thoughts on Apocalypse World?

[Faolyn]

Telling the players they are going to play a criminal gang isn't telling them what they will do or what their goals are. It's a genre specification.

Right. Same with investigators or occultists or explorers or nobles.

Since AW indicates that the MC sets up things like groups of opposition, rival gangs, and other stuff like that in a sandbox-y type of way, I would imagine that it would be perfectly in-game for me to say "this noble is having a masquerade tomorrow night, there's been a rash of muggings on this other street, there's been reports of demons on such-and-such a street, the glow-in-the-dark fungus farms are mysteriously failing, and you all have personal issues you said you want to deal with--so what do you want to do now?"

The second thing sets a goal for the player's action declarations. And seems also to suggest that a big chunk of play will be learning hitherto-unrevealed backstory.

They're very different games, to my eye. And the second looks to me like it will default to highly GM-driven.

I'm having a hard time seeing this. Unless you're saying that the GM doesn't actually set up anything, including the area's NPCs, until the players decide they exist? If otherwise, then AW should just say that it's a sandbox game.

Here's Vincent Baker on this point:

You know the rule in Apocalypse World that everyone has to choose a different playbook? You might be interested to know, as a point of trivia, that the reason for this isn’t niche protection or whatever, it’s just so the MC doesn’t have to show up to the first session with multiple copies of every playbook.​

OK, well that's good to know. If that's in the book, I missed it.

Like the race/class issue, I don't think this is a very big deal.

I like options. I like knowing that I can play what I want to play. To me, having race/class limitations written on the character sheet and saying that everyone has to have a different playbook are both unnecessary out-of-setting restrictions. If race doesn't matter, then each class should be open to all races. The game is making it so it does matter, if only as a homage to Gygax who wanted D&D to be humanocentric.

This is why I also hate how these games list names and physical appearances on the sheet, and in Blades there's a list of who you know, pick one, and they're all named. I am fully aware I can ignore those and make my own, but their appearance on the sheet feels wrong to me.

So here we learn how Keeler knows it - the GM establishes framing (ie that Keeler is passing by her armoury and hears her three gang members in there, arming themselves) - and then Keeler's player asks them what's going on. That's not an action declaration that triggers a move, so the GM responds with free narration in accordance with the principles: in this case, the GM continues to announce future badness consistently with what prep and honesty demand:

It looks to me like the MC is railroading this: Keeler will walk by the armory and she will not only hear people in there but will automatically go inside and find out what they're doing. Now, this could very well be shorthand, because the writer didn't want to spend 4+ sentences establishing that Keeler said she wanted to walk to the armory, have the MC say she hears noises, have Keeler say she wants to go in, and have the MC describe the scene, when one sentence would do for the example. If that's the case, that's absolutely fine, no prob.

But if the MC is actually expected to just tell PCs where they're going, what they're doing, and also that they know info that they couldn't possibly know, because this allows the MC to ramp up the tension, then I think they're doing it wrong. Or at least in a way that discourages me from wanting to play.

If Keeler lets me, that is. Keeler thinks about imposing her will upon her gang to stop them, her player thinks about it too. She twists her mouth around, thinking about it.​

I'm also a bit confused about this line, because it's making it sound like Keeler has an existence independent of her player. But I'm going to chalk this up to unclear writing. Maybe this is a "it's what my character would do" moment, but as I said, unclear.

That sort of interweaving of the action is pretty central to any GMing of a non-party-based game. In my own case, it's a technique that I've used in Cthuhu Dark and Wuthering Heights one-shots, and use fairly often in my Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel campaigns.

Yeah, that might be another issue as well. Not a huge fan of inter-party conflict, or TV shows where everyone is backstabbing each other.

Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. . . . Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.

And that line there really makes me not want to play AW. The only options that require roles are both manipulative (and one of them I am not interested in doing at all), and the lack of a persuasion-type move makes everything both arbitrary and dependent on aggressive activity. If the MC decides one thing, then there's nothing the player can try to accomplish peacefully.

What would count as a perfect opportunity on a golden plate, in the context of a PC looking around in a non-charged situation? I don't think it's easy to come up with an example out of context. But suppose that the PC is visiting their savvyhead friend's workshop, and their friend (as established by some prior fiction)

That's another bit that's confusing. It's an RPG. Everything is fiction. Why not say "as established in a previous session"?

