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Solo Tips & Advice #4 Prepare Your Answers

I can definitely remember times when I would roll for a yes/no question and then be absolutely stumped as to what the answer I got meant to my character.

Generally, there are three outcomes, some form of yes, some form of no, and then possibly a plot twist, complication, or interruption. What I am talking about here are the yes-no answers. You cannot really prepare for plot twists or they stop being plot twist, or at least they stop being surprising.

With the yes-no answer, having a decent idea of what your two options would look like brings two benefits. The first is an acid test, if you cannot imagine both branches of the outcome then it is not a viable question. It is only if you can picture both possibles, then it is worth asking.

The second benefit is that if you already have an idea of what the results could look like when the dice are rolled and the answer is known, it does not stop your game while you ponder “What does this answer mean?”

What this cannot help with is open-ended questions or inspiration prompts. At that point you are not dealing with binary options, there can be frequently thousands of options.

Most oracles are going to give you yes; yes, but…; yes, and…; no; no, because…’ no, but…; no, and…; and even things like yes if… and no if…. There are probably even more variations than that. When you need to start really pinning down your answer these are still just going to be variations of the basic yes and no answers that you prepared. The difficult part is the main idea.

I find this simple bit of prep before asking the question helps my game speed a long that little bit smoother.

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