GM fiat - an illustration

[Bedrockgames]

With respect, I think the real game styles are where players solve fictional mysteries for real.

Yes, this is perhaps a better way of putting it than I did

I don't believe there are real game styles in which, for example, players have solved the very real Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft at the game table in their dining room, and turned the culprits over to the police.

I did, but don't like to brag

 

[Bedrockgames]

These play experiences could not be more different from one another. Trying to address them as part of the same phenomenon is irresponsible. Why continue to do so through multiple threads when this has been addressed multiple times to you directly is baffling.

Again I am not doing it, but in this particular case, it is a distinction that matters a great deal. But I am not treating them as the same phenomenon. If AW lets you solve an objective mystery then it is also a game where you are solving an objective mystery. I am only pushing back when people use 'solve' so broadly that it could mean anything from gathering clues and putting them together to arrive at a conclusion that is accurate to the objective truth established in the game to that truth being determined during the course of play

 

[thefutilist]

I believe our GM thinks in terms of "secret myth" quite a bit. Like there are secrets and conspiracies we have uncovered and whilst the details may have been flexible, I assume most of them were preplanned way before we found about them in the game. Similarly NPCs and factions seem to do things based on their own plans and motivations and that produces events visible to us players. I am not sure how much this sort of thinking one is supposed to do when running a game like this. Like there are all these established factions and some named NPCs and they have their goals and stuff. But instead of as active forces with their own volition, should they actually be treated as fodder for fiction when the dice or player actions demand it?

I didn't give my actual take on BitD.

So going with 'no myth' as a play style (flags, minimal backstory, GM facilitates, fail forward). Then my answer as to when to use it is:


Does off-screen positioning matter for strategic purposes, is this challenge based play? Myth


Does the clash of ethos between characters matter? Myth


Is this genre based play? No-myth


My evaluation of BitD is that it's best for genre based play and so the GM should go full no-myth.

 

[robertsconley]

Again this isn't about one style of play or even my style of play. So it could be any kind of guess. But a simple example might be they take action based on who they think did it, and they end up being wrong. For instance maybe they think Mr Green did it, and so they restrain him for the night in order to prevent further crime while they continue to investigate. Only for another murder to happen because the real killer was someone else. In that kind of situation, having an objective backstory makes a difference. Especially since this isn't meant to be a blind guess in a mystery but one based on the evidence they have gathered so far

Perhaps my Scourge of the Demon Wolf as a more detailed example can help better illustrate how the pre-planned style of mystery works out in play.

For those who don' t know the Scourge of the Demon Wolf is a sandbox adventure I released a few year ago. Although currently out of print, I expect to have a second edition released by the end of summer this year.

So here is the summary of the initial situation

Three died. They were mauled beyond recognition. The Baron sent his huntsmen to kill the beasts and for a fortnight they tramped across the countryside. Between their whoring and drinking they killed twelve wolves, parading their skins through the village. They were hung on poles as trophies of victory. Then the huntsmen left, the beasts slain, the village saved… so we thought.

As the fields turned golden under the summer sun the killings began again. Four more died. Then the Baron’s man, the bailiff, was killed on the high meadow in sight of Mitra’s Temple. His screams could be heard well into the village. He was only identified after we reassembled the pieces.

With the priest’s help I wrote a report to our liege, the Baron of Westtower. My report ended with,
There will be no harvest until the best is slain the killings stopped.

The PCs can get involved in a number of ways due to the rumors spreading about how the peasants of Kensla are refusing to bring in the harvest. I list a few in the book, but when I playtest, I have the players make up characters that would be hanging around the Baron's court looking for jobs. A fairly common occurrence during medieval times.

With the Baron, the group is hired to go to Kensla, deal with the f*#@ wolves, and get his peasants to bring in the damn harvest. Afterwards, the Baron's Steward will pull the group aside and tell them that while they have a lot of latitude, a harvest needs living peasants.

So what going on here?

