PBTA folks: How literal are you with interpreting questions from investigative or interrogative Moves like Read a Sitch and Read a Person? I find I’m pretty abstract in interpreting them, depending on the circumstances when the Move is rolled.
Do you let the player ask a question in their own words and then interpret the answer through the list?
I don’t let players ask their own questions, and steer them towards questions on the list if what they want to ask is similar enough. But I also tell players that if what they want to know can not be found out by one of the listed questions, they move probably doesn’t trigger.
Yep. If the question isn’t in the lists, you can just answer it and don’t make anyone roll anything.
In AW the ability to ask questions not on the list is an advanced move.
When I’m the MC, I usually try to be generous with the information provided. There’s no need to try and play mind games: if they earned the knowledge of, example, “the best way out”, you tell them the REAL “best way out”.
I let players ask their own questions as long as I have the feeling that it is in the spirit of the legal questions and helps us all at the table to understand each other’s intentions better or pushes the story to an interesting direction.
No matter the result of the roll, I start with just telling them everything I can think of that they’d notice by Assessing or Reading the Sitch or Discerning or whatever. I try to be generous and honest and give them a lot to go on. And I try to answer the questions as stated, fully and honestly, ideally within the narrative context–but I will add explicit OOC answers if necessary to make sure it’s clear that “the best way to end this quickly” is to convince the ringleader to walk away, or whatever.
My modus operandi is to let them choose one of the available questions and, if they want and/or it is necessary, let them phrase it fitting to the current situation. As long as they catch the spirit of the original question I am fine with it.
If I ignore those restrictions, I might destroy my players character development and joy for it when they reach the advancements for advanced moves. That is true for AW at least, some of the hacks might give more leeway with that.
When I’m MC, I let them ask what they want but I try to fit their question to the list and answer that. Also, if they call the move (like, explicitly, or by implying it with their fictional action of ‘looking around/investigating’), I ask them before hand what information they’re trying to get. Sometimes it turns out they’re reading a person, not the sitch.