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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6781105" data-attributes="member: 87792">Yes, my GM could read a massive list of details about the world out every time we enter a new area - or I could spend a lot of time playing 20 Questions. On the other hand both of these take a lot of time, and time is a precious resource. Also knowing what the players are going to ask is a challenge.I know what you are advocating - but it is far from the only way to run things, and is a way I find extremely slow and clunky. Either by burying the players in the GM's wall of text or by asking lots of questions about things the character would be able to see at a glance, massively weakening immersion. As such I find this a vastly inferior way of doing things, one which makes for a less rich world from both sides of the table, and effectively leads to the experience of playing a blindfolded character being lead around by a guide (i.e. the GM) rather than having the PC actually inhabit the world. And I mean that literally - you can never get more description of the world by your way of doing things than a blind person with a guide (shared with multiple other people) would.This "Constantly switching back and forth between character-role and author-role" is something I only recall ever hearing from players whose major experience is with 90s RPGs or D&D 3.X. The reason I believe it breaks immersion for you is that you have been trained to believe that the players should not step on the DM's toes by actually trying to understand how the world works and sharing their vision as authoritative.I'm going to assume from this you've never done improv drama. And don't understand what @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a> would call the "No Myth" style of worldbuilding. Putting it simply, when the worldbuilding is solely up to the GM it is tightly held - and there is always a lot behind the scenes. Which means it's very easy to cross the lines because they are there but you can't see them. When handling cooperative worldbuilding if it hasn't been declared and someone contradicts it then you re-write it (which doesn't take that much). Even if you're the GM. (And no, this doesn't lead to people subverting the entire premise of the adventure unless you are playing with jerks). It's different rules of ettiquette - but both much easier for the GM and IME more immersive for any players who aren't vastly experienced with either D&D or WoD to the near-exclusion of other games.It is, however, almost always in my experience, used as a club to beat players who are playing smart characters. Rather than players who are e.g. trying to have their characters make gunpowder (which is, I agree, metagaming). Knowing how badly hurt you are isn't metagaming. Nor is knowing monster behaviour patterns. And any game that says smart and successful play is opposed to the play desired is badly designed.</blockquote>

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