All of this started at the Golden House, a conclave of mages several miles away from the village of Kensla. Like Convocations in Ars Magica, conclaves are group of mages banded together for support and security and part of a larger order of magic. Arbela is an apprentice there. Among her master's possessions, she found a book about demon, how to summon them, and how to control them. Very illegal, her master kept it after finding it on an adventure, as it is also a trove of useful but hard to get information about demons. He has no intentions of using any of the spells inside.Ambitous, Arbela took the manual late in the spring, went into the surrounding wilderness, and tried to summon a demon. From her point of view the spell failed, so she left the summoning site. While she took the book back with her, she didn't bother keeping up the remains of the ritual and she lost a satchel with her master's sigil on it that the book was originally in.

What she also didn't know was that beneath the place where she did the summoning was a wolf mother with her newly born pups. Nor Arbela knew that her ritual was a partial success; it managed to summon a wrath demon from the abyss, but failed to give its spirt a physical body in the material world. The spirit found the wolf den and possessed one of the pups, and thus created the demon wolf. The demon wolf grew quickly and killed the mother and the rest of the pups.

The Demon Wolf left the den, gained control of nearby wolf packs, and started terrorizing the countryside around Kensla. The bailiff of Kensla, Sir Anson, requested help from the Baron, who owned Kensla. The Baron sent his chief huntsman and a party of knights, hunters, and trackers to deal with the wolves.

While the Baron's hunting party treated the expedition as an excuse for a party, they did their nominal job. However, they were unaware that the Demon Wolf had manipulated them into eliminating the few remaining rival packs. Mostly by creating false trials that led to the Demon Wolf's rivals. With the wolves supposedly dead, the hunting party cheered their success, headed back to the Baron, and offered their pelts as proof of that the deed was done.

Meanwhile, for the rest of the summer, the Demon Wolf built up his strength and his pack. Mostly keeping to the mountains terrorizing a tribe of orcs that lived up in the mountains. In addition, a group of bandits decided to make some wolf costumes and tools to disguise their robberies as wolf attacks.

Then a few weeks later a group of wandering Beggars, dishonored horse tribesman reduced to using wagons instead of horses, arrived near Kensla as part of their normal travels. They know about the bandit group, although not about disguising themselves as wolves, and one of the reasons for stopping here is to fence some of the bandit's ill-gotten gains.

Late Summer near the Autumn Equinox, the Demon Wolf resumed its attacks around Kensla. One of these attacks killed the Beggar Chief's son caught unawares while hunting. The Beggar Chief vowed to find and kill the wolves responsible, although he and his clan were unaware that they were dealing with a demon.

A week afterward, the presence of the Beggar Clan was discovered by villagers from Kensla. The parish priest gets it in his head that they are responsible for the wolf attacks. Sir Anson disagrees but knows about the role the Beggars play in the rural criminal underworld. He rides out and orders them to leave. The Beggars pack up their encampment and move a short distance away still intent on hunting down the wolves.

Then the Demon Wolf kills and dismembers Sir Anson, the bailiff of Kensla, while he was out inspecting the fields. This and the other attacks were the final straw for the villagers, who drafted the letter to the Baron recounted above. However, one of the attacks on an outlying cottage occupied by an elderly couple was done by the bandits, not the Demon Wolf.

As the letter is on its way to the Baron, a peddler left Denison Crossing heading towards Kensla. He was attacked and killed by the Bandits, and his goods stolen. Also the Beggars are discovered by the villagers to be still in the area. The parish priest wants to go after them, but the village Reeve has managed to convince everybody that it is not safe and they should wait for whoever the Baron sends.

When the Baron got the letter, he was incensed; he also summoned the huntsman, berated him for his incompetence, and had him thrown into the stocks.

This is the situation prior to the start of play. What the players know is the geography of the land, that there have been wolf attacks, and that the peasants are refusing to bring in the harvest until the wolves are dealt with. Also, if the adventurers start out within Westower, the baronial seat, they know that the huntsman who led the original hunting party is in the stocks in the middle of the town square.

Next is what happened with the dozen or so more groups that tried to handle this.

 

[zakael19]

Sounds awesome. What game is this?

Songs for the Dusk, which has become my “play to find out” game dripping with current D&D play culture ethos. Even some of our characters are mysteries to themselves, so all I need to do is drop something from their Belief or Background in an appropriate spot.

