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I think, in this case, the point of contention has become the concept of 'solve', which for one of you is being defined as something like "the players deduced the solution to the crime" whereas the other is defining it as something like "the players roleplayed solving a crime". Neither of these...

IMHO the division as to who authored what is not that different, it's more the why, which leads to the what. In BitD or DW, say, the GM is framing every scene. Maybe what they say is depending on a question they asked or a player describing what their character wants (is a warehouse with one...

I don't canonically know of such. One could be present. I know there's a forensic investigator, but not one who is an LEO.

Remember, this kind of play is often pretty heavily centered on understanding the character in the context of the fiction, discovery of character. Usually certain things are established initially, such as perhaps a love interest in order to have a place to start from. And I think this is...

Gosh, if only a professional philosopher, aka a person trained in the profession of elucidating things was here! 🤔

Yeah, I'm not saying one or the other is a better game experience either, just that these kinds of clean room hypotheticals don't really produce much. Years ago there was a forum on which the rule was, no hypotheticals, only discussion of actual play.

Continuing with the mystery story meme, suppose I were to think about a game where one of the players is a real-life police detective. Do you think your murder mystery seems at all real to them? I doubt it would. In fact it might be much less real-seeming to them than one resulting from...

Is there really a material difference though? Each one involves moving from a question to an answer via some sort of set of rules of inference. I think I would probably agree that the rules of inference in relation to solving a murder mystery are perhaps somewhat looser, they apply to more...

Having a lot of experience in various types of RPG play, I don't find that there is really this vast difference, particularly in terms of immersion, as is often bruited about. Honestly, what I most find different between, lets say playing Dungeon World and playing 5e D&D (both of which I've...

Reduces the meaning in respect of what? You're carrying a whole lot of assumptions about what games are about into this. But beyond that it feels like you're equating agency with other qualities of game play.

Well, I live 3 miles from WotC, and it's hard to throw a stone without running into someone happy to play some Narrativist game or other. I don't know what is more common, probably D&D, but here in the capital of RPG land I don't think your assertion holds up well.

I mean, in the absence of information used to make informed decisions about play, pick moves, play becomes a trivial set of blind choices, right? Even if a game is about a mystery, like Clue, the total lack of relevant information means the moves are a series of blind guesses. In dungeon play...

So, you have now reduced the term to meaninglessness. I doubt that will be edifying...

Now we get back to the goals of play. Having information needed to decide what resources are required to get to the treasure room is different than some other goal. Without knowing that you can't analyze the question.

I would call Clue just a pretty basic logic puzzle. I recall realizing this around age 6. If you index all the answers to all the players guesses you can derive the contents of the envelope. It is really just an exercise in note-taking at that point. It's about as much a 'mystery' as working out...

Narrativist play revolves around "play to find out" not "play to author your favored plot". The latter is probably closer to some form of neo-trad/oc play where the main goal is showcasing defined characters and story arcs.

I agree that hidden information can be used in a very specific type of play, a couple of them actually, but it is not great at producing good Narrativist play. It's good for what I would consider pretty niche styles. One would be full up mystery story play, which IMHO is a very specific thing...

I think, first, it's worth agreeing that there's something of a continuum here. That is, players can, and surely do, have information that is non-diegetic in nature. This is true for all RPGs. Even in a game that was perfectly scrupulous about converging character and player knowledge, simply...

IMHO this line of argument actually does a disservice to your actual position. Less information always produces less agency. This is why propaganda is powerful! What you need to assert, and it's a perfectly valid position, is that maximal agency is not always the best way to achieve certain...

It seems like the players are deciding the direction of things at a high level. Hard to compare games. It's cool.