GM fiat - an illustration

[Maxperson]

No, it's not! How do you figure? If they say "what about the cameras" and the DM hadn't thought of that, then that's it? Mystery solved. They watch the video and there's Colonel Mustard with the rope, plain as day!

Maybe. Or maybe due to pre-authoring the DM knows that the killer took pains to conceal his identity so the video just shows a person moving. But even that gives clues! You have an approximate height and weight, from the build and/or movement you can make an educated guess as to gender, perhaps there's a specific watch or ring that the killer was wearing that the party could look for. And on and on.

The camera might or might not solve the mystery, but it should definitely have a shot to give something.

How is any of this determined?

Organically through the DM's knowledge of what he has authored, as well as possible die rolls.

This is why I say I'll believe it when someone can offer a clear description of play that doesn't rely on vague stuff like "it's organic".

Not all of us need clear rules for everything. Organic play works just fine for a whole lot of people.

DM input on all this stuff... it's so much DM input that it's hard to track it all.

I think this happens and people stop attributing these things to DM choice at all... they start to say things like 'well that's what would most likely happen' and so on. But it's only what would most likely happen because of all the contributing factors... which are mostly made by the DM.

Okay.

What ideas of the players get added to play?

The existence of cameras.

Okay... then what? What do the cameras reveal? Whose idea is that?

And then lots of stuff, depending on the specifics of the mystery, NPCs, etc.

 

[Maxperson]

If this is really true, it tells me quite a bit about the difference between your RPGing and mine . . .

Yes it's really true that someone could do that if he wanted. You know damned well that I don't do that, though. These kinds of comments reflect very poorly on you.

 

[Maxperson]

Not really. It's Clue. It works exactly the same way. Minsk and Boo or Miss Scarlet, it makes no difference. Little Calimsham or the Billiard Room, the Horn of Blasting or the Wrench. It's all the same.

Really? Some Clue games only have 1 die to roll. Some have bonus cards. Some say that after the player enters a room, they must leave on their next turn. Some don't.

Not all Clue games work exactly the same way.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Organically through the DM's knowledge of what he has authored, as well as possible die rolls.

So it’s all up to the DM? What might be, based on what we already know, using any mechanics he may feel like to determine whatever he wants.

Not all of us need clear rules for everything. Organic play works just fine for a whole lot of people.

Well for folks who are so adamant that the answers be predetermined, you seem to care an awful lot less about how pretty much everything else in play works!

Seems odd to me!

And then lots of stuff, depending on the specifics of the mystery, NPCs, etc.

I mean and then what as in the next step. You’re saying the players can add things to play. Okay… they ask about the cameras, so now that’s an element of play.

Then what happens in play? Specifically what does adding the cameras do? Can you describe it in terms of game process?

Really? Some Clue games only have 1 die to roll. Some have bonus cards. Some say that after the player enters a room, they must leave on their next turn. Some don't.

Not all Clue games work exactly the same way.

 

[pemerton]

Yes it's really true that someone could do that if he wanted. You know damned well that I don't do that, though. These kinds of comments reflect very poorly on you.

But it's not remotely true that someone could do this, and play a game that remotely resembles any RPG I've ever played.

The fiction in a RPG is not always mere colour. Sometimes, even often, it matters to resolution.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, those 3 x parlor games have pre-authored solves + either the drawing + the pantomiming + the deft wordplay that are the equivalent of the GMs prep of initial situation + clues & obstacles & exposition dumps + pre-authored solve in prepped Trad mysteries. That much is kindred.

But that isn't remotely the whole story, which is why I was pointing at the significant divergence between the two being contained vs labyrinthine. This is extremely relevant for the challenge-based priorities that matter to the question of "did the integrity of the solve maintain with the players performing the solve sans-GM Force...or did the GM prod/breadcrumb/corral them to the solve in part or in whole...or did the solve not emerge at all because the GM or players (or both) failed at their respective role (devising + articulating for GMs and investigating + solving for players)."

