What Bits Of Common Knowledge Do People Know?

[AlHazred]

There was a post from teh bunneh that got me thinking:

In my long-running Fantasy Hero game, here are the things that everyone "knows" about Elves:

 

 

• Elves are all hedonists. They'll sleep with anything that stays still long enough.
  
• Elves can breed with just about anything, too. Many people have Elf-blood in them (especially ones who are tall and thin and have beautiful features).
  
• Elves are immortal, and can only die through misadventure.
  
• Elves once ruled all the lands of the West, but a great war destroyed their Empire and scattered them.
  
• Elves' rulers are selected through a bizarre ritual known as "democracy."
  
• You can tell what an Elf is like by his skin color. Elves with green or blue skin are barbarians and sometimes eat human flesh. White and gray elves are civilized. Elves with black skin are the worst.
  
• All Elves are expert archers.
  
• Elves don’t have a word in their language for “goodbye.”
  
• Elves are very lazy. They sleep all day and only get up when the sun starts to set. They rarely work; they prefer to sing, dance, drink, and have sex all night long.
  

Some of these things are even true!

I, too, have bits of "common knowledge," things the whole world seems to know in my campaign setting. I also like to put things that are true, things that are false, and things that could be either true or false depending on circumstances.

 

For example, random people in my campaign will insist (absolutely 100% believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt) that one or more of these things is completely true about dwarves:

 

• Dwarves are industrious -- they're always working.
  
• Dwarves are suspicious and paranoid about others stealing their gold and technologies.
  
• Dwarves have hoards of gold secreted in their underground cities. In fact, they have a city no one else knows about, that's used just to store gold.
  
• Dwarves have technology beyond what is available to other races. When other races get their hands on it (or invent it on their own, a concept at which most dwarves just laugh) they send gremlins to make sure it never works right.
  
• Dwarves eat human, elf, and orc flesh. They process it in alchemical plants to disguise it from the other races, and distribute it throughout the dwarven kingdoms from a central factory where they herd thousands of slaves every year, never to be seen again...
  
• Dwarves make the best beer in the world. They brew it from underground moss, and mushrooms, and weird alchemical ingredients. Some beers contain gravel or metal shavings, other contain chips of gold or silver; whatever's handy goes into the beer.
  
• Consuming dwarf beer will turn you into a dwarf.
  
• Stealing dwarf gold will turn you into a dwarf. At which point, like a good dwarf, you'll give it all back -- the only people dwarves ever steal from is non-dwarves.
  
• Dwarves used to be giants. The gods shrunk them for some ancient slight, and they work industriously so that the gods will take pity on them and make them big again.
  
• Dwarves are just humans who have adapted to living below ground.
  
• Many dwarves are actually machines, designed to look alive. The actual dwarves are mixed in to throw off those who see through the conspiracy. They plan to replace all other rulers with machines.
  
• Dragons eat rocks and produce gold as a waste product; that's why their lairs are always full of the stuff. Dwarves eat gold and produce iron, steel, and adamant as waste products; that's why they've developed technologies to use those metals.
  

Anybody else with gems to add? I need to flesh out this part of my setting (the paranoid part).

[Lucius]

Re: What Bits Of Common Knowledge Do People Know?

 

What makes it complicated is that Humans might have one view of Dwarves, and Elves might have another, and of course then there's the view Dwarves have of themselves.

 

Not to mention differences of culture. One Human tribe might have a long memory of the time Dwarves saved them during a ruinous war with Orcs, and another kingdom might have an ongoing hot and cold running war over rights to mine a certain set of hills.

 

But if you want to stress people being paranoid about Dwarves...

 

Of COURSE everyone KNOWS that they have tunnels that run EVERYWHERE. A Dwarven army could rise from the ground anywhere on the continent and you'd never see them coming! They have undermined the walls of every castle and city and can make them fall any time they want to. Why, they could be under our feet right now, listening....

 

Lucius Alexander

 

What does everyone know about palindromedaries?

[薔薇語]

Re: What Bits Of Common Knowledge Do People Know?

 

Hobbits:

• Where do they come from? They are what happened to the children of Never-Never-land when they discovered the joys of a good drink. Alas, they never grew up, just old. So all their decedents are now doomed to eternal shortness but it is okay because they still have the happy juice! : ).
  
• Everything does not taste like chicken. Everything tastes like Hobbit. Just ask Karg the Orc.
  
• Hobbits can't breed. Their traveling caravans are actually used to steal small children and after giving them some special hobbit happy juice, turn them into hobbits. (this relates to #1)
  
• The reason Hobbits are always happy and Orcs always angry is that Hobbits cursed Orcs so that all the negative emotions Hobbits would feel are forced onto Ocs and all the nice feelings orcs would feel, transfered to Hobbits.
  

La Rose.

[AlHazred]

Re: What Bits Of Common Knowledge Do People Know?

 

• Well, I mean, everybody knows that Hobbits invented golf. One day a particularly old Hobbit was attacked by an Orc. He hit that Orc so hard, his head went sailing off and landed in a rabbit hole. When the Orc's children sued, that old Hobbit couldn't afford the weregild so he had to invent the sport of golf to make enough money.
  
• Everybody knows Hobbits dig holes to live in because they're descended from Dwarves that were cursed with happiness. You ever see a Dwarf that was really just happy? No, they can't feel those good human emotions, just greed and pride and whatnot.
  

[Beast]

Re: What Bits Of Common Knowledge Do People Know?

 

this was done by a friend of mine for those of us who act at Ren faires

it is mostly from a noble or courtier POV but there are bits for the lower classes

 

http://elizabethan.org/compendium/download.html

[teh bunneh]

Re: What Bits Of Common Knowledge Do People Know?

 

There was a post from teh bunneh that got me thinking:

 

Thanks! Yeah, I need to put together a list of what everyone "knows" about Dwarves, Hobbits, and people from different countries as well. I've just got too much Elvish laziness in me to get to it.