Players characters evading direct questions

[Ionathus]

If the players have various experiences with "gotcha" GMing, that will inform their reaction. It takes coaching, as a GM, to sometimes get past that. It also takes, to follow up on the point Kish made, establishing a trust relationship.

This was my guess from reading the original post as well.

"Gotcha GMing" can be pretty subtle if you're not looking for it. I often go overboard when roleplaying "hostile" NPCs -- but I try to make sure that the conversation never goes completely off the rails and the PCs can still get what they need out of the interaction: they can "save" the interaction with good enough rolls or creative thinking. But if you're not being careful, it can sometimes feel as a PC that the NPC has a billion unknown triggers you don't know about and saying the "wrong" thing can shut a social encounter down with little or no warning.

That can create a scenario where players are afraid to say ANYTHING, to ANYONE, because it could potentially lock them out of future interactions with that NPC. Especially if they don't have a good read on the NPC and what they like/dislike. That goes double for NPCs who are actually in clandestine organizations or dealing with any sort of specific secrets.

Social play is, in my experience, the biggest potential disconnect between what the GM and the players perceive as "fair consequences." It's easier to recognize as a DM when you're killing PCs with unfindable pit traps. It's harder to recognize when your standards of "good roleplay" are out of sync with your players'. It's very easy to subconsciously impose consequences on NPC conversations that make your players afraid to "play in the space."

It is not 'breaking character' for a GM to provide a memory prompt to a Character in the game. Doing so is treating the Character as a Character who recalls In Game stuff that the Character had learned.

Yep, I do this all the time too. I can't imagine a multi-session TTRPG experience where the GM doesn't give significant "memory leeway" to players. The players get to experience this world in chunks of a few hours each, once a week (or month). The PCs experience the world continuously, and in the world of the game, that thing Catherine forgot from September happened to her PC last Tuesday. She would remember it.