GM fiat - an illustration

[Maxperson]

Well... unless I'm the GM and you're the player?

Correct. The GM would be "Jack the Ripper" in that analogy and isn't showing clues to anyone. Placing clues =/= showing clues to the players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, not at all. Because a mystery in the real-world lacks the bolded above.

I don't think a mystery is constructed in that way. It's something that happens due to a collision of many different factors, with no driving force behind them all.

Right, so real-world detectives are going to look at everything as contingent and possibly ambiguous. Solving any realistic mystery is NOT LIKE SOLVING A PUZZLE. It is going to be a lot of intuition, guesswork, humility, and mostly the gathering of a mass of small individually insignificant facts. And this is what we see in actual investigations. At least ones where the cops don't just grab someone obvious or disliked and just pin it on them...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And what of the Clue/Cluedo method? That is, a situation where nobody authored anything, and the GM does not have notes--but there is still a single, definitive answer that was always the answer, and which still permits revealing clues (mostly negative clues, at least the way Clue/Cluedo is traditionally played, but I suspect there are still ways to have positive clues nonetheless). By your logic, this cannot be discovering the GM's notes because, as noted, there aren't any. But it still does the thing I described, where there is a single specific answer that can be discovered by gathering evidence and reasoning on the basis of that evidence.

But this has none of the character of solving a mystery at all. How are the characters validating these guesses. Why are they guessing anything at all? The whole thing is simply a lampshade for a parlor game that is a logic puzzle. It can tell us nothing about the questions at hand here.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Correct. The GM would be "Jack the Ripper" in that analogy and isn't showing clues to anyone. Placing clues =/= showing clues to the players.

This is just silly.

Placing clues is a hell of a lot closer to showing clues than killing prostitutes is!

I mean… the GM places the clues TO show them to the players. The whole thing is crafted to work as a game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You'll have to say it. I'm not positive I'm understanding it.

It's turtles, all the way down. Your not dealing with any facts or constraints. This is why calling world building and trad GMing 'simulation' doesn't fly. None of this is analogous to anything, there's no logic to say what is or is not correct. There's just turtles (made up stuff).

 

[bloodtide]

Right, so real-world detectives are going to look at everything as contingent and possibly ambiguous. Solving any realistic mystery is NOT LIKE SOLVING A PUZZLE. It is going to be a lot of intuition, guesswork, humility, and mostly the gathering of a mass of small individually insignificant facts. And this is what we see in actual investigations. At least ones where the cops don't just grab someone obvious or disliked and just pin it on them...

This is what players must do to solve real mysteries in the game too.

I mean… the GM places the clues TO show them to the players. The whole thing is crafted to work as a game.

Well, your game is just a game. So sure everything to you is crafted to work as a game.

Many of us others see a RPG as beyond the label of a game: something greater then the sum of it's parts.

What would people think about a hybrid of the two approaches? Is that even possible?

No.

You have a real mystery or you have a non-mystery game play activity made for game play to make the players feel like they are discovering new that has never been thought of by anyone before the player randomly used the game rules to make the randomness in front of them.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, your game is just a game. So sure everything to you is crafted to work as a game.

Many of us others see a RPG as beyond the label of a game: something greater then the sum of it's parts.

Oh no no… my game isn’t just a game. I don’t even call it a game. I call it a life activity. If anyone shows up to our life activity and isn’t dressed as their characters, they are stripped and exiled naked into the wastelands.

If anyone really interrupts me as I’m narrating a really real mystery, I really kick them in their real faces. And if anyone asks one of those pesky questions, I really make them sit in the corner for an hour.

Some of us are just real gamers.

 

[soviet]

Oh no no… my game isn’t just a game. I don’t even call it a game. I call it a life activity. If anyone shows up to our life activity and isn’t dressed as their characters, they are stripped and exiled naked into the wastelands.

If anyone really interrupts me as I’m narrating a really real mystery, I really kick them in their real faces. And if anyone asks one of those pesky questions, I really make them sit in the corner for an hour.

Some of us are just real gamers.

Personally the murders my players solve are real ones I have committed.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't see a conflict between these things, and I suspect that you do because you have a view of what 'prep' is which is rather different from what Baker did when he wrote AW2e. Baker's prep is pretty loose. It's not about establishing a lot of hard facts. It also ALL happens AFTER session 1.

That last bit is super important, you already know who the PCs are. By asking questions and putting together the backstory/playbook/gear/moves chosen by the players. Now you play the first session, a basic context is built. Afterwards you go off and think about your threat map. What sorts of trouble could be brewing that would put pressure on the PCs, threaten them, test their ideas of who they are, and/or put them in conflict with each other?

That is AW prep, at no point is even one bit of this just the GM world building. Maybe the techie character seems to be angling to get the town running again, with power, light, water, etc. Nope, turns out the nutters down the road say it was the robots that ended the world, and they're going to make darn sure you can't restore it! Worse, they convinced the Brainer they're right! Threat is on the map, it's coming for you, do you still believe in the big reboot? Or are giving up?

If one can understand "prep" so differently, it would seem to me that it would behoove the authors to be more specific, rather than just using a generic word and presuming everyone agrees on what it means.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But this has none of the character of solving a mystery at all. How are the characters validating these guesses. Why are they guessing anything at all? The whole thing is simply a lampshade for a parlor game that is a logic puzzle. It can tell us nothing about the questions at hand here.

....the logic puzzle IS the mystery-solving? I don't understand what your point is here.