Key here is, in contrast with contained, labyrinthine comes with severe signal dampening noise + breadth and scope (either artificially/incidentally because players start chasing the wrong inference/information set or actually because the mystery is convoluted and vast). When playing a Sherlock Holmes boardgame mystery, there is no accumulating fiction and free roleplay and backstory and "living breathing world" to distract (or inform) the mystery nor is there a GM to damage the integrity of the effort to solve. There is no challenge-based priority, solve-integrity harm to the "legitimacy of the solve" via tried & true (and well-endorsed everywhere...certainly here is no exception) Trad techniques of any of (i) ensuring clues (particularly "essential" ones) find their way into play even if players' investigation efforts would miss them, (ii) GM-rerouting players on Wild Goose Chases or lost in erroneous inference chains via strategic NPC exposition dumps or site-based info dumps (breadcrumbs), or (iii) action resolution manipulation.

Why do GMs in Trad mysteries do this (at scale)? "Because labyrinthine." Because either the core build of the mystery has failed (typically due to convoluted fiction and attendant convoluted inference chains or overwrought breadth/scope that engineers in too much bandwidth-stealing noise into individual and collective player mental space) or the play has failed (perhaps both). Or it could be that the GM basically mainlined Ouija play straight into the mystery architecture. On the surface it looks like the players are doing the investigatory work, but the GM is controlling the planchette which means the investigation strategy > clue-finding > inference chain > legitimate solve = a complete veneer. And once the GM has interfered with the integrity of the investigation strategy, the clue-finding, the inference-chain....any of it...to any degree...well, the legitimacy of the solve in terms of challenge authenticity is kaput. The integrity of any related challenge-based priorities becomes zero and the force of “but the solve was written down beforehand(!)” does the same work; zero.

The Sherlock Holmes boardgame mysteries fail at an alarming rate; probably 60+ %. This is “expert” boardgame mystery writing and unburdened by TTRPG’s obscurant dynamics mentioned above (it is just straight solving of a singular mystery with no other priority nor TTRPG-specific phenomena, like "living & breathing world" content, vying for table time and precious mental bandwidth). There is no way Trad mysteries (which necessarily folds in the large % of those mysteries that feature the challenge-integrity destroying techniques above which are tantamount to “the GM playing the game for the players”) do better or even near that number. My guess is, folding in that GM Force intervention above as a failure-state, Trad mysteries flop at an 80 % clip or worse when it comes to solve-integrity or successful solves. I'll give you a very charitable 20 %. 1 in 5 feature (a) well-built and well-GMed mysteries + (b)no GM Force to corral and guide the investigation strategy/clue gains/inference chain/solve + (c) players coming up with and executing the correct, pre-authored solve. I suspect the number is lower (I've only heard about these unicorns in the wild...I've never seen one...but boy have I heard about and seen the opposite!), but I'll give you 1 in 5.

This is the point and the reason to contrast Pictionary/Charades/Taboo with Trad TTRPG mysteries. Same goes for Pawn Stance dungeoncrawling where it is basically a sequence of isolated (contained) puzzles/obstacles and a strategic throughline of logistics and resource management. It is where they diverge that is the consequential piece, not the overlap on the Venn diagram...and what that divergence yields in terms of solve legitimacy (which only matters if your play champions these related challenge-based priorities as the hill to die on).

So what you say about possible complications and how the GM using force to avoid them damages the integrity of the solve is of course true. But I think your conjecture about failure rates etc is just pulled out of thin air. If the Holmes boardgame has 40% failure rate then like you said the game is rather hard. And yes, if you took the same problem, and made it into RPG it is possible that the failure rate would be even higher (then again, I'm not so sure it is given, as you would need to restructure it so significantly that how exactly you go about doing it would have a huge impact.) Bu if you want a higher success rate for your RPG mystery, then there is a simple answer without resorting to GM force: make the mystery really easy! It is that simple!

But of course ultimately the point that still stands, that with a real mystery that the players really try to solve and the GM is not using force to feed them the solution, there is possibility that the players fail to solve it. And that is perfectly fine! In fact, the failure being possibility is required. After all, if there was no chance of losing did you really win? It is same like so many other things in RPGs. With fair combats without fudging the PCs might lose. It is part of the game, it is a feature not a bug.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And those constraints on inference - that follow from genre, trope, a shared sense among the group of what is salient, the way that things are presented in play, etc - operate as much on material introduced during the course of play as they do on material authored in advance of play.

