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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9629592" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I watch a mystery movie primarily to be entertained. And this is the same reason I have played traditional CoC-esque modules. Wondering whodunnit is part of the experience, but I don't regard it as an actual investigation.But to turn to the RPG mystery scenario, of a traditional CoC variety, here are two terms which co-refer: "the mystery" and "that which the GM imagined or wrote down". The main reason for using the second rather than the first term is that it more accurately points to the actual process of play.For instance, the players in a RPG don't encounter "clues" that point to a "fact". Rather, the GM tells them certain things, from which the players then draw inferences or make conjectures as to other things that the GM might tell them if they, the players, declare certain actions for their PCs.A second reason for using the second term is that it more clearly states the correctness conditions for certain assertions the players (or any other observer) might make. For instance, suppose that a friend is telling you about the mystery scenario they have written, and at a certain point you ask them "So, is <so-and-so> the culprit?" What makes that conjecture true or false is whether or not it corresponds to what the GM has imagined or written down. There is no other basis for working out what is a true or false claim about the fictional mystery.A third reason, related to the second, is that by talking about that which the GM imagined or wrote down, we can also understand how reasoning and inference work in a mystery RPG. For instance, the players, thinking as their characters and immersed in the fiction, might ask "Did the lights go out because the burglar cut the wires?" But there is no actual causal explanation for the lights having gone out. There is only whatever the GM has imagined. And so inferences or conjectures like the one I've just suggested will be true if they correspond to the sorts of connections between fictional events that the GM has imagined. Eg, in this case, did the GM imagine the burglar cutting the wires with the result that the lights went out.This is also why I have responded to [USER=6790260]@EzekielRaiden[/USER]'s references to inductive reasoning by pointing out that the only inductive reasoning in play is inductive reasoning about the sorts of tropes and patterns the GM prefers. The players can't actually inspect the wires, search for wire-cutters, look through the burglar's credit card records to see if there was a recent visit to a hardware store, etc. Going back up to the main reason, all they can do is say certain things to the GM, which will then prompt the GM to say certain things back to them.The medium is conversational. The object of conversation is stuff that is jointly imagined. And, in the classic CoC-type of play, the correctness condition for anyone else's imagining is that it conforms to what the GM has imagined.EDIT:In the Cthulhu Dark session that I've referred to several times in this thread, the player of the butler Appleby was trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to Appleby's master, the missing Earl. He was drawing upon relevant clues in pursuing this endeavour.To contrast this play with classic CoC-type play, it's necessary to look to how the mystery is constituted. Which, in the latter case, takes us back to the GM's notes and imaginations.</blockquote>

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