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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9228168" data-attributes="member: 42582">Imagine a fairly typical CoC or other investigation-type RPG, being played in a fairly typical way.The players are trying to find out who did it, where the kidnap victim is, etc. They do this by declaring actions like We break open the safe, We rifle through the mail, We "interview" the maitre d' at the club, etc. All standard stuff.The players have intentions and goals in doing this - to locate the victim, find the dirt, etc. They are also trying to build up a picture of the fiction that - at least in principle - the GM has already established. This is the puzzle-solving aspect that [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] mentioned upthread.This is classic task resolution. The Alexandrian has various bits of advice on how to make this sort of play work: node-based scenario design, and the "three clue" rule. One point of these techniques is that they reduce the need for the GM to break the failure=lose connection (eg no need to put the clue into the wastepaper bin), by creating a systematic framework for retries.This sort of play relies very heavily on GM-authored secret/hidden backstory; on the players declaring relatively low-stakes actions that will elicit that backstory ("low-stakes" in the sense that, if they succeed, backstory is elicited, and if they fail, the status quo is not perturbed in a way that would invalidate previously-acquired information); on the players not bringing stakes into play that have not already been put there by the GM (or, perhaps, the game system itself - eg loot in D&D); and on the GM managing all the interlocking parts of the fiction, deciding what is at stake in any situation, what consequences flow from one scene to the next, etc.Is it really very mysterious how different this is from (say) DitV?(Notice how Harper, in presenting the first of his <a href="https://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2006/01/situation-scene-conflict-resolution.html" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="https://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2006/01/for-comparison.html" target="_blank">diagrams</a>, says "This is remedial stuff as far as theory is concerned (it's a rehash of Dogs town creation, really)".)</blockquote>

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