 

[robertsconley]

The problem with writing a sandbox adventure is figuring out what to write about. The way I solved it was running it multiple times with multiple groups using multiple systems, keeping careful notes on what happened. I presented the situation, the players chose how to deal with it, and I recorded the outcome. Those notes became the basis for what I had to write about. I have done this 15 times and counting with GURPS (the original adventure), D&D 3.0, OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry, and D&D 5e.

Since most of the playtesting happened at conventions and game stores with limited time slots, most times it started with the players getting the job from the Baron. The "I got a mission" is the best way to get things going when there is limited time. However, there were two instances when it began with the players passing through Denison's Crossing, learning about the situation and electing to address it on their own initiative.

Also, this will read like I'm recounting actual events, which reflects how I run things in the first person. So when I say something like the players talked to the huntsmen, this means I described Westower marketplace, which included describing that a knight has been placed into the stocks. Then the players are telling me what they are doing as their characters. There are no formal mechanics to any of these, no moves or actions. Just going around the table, asking each player what their character does under the given circumstances. Only when combat happens do I use a more formal structure.

When it starts out in Westower the first point of departure is dealing with the huntsmen. Four out of the 13 groups that started in Westower ignored the fact that the huntsman was there and headed to Denison's Crossing. The remaining groups roleplayed with the huntsman getting the information he had. Mostly details about local geography and the hunt. He mentions that the wolves they captured seemed to on the brink of starvation. In hindsight, he believes they should have investigated further, as the wolves didn't seem strong enough the reported attacks didn't seem strong enough. At times, they ignore it because they figure that starvation was the reason for the attacks. Two of the groups went back to the Baron and convinced to release the huntsman from the stock to accompany the group to Kensla.

Two of the 15 groups elected not to go through Denison's Crossing and down the road to Kensla. Instead, they headed overland, checking out the countryside. One group encountered wolves, the other didn't, using the random encounter tables I use for the adventure. The one that encountered wolves figured out they were unusually organized for a wolf pack.

For the 13 other groups, there is a inn in Denison's Crossing. In the inn there happened to be an agent of the Duke, the Baron's liege, who was there checking out the situation. Only a few of the 13 noticed the agent, all of them opted to ignore him and proceed onto Kensla. The ones that notice just knew the guy as being "too interested" in what they were doing. Some of the group spoke with the innkeeper, who informed them about a peddler traveling down the road, but had nothing new to add to what they already knew at that point. Overall, the duke's agent was never a factor and thus I only briefly mention the character in the published book.

From Denison Crossing, 13 groups headed down to Kensla, and about halfway there, they encountered the dead peddler and the overturned, looted cart. For most, this is the first major point of departure as to how the rest of the adventure will proceed. While all the groups investigated the peddler's death, some didn't closely examine the wounds and missed the fact they were created after the peddler died from sword wounds. Others didn't decide to do an extended search around the area.

Of the 13 groups that dealt with the peddler, the range of outcomes included

• The peddler was discovered to have been killed by humans, and an extensive search of the area discovered where the bandits stopped obscuring their tracks and left a trail back to their hideout.
• The above happened, but the group decided to put a pin on following the trail and head to the village.
• The bandit wounds are discovered, but the group didn't find the trail because they didn't want to go too far into the woods.
• The party did not discover the bandit wounds, leaving them to think this was a wolf attack.
• Last, some parties buried the peddler, and some had the body carried to the village with them.
  

The first few times, I used skill rolls to handle some of this, but after the mid-2010s, I elected to do it more like Gumshoe; the only criterion for discovering the artificial wounds is examining the peddler's body thoroughly, like looking at it front and back. I only used skill rolls if they wanted more specific details like the type of weapon (shortswords and metal claws). With the discovery of the trail it whether they go beyond a few hundred years searching for additional clues. Again, I only used skill rolls if they wanted additional details, such as the size of the party and their weights.

If the trial is followed, it will lead the group to the bandit camp. Eight of the 13 groups did this.

