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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9629793" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Pictionary is a game where a person/place/phrase/concept is written on a card and a teammate is required to convey the contents of that card to a player via a drawing; you might look at this participant as "the GM."  The player attempts to infer the contents of the card via the drawing and "solve the mystery."Charades is a game where a person/place/phrase/concept is written on a card and a teammate is required to convey the contents of that card to a player via pantomime; you might look at this participant as "the GM.".  The player attempts to infer the contents of the card via the pantomime and "solve the mystery."Taboo is a game where a person/place/phrase/concept is written on a card and a teammate is required to convey the contents of that card to a player via deft wordplay; you might look at this participant as "the GM.".  The player attempts to infer the contents of the card via the deft wordplay and "solve the mystery."Contained mysteries are challenging to all three of build, articulate, and resolve.  However, relative to labyrinthine mysteries with complex initial conditions, weighty information sets with comparatively huge noise (intended) to distill signal from, and laborious chains of inference that easily have their coherency foiled in the build or articulate phase of play, contained mysteries are a relative sinch with a very high success rate.In my experience, a D&D dungeoncrawl is somewhere between a contained mystery and a labyrinthine mystery with a lean toward contained.  However, when codified deftly via ruleset and generated deftly via GM, you can have the equivalent of a puzzle/obstacle course with several discrete puzzles/obstacles that can be isolated to themselves, making the dungeon tantamount to a series of contained mysteries; this is an important distinction both in terms of design and application (the play).[HR][/HR]I wanted to get this premise and supporting ideas out of the way for what is to follow.  I'm not concluding this today as I don't have the time.  At some point in the future, I'm going to construct the full-on Actual Play of a mystery (Threat) in the Between that [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] 's character ( [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] and another player were in this game as well) exclusively handled; The Reaver's Last Victim.  That one seems the most easy to articulate as it is just (i) one character + (ii) initial conditions/framing + (iii) maybe 4 scenes (and 3ish Day/Night phases?).  Further, there was only (iv) the 1 Question ("Where are the remains of Anton Farrow hidden?") along with (v) only 6 Clues.  I think I can reconstruct that pretty easily and explain how the play produces both (a) the experiential quality of a hunter/detective puzzling through a series of fictional parameters and situation-states as well as (b) a player that actively has to draw inferences into an integrated solve.  I'll also contrast it with Pictionary/Charades/Taboo and a dungeoncrawl and contained vs labyrinthine.I'm going to reference this post when I do this in the future, so I'm going to attach the Excel Keeper snippets/notes we took for reference (below).[ATTACH=full]401710[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]401709[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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