Again, I disagree, for the very simple reason that it has been brought up multiple times in this thread that "sudden total reversal reveal" is 100% in keeping with both the constraints you speak of, and the rules which permit creation of new fiction.

Hence, literally everything you've ever heard can instantly be upturned because someone--any player (edit: potentially any player, per your other posts), in your Cthulhu Dark example, or the GM, in PbtA examples--felt that it was in keeping with those so-called "constraints."

When the "constraints" can allow literally any information within the fiction to be retroactively invalidated or retroactively promoted to the full (within-the-fiction) truth, I don't see how it is even remotely possible to reason in advance to the conclusion. You can only reason to it post hoc. The world is not--even in principle--predictable because the genre in question permits such gross, whole-situation revision.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So to be clear, you're quibbling over the use of "notes" or "pre-authored fiction" in lieu of "prepped material"?

Give me a break!

So you think it is annoying that people have hyper specific semantic quibbles!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But it's not remotely true that someone could do this, and play a game that remotely resembles any RPG I've ever played.

The fiction in a RPG is not always mere colour. Sometimes, even often, it matters to resolution.

I think one could play pawn stance dungeon delving basically as board game and I think people do that. 4e D&D was particularly suitable for this as its rules were so self contained. I don't play like this and I never have, but it definitely is a thing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And who do you think you are disagreeing with here?

I was given to understand that you, and others, were claiming that it is perfectly, 100% in keeping with that, and that I was somehow being bullheaded about it.

If you actually agree with the given assertion, then I'm perfectly fine leaving the point.

That's not what the rules actually say.

Page 2 says, "If someone thinks it would more interesting if you failed, they describe how you might fail and roll a die." It doesn't specify who the "someone" is. Page 4, under the heading "Unanswered Questions", goes on to say this:

Who decides whether you might fail? Decide the answers with your group. Make reasonable assumptions. For example, some groups will let the Keeper decide everything. Others will share the decisions.​

So far from there being an explicit rule of the sort that you state, there is an explicit statement that there is no such rule! (As a general proposition: each table has to adopt its own rule as to who gets to make the call on possible failure.)

Okay? I don't see how this helps anything. Just because some tables might not agree that absolutely any participant can do this, doesn't mean it can't happen. Even if the power were absolutely always restricted to the Keeper, it would still be broad, functionally unlimited retcon power. Any retcon which is on-genre (which is hardly even worthy of the word "constraint") is perfectly valid, and gated only by winning an opposed die roll.

When I GM Cthulhu Dark, the convention adopted is that if two PCs are in opposition, opposed dice are rolled by those players; and as GM, I might sometimes roll dice for non-PC opposition or circumstances if that is appropriate. (Applying broadly BW norms.)

Okay. I don't see how this prevents the frequently-repeated example of a third-act reversal reveal, which is genre-appropriate but completely invalidates any prior effort to get to the ultimate answer. I don't care whether such a power is held only by the GM or by all players or gated by dice or whatever else. That it can be so casually swept away--in a way that people have repeatedly cited in this thread as a perfectly acceptable, reasonable, genre-appropriate (etc.) alteration to the fiction.

The only example you've given of this is a non-RPG logic puzzle - Clue(do) - and so I have set it aside.

This seems to me an arbitrary exclusion simply because the game is of one type and not another. But fine, whatever. I'm frankly growing rather tired of participating in this conversation to begin with.

A RPG cannot work via pure logic puzzle, because the fiction matters to resolution.


This is like comparing solving a crossword to scientific or mathematical investigation. The comparison, in my view, is absurd.

Then I disagree with both of these things. I think RPGing can be completely compatible with solving a pure logic puzzle, and I find it quite enjoyable when I am able to do that very thing.

And I don't see why that comparison is in any way "absurd". The facts of our world already exist. Sure, they aren't as cleanly and overtly presented as a crossword, but a well-structured mystery novel isn't as cleanly and overtly presented as a crossword either. A significant part of solving either thing--a logic puzzle or a confusing area of physics or mathematics or whatever else--is getting the information in the first place, asking the right kinds of questions, being open enough to consider paths you had neglected, not being so precious about your preconceived notions that you can't recognize that you really had been actually wrong all along (as opposed to someone, any participant, changing the fiction in such a way that you have become always wrong all along, but weren't beforehand.)