And all eight wound up fighting the bandits, although all the fights were handled differently. Include a few that started out with the rogue character hidden in a nearby bush and one of the bandits walking over to said bush to answer nature's call.

After the bandits were defeated or killed, the characters find the bandits' supplies, including the costumes and tools to fake the wolf attack.

So here things get a bit complex in the outcomes.

One group thought they had figured it out and went back to the Baron to report their success. Which is fine except this group didn't go to the village, so when the Baron asked about the harvest, they went "durp", and headed back out to let the villagers know. Since there were also still wolves attacking, led by a Demon wolf, they quickly realized that wasn't the end of it.

Some groups, including the above, killed all the bandits in the fight, so they didn't get any additional information. The rest captured some of the bandits, questioned them, and learned about the Beggars and how they fenced the bandits' goods.
Three groups immediately followed up on that information and headed out to see the beggars. The rest opted to head to the village, or in the case of two, do briefly go back to Denison Crossing to turn over the bandits to the small baronial troop manning the toll booth in the hamlet.

Interestingly, of the three groups that opted to talk to the bandits, two managed to investigate and deal with the rest of the situation without ever talking to villagers until the very end before heading back to the Baron. The first time it happened was the result of an unexpected session I conducted at a Savannah game store, where I stopped by while on the road for business. I had nothing to do that evening, and the group there had their referee bailed. I borrowed a few tiny D6s as miniatures and a dry-erase board and ran it. I am glad I did, because overall, how that group dealt with the situation was not only unexpected, but also they handled it very well.

I will post later with the rest of the details of what happened, starting with what the other groups did upon their arrival at the village.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, but at least to me it is pretty unclear where the line is. If we treat these factions as real and have them behave sensibly, then certainly things like the party to whom we are trying to set ambush for learns about it an thus do not walk into it can happen? Also, enemies kidnapping our allies, thus sorta "forcing" us to do a rescue score. Should this happen? I don't know, to me it is unclear how "active" the setting should be in creating trouble for us as logical outcome of the myth. Like there are already entanglement rolls, which produce negative events. Should the potential myth-based trouble merely be fodder for justifying those, or should the game have both?

Yeah, when I played there were various clocks, entanglement roll stuff, rivals, etc. We

That's the only logic I could discern in it, but I've kinda checked out from this whole "What does 'real' even mean?" nonsense. Like I know what I mean by "real mystery" in context of RPGs, and it is the same usage overwhelming amount of people would understand. Now if someone wants to beat their head in the wall and insist that they do not agree with my use of "real" then I cannot stop them, but I am not going to change my language to please them in a manner that would make things harder to understand and more difficult to discuss for majority of people.

In any case, I don't think that part of the discussion will lead to anywhere. Not that it has ever stopped anyone around here...

Yeah, it was not especially the hill I was eager to die on. I'm pretty leery of that terminology, but whatever, if BRG wants to use it, then it's pointless to argue about. IMHO all play is so many layers removed from anything real that the only true purpose is to have fiction we can all successfully interpret and extrapolate from. My preference is thus overwhelmingly in favor of game play and roleplay. If I want realistic puzzle solving, I got a day job for that!

 

[robertsconley]

Scourge the Demon Wolf continued.
The Village

Aside from two, the other groups arrived at the village of Kensla. One of two things always caught the attention of the PCs, the open air tavern on the village green in the center, or the Temple of Delaquain, goddess of honor and justice, up on the hill above the village. Most groups opted for the tavern.

If they went to the tavern, they met old Harnic, who is "retired" and basically looks after the Broken Keg Tavern for the village. He will get Tomas, the village reeve, for the players. The roleplaying varies, but the reeve fills them in on the specifics of the killings. He will also send for the parish priest, Elder Anselm, and the village elders to include them in the conversation. At some point, the reeve will talk about the most recent killing, which took place on the village outskirts, where an elderly couple was killed.

Reeve Tomas

Three of the groups went to the church first and spoke with Elder Anselm. The priest is certain that the Beggars are behind the wolves and the killings, and he begins pushing the PCs to mount an expedition to drive them away. If Elder Anselm is summoned to the tavern, he will make the same point. While Tomas the Reeve agrees that the Beggars hanging around are a problem, he is sure that they are not the cause of the problem. All of the groups caught on that there is considerable tension in the village. And all of the groups didn't side with Elder Anselm and were uncomfortable with the anti-Beggar rhetoric.

