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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9628175" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I genuinely don't follow what your original point was. The article describes a scavenger hunt. I don't recall ever hearing a scavenger hunt described as a mystery before. I certainly never heard of it being compared to solving a "real mystery". So you don't think they need to be opposed? Someone can discover something through the act of creation? What if the act of creation is not a solo thing? Can they discover things then? You said "for the umpteenth time" and responded to me. If it wasn't meant for me, then don't say it to me, right? I just told you I did feel that way. Others have expressed similar sentiments in this thread. Well in the games I'm talking about (I've mentioned Brindlewood Bay and The Between, which use the same mystery system) the clues aren't created by the players. The solution to the mystery is something that the players propose based on the clues that they find. They discover the clues in play, and then they come up with a theory about what's actually happening in the game world. The solution to the mystery is not predetermined, but I think as a player I'm very much discovering through play. Because I'm not just following up on something someone else already created. It's similar to the feeling I get when I'm playing in a game where I'm railroaded to one where I'm not railroaded. When the mystery is predetermined in this way... which means it has an author who has crafted not only all the details of the mystery, but all the conditions for those details... and is then presented to me to "solve", it feels like I've simply been offered a puzzle to solve, maybe a riddle. I don't feel remotely like I'm discovering anything because it's all already known by the GM. I feel more like the GM is revealing their plot more than I as a player am discovering anything. No, as I've explained in a prior post to someone else, as the product of a single author who has determined every detail of the mystery, it's a very different thing. I think the two instances of "playing a game about solving a mystery" are more similar to one another than either is to actually solving a mystery. Yeah, you're using real in two ways here. I reject the second usage. Predetermined ahead of play is no more "real" than determined during play. They are both things that are made up. No, the mistake is thinking that a GM extrapolating from information that they've previously made up is simulating anything. If you make a bunch of stuff up, and then imagine how it would go, you're not simulating. You're just imagining.</blockquote>

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