When you have posted that there might be a consequence of failure even if the situation the PC is examining is not charged with potential danger you have failed to misdirect yourself! You've supposed that the function of the dice roll is to model some "possibility space" within the fiction. But it's not. Here's the explanation from the AW rulebook (pp 110-11):

Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. . . . Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible. . . .​

Yeah, I read that. It makes it sound very GM vs. PC to me. "I want to hurt the PCs, but I'm not allowed to do it unless I have a good in-game reason." I'm sure that's not what's intended, but the writing is so unclear that's what's coming across.

AW has no random determination of the fiction. At every point someone has the job of deciding what the fiction is: either a player is saying what their PC does, or the GM is announcing backstory, or framing, or consequences.

OK, so how is this different from a typical RPG?

The point of misdirection is that the GM is not to speak in the (real world) language of decision-making. They are to speak in the fictional language of (imaginary) cause-and-effect.

Which is weird, because all of the examples the game provides are filled with game terminology. So if the goal is to ditch real-world language, it fails.

The places where a RPG obliges a GM to do this sort of thing help tell us what the RPG cares about. (Classic Traveller cares about doing tricky manoeuvres in space suits. It doesn't really care about charged situations, though, unless they're about to explode into violence, and so while it does have encounter surprise and evasion rules, it doesn't have any subsystem comparable to read a (charged) sitch.)

I haven't played Traveller so I can't speak to that (although I looked it up and the SRD lists Carouse, Investigation, Streetwise, Social Sciences (Psychology), and Tactics, all of which could be used to read a situation). And it has a Diplomat and Persuasion skill.

But I know that other games do have rules that let you read a situation. If I'm running D&D, the player can ask "what's the general mood like" or "who's the baddest mofo in the room," and I can tell them to roll Insight. Or I can tell them to roll Insight as soon as they enter, or just use passive Insight. If the player asks if there are any exits, I can have them roll Perception, use passive Per, or for that matter, simply tell them there's another exit as soon as they need to escape out of one. Or if one of them says "Is there a back door? If there is, I'm going out it," then I can either say there is one, say no, or invent a back door right there and then. Ditto for GURPS, Fate, Cypher, and other systems I've played.

 

[Faolyn]

Okay, sure, and the fact that when I start playing Monopoly I can't invade Australia with my armies is a glaring omission and a point against the system as well. Or that I can't use that $1000 Monopoly bill to buy all the armies in Risk so I can take over Baltic Avenue! You're talking about different games, and saying that it's an omission that one doesn't play like the other. Seems to be a rampant problem in the world of games, so I'm not sure how to put any weight in the concern at all.

So... this doesn't really answer my question, and I'm getting rather unnerved by how defensive people are getting when I ask them to explain it to me.

So what you're saying is that PbtA is not capable of handling investigation, problem-solving, or stuff like that. So what do you think PbtA is best at doing?

 

[Ovinomancer]

So... this doesn't really answer my question, and I'm getting rather unnerved by how defensive people are getting when I ask them to explain it to me.

I'm not defensive at all. I'm pointing out that your statement makes no sense in the way that storming Australia makes not sense when you're playing Monopoly. As such, the charge that it's a glaring omission is, well, without any weight. I'm not getting my back up, I'm pointing out that you're coming in from left field and making statements that don't really make any sense.

So what you're saying is that PbtA is not capable of handling investigation, problem-solving, or stuff like that. So what do you think PbtA is best at doing?

Nope. I'm saying that passively investigating a murder scene where there's no dramatic interest pressing on the play is not something that PbtA even cares about. @Manbearcat presented a situation from Blades, which using PbtA as a strong influence, that occurred in actual play and was an investigation, so it's pretty clear it can do investigations. The problem is that you're still looking at games as a task resolution system, when players are prompting the GM to tell them more about the world or situation and not a game where the players are driving the game and the GM is being obligated by what the players are doing. I don't have an answer to your question of how PbtA could do what reads like an anodyne police-procedural because that's just not what the system cares about in the same way that D&D doesn't care about what it's like to be a teenaged werewolf exploring your sexuality and finding out you're deeply attracted to a same-sex vampire even though you're dating the super hot opposite sex succubus cheerleader. This seems like a glaring omission in D&D, yes?

