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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9672999" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I have. Several times.Party meets in a tavern. GM describes the tavern and notes that one of the patrons is an old man with one arm. This is understood by many old-school GMs as ample information for the party to know that the old man with one arm is an essential source of information that cannot be ignored. I--if I had not been explicitly told this by such GMs--would never have seen it as such, and would just have interpreted that old man as colorful background, a cool bit of set-dressing. These GMs have explicitly informed me that failing to talk to the one-armed old man would be a major--likely fatal--mistake.Wait, really?Genuinely hold the phone here. I thought this level of collaboration was absolutely, positively unacceptable under any circumstances. Is that not the case?I mean I don't really have a very high opinion of &quot;a menu of choices&quot; as being the kind of sandbox folks here have insisted upon, but alright I guess. What does &quot;encourage Q&amp;A&quot; mean? Like what do you do to do that? (This, at the very least, is something that would be personally, directly useful to me, because I have a player who profoundly struggles with brain-locks-up issues during play. Like I describe the scene and a potential problem to be resolved and half the time he genuinely cannot think of ANYTHING to say. At all, period--zip zero zilch nada, brain completely empty. When he does have ideas, they're great! But he locks up so often it can be a challenge to run the game for him, so literally ANYTHING you can tell me about how to encourage Q&amp;A would be incredibly useful to me.)I was given to understand this was too much limitation, by a pretty significant degree. Is that not the case?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9672999, member: 6790260"] I have. Several times. Party meets in a tavern. GM describes the tavern and notes that one of the patrons is an old man with one arm. This is understood by many old-school GMs as [I]ample[/I] information for the party to know that the old man with one arm is an essential source of information that cannot be ignored. I--if I had not been [I]explicitly[/I] told this by such GMs--would never have seen it as such, and would just have interpreted that old man as colorful background, a cool bit of set-dressing. These GMs have explicitly informed me that failing to talk to the one-armed old man would be a major--likely fatal--mistake. Wait, really? Genuinely hold the phone here. I thought this level of collaboration was absolutely, positively unacceptable under [I]any[/I] circumstances. Is that not the case? I mean I don't really have a very high opinion of "a menu of choices" as being the kind of sandbox folks here have insisted upon, but alright I guess. What does "encourage Q&A" mean? Like what do you [I]do[/I] to do that? (This, at the very least, is something that would be personally, directly useful [I]to me[/I], because I have a player who profoundly struggles with brain-locks-up issues during play. Like I describe the scene and a potential problem to be resolved and half the time he genuinely cannot think of ANYTHING to say. At all, period--zip zero zilch nada, brain completely empty. When he [I]does[/I] have ideas, they're great! But he locks up so often it can be a challenge to run the game for him, so [I]literally ANYTHING[/I] you can tell me about how to encourage Q&A would be incredibly useful to me.) I was given to understand this was too much limitation, by a pretty significant degree. Is that not the case? [/QUOTE]

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