GM fiat - an illustration

[AnotherGuy]

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.

Bold emphasis mine.
I would say players use their experience and learning whether it be from work/life and media (film and books) to apply to the investigation in a mystery adventure.

To use the example of cutting the electric wirings:
Why were they cut? What function did it serve in the burglary? i.e. how did it assist?
How were the electric wirings safe-guarded? Who had access?
What did the cutting entail? What knowledge/capabilities would one need to cut such wirings?
Would you need more than 1 person to perform the cutting of the wirings and the burglary?
Do any of the above narrow the list of suspects or highlight any possible suspects?

Is the above all just tropes and platitudes?
I do not understand how the above is different to actual reasoning by actual investigators?

I can accept the scientific details in the cutting of which electric wire etc are not provided but to discount that the entire roleplay investigation as but an exercise in evaluating the degree of knowledge or ignorance of the DM - and all this just to claim that the Trad Game does not have an actual mystery is not a strong argument IMO.

And although I've not played in a Story-Now mystery, I'm sure the players would apply themselves in a similar manner in the logic necessary for the mysteries they play out and solve.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Or perhaps the resolution relies on phrenology? Your a bit in straw grasping territory here. Most key clues are not like that. They are about material proof, alibis, motivations and capability. Furthermore, realism is not a requirement. That is not what "real" refers to here. It merely requires participants are roughly on the same page. Ghosts as clues seem perfectly valid to me (of course depending on details.) Like I said earlier, in my game the players recently made conclusions based on whether a wizard would be capable of casting a certain spell. It was perfectly real reasoning, despite to my knowledge wizards in the real world being incapable of casting any spells.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I...really disagree with this, but you probably won't be surprised to hear that. 4e was often quite good about making its mechanics actualy conform to fiction in a way most, if not all, other D&D editions have not done. Lay on Hands, for example, actually costs the Paladin's own vitality. Paladins have a couple extra surges, but they could give away as many surges as their Wisdom modifier--meaning, their healing could easily be a real sacrifice, a real "I give of myself, to replenish you", something never previously true in D&D and not true since (5e has returned to the incredibly boring and fiction-free "you just have a free bonus pool of HP to divvy up" method.)

 

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

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.

Would you care to explain how this sort of rug pull is consistent with the rules of (say) Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Would you care to explain how this sort of rug pull is consistent with the rules of (say) Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World?

....

Are you saying it isn't? Are you here, now, saying that it isn't acceptable to do something like this?

Because I could swear that you had, previously, made exactly that assertion--regardless of the game in question. That it was perfectly in keeping with the genre conventions, tropes, themes, etc. of mystery novels to do this sort of thing.

Because if you are fully committing to the idea that the "sudden reversal reveal" trope isn't acceptable by those systems, why on earth would you and others keep bringing up that example???

 

[pemerton]

I think one could play pawn stance dungeon delving basically as board game and I think people do that.

Sure, there are skirmish boardgames and dungeon crawl boardgames out there.

As I said, this would not remotely resemble any RPG I've ever played. In RPGs that I've played, the fiction matters to resolution. Pawn stance play, as I'm familiar with it, is about the way a player makes decisions for their PC; it's not about the fiction not mattering.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I...really disagree with this, but you probably won't be surprised to hear that. 4e was often quite good about making its mechanics actualy conform to fiction in a way most, if not all, other D&D editions have not done. Lay on Hands, for example, actually costs the Paladin's own vitality. Paladins have a couple extra surges, but they could give away as many surges as their Wisdom modifier--meaning, their healing could easily be a real sacrifice, a real "I give of myself, to replenish you", something never previously true in D&D and not true since (5e has returned to the incredibly boring and fiction-free "you just have a free bonus pool of HP to divvy up" method.)

So I do not mean that this would be best way to play 4e, but that it would be a game that would work well if played this way. I am not trying to claim it didn't have fiction. But the rules are very self contained in a way that requires less adjudication vis-à-vis fiction than many other games. Like a power says that it has certain effects, and those effects are clearly codified in the rules.

 

[pemerton]

Are you saying it isn't? Are you here, now, saying that it isn't acceptable to do something like this?

I have repeatedly emphasised the constraints that operate in games like AW, BW, and Cthulhu Dark where the gaps in the rules are supplemented by BW principles.