ETA: look, I had a lot of trouble with this concept, asking similar questions and not getting it. I bounced off of Burning Wheel when it was released -- bounced hard. Couldn't fathom at all how it was supposed to work. It really took me realizing that people were saying that these things worked, and that they seemed like pretty reasonable people (except for that) and were pretty consistent in what they were saying, so I tried out starting with assuming, "ok, let's just accept it works that way, can I move my understanding around to make that work?" And, click, it locked in and I got it. I still play 5e, and don't bother with this approach at all when I do, because 5e isn't a game that supports this. I'm currently playing Aliens, and the GM running it is doing it using principles similar to PbtA, and I think it's working okay, but my read on that game is that it should be played out in much more of a classic approach -- keyed scenario type stuff. We'll find out. I also play/run Blades, and there I absolutely embrace the concepts here and a straight up murder scene investigation just won't happen in that game, because the only what that can happen is to have the GM push it into the game. Otherwise, the system's going to be generating way more charged situations -- like the thief pretending to be an inspector casing the scene at high risk of being caught just to pick up a bit of evidence as a setup for a later score to incriminate someone. Or to reduce the heat on their crew. Or something else equally charged. Why? Because Blades drives this situations and doesn't drive mundane investigations where the players search for the clues the GM has placed. Just different games with different intents, goals, and procedures. I absolutely do these investigation things in my 5e games.

 

[Campbell]

I will not speak for Powered by the Apocalypse as a whole. There are games like The Sprawl and Monster of the Week that focus on procedural storytelling, but those games are not like my bag. The PbtA games I personally have enjoyed playing/running are Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Masks, Apocalypse Keys, and The Veil. The thing they all excel at is interpersonal drama, particularly among PCs. The GM's role in these games is about applying pressure in order to see how well the player characters can hold together or if they even will. Sometimes like in Apocalypse Keys or Masks there will be procedural elements, but they are mostly there as a backdrop for the interpersonal stuff.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@Faolyn I think @Ovinomancer and @Campbell have provided some clarity in their most recent posts, but as someone who at one point struggled with following discussions of these games, I wanted to add something that may help, based on what you said in the quote below.

Because someone they loved was killed, because they think they know who did it but need proof, because someone has been arrested but the PCs are sure that the person is innocent, because the murderer used the PC's favorite gun and the PC wants it back, because the murderer has killed before and will kill again unless the PCs stop them, because they're professional detectives.

At this point, the motivation doesn't even matter: for a reason, they're there, investigating a crime scene. How do we go about doing this?

Again, if PtbA games aren't built for this, then that's fine. I think it's a glaring omission and a point against the system, though.

The thing with this is that the motivation absolutely matters. So do other elements like who is involved with this investigation and why, and what the potential consequences can be. The GM should be considering all those things as this scenario takes place, and he shoudl be using those elements to inform the moves he makes, or the consequences that he inflicts.

So to take one of your examples and run with it....let's say the PCs are actively trying to determine a culprit because an ally of theirs has been arrested for a crime. Even something as fundamental to this situation as "did the ally actually commit the crime" is likely unknown when play begins. The ultimate outcome is determined through play, and how the rolls go and what they lead to; it's not decided ahead of time.

So it can go either way......perhaps the ally was framed, perhaps they committed the crime. You'll see the phrase "Play to find out" and that applies to the GM, too.

That's one of the first steps to getting a better handle on these games. Or at least, it was for me.

 

[Blue]

In Apocalypse World whenever the players look to the MC to find out what happens the MC makes a move. That's true regardless of if a basic move is triggered.

You can totally do things not covered by the basic moves. It happens all the time when I run Apocalypse World. In those cases the system does not have anything to say so the MC just says what happens based on the fiction and their principles. Not everything requires rolling dice.

One additional thing - there often is a move, you just need to think of how to apply it. Because the move should force you to set up a dramatic situation. There's a great example for Dungeon World, about asking for something nicely instead of using the Parlay move which specifically is for when you have leverage. For example, asking a local knight if they can purchase his magic sword.

From: How to ask nicely in Dungeon World

The problem here isn't on the player side. The GM is cheating. Accidentally, but still cheating.

GM Cheating in Dungeon World​

The GM cheats in Dungeon World when they speak without following their Agenda, Principles, and Moves.

There is no GM move called "make an arbitrary decision." There's also no GM move called "have a freeform social interaction." If the GM is following the rules, this kind of stall should not happen.

This is why the GM has rules, to prevent situations like this one, among other situations that qualify as failure modes to avoid.

