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History as Mechanics.
The History skill pertains to the knowledge of the record of chronological events of a region and their significant causes. It may include royalty or other notable leaders and figures, laws, traditions, customs, wars, legends and miscellaneous noteworthy events. Make a History check to remember a piece of historical knowledge or recognize a historical clue. Passing an Easy check provides only General knowledge, where a Moderate check provides Specialized knowledge and a Hard check gives Esoteric knowledge.
..and that’s what you do-ooh-ooh with a History check! (insert Klondike Ice Cream jingle music here). Honestly, though, it’s not that simple. Something that gets glossed over in D&D to the detriment of the game (at least in my opinion) is the issue of “whose history are you remembering?” By the time this posts, most electoral races in the U.S. will be over, but many of us will still be in the political frame of mind, so let’s pull our example from here.
***WARNING*** I’m going to try to not express any actual political views. If I do, they are solely mine and do not represent the view of Quinn or anyone else who writes for At-Will.***WARNING***
The American War for Independence, like every other important conflict in real-world history, is fraught with bias where fact meets opinion and stuff gets blurry. For those of us in the States, our history tells us that the colonists fought an almost holy war against a distant, oppressive monarchy to earn our freedom. In the end, we were victorious because of our bravery, endurance and generally being ‘right.’ If you’re from the UK, however, you may very well have learned that the colonists were at best a bunch of ungrateful outcasts and rabble-rousers who ultimately weren’t worth pouring a lot of time and effort into controlling. At worst, they were outright terrorists. Ultimately, the colonies didn’t so much win as Britain just had better things to do with its military. The same goes for the view of the Founders in general. Who were they? The conservative element of U.S. politics likes to espouse the Founders as brilliant men of learning and reason who came to this land to seek freedom and worship God without the intervention of a major church (Anglican or Catholic, take your pick) or government. That is true – many of the Founders had advanced learning in military tactics, engineering, science, agriculture, mathematics and what we might call today ‘sociology.’ They invented, built, organized, wrote and together created one of the most influential political documents of all time. None of this is wrong. It’s just that Ben Franklin was a well-known womanizer and drunkard and more than a few of his contemporaries thought he was too buddy-buddy with France. Thomas Jefferson literally cut his Bible to pieces, removing all references to the Old Testament God (YHWH) and, based on his writings, was far more generically Deistic than any fundamentalist Christian today would like to admit to. He also cheated on his wife with a slave woman. Oops. Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist stances would look pretty at-home in the Obama administration if it weren’t for the fact that he was killed in a duel by Aaron Burr, another Founder. (You mean they didn’t all have a single common vision for the country? Really?) Even Thomas Paine, champion of states’ rights and low taxation wrote such socialistic sounding things as “Pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age.” in his work The Rights of Man.
My point here is that history is very dependent on who’s remembering it and for what purpose. As role-players, we tend to assume that there’s some kind of unified bank of History that our characters draw from and no one argues about. To do this is to entirely miss the point of recalling historical information. It’s the perspectives, opinions and color that “fills in” the connect-the-dots series of factual events that tells us who we are and where we came from as people – any people. This means there is really no reason that a DM couldn’t give out two or more pieces of seemingly conflicting historical information as the rewards of a couple History checks made by different characters and have neither of them be wrong. In fact I would go so far as to argue that nearly every History check made should yield some kind of information, be it true, false or somewhere in-between. The History skill is unique among the Knowledge skills for its dizzying spectrum of grayscale tones; it’s something to be utilized and played to the hilt, not feared.
History as Platform
Who are the folks trained in History and why?
Describing who all is trained in History can be just as difficult as figuring out just what History means. Is the leader of a barbarian tribe who knows the clan’s genealogy back 20 generations but nothing of the nearby city-state’s political structure trained in History? How about the merchant who knows all the laws and customs of a dozen kingdoms, but has no inkling of what happened before his great-grandfather lived? Does training require breadth, depth or both? Is someone whose education in History comes from an overtly slanted source trained? I can’t really answer these questions, to be honest, as it will vary significantly from campaign to campaign and setting to setting. In order to talk about training in History with any sort of foundation we have to ‘normalize’ it, if you will, to the scope of a given campaign world.
A character trained in History in Faerun, for example, is going to know a heck of a lot more information than someone on say, Athas where a lot of history has been lost. The Faerun historian is probably a Stickler for Detail or Endlessly Curious where the Athasian is making sure he’s Smart Enough to Survive. In the game Quinn was running up until a couple weeks ago (wherein we were essentially the X-Files for the Iroquois League) training in History could be very limited to the region around the upper Great Lakes. In short, a character trained in History has to be able to have access to information about any location they might visit in your game world, though that ‘world’ could reasonably amount to only a couple hundred square miles if you wanted.
This means that the larger the world, the more justification a character needs in order to be trained in History. When the game world is large and primarily uncivilized, your History-trained characters are very well-travelled or VERY well-read. They could be Scholars, Explorers or Treasure Hunters – really any background that requires constant and expansive overland travel. Most royalty, nobility and merchant class folks just aren’t going to have the breadth of knowledge to recognize obsolete hieroglyphs in some dungeon somewhere. If your game world is less out of the way and more urban or at least politically oriented, then your Nobles, Elders, Viziers, Government Officials, Top Brass Military, Merchants, Clergy and similar Upper Class Citizens will know enough History to be functional wherever they find themselves. Actors and Musicians also probably have History training at this level since much of the entertainment is derived from historical or quasi-historical sources.
