Recent content by deleuzian_kernel

Yeah, agreed. This was a failed thought experiment that threw most people off. My bad for introducing it! It was meant to show that a "pre-written backstory" only gets made real through, unsurprisingly, the Lumpley Principle. The GM pronounces it as real, the players accept it as real...

Regardless of whether there is a prewritten backstory or the mystery is being developed procedurally during play, the key is that the situation is live, open, and responsive to the players’ actions. It’s not about whether the GM wrote something down before play or is improvising but whether the...

Guys, I'm not suggesting that you should lie to your players. I'm saying that, when there is true situational play, there is no verifiable quality in that kind of play that would let them distinguish between a prewritten backstory or a secretly procedurally generated backstory. The nature of...

This is almost my point! Notice that I said use procedural methods for generating the mystery. Not fiat. I'm not saying craft the mystery behind your screen to respond to shifts in your aesthetic concerns. That would be illusionism. I meant use procedural methods (like those in The Between or...

If you as a GM is fine in allowing play to go whichever way and really commit to playing situationally, you might without issue tell your players that there is indeed an objective truth to the mystery, but secretly use procedural methods for generating the mystery and they would not be able to...

Great! So it seems that all three of you agree that whether or not the mystery is “solved” does not prevent the situation from resolving. Whether the players succeed fully, succeed partially, or fail altogether at discovering some, all, or none of the details of the mystery, play can and does go...

Ah great! But like, that's still productive play right? Failure to solve the mystery, is still very much a welcomed outcome for this type of play? Yes?

I'm building up to it. Given your continued involvement in this thread, I suspect you'll still be here for when I do.

So catching Grant right? If they discover that it was Grant, but he escaped half an hour ago, did they solve the mystery? If they don't discover the truth, or they go find and imprison Sofia, did they solve the mystery? @Bedrockgames, do you agree? Like catching Grant but never really knowing...

Thank you for responding! That seems like a viable resolution of the investigation for me as well. I'm building up to something but I'll let others respond.

But humor me. What does it mean to actually solve it? For instance: The wealthy industrialist, Victor Harrow, is found dead in his locked study, shot once in the chest. There were four people in the house that night: his estranged daughter Clara, his business partner Lewis Grant, the family...

@Bedrockgames @Crimson Longinus @Micah Sweet A question for you: What does it mean to "solve" an investigation scenario under the light of a pre-established, pre-written mystery backstory? Is it when the players correctly guess the culprit's identity? Is it when they reconstruct the entire...

You too have rules and procedures for who invents what! Its just the case that you have decided that the GM invents most before play, the players invent little during play, and from what little they do, the GM gets to cherry pick which ones stick to what he invented before play.

Throughout this thread, you’ve consistently used the word "solving" the mystery to mean that the players’ theories are tested against a pre-existing, GM-authored backstory. In your view, the mystery is "real" because there is a definitive answer the players can discover, and their deductions...

I’ve been following this discussion with great interest and especially now with the pressing question about when mysteries in TTRPGs are “real” or just an illusion, and whether pre-establishing a solution is essential for that sense of "reality". Reading through everyone’s posts, I kept thinking...