Responding to a polite request, as the GM​

The player's job is done: they've had their PC ask politely. There is no error on the player side of the equation and nothing to fix, no other moves to try to bend to fit the goal.

Since the “everyone looks to you to find out what happens” trigger matches, it's now the GM’s turn to make an appropriate move, instead of falling into “time for unstructured social exchange improvisation!” habits that they have brought with them from some other game.

(Recall too that moves aren't optional when triggered: when that trigger happens, a move must be made; this is equally true for GM moves as for player moves. The GM's turns has been triggered and making a GM move is now demanded by the rules.)

There are several moves that the GM could make. All of them, if executed with the Agenda and Principles in mind, should immediately add something new and interesting for the players to engage with, not just chit-chat.

The trick is to pick one, and then do a quick mental Mad Libs to fill in the blanks that the move demands. Let's assume the PC has politely asked for that magic sword:

• Reveal an unwelcome truth:
  

  “Sure, you can have my sword! It's cursed. If you can take it from me, I'd be more than happy.”

• Show signs of an approaching threat:
  

  “What kind of a person asks for a warrior's sword?” the bandit chief growls. She's obviously really insulted just by the question. It looks like she's thinking of giving it to you, point first, if you can't mend the situation. What do you do?

  or
  

  “This old thing? Uh, sure! Here!” he says breathlessly. He almost pushes it into your hands, and then runs off. It's a very fine sword, clearly magical and worth a lot. As you look up from admiring it, you notice a posse of civilians with torches and pitchforks lead by three members of the city watch running in your direction. They're shouting something that sounds awfully like “Thief!” What do you do?

• Turn their move back on them
  Possibly the simplest and most straightforward move to make: ask them to tell you why in the world their polite request makes any sense! If they're asking in the first place, they might see a good reason that you're not seeing.
  

  — Hm, you're just asking? Okay, well why do you think they would just give it to you?
  — Because the village owes us their lives and souls, and we're heroes. He'll probably gift it to us.
  — Huh! Well at any other time I'd laugh and so would he, but yeah, considering what you just did? Yeah, they gift you the sword. They even make a big ceremony of it. You're big damn heroes!

• Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities
  Have you got a thief in the party? Well...
  

  He laughs that off. “Just give you my sword?! You must be soft in the head.” He turns and walks off, shaking his head and laughing. But you get a good look at his sword belt from behind and notice it's worn... given the right chance, you could probably cut it quick. Want to tail him?

• Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask
  This is a staple of responses to polite requests. This prompts the GM to set a price, and ask.
  

  She says sure, she'll give you the sword. But only if you defeat her in single combat. She seems pretty confident too. What do you do?

  or
  

  “Sure. What's it worth to you? How about... that emerald necklace and arranging an audience with the Unmasked Lord for me? No? Well... let me know if you reconsider.”

  or
  

  “Hm, alright. Do you have three hundred crowns?”

  or
  

  “I tire of the burden. It is yours if you want it. But beware: the sword has a way of making heroes out of its bearers, whether they mean to be or not. Take it only if you are willing to shoulder that burden.” He holds the sword out, hilt first. What do you do?

The point is that the PC “just” asking is just the beginning, and there is nothing that says “just asking” is suddenly set in stone as the price at stake. The GM's job is to play to find out what happens, and to do that you pick a GM move, fill out its details, and play out that response. The result will almost certainly establish that there is a price beyond politely asking, either of in-game goods to exchange or in narrative branches the players must tackle. Rather than deciding, you add something interesting to the situation and then see what the players do.

So clean up the GM's side of these meandering social improv interludes, and you won't see stalls anymore! The GM might even be surprised by the things they spontaneously add to the game, faced with such circumstances. This is where Dungeon World shines: turning mundane, boring bits of play into pivotal moments, because the rules demand never doing something boring and stale.

 

[GrahamWills]

Have you missed the point, or just conveniently ignored it?

Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?

The fact that you're badly misusing 'read a sitch' simply tells me that you've not bothered to read and understand either my post or Apocalypse World.

Rather than just insult, could you please try and address the question. I’m happy to be told to use another move, or that AW doesn’t support this style of activity, only ones with active risk (as another poster stated), but simply insulting me isn’t terribly helpful. Feel free to imagine any answer to your questions. But at the moment you seem determined to use jargon and insults to avoid debate. I actively want to enjoy PbtA games, but I have some issues I’d like help with. Seriously, if you don’t want to be helpful, just chill and leave it to others who do.

