Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
I think this is one of those areas where we are mixing up No Myth and Story Now. A lot of games are both, but No Myth is not required for Story Now. In Sorcerer games I have had murders where I knew who committed crime when players did not, but it still was nothing like a whodunit because the players addressed the murder with regard to their own agendas. No one particularly cared who actually was responsible. Even if they did I would not have put purposeful red herrings in because the point of the scenes I was framing were based on the personal impact to the player characters.
As a player in a Story Now game the expectation is that you are primarily going to be oriented towards your character's struggles. It's not a problem solving exercise primarily. We're going for fairly clear emotional stakes and really engaging the current moment of play. We care a lot more about moral choices than strategic ones. In a Story Now game the interesting bit happens when you know who committed the murder.
I do think you can have for example a Story Now game that would handle characters like Sherlock Holmes, but like solving the mysteries would not be the interesting part. The choices you make once you know what's going on would be. So a lot like Sherlock on BBC.
I'm running a game right now which should test this pretty well. Apocalypse Keys is a Medium Myth game about playing monsters who investigate other monsters so as to avert the Apocalypse. So there is some secret backstory in terms of NPCs who have relationships to the victims, clues, and what happens if the mysteries go unresolved. However it leaves the exact details more open. The point is not really solving the mysteries though. It's player characters dealing with the fallout of using their dark powers, their relationships to each other, the temptation to give into darkness, and how the characters interact with a world that is afraid of them.
As a player in a Story Now game the expectation is that you are primarily going to be oriented towards your character's struggles. It's not a problem solving exercise primarily. We're going for fairly clear emotional stakes and really engaging the current moment of play. We care a lot more about moral choices than strategic ones. In a Story Now game the interesting bit happens when you know who committed the murder.
I do think you can have for example a Story Now game that would handle characters like Sherlock Holmes, but like solving the mysteries would not be the interesting part. The choices you make once you know what's going on would be. So a lot like Sherlock on BBC.
I'm running a game right now which should test this pretty well. Apocalypse Keys is a Medium Myth game about playing monsters who investigate other monsters so as to avert the Apocalypse. So there is some secret backstory in terms of NPCs who have relationships to the victims, clues, and what happens if the mysteries go unresolved. However it leaves the exact details more open. The point is not really solving the mysteries though. It's player characters dealing with the fallout of using their dark powers, their relationships to each other, the temptation to give into darkness, and how the characters interact with a world that is afraid of them.