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For what it's worth: I'm skeptical this is even an issue in Iserith's actual play. I haven't seen it much in the transcripts so far, because he tends to answer reasonable questions without issue so far. But it seems like as this thread goes on he is digging in his heels on the "no questions"...

Even without the penalizing, it's worse. If I have to say "I inspect the table to see what color it is" that's very different than just saying "what color is that table you mentioned?" You don't need to inspect an object to glean basic observable details from it. So the first example isn't...

No.

This gets back to what I said in post #545. You won't always know what details someone else will be curious about. And sometimes the detail they are curious about would be readily apparent if they were there. This is a limitation of the medium. Iserith's approach exaggerates the problem...

This reminds me of something else: I have a DM who wants our TotM combat in a savage worlds game to be intense and chaotic and not optimal. Among other things, declaring actions in melee requires we do some LARP-ish adjudicating using resin weapons to determine angles of attack, location...

I'm calling shenanigans. Especially on the bold part. It's weird, after I left you seem to have doubled down on the "no questions" thing, whereas when we discussed it up thread you acknowledged that sometimes questions are okay. Here's the thing. You have now indicated the following: 1) your...

Do you discourage pre-rolling in combat? e.g. Rolling damage and attack at the same time, or similar?

This is a good question that I didn't answer sooner. I'm not sure how to answer it. In a sense my players definitely might initiate a roll. They wouldn't start the conversation that way though. They would state their action or speak their dialogue. Upon its conclusion, there's a good chance...

My players, as villains, did a better job of killing protagonists than I ever managed. One of them in particular was absolutely brutal, and always went out of his way to finish off downed enemies. He eventually got so powerful and despicable that the player requested that I take him over as an...

In the game I mention above I've had players ask me for a social skill check against them, when they were on the fence about how to react to an NPCs dialogue and behavior. It doesn't happen often but it happens. They've also asked for DCs for other stuff, like to keep down their lunch when...

No joke; I saw you XPed this post, and I thought about it some more. Removing the dictator role from GMing has provided me with better games in the last 5 years than in the 15 years before that combined. In my current main campaign I began with literally zero prep and we built the world...

These are great. Up until about 6years ago that first one would have never been something I'd do. The world was mine. I've had a lot more fun since loosening my hold on the reins.

I think that there are types of collaborative storytelling that may involve adding more constraints to players at times, even ones that temporarily impact their agency (aside from magic). If you have buy-in from the players for this type of game, it can work pretty well. But I don't think it is...

Oh absolutely! I think I said right off the bat that I've seen players engage in the kind of 20 questions you're talking about. I definitely prefer to discourage that as well. I often play with kids who are new to RPGs. A simple "you can ask him" or "you can try opening it and find out" or...

Ovinomancer: Iserith will correct me if I misrepresent him, but... I think I can help clarify this for you a little. Just based on the style of narration in his transcripts, I think I can offer some insight Think of Iserith's games as a novel he is writing. He writes everything except for...

It's not really about trying to "catch" you though. It was to see the style in action with regards to that one narrow issue. It's clear to me now that I misunderstood you, though. No biggie, misunderstandings are common (another reason I like clarifying questions!) You say it plainly here: if...

Yeah, that is my stated goal. I read a little further, found more. They aren't common, but they occur. Are you bothered by the fact that I'm looking? That was the whole point of linking me the transcripts, right? So that I could see your "no questions, only actions" policy in effect? But it's...

Heh. Point. But I play with a group of friends. In the same way that my group of friends rarely has issues with war, genocide, prejudice, and so on. Communication *among our group* is usually pretty easy. :)

Interesting! Some of the most immersion breaking experiences I've ever had as a player have been under "keep it in character" DMs. If a DM presents me with an incomplete picture, that's normally fine. I'll ask a clarifying question or two to get my mental picture in place and then proceed...

I think some of you may be looking at this different than I do. The reduced XP requirements may not be intended to dramatically scale up the rate of advancement, but rather keep it mostly the same. Due to Bounded Accuracy, the expectation at higher levels is not that you will be constantly...