When I say be Holmes, I mean in Holmes shoes to play detective. What you are describing is what I mean by simulating Holmes, which is a totally viable option. But it isn't the same as playing the game Holmes is playing. In this style I am there to strive to be like Holmes, to pit my wits against the scenario the way Holmes does. I think a lot of people who are fans of mysteries, approach mystery novels this way (they are interested in solving the mystery before the story reachers its conclusion). That is how I read mystery novels, and for this type of person and for me, the most fun I have in mystery scenarios is getting an opportunity to truly play detective. This isn't about Sherlock Holmes specifically. This is about seeing how good of an ace detective you can be, and trying to become a better one. My point is, that is the game some players want to be playing. If you are playing it this way for this reason, you don't care if tests of strength in the game are testing your real world strength, you care that your mind is solving the puzzle. Bridging the gap between the players mental abilities and the characters makes sense if you want to simulate Sherlock holmes, but bridging that gap interferes with playing the game of solving the mystery i you want to be in Sherlock Holmes' shoes.
Again, both approaches are fine.
Right. I agree that both approaches are fine in so far as they may be fun and the participants may be perfectly happy to play in such a way. All approaches are fine in that sense.
I'm just trying to consider if different methods would suit a whodunnit style mystery as RPG. My experience with the Star Trek scenario, which had an apparent accident as the point of investigation, and then different clues or details that could be gathered from either investigating the scene of the accident or a couple of other locaitons, or from questioning the people involved, with all of these being resolved through Skill rolls (or whatever the game calls them!), was not very fun for me at all. I mean, I had fun in the sense that I was hanging with my friends and we had some laughs and so we all had fun. But the game in and of itself was not engaging for me as a player at all.
I simply didn't feel like a detective or like I accomplished anything by piecing together the puzzle. Because this is a perfect example of "RPG as puzzle solving" that was mentioned earlier in the thread. Now, I'm not saying that I can never be engaged by that kind of game.....thinking about it now, I can likely rattle off several examples of that kind of play that I did feel was engaging.....but as the central focus of an entire session it left a lot to be desired.
The mystery wasn't all that compelling and the use of game mechanics was not all that exciting. It wasn't terribly difficult to figure out, ultimately; any difficulty in that regard was more a case of format. Like I remember at one point someone saying somthing along the lines of "Oh wait, you said that engineer we spoke to went to academy with the victim right? Or was it the scientist?" which are the kinds of details that can be blurry in a game but no so when you're actually a detective experiencing interactions with people. Once we resolved any of those, and we had our characters engage in the right locations/NPCs to the correct extent, the answer became clear, and the culprit was revealed. The one bit of credit I will give this published scenario is that the actual culprit was not the most obvious choice.
At the same time, I feel if the mystery were to be more complex, it would easily move into impossible to solve territory. So I think it's a tricky tightrope to walk as a RPG. I know other games address this in different ways....Gumshoe, notably, and some others that have been mentioned.
@Fenris-77 provided a pretty interesting node based approach, which I think would probably map to the Gumshoe system pretty well. I've still seen plenty of criticisms of that kind of approach online, as well.
When you say correct solution, what do you mean? Does solution here equal who did it, or does solution mean the ways you can discover who did it? I would see those as two very different things. I think for the style of play I am talking about, you need an objective event that is set: Frank killed John by strangling him to death in the attic, because he was jealous over Loraine. The GM might plan out all the possible ways clues could be found (and these, in my view, should fit a consistent and logical backstory so the clues all make sense). But the players might come up with a way to find clues that would reasonably yield them in this scenario, even if the GM hadn't considered them. That is what I mean more than one path to a solution. Understand with mysteries for someone like me solving what actually happened is the point. If you are a fan of mysteries this is also often the point of reading them (if you sense the writer didn't know who did it and how from the beginning, and didn't have all the details pinned down, it can ruin the book). So if the GM is deciding that Loraine Kills Frank instead because the players went down that path of reasoning instead, I think this would take away from any real sense I had of solving it were I to know this (and I think one would start to suspect this after several sessions)
Here is my question for you in this regard. What if the process for this was still all in the hands of the GM in the sense that the GM decides what happened and how, but doesn't actually commit to all of it before hand? Because it seems to me that your sticking point is looking at this as a challenge, and the satisfaction from overcoming the challenge.
Do you think that in order for this to be challenging to players, all the relevant details or clues need to be established ahead of time? Or maybe only most of them? Or do you think that such a scenario can still be challenging to players if a GM is determining some of these things at the time of play?
