Immediate Question
Our core principles tell us to ask questions and build on the answers. We have some questions that trigger the game’s mechanics, meaning we can’t ask them all the time. To differentiate between them and the questions that we should ask whenever we come up with them, we refer to immediate questions. Immediate questions can address sensory impressions (“What do you see?” or “What do you hear?”) or emotional responses (“How do you feel about that?”). You can leave them wide open, or make them leading questions (“How did you lose your footing?”).
Address your question to one specific other player.
#Answering Immediate Questions
Immediate questions reveal true things about the Fifth World, and you shouldn’t lie in your answers, but you can certainly mislead. Or, when building on those answers, you can show their limitations. Immediate questions don’t probe too deeply, and may not get to the whole truth of the matter, so you can misdirect, especially when the phrasing of the question indicates someone looking in the wrong direction. The answers to immediate questions involve only what seems true at the moment. They might hint at the real problem, or only a passing mood. They might point you in the right direction, or send you off on a long, irrelevant tangent. You can ask an immediate question for free at any time, but you can’t always rely on the answers. You can think of these questions as lacking the sort of agency that attentive and looming questions have. They fill in our story beat-by-beat, but they lack the power to meaningfully drive it forward.
When asked to answer an immediate question, your role will depend on the nature of the question. If it addresses your character as “you,” then you should play your character as you answer. Put yourself in your character’s place and tell us what you see: the answer that seems obvious to you, given what you know of your character.
When playing your place, if someone asks you an immediate question about it, then answer as you would for the place. “Can I find any deer tracks here?” asks you to answer from your role as the person playing the place.
When playing your place, if someone asks you an immediate question about someone in that place, then answer as you would for the place, about that person. Use the tools you’d normally use in playing supporting characters to decide how to answer.
When someone asks you a question that doesn’t involve your character, and it doesn’t happen at or concern the place that you play, then you should play the audience.
When answering immediate questions, always consider your agenda and principles, and provide an answer that you feel will best fulfill them. You may find it helpful sometimes to scan the list of principles, choose one that seems promising, and craft an answer aimed directly at achieving that end.
#Outside of Any Player’s Place
Only those places played by a player in the game have agency. Nonetheless, the story might go to other places from time to time. Don’t dally there, though. Since those places have no agency, nothing of real importance can happen there. Things can only start happening again when the story returns to one of the places in play.
Use immediate questions to fill in these moments, since no one can play the place. You might even encounter danger and difficulty, but you should resolve these quickly and return as soon as possible to a place played by someone in the game.