Hi folks,
This post is for those of you who engage in Research (which is many of you!) or who are generally interested in finding stuff out at PK. We want to give you more clarity on what to expect from your Research uses. To that end, we’ve put together a bit more of a framework for answering Research questions and added some rules. This will be in the Research Appendix to the rulebook. Here’s an approximate guide to what you should expect:
You may spend a maximum of 20 points on any one Research question.
We’ll be roughly classifying your questions as basic, intermediate, or complex. This is extremely vibes based, and based on our best judgment.
If you spend 1 point of Research on a question, you’ll receive an answer to a yes/no question about common knowledge, or confirmation of a commonly known fact
If you spend less than 5 points of Research on a question, you will receive a complete answer to a basic question or a basic partial answer to a more complicated question.
If you spend between 5 and 10 points of Research on a question, you will receive a complete answer to an intermediate question or an intermediate partial answer to a more complicated question.
If you spend between 10 and 15 points of Research on a question, you will receive a complete answer to a complex question.
The difficulty of a question may be increased by modifiers. Any of these will add 5 points to the difficulty of your Research:
- Your Research topic is illegal
- Your Research topic is extremely obscure
- Your Research topic involves a foreign language that you don’t speak
There may be other modifiers added later or that you discover doing very unusual research.
If the answer you get in one round of Research is not satisfactory, you can do further Research on the same topic. For example, if you’re investigating a complex question about something that is both illegal and extremely obscure, you would need to spend 25 points to get a complete answer, which you can’t do in one BGS cycle. You can spend up to 20 points in one cycle getting most of an answer, and then Research the same topic again in the next cycle to build on the previous answer and get any details you may have missed before. (If you do follow-up Research on a previous question, please please include a link to the previous BGS. Also note, we are not looking for you to combine points over multiple cycles to hit the number needed for a complete answer, i.e. we aren’t counting your total points used, this is more like returning to a topic to get another portion of the answer)
The point thresholds cited here are approximate, and we’re not going to be sticklers about them. Similarly, classifying types of questions will be our best guess. The thresholds here are intended to provide guidelines to what kind of answer you should expect.
If you have questions, you can ask them here, or speak to staff. If you have a particular concern, we’re more than happy to chat and address it.
Thanks,
Charlotte, on behalf of Staff