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Message: <blockquote data-quote="deleuzian_kernel" data-source="post: 9623882" data-attributes="member: 7036985">Throughout this thread, you’ve consistently used the word "solving" the mystery to mean that the players’ theories are tested against a pre-existing, GM-authored backstory. In your view, the mystery is "real" because there is a definitive answer the players can discover, and their deductions either match or fail to match that answer.I want to challenge that conception, because it’s more limited than it seems. What you’re describing is one kind of mystery experience, and, frankly, it often slides into Pro Forma play, where the investigation is less about REAL play and more about matching guesses to something the GM already knows.Solving a mystery in RPGs cannot only, or even primarily, about verifying facts the GM has written down. It can also mean that players, through investigation and interaction with the fiction, bring new information into existence and shape the meaning of the mystery itself. Their decisions about where to look, whom to trust, and how far to press can change the trajectory of events, alter the lives of NPCs, and transform their own characters — and that procedural unfolding is the real engine of investigative play.You keep pointing to the idea that "something happened" and can be "determined. These RPGs don’t waste precious table time in trying to answer the question of whether something "really" happened in the GM’s notes. The question is whether the players’ investigation has the power to change what happens next, whether their failures and insights create real consequences in the fiction. That’s what makes an investigation alive at the table, rather than a test graded by whether they guess the GM’s secret.I think this quote of yours really crystallizes the misunderstanding many trad players have when confronted with alternative approaches of play.No, that’s not quite what’s happening at these tables. It’s not that we’re inventing a story about solving a mystery. What’s happening is that we are playing characters situated in an investigation, dealing with concrete situational constraints, and actively engaging with the known unknowns of the mystery. There are real consequences to what happens next, to secondary characters, to the fiction itself, and to the investigators as people.When you say “collaboratively inventing,” it misses the mark. The mystery is procedurally discovered, not fabricated to entertain. Even when the culprit or backstory isn’t pre-established, the investigation isn’t arbitrary or invented on the fly. It is built out of the players’ actions, their inquiries, their missteps. What’s at stake is whether those actions materially shape the trajectory of play. What is being collaboratively constructed is not the mystery’s solution, but the history of how that investigation unfolds and what it does to the people involved.That’s the difference between procedural play and performance.I wanted to circle back to something you said earlier, which I actually thought was spot on:I mostly agree with you here, when you that agency depends on whether the GM is using Fiat to steer outcomes, not on whether there’s a prewritten backstory. It’s the procedural openness during play that matters in terms of, not what’s sitting in the GM’s notes.But then, in another post, you said:This is where I think you’re pulling in opposite directions. On one hand, you recognize that agency collapses when the GM starts steering outcomes, regardless of what’s pre-established. On the other hand, you’re still seem to hold on to the idea that there must be an "objectivity" of backstory that is somehow essential — as if the fact that there is a hidden answer somewhere makes the investigation more real or meaningful because it's a real mental exerciseBut if you take your first point seriously, the existence of a prewritten answer is irrelevant for agency presservation. It’s what the GM does with it, how they handle contingency in play, that determines whether the players’ actions have weight. So, I can’t help but wonder — why is this "objectivity" still so precious to you, if even by your own account, it’s not the thing that preserves or threatens agency?Your first post seems to at least suspect that even when players are moving AWAY from the pre-established thing, meaningful play  can still occur. Yeah?I guess I'm not really sure you truly believe that the second post is as expansive and encompassing of all mysteries as other posters seem to be defending, yet you seem to be kind of agreeing with them, which further confuses me?All this being said, I strongly resonate with what you wrote elsewhere about bundling people opinions with "sides" in a conversation. If it matters to you, and maybe it doesn't, I remember occasions where we have had previous similar discussions and I have noticed that you are now saying things like:I think you have a very good intuition and positive suspicion about what it is that we do, which is more I can say for outright deniers. This to me signals an openness, that I personally appreciate, specially because when people like me and other of the great posters here (they know who they are) go to explain and expose things at length, we do it out of the hope that, through digital text, people might grasp at what it is that we do when we play with this particular orientation. We don't do it to get internet points. We do it in an attempt to share what we have learned.</blockquote>

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