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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8154746" data-attributes="member: 42582">One connotation of the word railroading is that there will be multiple pre-determined scenes. In the murder mystery I described that's not quite the case, although it's fairly close to that: there's the inspection of the staterooms, the interviews with the handful of salient NPCs, etc. But unlike (say) the famous Dragonlance modules there's no story development. The situation is essentially static and the players "poke" at it with their PCs and extract information from the GM.So (i) it lacks the motion or dynamism that might be connoted by railroad, and (ii) it doesn't really involve a "living, breathing world" and so in some ways is closer to classic map-and-key exploration (in my game I achieved this result by setting it on one level of a starship in jump space - so no one getting on or off - with only a handful of characters, more than half of whom were played by the players).The whole thing was a big puzzle, and so in that sense it's all about GM agency. As I think I posted upthread, there was one point where the GM agency really came to the fore: when the PCs interviewed one of the conspirators. We were no using any mechanics, and so I just had to play her responses - but I am not an actor, and the players made it clear that they weren't sure what to make of the way I portrayed her: was it my bad acting, or was I portraying her bad acting/lying, or something else? That moment of play certainly involved deliberate GM manipulation of the situation in this sense: for reasons entirely to do with pacing and satisfactory resolution, I wanted to keep this NPC a viable suspect but not to have her crack under pressure.Whether that counts as railroading isn't something I want to die in a ditch over. But in a game experience with overall low player agency, that was probably the moment at which it was lowest.****************************************On the bigger picture about mysteries: to me it depends in part on what the point of play is. The episode I've just described was one where the players came into it knowing it would be a murder mystery, because that's what my daughter wanted.In my Prince Valiant game I ran the Episode from the Episode Book called the Blue Cloak. This has a mystery to it, in the sense that one of the NPCs turns out to be a ghost. Here's the actual play write-up (the three PCs are Sir Gerran, Sir Justin and Sir Morgath):In this episode of play, there is first an extended period of framing and free back-and-forth narration: meeting the merchant, agreeing to help him, coming upon the lustily-singing bandits.Then there is an action declaration - Presence vs Fellowship (in Apocalypse World this might be read a person or read a charged situation) - which does not produce any additional insight into the mystery: the framing remains essentially unchanged.Then there is some more framing - the bandits and the cloak - and action declarations, to cow and beat down the bandits. These succeed.Then there is yet more framing, established via narration from two NPCs (the old man and the wise woman) - the merchant has disappeared, it's morning, not only is there a duplicate cloak but it has a duplicate broach.This finally leads to more action declaration: the bandits are interrogated but don't confess, there is the vision - I don't remember now whether there was a check of some sort, or if it was free GM narration, but my best guess would be that it was some sort of Presence check - and then the sanctification of the ground (that was probably "say 'yes'" following a check for the vision).The return to Warwick is freely-narrated denouement.By looking at the action declarations we can see what was the point of play: defeating the bandits and trying to get them to confess, and sanctifying their hasty burial of the merchant. There are no exploration-oriented action declarations aimed at solving the mystery. All the information needed to solve the mystery is provided in the framing exposition.How might the situation have resolved differently, had some of the checks been different? The bandits might have confessed and been taken on as servants by the PCs. The ground might not have been sanctified and so a haunting of the PCs could have continued or perhaps their conversion of the wise woman from paganism (which had happened earlier in the same session) might have been undone. What is at stake is not the mystery as such but these relationships between the PCs, the NPCs, their faith, etc.</blockquote>

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