GM fiat - an illustration

[Bedrockgames]

In the play of Burning Wheel (as an example) there are also ways to make things salient. They just don't rely so heavily upon pre-authorship by the GM.

Again I don't play burning wheel. So I have no idea how objective it is. But the point is in a mystery like we are describing, and in real life mysteries, things are becoming salient to an objective mystery with facts established.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Wait I thought the last 80+ pages of this thread were spinning roughly on exactly this.

Pretty much all of us have said it is not identical to a real world mystery. We said many times, you are not simulating reality, you are playing a game where there is an objective "real" mystery and the players are "really" solving it. The point arose because I made a point about agency, where someone had said something to the effect that giving players more information always increases agency. And I said not in cases where players are solving a real mystery, because having too much information would reduce their ability to make meaningful choices (because the point is to really solve the thing)

 

[pemerton]

It is a straw man because we aren't saying it is exactly the same as a real mystery

You are insisting that it is objective and real in some fashion that other approaches to mystery in RPGing are not.

For instance,

The language of calling it objective and real is not meant as an assault on other approaches. The point of taking this approach is you want to have players who really feel like they are solving a real mystery. And you have objective details about that mystery so that they are actually solving something.

 

[pemerton]

Pretty much all of us have said it is not identical to a real world mystery. We said many times, you are not simulating reality, you are playing a game where there is an objective "real" mystery and the players are "really" solving it.

What are the scare quotes for?

 

[pemerton]

in a mystery like we are describing, and in real life mysteries, things are becoming salient to an objective mystery with facts established.

There is no narrative salience in real life. Information is what it is. It's not presented to investigators by a "story-guiding" narrator.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is no narrative salience in real life. Information is what it is. It's not presented to investigators by a "story-guiding" narrator.

In life it is salient to the investigation. It has an objective truth with salient leads. A game mystery has objective truth with salient leads. That is the connection

 

[Bedrockgames]

What are the scare quotes for?

It isn’t scare quotes

 

[Bedrockgames]

You are insisting that it is objective and real in some fashion that other approaches to mystery in RPGing are not.

For instance,

Yes some adventure structures, styles of play and systems aren’t concerned about having an objective mystery really being solved by the players (for example it can be about the player rolling dice to deduce something rather than the player actually deducing something, or the details of the mystery might not be determined until later scenes). Not saying this is the case with the games you are playing

 

[Maxperson]

He controls the solution. Even your phrasing shows that. “There are generally multiple avenues to the solution” means he doesn’t control how the players may arrive at the solution. But there is a solution.

Only in the sense that he knows who did it. He controls no solution, though. There is no one true way to figure it out, and even figuring it out isn't guaranteed. The players control the ideas, including thinking of things the DM didn't.

This has been the crux of the argument that the mystery is real… that it has a predetermined solution. So who controls that if not the GM?

Predetermined perpetrator. Not solution.

Max, it doesn't matter how many times you say it, you’re wrong. Repeat it all you like. The GM being the one who decides all these things and doing so with the express purpose of presenting an engaging play scenario is a major factor of the point I’ve been arguing.

I mean… clearly we disagree. But please don’t act like I’m not understanding you and you have to repeat yourself to a simpleton.

And it doesn't matter how many times you say it, you're wrong. The deliberate aspect doesn't matter.

 

[Maxperson]

This happens in the fiction of RPGs where mysteries are solved even if the GM has not pre-authored a mystery with clues in the style of a traditional CoC module.

I agree. The major difference is that part of all(depending on the game) of the clues and perpetrator in a game where it isn't pre-authored, are created and not discovered.

Again, that's not better or worse. It's just a different feel to solving the mystery.