The platform list just given should look pretty familiar as it overlaps heavily with the Heal and Dungeoneering skills so far. This makes sense since we’re talking about skills representing (probably) formalized education. As your campaign scope continues to narrow, though, the education requirement drops off. In fact, games set around small enough tribes or villages might find it odd to NOT be trained in History given there’s so little to know comparatively. That in itself can be an interesting platform that is pretty unique to the History skill. Why AREN’T you trained in History if the amount of actual knowledge required for it is so minimal? Are you a Recent Arrival? Did your community find you Untrustworthy? Maybe you’re just Too Naive to Care. A character’s knowledge of the events of her world can say a lot about who she is and where she comes from. Even if you don’t consider the roleplaying implications of training in any other skill, at least think about why or how you are (not?) trained in History.
History as Sense
Hindsight is 20/20, and that’s precisely what characters with a strong historical bent are good at. Through the lens of History, all events are connected and influence or create one another. Market trends, the sway of public opinion, cycles of conflict and peace – patterns are the foundation of an education in History, so training in History tends to give a character good pattern perception. In a way, History is almost a reasoning or deductive thinking skill, measuring the character’s ability to take disparate pieces of data and correlate them into a coherent whole. It isn’t very useful or appropriate as a method of gaining information (like Perception, Insight or Streetwise) but as a method of processing information, it’s second to none. In the Dungeoneering writeup, I suggested giving the ‘gut instinct’ secret notes or clues to the PC with the best score in that skill. Similarly, I would recommend giving the ‘you notice a pattern in the puzzle’ secret notes or clues to the PC with the best History bonus.
If you’re going to really play up your History as sense, let me offer one more possibility. One of the likely downfalls to being a student of History is that you are never exactly in the moment. Your mind is generally forward or backward in time to some extent, either reviewing and cogitating what’s happened before or trying to predict what will happen next based on what you have gleaned from that mulling over of the past. Since you are always trying to make current or future situations fit into the molds of the past, you can miss unusual or context-specific cues that don’t fit into the model you have in your mind. It may not go so far as to make you a Ditzy Genius, but you may be a good bit more stubborn in your beliefs because of the ‘certainty’ you have based on your connecting the dots. This of course assumes you’re using the ‘correct’ information as discussed in the opening a few paragraphs back. You might just be a Font of Useless Information, which can be played for laughs in the short term though I would advise against doing so for long periods of time.
History as Social Skill
So you could use History to “relate the current situation to something historically famous” or “recall a relevant piece of historical information,” sure. That’s pretty obvious. What’s less obvious is that we as geeks use History as a social skill all the time. When was the last time you complemented someone by saying “The Force is strong with this one” or asked someone who’s been annoying you recently if they’re “feeling lucky, punk?” Lines from movies, TV shows and plays, internet memes and famous quotes are all uses of the History skill in real life as a social tool. Generally referred to as ‘social currency,’ these phrases are meant to evoke a sense of commonality or camaraderie between people who have just recently met or are of distinctly different backgrounds. Your character need not have a high Charisma to create rapport if she can reference a common saying or line from a song that applies to the situation at hand, be it seriously or otherwise. The right line at the right time sells itself, which is why I feel this is a History ability (knowledge of notable sayings), not Diplomacy (the ability to craft speech). History can in fact make a very good ‘joke’ skill as it involves the character being able to connect two previously unrelated events in an amusing way. It is also, from a metagame perspective, a great way to bring players back into the game from a round or two of wisecracks about it – have one of the characters make a History check to come up with a quip in-game analogous to the one he or she just said out-of-game. History can be a solid helping skill for any of the major social skills (Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate), particularly if the party lacks Insight, as it can help the group know what things to say, which words not to use, and maybe some shortcuts as to how to build rapport with a certain race or citizen of a region. Consider how often “you know what they say” or “a wise man once said” comes up in your own real-life conversations and how that might apply to your character’s interpersonal encounters by way of his or her History skill.
Hope you enjoyed that breakdown of History! Next week: Intimidate.
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About the Author
Ryven Cedrylle was introduced to 2nd edition D&D by his father at age 8 and has been hooked ever since. When not out somewhere with his nerd-loving wife, he spends an inordinate amount of time staring at small objects - primarily beakers, stars, books about religion and virtual gaming miniatures. Follow him on Twitter for previews of upcoming material and random nuggets of wit!
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Good thoughts. In 3.5, we had Knowledge:Local ___ (fill in the blank). I’ve often wondered why there was never something similar for History. Not that I’m advocating going back to “fill in the blank” skills, as the specificity that some people filled in that blank bordered on the ridiculous. It’s just that history, as you noted, can be an immensly broad topic, and defining what, exactly, a PC knows can be difficult. Does she (or CAN she) know the Barbarian’s geneaology back 20 generations, even though she grew up half a continent away?
This is a good argument for bringing back the OD&D “seer” for PCs who are adventuring far from home.
As for “History as the ability to make jokes,” what a great angle! I would add, however, that it’s important to remember there is a cultural aspect to humor as well. That, I believe, is now covered by Streetwise (though I could be wrong), so maybe History check bonus/penalty for being/not being trained in Streetwise. Just a thought.
I think a problem with using history as a social skill is that it requires your audience to understand your reference or it will just go right over their heads. I would still think someone would need more social and charismatic skills to know when and how to use commonly known references.