One Roll to Know it All

[Vorr]

So this came up in my game again. The idea that a knowledge check should tell a character everything. Like a single rank in knowledge(something) represents an intensive four year study course.

But, it just sucks all the fun out of the game. When you make a knowledge roll, your just skipping over the fun discovery of the game. Worse it makes D&D just a roll playing game, not a role playing game. It's a question of play styles.

The Game Theroy

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The basic idea of the knowledge check is for the causal gamer. The one who has far too busy a life to care very much about a game. (Yet oddly, they still find the time to game and still want to game, but such things are beyond this thread). The kind of player that can't figure out, say, that ''the Red Wizards are a group of evil wizards'' after they see some npc's do cast some arcane spells and do evil things. Or maybe they just don't want to take the time or effort to do so.

But as D&D is a role playing game, and it might impact a players fun if they get left out as they don't know something. So the knowledge roll was made and put into place so that the casual gamer can know all.

So the question comes down to, why are so many players obsessed with sucking the fun out of the game and ruining it, just so they can ''know everything''? I just don't get it.

Example:The group enters a cavern and sees:Starting in midair in the center of the cavern dark black oil-like liquid falls ten feet or so down into a pool of the same liquid. Though several gallons of the liquid fall each second, the pool oddly does not seem to change the amount that is in it. The air around all this liquid is noticeably colder then the rest of the cavern. A nice strange and mysterious thing for the players to find...

The group with the causal player: Player:Oh I rolled a 30 on my know everything roll. DM:Oh, it's a physical manifestation of a portal to the plane of shadow, if you touch it it will zap you to the plane of shadow. Group:Oh, ok, we avoid that and look around for anything to kill or loot. So the nice encounter the DM had planed only takes like ten seconds, as everyone has 'fun' not doing anything

The involved group game:Slowly, the entire group approaches the strange pool of liquid, careful not to get close. Player 1:Adom carefully looks to see if any of the liquid is splashing out of the pool. DM:No, all the liquid stays within the pool area. Player 2:Reno takes out a copper coin and tosses it into the pool. DM:As soon as the coin touches the liquid if fades from sight, but you can't tell if it just sank or was teleported away. Player 3:Woah, ok, wait, I'll try to touch it with my ten foot pole. Player 4:Wait, don't hold onto the pole, I'll use mage hand to hold it. So the whole group is now involved in figuring out this encounter. It's no longer just ''one player causally rolling a dice''

Now I'm not saying it's wrong if a player just wants to ''roll to know it all'' and skip past all the fun discovery of a role playing game. My question is more: Why would you want too?