Elder Anselm
Many groups had to work hard roleplaying-wise to get the villagers to accept their leadership and authority. A significant exception is that if the villagers are made aware of the bandits, which sows a lot of doubt among the villagers and gives the PCs the upper hand socially easily. However, if it revealed that the Beggars were acting as fences for the Beggars, the opposite happened. However, all of the groups were able to get the villagers to the point where they accepted the next step was further investigation, starting with the elderly couple's cottage, talking to the Beggars, and patrolling the countryside.
The day usually winds up with several things, the PCs investigating the Elderly couple and finding out that it was a bandit attack. Tomas the Reeve introduces them to Yoluf, a local trapper who knows the countryside well. And finally, the Reeve housed them in the empty manor house where the bailiff and his family lived.

A small number of groups were tasked with examining some of the bodies. It takes convincing to get Elder Anselm to let them into the catacombs. When this happened, they confirmed that the Elderly couple suffered the same wounds as the Peddler, but they will also see that it is clearly not the case with the bodies, despite their decomposition. For the groups that did this and who were thinking that bandits were the cause of the problem, this confirmed that there was more going on.

Usually, we moved onto the next day, but one group had a thief who decided to rob the temple because he thought Elder Anselm was an naughty word. During the heist, he was caught outside by a small group of wolves and was forced to run and climb a tree until morning.

At many points in the adventure, I will do a round robin asking each player what their character is doing at particular moments. Then adjudicate accordingly. When I do this for the first night, the players in most groups say they just sleep for the night. For the group in the previous paragraph, the thief player said, I am going to rob the temple. So I roleplayed it out, it took about fifteen minutes to resolve, and the rest of the players enjoyed being witnesses to his misfortune. This group was a bunch of friends who regularly played at the game store where I was running the adventure.

As for the wolf encounter, the Demon Wolf has a small number of wolves keeping an eye on the village. If a lone villager is out by themselves, they will attack. Since the bailiff's dismemberment, the village generally doesn't go out at night, and when they do, it is always in small groups. The thief was the first person out alone in a long time. Also, keep in mind the wolves have been supernaturally dominated by the Demon Wolf, so they are far more canny and aggressive than they otherwise would be. For the group with the thief, the whole incident was a significant clue that something was amiss with the wolves, warranting further investigation.

The next post will cover what happens the following day.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So .... it's exactly like every episode of Castle or House M.D. or CSI or Law and Order, or .......

Not exactly seeing the conflict here. If detectives are following Theory A because that's the evidence they have, then suddenly they're faced with evidence that changes everything to point to Theory B ..... ?

The difference is that the thing you are describing is a discovery of the real truth. As in, the facts that were always there, waiting to be found, they just weren't accessible or visible or analyzed (etc., etc.) yet.

The situation for a player is that you literally cannot reason from evidence that could be 100% legitimate OR 100% illegitimate and you have no idea which one it is until midway through the session. If the value of the evidence you already have is dependent on as-yet-unknown determinations that haven't happened yet, how can you actually SOLVE the mystery?

You can certainly have the game generate an answer, but is that SOLVING, or is that simply producing an answer? I argue it is merely the latter--no purely-within-the-player's-thoughts solving is occurring.

Look, I'm not saying that there isn't some specific quantitative difference between "100% pre authored mystery solely created by the hand of the all-wise GM to amaze and entertain" and the "90% pre-authored mystery, but 10% left open to follow emerging drama, character stakes, and thematic impact". Could it impact play? Possibly, if you're playing with a certain type of player who demands fully that the procedural operation of play meet their own prescriptive need to only approach a "mystery investigation" as a "real life investigator would" (despite the fact that the investigation itself is a fictional construct wholly created by another fallible human and will likely have inconsistencies and holes because the author of the fictional construct doesn't write procedural crime novels for a living).

