Are your campaigns mysteries, or puzzles?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

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?

Matter for the players, not for the DM.

I provide an environment and a cast of supporting characters. The players' job is provide the protagonists and give those protagonists goals and objectives. From these raw materials we create a character-driven (rather than GM-led) story and neither the GM nor the players know where the story is headed.

In other words, for me, story is the result of gaming but not a process within it. I make no attempt at all to write a story.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

By the defintiion in the OP - or how I understand it to be meant as there is some confusion in definitions and terminology here - mine have to be mysteries because when they start I seldom even know MYSELF what the "correct" answer is. The answer/solution will turn out to be... whatever it turns out to be. When it's said and done it may look like it was a puzzle, it may look like it was a mystery - but I won't really have known which any more than the players.

A puzzle is... a jigsaw puzzle or Rubiks Cube is probably the best analogy. The players have all the pieces, they just have to adventure to figure out which order they must be assembled in to solve the puzzle. A mystery requires adventuring to perhaps even learn what the pieces ARE, much less how they MIGHT fit together.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I definitely run a mystery campaign, as defined in this example. And I'm fine with the terms as long as I think of a "puzzle" in terms of "jigsaw", meaning it's just a matter of putting the pieces together. Mysteries, on the other hand, are more like a huge box of tinkertoys, where there are multiple results.

Puzzles happen, especially as a result of the players deciding to interpret a mystery a particular way, creating artificial restraints, or seeking to produce a specific result.

I avoid designing puzzles into my games since I hate riddles, levers, and other such claptrap and as a player am known for getting around them with rope and/or explosives, essentially by redefining a puzzle into a mystery. However I know people who need puzzles to solve, panicking at the open-endedness of mysteries, so it's no sweat off my nose if they choose to approach things that way.

There is no right/wrong but there sure as heck is good fit/bad fit. Players can turn mysteries into puzzles by adding constraints or puzzles into mysteries by changing the implied constraints with a decent GM of either ilk. However a DM who can't stand to see their puzzles redefined or their mysteries constrained will either go crazy or drive the players nuts.

 

[TarionzCousin]

It sounds like we want some new terms, like "muzzles" and "pysteries."

---er, but not those words exactly.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In my campaigns... The players usually start out with not enough information... As the campaign progresses, hopefully, they don't know what to do with the information that they have. So, early camapigns usually start out as the one, and late campaigns turn into the other.

Later
silver

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's some more clarifications on the position, using some common adventure motifs:

Find the McGuffin: As a puzzle, the McGuffin is the item that solves the problem, the solution to the puzzle: it is the one weakness.

Vengeance on the Evil Army: This is more of a mystery, where you are given a motive (orcs killed your family), and finding out how to execute it is more of a personal judgement call. Do you need to destroy the army? Beat its champion? Thwart its plans? Just destroy the clan that killed your family?

Slaying the Evil Wizard: Kind of a puzzle: killing the evil wizard will solve the problems plaguing the world. One dillema, one solution, a million different ways to get to it.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Mysteries. With some puzzles here and there - if the players choose to try to solve them.

 

[RavenSinger]

I'm in with Whizbang, in that I try to nest them together. Most of my adventures (small scale problems) are puzzle-ish. Most of my campaign issues are much more character driven, and therfore mystery-ish. I rely on my players to help make the qualitative decisions about the direction and mood of the campaign. Then I put together the scenerios/dungeons for them to play it out.

My 2 cents,
RS

 

[the Jester]

My campaign is generally more mystery than puzzle, but that is not always the case. It depends on the campaign.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Wargames with the occasional mystery element.