Are your campaigns mysteries, or puzzles?

[I'm A Banana]

Neither, really. They're places to explore.

So, why are they exploring these places? Is it because those places offer them a solution to a problem? Or because those places might achieve some end they've chosen for themselves?

Or maybe, when they're exploring those places, do they need to seek out specific places so they know how to delve deeper? Or is delving deeper more an issue of figuring out where they are and choosing the best path?

But in truth my adventures are stories.

So, when you develop the conflicts for these stories, are the antagonists there to be discovered via a direct process, or are they there to more oppose and foil the PC's, to give them something to consider and move ahead with themselves?

I think it's interesting to note that one of the corallaries is "Puzzles often come to satisfying conclusions; mysteries don't." Mysteries leave a lot of threads laying loose: "what if we did this instead? What if this other villain was really behind it? Who truly told us about the plot?" Puzzles can be stacked to be pretty complicated mazes, though, and exploring what wind up to be dead ends are still fun -- each turn, left or right, has an answer that will lead you closer or farther away from your goal, but there are turns within turns and twisted passages and the like. There's only one end (mysteries could have several different ends), but getting there is half the battle.

 

[Illirion]

Let's see if I have understood this right...

Puzzles:

- Where can we find the fourth plot item that we need?
- Is the gate to the lair of the frost giants guarded?

Mysteries:

- How do we get inside the frost giant lair?
- Should we charge in now or should we find a way to get to the plot item through another method?

It's kind of a mix really.. :\

Cheers,
Illirion.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

My campaigns can probably be summed up as "long periods of mystery with brief periods of panic".

The PCs rarely do have one single objective they must achieve and work toward. Instead, I present them with a situation, and how they wish to proceed - indeed, even whether to proceed or not - is their decision.

 

[tx7321]

Adventure and discovery are my focus...the kind of feeling an explorer might have, and the high you get from doing something extraordinary (like killing orcs and stealing their gold). So its a mystery in the since of "whats beyond the next hill", and a puzzle in, "are we lost", "what spells would be best to memorize given conditions or expected enemy", is this a trap, etc.".
Developed puzzles and mystery are short quick elements that I might pepper with here or there, and about equally (niether dominates the design), though I do usually have a theme (ex. this is the tomb of an ancient king, or find the stolen idol and return it to the village cleric) often the players don't know it, or particularly care. Thus, often any sense of mystery or feeling of being puzzled is on their end alone and is not designed into the campaign.

And then there's pure hack n' slash (with no particular puzzle or mystery in mind). Aimless "cops and robbers" kind of fun. . I suppose action/adventure is my primary design theme. Heck we used to role up random dungeons using the tables in the back of the DMG and have a blast. The players never new these weren't official modules or purposeful dungeons.

 

[shilsen]

My campaigns can probably be summed up as "long periods of mystery with brief periods of panic".

The PCs rarely do have one single objective they must achieve and work toward. Instead, I present them with a situation, and how they wish to proceed - indeed, even whether to proceed or not - is their decision.

What he said. Especially the panic

 

[Deadguy]

I suspect that often what I write up as a Puzzle ends up after the ending to feel like a Mystery to the players. I suspect that any time you end up having to explain things OOC you've produced an unintentional Mystery

 

[S'mon]

I think Gladwell got his terms back-to-front, as explained here:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/01/brad-delong-gladwell-seems-more-than.html

I tend to put as much info as possible in plain sight & have it all make sense, so my games are more puzzles (what do we do with available info?) than mysteries (what's going on?). I did have a player who insisted on treating my game as a mystery, with deleterious consequences - he convinced all the other players that things were far more obscure than they really were, greatly harming the PC group's effectiveness.

 

[Desdichado]

I aim for mysteries. I think I end up getting forced eventually into puzzles at some point, because they work better as campaign models. Mysteries have a great deal of risk that the PC's are just wandering around clueless.

 

[S'mon]

"Are your adventures mostly puzzles, where information will slowly reveal the true answer and the PC's must acquire such information to find the Real Culprit (tm)? "

To me that's a classic definition of a mystery, not a puzzle.

 

[Animus]

According to the article, I favor puzzles over mysteries when I GM.