The thing I was responding to wasn't "90% pre-authored, 10% in-play". It was "bare minimum 50% in-play, and probably a lot more than that." Massive shifts--including both who did it, how it happened, when it happened, etc.--can occur which it is impossible even in principle to reason from, since you can't reason to the solution if there isn't a solution!

I'm sure plenty of people don't really want to reason to the solution from the evidence, or they only wish to do so at a relatively abstracted distance. That's totally fine. I just see a gap between "solving a mystery means you can take the clues you have, reason from them, and then derive the answer" and "there are essential, whole-result-altering details that have no truth value until after a play process gives them one."

If you're playing with my players, all of the hand-wringing, word-parsing over "Oh my gosh, is it actually mystery????", the overbearing one-true-way-ism about how "If you change anything now, it will be terrible for the players, they'll hate it, it will ruin their enjoyment of the game, it will be this phony, fake, transparently hollow gameplay experience" is so wildly overblown and the 180-degree opposite of my own personal experience that it's actually quite depressing.

It has nothing--nothing WHATEVER--to do with "one true way" or any of the other BS mudslinging you're doing here. I've said that several times. It has nothing, absolutely positively nothing, to do with whether "it will be terrible for the players, they'll hate it" etc., etc., etc. that you are shoving in my mouth as though I ever said ANYTHING like that.

It is only and exclusively, are the PLAYERS solving a mystery when they do this?

Because as far as I'm concerned, the answer is "no". And when I propose to GM a mystery-solving adventure with my players, I prefer that BOTH the characters AND the players be doing the actual actions of mystery-solving. There is absolutely, positively NOTHING wrong with doing a thing where the characters are doing the actions of mystery-solving and the players are not. The vast majority of gaming is like that: I don't have nearly the charm to woo a feylord, I don't have the strength to swing a greatsword, I don't have the constitution to drink a toxic brew and not break a sweat, etc., etc. But I do have, sometimes, the intelligence and perceptiveness to solve a mystery before the true answer is revealed, so long as the clues actually permit reasoning to the conclusion. Hence, since such an experience is one of the very few TTRPG things where my personal lived play-experience can 1:1 conform to my character's lived fictional experience, it's a place where I like to make that 1:1 correspondence possible unless doing so would be harmful to the experience in some other way.

I don't want any new GM out there to get caught thinking that just because he or she came up with a super-cool idea six months ago for a "mystery to solve", but now they see a way to ACTIVELY ACCELERATE the fun and enjoyment of their game, that they're somehow now trapped---lock, key, and chain---because "changing the mystery now" is THE ULTIMATE BADWRONG EVIL and they should never do it.

Okay. So you don't care about detail-fudging. I do. I think it's an extremely serious breach of GM-player interaction. The moment such an action becomes known to the players--and it eventually always will, the players collectively are smarter than the GM individually--it damages trust in a severe way that often cannot be repaired. After all, if you learn that someone was willing to secretly rewrite things once, and to actively hide this from you, how can you trust they won't do it again?

I've played and am actively playing in games RIGHT NOW that completely blow that theory out of the water, and the players are having a great time, and actually ENJOY filling in the margins of the 10% left open.

Now, if your group is totally programmed to live, breathe, and eat the "trad value system of RPG play," then yeah; do the "100% pre-authored mystery" instead of the "90/10 mystery". It's no skin off my back. Just don't deny your players better gameplay experiences just because of the dogma.

Again. We are not talking 90/10. We are talking 50/50 at best, and probably more like 30/70. The example given was a missing-persons case where all of the following details had no answer until hours into the session:

• Where the missing person actually was
• Who was hiding the missing person
• What the nefarious actors actually wanted
• Whether the nefarious actors were even involved in the person going missing

That's a hell of a lot more than a ten percent marginalia.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Answering questions as the necessary output of playing the game is not pre-authoring. It's playing the game. No one is arguing that answers do not get set as a result of gameplay. That, in fact, is (part of) the whole point of distinction that's trying to be drawn: between answer as pre-authored input into fiction vs answer as output of actual play.

Whether or not the answer is created as the output of actual play, if there is no answer at all until the moment play generates one, how could you reason toward that answer prior to its generation?