 

[GrahamWills]

So to take one of your examples and run with it....let's say the PCs are actively trying to determine a culprit because an ally of theirs has been arrested for a crime. Even something as fundamental to this situation as "did the ally actually commit the crime" is likely unknown when play begins. The ultimate outcome is determined through play, and how the rolls go and what they lead to; it's not decided ahead of time.

Thank you, @hawkeyefan, that helps my understanding. I know the style of investigation where there is no pre-existing puzzle and the group comes up with a solution is a way of running investigation, and I can see that PbtA can handle that. For me and my group, that always feels a little illusionistic — you are going to solve the problem eventually because you will generate a solution. But more importantly puzzle-solving is core part of RPGs heritage, so it’s helpful to know that PbtA is just not going to be the best tool for such a game.

I’ve most enjoyed PbtA in highly railroaded settings (Bluebeard‘s Bride) and also in sandbox-y settings where there is opposition that need to be overcome in imaginative ways, but not by trying to figure out clues. I can’t imagine effectively using PbtA to run the Call of Cthulhu games I played at Origins last week, but I would also be unenthusiastic about trying a caper action scenario using BRP. I’ve played MONSTER OF THE WEEK a couple of times — would it be fair to call it the closest PbtA version for investigatIve roleplaying, or is there any other implementation I should look at?

 

[chaochou]

Rather than just insult, could you please try and address the question. I’m happy to be told to use another move, or that AW doesn’t support this style of activity, only ones with active risk (as another poster stated), but simply insulting me isn’t terribly helpful. Feel free to imagine any answer to your questions. But at the moment you seem determined to use jargon and insults to avoid debate. I actively want to enjoy PbtA games, but I have some issues I’d like help with. Seriously, if you don’t want to be helpful, just chill and leave it to others who do.

I had already answered your question in my post which you quoted.

So my advice would be to re-evaluate the set-up and premise of character creation, the processes which are being used to create the situations each PC finds themself in, and ask yourself if it's the players who generated the purpose and goals of the PCs. If you have strong characters with clear player-generated goals and obligations and drama around them, you shouldn't get passive moves.

And then, when you completely ignored this, I reitereated it:

Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?

Are you going to ignore all this again?

Until you take me - from the beginning - through the processes being used to establish why there's a crime, and how the characters are related to that crime, and why each character cares - and of utmost importance who has authored every one of those aspects of the situation - then there are no answers as to how Apocalypse World (or indeed any Story Now game) will 'handle' your empty 'investigate a room' proposition.

Who has authored what room you're in? Why you are there? What sort of thing you might expect to find? Why do you believe that's the case? Who at the table is creating all this content?

The presumption in your line of questioning is that in all cases the GM has decided that a crime has happened, that the GM gets to task the players to investigate the crime, that certain information (clues) have been pre-written by the GM to allow the perpetrator of the crime to be revealed, and that gameplay will involve players making action declarations gated behind rolls which will dole out parcels of information until they have all the jigsaw pieces to 'solve' the mystery.

Until you discard this entire paradigm there is no point answering questions about any specific instance of play.

 

[Aldarc]

Have you missed the point, or just conveniently ignored it?

Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?

The fact that you're badly misusing 'read a sitch' simply tells me that you've not bothered to read and understand either my post or Apocalypse World.

I think that Graham Willis is approaching this from a position of good faith and conversation has been incredibly amiable (at least compared to past conversations about these games), so maybe lay off a bit? There was nothing about his tone or content in his post that required escalating the hostility.

I would personally appreciate showing a little more patience for Graham Willis, Faolyn, and others when it comes to PbtA and FitD. It took me awhile to grapple with what Fate was asking me to approach the game differently as a player and GM. Same with PbtA and FitD. Furthermore, not everyone will have smooth sailing when it comes to these games. There are bound to be bumps, hurdles, misunderstandings, and old habits to work through.

I think this issue of PC race in Dungeon World is of pretty minor importance to the system overall. Comparisons are tricky to make: it's a slightly bigger deal than whether or not the gear list from some edition/version of D&D has candles or needle and thread on it. It's probably closer, in D&D terms, to what is on the weapon list or the spell list.

