Me: Ok, I'm going to confront the slavemaster and free the crew from bondage, as it is not meet that any should toil against their will for the profit of another.
DM: Hmm. You know his true name is Sarl, meaning beechwood in the common tongue, so I guess you succeed at the encounter.
Me: Yessssss suck it thou who wouldst imprison free men
DM:... But now you gotta roll to see if, in the heat of your righteous fury, you act in an unwise manner and let pride drive your heart towards petty vengeance.
Me: Fuck. I rolled a 1.
DM: HA! You will come to regret this in decades to come, when the surety of youth is replaced by the hard-won wisdom of a life lived in the service of others
Me: I attempt to detect traps. [D20 clatters] 19!
GM: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Me: Are you going to say that every time I try to do something? What does it even say in that GM's Guide?!?
GM: Words are the source of misunderstandings.
Me: So what do I see, gazing out upon this city street?
GM: You see a wild fervor building, as it builds every day to recede at sundown. The city of Rakta has the temperament of a great sundial: those places in sunlight are danced upon by many joyful people, while those in the shade are quiet, mournful, dying-dead.
Me: Can I roll an insight check to remember this city and what causes these great shadows?
GM: Go ahead.
Me: I got a 14.
GM: You remember that you do not recall the name of this city; but, knowing the aesthetic temperaments of Marco Polo's last several cities, you can start to see a pattern.
Me: You mean to say that the center of the city is a great gnomon, whose dictates determine light and shadow, joy and grief, for those beneath it?
GM: I mean to say that this city is a metaphor for time itself.
Me: I roll to steal the hookah from Marco Polo.
Me: I roll to reconcile my desires with the stifling expectations middle-class society has placed on me from birth.
GM: Ok, roll a d8 to see how you fail.
Me: Six.
GM: You have begun an affair with a man whom you don't particularly like, and who doesn't seem to particularly like you. You are fixated on the way a cigarette hangs off his lip as he loiters in the lobby of an apartment building he doesn't live at. One day he says to you [rolls, checks table] that under the right light you could almost be mistaken for pretty. You are [rolls] devastated, but also still completely in thrall.
Me: I roll to collapse on the linoleum floor.