GM fiat - an illustration

[Micah Sweet]

Then again, the fiction is a big part of appeal of the game. That it evokes the imagery of a classic murder mystery is not trivial to the actual play experience, and if that was absent none of us would be discussing this game as it would have not survived past its first print run if it even made that far. Furthermore, it is possible to play RPGs in a way where the fiction really doesn't matter for the results and many people do. I don't see the appeal, but it happens. Like there is just dungeon map which is basically the board and then there are enemies that are just collection of stats and then characters that are just collection of stats as well and then they fight. 4e was particularly suitable edition for this boardgame play, as the rules were quite self sufficient and did not really require much interpreting based on the fiction, but people have definitely always done it.

Exactly. I wouldn't play that game if it didn't possess a fictional frame.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So we have...

1) Players declare actions (for their characters)
2) Clues are revealed
3) Players make deductions based on the clues.

... as a rough summary of the process. Step 2 seems incomplete.

How is it determined if a clue is revealed? What constitutes a clue? What determines the quality/scope of the clue?



I think this is how we separate the rules of the game from the experiential quality of play. The fluff of Clue... the mansion and Mr. Body and all the weapons and suspects... may help enhance the feeling of solving a mystery. "Weapon 1" isn't as evocative as "dagger" or "candlestick" and so on. This stuff enhances the feeling or experience of play.

But the actual process is we roll dice and when we reach a room we can make a supposition that includes that room, another suspect, and a weapon. If the person we make the supposition to has any of those cards, they show us one of their choosing, and we can cross them off our list.

These two things can easily be separated for discussion.

With an RPG it's harder to do because the fiction matters quite a bit to play. But it's not impossible. For me, that's been part of the frustration with the discussion... I think it makes sense to make such distinctions to discuss play, and I don't always understand why it's so difficult to do so, or why folks seem reluctant to do so.

Because some of us feel the game isn't worth playing unless both are present, and the two things inform each other constantly. Separating them will always leave gaps where disagreement can set in.

 

[pemerton]

Yes, the method of obtaining clues is talking to the GM. These clues however still are real clues, in a sense that they point towards real facts and real deductions can be based on them.

Suppose that the GM believes in some false theory: say Myers-Briggs personality indicators, or some false view about correlations between social position and behaviour. And then the GM writes something that relies on that sort of connection as a clue.

Or suppose, as in the CoC scenario I referenced, the GM uses a ghost and its ravings as a clue.

These do not point to real facts on which real deductions can be based. They point to tropes or stereotypes or popular (mis)conceptions, which the players have to reason about - and not by inhabiting their characters, but by their metagame familiarity with those tropes or stereotypes or (mis)conceptions.

 

[pemerton]

If I've understood you correctly, I think you're looking at this all incredibly wrong.
If the lights went out due to the burglar, it may point to more than 1 burglar involved in the heist.
It may point to the burglar having the necessary skills to know which wires to cut and where one cuts them.
And thus, may highlight certain suspects more so than others.

My point is that, when actual burglars actually manipulate electric wirings, there are objective facts at work. Real causal relations.

When this happens in a fiction, there is only imaginary stuff. Imagined causal relations. Depending on the GM's degree of knowledge or ignorance, what they imagine may or may not be plausible, either in general or in detail.

The players are reasoning by reference to tropes and platitudes. They are not performing reasoning that is comparable to the actual reasoning that actual investigators, let alone actual scientists, undertake.

 

[Bedrockgames]

These do not point to real facts on which real deductions can be based. They point to tropes or stereotypes or popular (mis)conceptions, which the players have to reason about - and not by inhabiting their characters, but by their metagame familiarity with those tropes or stereotypes or (mis)conceptions.

I think though in this style you are very much engaging the skill of the player. You wouldn't want to give them metagame knowledge about the mystery their character doesn't have (like who did it), as that would defeat the purpose. But I don't see anything wrong with a mystery where characters are rooted more in genre than real life. As long as the players can make sense of it (which I think is easy enough as those kinds of behavior patterns among PCs become pretty clear to most people and popular misconceptions are...popular so they are widely known

 

[pemerton]

I am using objective to mean it is exists as a fact outside the players, outside the PCs.

All mystery scenarios include facts that exist outside the PCs (unless they are very peculiar psycho-dramas).

As for "facts outside the players", I assume you mean by that something the players didn't author. That happens all the time in RPGing that doesn't depend upon pre-authorship. I've posted and referred to an example in this thread: my play of Cthulhu Dark.

So I now infer that that was, even by your standards, an "objective" mystery that the players "really" solved (or almost solved).

Your jargon seems very loaded, especially when the terms start coming together

"Pre-authored" isn't jargon. It's just ordinary English.

 

[pemerton]

I think though in this style you are very much engaging the skill of the player. You wouldn't want to give them metagame knowledge about the mystery their character doesn't have (like who did it), as that would defeat the purpose. But I don't see anything wrong with a mystery where characters are rooted more in genre than real life. As long as the players can make sense of it (which I think is easy enough as those kinds of behavior patterns among PCs become pretty clear to most people and popular misconceptions are...popular so they are widely known

A player who tries to pay The Vanishing Conjurer - a bog-standard CoC module - without bringing in metagame genre knowledge has no hope of solving the mystery.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So I now infer that that was, even by your standards, an "objective" mystery that the players "really" solved (or almost solved).

Link the post and I will let you know what I think (provided it isn't like a page long). I do think when the material enters the game matters as well for the purposes of a mystery being objective.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because some of us feel the game isn't worth playing unless both are present, and the two things inform each other constantly. Separating them will always leave gaps where disagreement can set in.

I’m not saying to separate them for play. I’m saying to separate them for discussion.

So if we’re going to talk about the process of play, we’d say something like “every 10 minutes that the characters spend in this area, the GM will roll a d6. On a 1 result, a random encounter will occur. Roll on Random Encounter Table G.”

That’s a play process. It would seem to me to be a relatively easy thing to discuss. But it seems problematic… and I’m really not sure why.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A player who tries to pay The Vanishing Conjurer - a bog-standard CoC module - without bringing in metagame genre knowledge has no hope of solving the mystery.

I was responding more to the general points you were making about tropes, stereotypes and myers briggs than any specific call of cthulhu scenario