Are your campaigns mysteries, or puzzles?

[Vedic Wizard]

Overall the games I'm running (different parts of the same world, based more or less around a common theme) are Mysteries, but they often start off as Puzzels. i.e at first the players have no idea who is causing some nasty events to unfold, before long they uncover more and more info until they have a decent picture of who the other side is. Then the game changes to involve more intrigue and maneuvering.

There's always one SOB who wants option C "both"....

 

[Psion]

A common quip over at RPGnet -- which I believe -- is that you can't rely on a player getting all your clues so you should give players three times as many clues as they need.

Which sounds like it falls under "mystery" by that definition.

 

[howandwhy99]

I like to run a game more like a mystery with all sorts of paths and outcomes. On occasion, though, it will be more of a puzzle.

It's funny that a Whodunnit is a puzzle and not a mystery.

 

[Umbran]

The real questions are:
Given enough information, does a mystery become a puzzle?
Can a thing that starts as one become another?

My campaign, as a whole, is not predetermined. So, at game start, it must be a mystery. But, near camapign end, the space in which events happen is constrained by history. The number of places events can go is relatively small, and may well be more a puzzle.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A common quip over at RPGnet -- which I believe -- is that you can't rely on a player getting all your clues so you should give players three times as many clues as they need.

Which sounds like it falls under "mystery" by that definition.

Well, it's more about what the PC's can do with that information. Is that information a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a conclusion about who left it, or is it more a field of breadcrumbs where the PC's need to find the one most likely dropped by the little children, and their descision, right or wrong, leads them down several possible different paths?

Given enough information, does a mystery become a puzzle?
Can a thing that starts as one become another?

A) What Gladwell seems to be saying is that mysteries aren't any easier no matter how much information you have (and more information could make finding the "correct path" even harder). If you just need more information, it's a puzzle.

B) I could see them turning into each other and weaving in and out, that's why I acknowledge that all campaigns likely have a good mix. However, when you sit down to write an adventure, when you think of a conflict in your head, are your thoughts on "how are the PC's going to find the solution?" (puzzle) or are they on "how will the PC's take this event?" (mystery)

 

[Umbran]

A) What Gladwell seems to be saying is that mysteries aren't any easier no matter how much information you have (and more information could make finding the "correct path" even harder). If you just need more information, it's a puzzle.

My question is simple - is Galdwell *correct*? Is there a fundamental difference between them, or or is the difference merely a matter of practical scale? If a puzzle has so many pieces that the people solving it cannot manage to get the required information, won't it look like a mystery to them?

If Gladwell is correct, there is no point in investigating mysteries, because no amount of work or information is going to help. Is that a fun place to take your players? Where they might as well list some possibilities, roll a die, and guess, because their labor to try for a better solution won't change their odds?

If Gladwell is incorrect, then even if they cannot get the one true solution, working on the thing can narrow the options, and change the odds in their favor - they may not finish the whole picture, but if they get enough pieces they can make a better stab at whether it is of balloons or dogs playing poker...

 

[Hjorimir]

My game is layers of puzzles and mysteries ontop of each other...like peeling the layers of an onion to get to the center of things. Sometimes the players already have the needed information (perhaps in one of my handouts) to puzzle things together, while at other times they are trying to see through the cloud of mysteries that are all around them.

Oh, and there is lots of running and screaming too.

 

[fusangite]

Chalk me up as another person not agreeing with the article's definitions entirely.

And even largely accepting the article's definitions, I don't agree with the author's conclusions. It seems to me that mysteries have many answers whereas puzzles have one. The more answers a question has, the more profound the question is and the more worthwhile.

I tend to structure my games as puzzles, broadly speaking. In my campaigns, world=puzzle. The players figure out the problem/question the world poses and then they rearrange some parts of the world in order to solve the problem/question that the world poses. Individual adventures are part of this process but I wouldn't class the individual adventures as puzzles because sometimes they are just about discovering and sometimes they are just about doing.

As for the clues question, because the whole world is the puzzle, apprehending any part of it is some sort of clue. I much prefer a 5% clue apprehension rate. I assume 19 out of 20 clues, even if they are understood as clues won't necessarily be fitted into the puzzle correctly so I deluge my players in clues. And with so many clues to follow, so many paths to the centre, problems of railroading tend to decrease, the more possible clues there are.

 

[fusangite]

My campaign, as a whole, is not predetermined. So, at game start, it must be a mystery. But, near camapign end, the space in which events happen is constrained by history. The number of places events can go is relatively small, and may well be more a puzzle.

Sorry I missed this post in my first reading, Umbran. This is a much more economical way of expressing some of what I was trying to convey, although I wouldn't say that there isn't a lot of predetermination in my campaigns -- it's just not at the literal, event-based level. In my current campaign, which is winding down, I always knew the party would pass through seven cities: the city of tides, the peaked city, the city of kings, the city of riches, the four-sided city, the city of celebration and the city of glass. I just didn't know which cities they would turn out to be, where they would be or in what way these mythic names would refer to them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I nest them together. In Midwood, my players are slowly figuring out what the kobold plan to destroy the barony is (a puzzle), but once they know what it is, they'll have to figure out what to do about it (a mystery). (I actually have an answer for what they can do to save the day, which I they'll be able to discover if they hit the books for help in lieu of simply springing into action, although it's by no means the only viable solution to the problem.)