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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9622265">I think this both misses some of the nuance and frames it in a way that just doesn't match what the experience. It is like describing a boxing match as two men swinging their arms till one falls down. Yes, I can't say it isn't accurate, but it also misses so much. It isn't that you are simply prompting the GM to say something. The GM has modeled a crime, who committed it, what evidence they left, etc. There is a mental map of this thing and that model is what people are talking about when they say it is real (and again, to be clear, no one is saying it takes on real world substance; just that the idea of it is concrete and objective). The process of solving it is also real. The players are deducing facts, they are going to locations in the game, discovering clues, putting those clues together. And they can be wrong or right in their deductions. There is something real they are trying to figure out at the end of all this. It isn't just the players take actions and that prompts the GM. There is an interplay. Whether that is going into a room and asking what you see, and when the GM tells them a desk, a book shelf, etc, you might follow up with "I check the desk drawers". Those notes the GM has in their page are there so that there is a world of mystery to explore. And the same with suspects. There is a Q&A process that can occur in these games where what questions you ask a suspect can matter and can reveal or not reveal information that helps you figure out the mystery. No one is saying this is the best way to do mysteries, or this is the only way, or that what the GM imagines comes into being in the world. They are saying you are really solving a mystery because that is what the players are doing: they are putting clues together, making deductions and trying to figure out what happened. There is an objectivity to this kind of mystery adventure. Whereas in my Hillfolk example, that was fun, but the fun was seeing how things unfolded, not in genuinely solving the mystery Also that these kinds of trail of clues mysteries are notorious for crashing because the players can't solve them, just shows how agency is relevant, how the players choices and deductions matter. There has been tons of ink spilled trying to figure out ways to manage this very problem. But it is a problem that comes from the fact that mysteries involve choices by the players that can lead to them to solve what is at the heart of it, or never figure it out.</blockquote>

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