I personally wouldn't count these as issues of extensive homebrewing. But in any event, just as someone wouldn't normally choose what version of D&D to use based on the spell list - that's not where most of the action is across different versions of the game - so I would say the same for DW. If you're interested in it because of the system, it's pretty trivial to add whatever new race option will suit your table. If you're not, I don't think tinkering with the race options would be a reason to change your mind on that.

The amount of homebrewing I have done in Dungeon World on account of "race" is practically non-existent. In comparison, the amount of homebrewing I have done in D&D - where I am told explicitly through fluff and mechanics what it means to be a 'dwarf' or an 'orc' - has where I have arguably spent some of my greatest time and effort homebrewing for my games.

I would also say that by this point there is Dungeon World as it existed in that particulary point in time and there is Dungeon World as played and modded by the community now. I think that the latter of which doesn't care in the slightest about the old racial restrictions of the core game. The game has basically moved beyond Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra.

Because someone they loved was killed, because they think they know who did it but need proof, because someone has been arrested but the PCs are sure that the person is innocent, because the murderer used the PC's favorite gun and the PC wants it back, because the murderer has killed before and will kill again unless the PCs stop them, because they're professional detectives.

At this point, the motivation doesn't even matter: for a reason, they're there, investigating a crime scene. How do we go about doing this?

Again, if PtbA games aren't built for this, then that's fine. I think it's a glaring omission and a point against the system, though.

As a concrete example, here is the move "Investigate a Mystery" from Monster of the Week:

Investigate A Mystery
When you investigate a mystery, roll +Sharp. On a 10+ hold 2, and on a 7-9 hold 1. One hold can be spent to ask the Keeper one of the following questions:
• What happened here?
• What sort of creature is it?
• What can it do?
• What can hurt it?
• Where did it go?
• What was it going to do?
• What is being concealed here?
Advanced: On a 12+, you may ask the Keeper any question you want about the mystery, not just the listed ones.

And the example explaining Hold also involves Investigate a Mystery:

Hold
When you get a hold, you’ll get a number of points. Each point can be spent one-for-one to get a specific effect. The move will list the effects you can spend your hold on.

For example, you are interviewing the witnesses to a monster attack and you make an investigate a mystery roll. Your result gives you 3 hold. You can spend your hold to ask the Keeper questions from the list in the investigate a mystery move.

You ask a witness, “Did you see where the attacker went?” and spend one hold. (“Where did it go?” is one of the questions.)

The Keeper says (as Mrs Henderson, the witness), “It scurried over there, and pulled up that grating and went into the sewers.”

As the conversation with the witnesses continues, you spend the next hold to ask the Keeper about the monster’s powers. “Hey, from all the things they’ve told me, can I work out any powers?” (“What can it do?” is another question.)

The Keeper replies, “The witness descriptions don’t agree at all. It must be able to change shape or maybe change memories.”

Later the last hold goes to ask the Keeper about whether a witness is hiding something. That exhausts your hold, so you don’t get any more questions for now.

Here I would also point out that one of the general Keeper moves is "Make [the PCs] Investigate." In other words:

Make them investigate keeps the game moving. In each mystery the hunters need to find clues until they know enough to face the monster behind it all. If the hunters get stumped, ask them what they look for next. If they ask you for information, ask them how they find it out, then get them to make the investigate a mystery move. The
answers from investigating depend on what the hunter did: by asking a witness questions they will learn different things than when they analyse samples in a lab. If the hunters ask a question and you can’t see how they could discover that, ask them to explain how.

As one might imagine from a game called "Monster of the Week," the mystery in question is presumed to pertain to a creature. So Investigating a Mystery is framed in terms of the creature. But hopefully one could see how this framework could be applied to other types of investigative scenes.

But the game Monster of the Week also wants to stress something about its game too:

It's About the Hunters, Not The Mystery
Another thing to remember is that although in each game of Monster of the Week the hunters have a mystery to solve, this isn’t really a game about solving mysteries. We want to see the hunters being awesome, and that requires that they solve the mystery and find out your secrets about what’s going on in the wider world. Then we see what they do with the answers.

We play for the times when the hunters realise they need to do something terrible, or put themselves in danger, or pull out all the stops. When the hunters make those decisions, and we play out all the consequences, that’s what this game is about.

This is not to say that Scooby-Doo doesn't involve solving mysteries, but, instead, that we watch Scooby-Doo because we are interested and invested in seeing Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo do it.