My Life As A Gamer: Monologue Are For After The Fight

In a bit of irony, this clip from The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly demonstrates why gaming isn't storytelling.

In practice, Tuco would've shot him before he got a word out. There's a time to talk, and it's not when either hot iron or cold steel has been drawn. I can't count the number of times I've seen players gank an opponent who--operating under narrative logic--tried to talk during or just before a fight only to get cut off, often by getting cut down.

GM: "Evil Roy says-"

Player 1: "I waste him with my crossbow." (Rolls, hits, kills)

GM: ?!

Player 2: "Either he knows nothing, or what he knows we can get without putting up with stupid, risky bullshit or worrying about if he's lying to us."

In short, Evil Roy talked when he should've shot and got punished for it. Narrative logic is how you can get away with talking when you should be shooting. Narrative logic doesn't apply in a proper RPG, and frustrated storywankers need to let go of that false conception or they're going to have a bad time until they do. Don't believe me? Go look at TORG, where they have to hard-code narrative tropes into the rules, because gamers--as a class--don't do dumb shit like that otherwise. It's part of why the Fake Gamer crowd went all-in on gaslighting via fake shit like Critical Role; they think they can program gamers to obey this bullshit, only to find out that most of the audience doesn't even play at all.

And that crack about getting intel without needing to listen to the NPC? It happens. Perfect interrogation powers, alternate paths to the same info, etc. are routine- as is powering through without bothering at all because the info is not critical to the players' success. Note, I mean "players"; what the GM or anyone else thinks is irrelevant. If the players got what they wanted, they succeeded.