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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8994539" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If the players never dwell upon it and it never comes up in play, does it even matter?We tell stories not about Jane Average who worked uneventfully as an accountant for 50 years, retired to Florida, and passed away in her sleep at age 85, but about exciting people whose lives are full of adventure and drama and mystery. It's not that the world cares about the adventurers. It's that our window into that world is only going to focus on characters whose lives are interesting enough to focus on in the first place. Comics are about Bruce Wayne and Batman because those people are the ones constantly doing story-worthy things. RPGs are about adventurers, because we play them for adventure.Edit:Looping back to my actual game and the example I gave, there was a murder. My players were in a Jinnistani city (Mt. Matahat, ruled by four earth genie siblings) looking to curry favor with one of the rulers to secure legitimate travel papers so people wouldn't ask dangerous questions about some of their allies. (The allies are perfectly good people, but the place they come from is dangerous, so not letting folks know exactly where they hail from is important.) As things evolved, it became clear that they were getting roped into the courtly machinations, with the elder brother of the four trying to usurp his elder sister earlier than would normally be the case for their weird round-robin rulership structure. So to get plausible deniability, he had the party aid his brother and then ask for an invitation to a party as their boon for aiding the brother.At the masquerade ball, I felt inspired to do a murder mystery. It sounded like a good time and something my players would get a kick out of. The party would be able to investigate (as outsiders, whose positions were all well known throughout the evening prior to discovering the body, they were the most impartial investigators present on the grounds, and thus the ruling Padishah Sultana appointed them her questers...but if they couldn't figure it out on time, she would go with the most likely suspect.Making the mystery fair and meaningful, to my eyes, meant that there had to be a truth of the matter. One cause of death, one or more specific perpetrators, clues that were actually fake vs fully legitimate, etc. Poor decisions could cost the players critical information. Wise decisions could let them figure things out faster and maybe resolve the issue without a major diplomatic incident.In what ways is this not "objective" in the way you describe?</blockquote>

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