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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6754798" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Couple thoughts on this.  The first is about philosophy, table agenda, and transparency in communication.  The second is technique/system-related in how to handle this stuff and keep it fun.1)  The player is flagging (a) what they want to be up for grabs with respect to conflict the unfolding story and (b) where they want "director-like" capacity as a PC.  This is good.   There isn't going to be a lot of challenge when it comes to investigatory (the central trope here) conflicts.  The player will be in a stout position to dictate outcomes.  They'll look like Sherlock Holmes.  Good deal.  However, they are also signalling that they're ok with conflict and unsuspecting dramatic outcomes in other areas; eg the physical noncombat challenges such as the inevitable chases that come out of such genre play.  So, they always figure out who killed the butler (Professor Plumb), where it occurred (in the library), and how (with the candlestick).  But the following action scene (eg - the chase) is laden with drama, up for grabs, and everyone gets to play to find out what happens!2)  How can you make investigatory challenges engaging from a player perspective?  Let us say the Skill Challenge is uncovering who killed the butler.  Each success would be a clue as to the killer's methodology, motive, and identity.  Something extremely easy to do in order to get what you want (throw some odds of failure into the mix and engage the player, not just the PC, from a challenge perspective) is to address the reward cycle.  Wheel of Fortune.  Allow them to take a risk to "solve the puzzle" before the final success cements the reveal.  Perhaps each success less the total required to succeed in the Skill Challenge gives them another "of-level Standard" worth of xp (eg 500 xp for a 10th level character).  However, failure means they fail the Skill Challenge and something major serves to complicate the life of your Sherlock PC (eg, the body, a witness, or some other important bit of evidence comes up missing...or the scene burned to the ground...or third party thugs hired through several proxies show up to send Sherlock down for the dirtnap!).</blockquote>

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