In the case of BW, the principles are fairly straightforward: the characters establish priorities for their PCs; the GM frames scenes that put pressure on those priorities; when the players declare actions, they declare intent as well as task; if an action fails, the GM narrates consequences that negate the intent, and that reframe in accordance with the framing principle I've already stated.

In the case of AW, the GM has to make moves - which are both framing and consequences - that speak to players' concerns for their PCs, because that's what makes something badness or an opportunity or a spot.

This is how the fiction in these games unfolds in a relatively coherent fashion, establishing rising action, crisis/climax, and resolution.

I could swear that you had, previously, made exactly that assertion--regardless of the game in question. That it was perfectly in keeping with the genre conventions, tropes, themes, etc. of mystery novels to do this sort of thing.

Where did I post this?

if you are fully committing to the idea that the "sudden reversal reveal" trope isn't acceptable by those systems, why on earth would you and others keep bringing up that example???

I've not brought it up. You're the only poster whose done so, by my reckoning.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think something like Blorb Principles does a much better job at getting to the gameplay concerns of mystery scenario in large part because it's emphatically about fairness and the integrity of the challenge rather than getting into that space of this or that is more real.

Blorb Principles 3 Tiers of Truth are not built on this is "more like real life", but instead about removing as much bias as possible during the act of running the game.

So these are good principles and this is how I run my game. And you're correct, that for "real solving" we've been talking about, fairness and integrity are important. Realism really isn't. But I don't think anyone on the "real mystery" side has been talking about realism. Only @pemerton keeps bringing up things related to that like it was relevant, even though it isn't. What is relevant, that there are solid established facts which can be learned and based on which deductions can be made. Whether those facts are "realistic" is besides the point, except in a sense that the participants must have roughly common understanding of what is possible in the context of the setting.

This is exactly what I think about in terms of conventional mystery games, eg: CoC/Delta Green/D&D. Thinking about it is also why I mentioned that to me mystery prep and OSR-style dungeon prep seems very in-kind. Both establish truths about the situation, and concrete discoverables that the players can find out via question and answer. Both should have a high degree of trust that "if we reach out and touch the world, stuff isn't being decided on the fly by GM fiat." Blorb play relies on concrete prep, and pre-determined tables to achieve that (with the admonition that if you need to make a ruling about something you didn't anticipate that's about the truth of the scenario vs a creative problem solving action of the players, fix that for the future). Looking at stuff like well regarded Delta Green scenarios, it relies on a wide application of potential avenues with clearly stated "if the players do X, they will find out Y" so that they can have faith in applying the skills and know that following their character's strengths will lead them onward (or at least have a good chance to).

This is why I'm baffled by the combined contention of some here that seems to take that sort of principled start, and then leave it open to running GM fiat based on what the players do. Maybe outcomes from specific actions, sure; but in this style of play shouldn't the clues and world be predictable, in that they follow-forth from the sort of problem solving culture the game expects? If you're just fiating clues and "solutions" then aren't you really just running a version more akin to a narrative play style, but without the concrete player-facing rules that create their own set of controlled outcomes? Isn't it genuinely just all fiat at that point?

I mean I agree, expect you seem to be confused about who is arguing for what. Everyone on the "real mystery" side have been arguing for importance of solid objective world. Only one using this sort of GM fiat world establishing is @pemerton, whose Cthulhu Dark game seems to be ran this way.

 

[pemerton]

I would say players use their experience and learning whether it be from work/life and media (film and books) to apply to the investigation in a mystery adventure.

To use the example of cutting the electric wirings:
Why were they cut? What function did it serve in the burglary? i.e. how did it assist?
How were the electric wirings safe-guarded? Who had access?
What did the cutting entail? What knowledge/capabilities would one need to cut such wirings?
Would you need more than 1 person to perform the cutting of the wirings and the burglary?
Do any of the above narrow the list of suspects or highlight any possible suspects?

Is the above all just tropes and platitudes?
I do not understand how the above is different to actual reasoning by actual investigators?

I posted the example, upthread, of looking for the charging cord on my desk. Which is about as simple as an investigative task gets.

An actual investigation involves manipulating things, poking at them, examining them from multiple angles, corroborating them by reference to at least somewhat independent alternative sources of information, etc. If you think something looked like XYZ, I can double-check your observation, your work, your experiment, etc.

Collecting statements from a single source (the GM) and comparing them, corroborating them, etc isn't much like this, in my view.