the many fantasy books you have read over time).
What are the odds that your character has participated in any sort of world building exercises involving broad story arcs culminating in plot point Z? Or that your world is populated with numerous fantasy stories with which your character is familiar?
For what it's worth, I leave that entirely up as a possibility. While in the worlds I create, only in the largest cities or nations with the highest amount of culture and education would it be likely that stories about fantasy and the like would be widespread enough that someone would be familiar with very many, much less enough to be able to claim "Oh, I think I know how this ends." In the campaigns your GM runs it could be that such stories are widespread and very well known, to the point that your character would be very familiar with them.
Keep in mind the source of your knowledge; as you point out it is because your GMs have been big on foreshadowing (repeatedly in campaigns you have experienced multiple times) and because you read fantasy and know all the tropes (from the many fantasy books you have read over time).
What are the odds that your character has participated in any sort of world building exercises involving broad story arcs culminating in plot point Z? Or that your world is populated with numerous fantasy stories with which your character is familiar?
For what it's worth, I leave that entirely up as a possibility. While in the worlds I create, only in the largest cities or nations with the highest amount of culture and education would it be likely that stories about fantasy and the like would be widespread enough that someone would be familiar with very many, much less enough to be able to claim "Oh, I think I know how this ends." In the campaigns your GM runs it could be that such stories are widespread and very well known, to the point that your character would be very familiar with them.
I generally do this a lot with bard and detective characters. Then the other characters roll their eyes at the bard and say "Do you have any proof?" and he says "Nope, that's just what would make the best story!" Of course, many times he turns out to be right...
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I think that it is perfectly okay for any character to follow his gut feelings that things are not as they seem. After all, even a 1-st level PC is an adventurer with far more knowledge of traps, monsters, dungeons and battles than any commoner will ever get.
You can also play a conspiracy theorist who produces so many theories that some of them will be true.
Or you can play a character with low mental stats and blissfully walk into traps, ambushes and plots that you, the player, are well aware of. It is actually great fun and quite refreshing.
Or you can play a character with low mental stats and blissfully walk into traps, ambushes and plots that you, the player, are well aware of. It is actually great fun and quite refreshing.
The first character I made when we started playing Pathfinder was a lower-wisdom Paladin whose first act as an adventurer was to walk up to the ominous tower, yell "My name is Brynden Steelsong, Paladin of Iomedae, and I am here to smite evil!". I then proceeded to break through every door, run directly into every trap, and trust 100% the word of any NPC who did not detect as evil because "why would they lie?"
That character was a blast, and since our game was a mixture between serious and ridiculous our group had a great time shaking their heads and digging the dumbass paladin out of trouble.
In the town of Sandpoint there is an inn called the Rusty Dragon, named for the large rusty dragon decoration on the roof. When I described this in a game, my brother, very new to RPGs and basically playing himself, had his character climb up on the roof and poke it with a sword to make sure it wasn't alive.
His belief in the Law of Conservation of Detail served him well later in the campaign, so we just made paranoia part of his character.
Tell me about it. I have been playing since 1974. Few things surprise me. The scantily clad woman chained to the dungeon wall asking so seductive for rescue? Succubus. Every time.
"You find chokeapples under a chokeapple tree, your find treasure under altars”.
My way of doing it is to suppose it’s done mostly by level. A PC simply gets more & more genre savvy by experience.
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When ever I hit something I know what it is I make judgement call as to how obscure whatever it is. If I imagine that my fighter has only heard that trolls are hard to kill I race forward with my shocking burst weapon. If its a toss up. I will directly ask if I know. Chances are I will have to make a knowledge check. We always laugh when we make inappropriate conclusions.
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I had this come up in my 7th sea game last weekend. The party was in Bryn Brasail (Sidhe-land), trying to get a MacGuffin from a castle. Castle was full of a mustering army, but also had ruined and unused portions. They're sneaking around ok, but bogging down things a bit more than we had time for. So I had them give me a Sidhe Lore check. A good roll later, I pointed out to them:
"This isn't the real world. This is fairy land. The Sidhe do whatever makes the best story according to that particular sidhe. The item isn't going to be in a hidden corner somewhere. It's going to be in the fancy lair of the BBEG."
They quickly went where they needed to.
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DrDeth,
Your succubus will be much more effective if most of the damsels you rescue aren't succubi. Ditto the obligatory traitorous NPCs. You just have to, as a GM, make the PCs get somewhat more from their relationships than the aggravation and investment they put into them. This is realistic after all, the whole reason we form societies.
I think DrDeth was complaining about never being surprised as a player, not about being unable to surprise players as a GM.
I think DrDeth was complaining about never being surprised as a player, not about being unable to surprise players as a GM.DrDeth,
Your succubus will be much more effective if most of the damsels you rescue aren't succubi. Ditto the obligatory traitorous NPCs. You just have to, as a GM, make the PCs get somewhat more from their relationships than the aggravation and investment they put into them. This is realistic after all, the whole reason we form societies.
Yep.
There's simply no level of intelligence at which your character can declare his or her knowledge of every twist without it being obnoxious in an out of character capacity, unless your group happens to enjoy the irreverent genre savvy approach. It breaks suspension of disbelief too much, and tends to come off as smug instead of actually clever.
Depends on how obvious it is. I can see someone with lots of history/story skills applying pattern recognition to a situation. Or even in basic AP pacing if each book seems to follow the route between combat/skills etc.
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In a world where skeletons and statues can be animate and hostile I would expect an adventurer to keep that possibility in mind. Likewise the existence of shapechangers, polymorph magic, and mind-control has to affect peoples' awareness of the possibility of spies and infiltrators.
It's like a modern person wondering if a person is an undercover cop. It's not being genre savvy, it's knowing how your world works.
It's not being genre savvy, it's knowing how your world works.
A Genre Savvy character doesn't necessarily know they're in a story, but they do know of stories like their own and what worked in them and what didn't...There are two finely-distinguished varieties of genre savvy. The first comes from being familiar with fiction. A good example of this is the Scream series, where the genre savvy characters are savvy because they've watched horror movies. The other kind comes from being a character in some sort of serial fiction, and having a good memory. For example, many modern comic book superhero characters exhibit a lot of savviness, simply because they can remember all the weird things that've happened to them, and thus are not surprised when yet another evil twin shows up.
I'm honestly not seeing the difference.
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Having a rank of diplomacy/knowledge local/knowledge history tends to give the best leeway for genre savviness in my games. Diplomacy for gather information, hearing the local stories and what people think of them. Knowledge local for much of the same, local legends and deeds. Knowledge history for the older stories, legends and the like.
That and if a player actually says "I want to buy the veteran adventurers in town a round of drinks and listen to their stories" I will certainly make a note of that and roll random intel checks during their own adventure to give "you remember so and so talking about something a lot like this" hints and the like.
