Warning: long, analytical post incoming!
To continue the discussion of 'mystery' and 'investigation' in Apocalypse World and whether it 'does them', here are some more ideas.
<snip nice examples of Dusk and friends>
So I hope it's clear that mystery and the unknown can easily form a really central element of Apocalypse World play (and hopefully its also clear they usually do in my games).
And I hope it's equally clear that what we're not doing is railroad investigation into stuff the MC has written for the players to 'find out'. Pre-scripted, pre-determined, zero-agency 'learn what's in my notes' play. Jumping through hoops finding scripted 'clues'. There are plenty of games to do that with if you enjoy it - and Apocalypse World isn't one of them.
This post drives home that a RPG is more than just a rule for how to generate random numbers as part of the action resolution process.
The contrary, but mistaken, thought was found in a post upthread by
@Faolyn - I stated that Classic Traveller has no
read a situation subsystem, and Faolyn replied by pointing out that it has various social skills. The premise of that reply is that what defines Traveller as a rpg is simply its list of potential modifiers to checks - but that we
already know what the process of resolution looks like (ie roll a die/dice of the size and number specified by the rules when the GM tells you too; add the bonus from the appropriate list as specified by the rules and/or the GM; compare that to a target number specified by the rules and/or the GM that the player may or may not know; have the GM tell you something about the fiction as the result and/or the rules prompt them to).
With that mistaken assumption in place, the question about
how does AW do mysteries? is equivalent to the question
what list of bonuses does the game offer to add to rolls, and
what sorts of things does the game prompt the GM to tell players after they have made the rolls that the GM calls for. Which then prompts the complaints
But why is there no general "investigation" ability? (Ie why is the list of bonuses constrained in a certain way?) And
Why can the GM not call for a roll when the situation is not charged?
Whereas probably the most important features of a RPG are its rules for
who gets to say what, when, and make it part of the shared fiction. Now it's true that between the early 1980s and the late 1990s almost no RPGs actually stated their rules about this (I choose those cut-off dates because there are earlier RPGs that are clear about this: I think Moldvay Basic and Gygax's AD&D are tolerably clear although the latter is a bit convoluted about it, as is well known; Classic Traveller is clear in places; and then there are late 90s/early 2000s RPGs that are clear like Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars, Sorcerer I assume without actually having read it, Burning Wheel, In a Wicked Age, etc). They just assumed that everyone knows that RPGs work as described in the second paragraph of this post.
That's a way to play a RPG, if that's what someone wants. But obviously it puts nearly everything about the shared fiction into the hands of the GM, unless some sort of ad hoc understandings or protocols emerge at the table.
I think the easiest way to bring out how AW is different - and its there in
@chaochou's post that I've quoted, and in some of my posts upthread - is to ask
how is this bit of content being established as part of the shared fiction? By whom? In accordance with what rule or principle? Because AW is so crystal clear on who gets to say what when, answering those questions in a way that is consistent with what AW says will quickly reveal that the mystery is
not going to look or play like a typical CoC module.
We often talk about investigation or mystery in terms of TV, movies and books. In all three of those cases there is a script in play - one that dictates the outcome of the mystery in advance. However, I think it's worth at least considering whether or not that notion actually means anything in terms of whether the show/movie/book was any good or not..
Like you, I think it's easy to exaggerate the importance of pre-authorship. I've certainly heard (is it still accepted fact?) that the script for Casablanca was still being finalised while filming was taking place. And then there's the notorious observation that even Raymond Chandler himself didn't know who had committed one of the killing in the film version of The Big Sleep.
When I've played Cthulhu Dark there have been "loose ends" like that - ie events that certainly took place (because they were part of the shared fiction established in play) and that definitely propelled things forward, but no one at the table has known exactly who caused them or what their precise rationale was. They don't impede the play of the mystery. (And think about playing a typical CoC module: there will be stuff in the module that the
players never learn. So for them the experience is always of loose or not fully resolved threads. My experience is that it makes no difference to the sense of mystery if this is true for the GM also. In the CoC case, the players may suppose that the module author tied it all together in what they wrote. In the Cthulhu Dark case I'm describing, everyone knows that we could tie it all together if we wanted to, by writing the additional fiction that would link it all up. But do we need to?)
I could be off-target here, but my overly brief sense of the main difference between investigation in many (most) trad games and investigation in something like PbtA or FitD is that the latter are not interested in dead ends. They either skip right past them or mechanically turn what might be a dead-end scene in another game into a surprise plot twist or revelation.
Does that sound right? In a sense, it seems like that's a main, overarching feature of Story Now games--get to the conflict already.
PbtA and FitD don't script set dressing. There's no "the duke's diary is in the third drawer of his wardrobe" sort of clue salting. The framing of clues is a direct consequence of the players' actions and the fictional positioning. So if the players actually search the Duke's bedroom successfully, you can then feel free to have a diary with some useful content appear because it makes sense that it could be so. Less true if they search a random apple cart in the market. This does indeed obviate the dead end issues experienced in some games, but only as a by product of being interested in other things (like the conflict you mention)
If you mean that in a more traditional game, where the GM has already predetermined who did it and what the clues are that may be discovered that will point the players to the culprit, and then the players for whatever reason are spending their time chasing info in a location that has nothing to do with anything.....then yeah, that should not be happening in a PbtA/FitD type game.
<snip>
In a PbtA/FitD type game, the GM is meant to ask the players why the PCs are investigating the billiard room, and then shape what happens based on those answers and on the results of the rolls. So they may still wind up finding nothing of use in the billiard room if the rolls don't go their way....but something will happen.
I'm responding to this through the lens of AW in particular. (I think DW is close enough in its principles and GM-side moves that it might make sense for DW too.)
Building on what I've said just above, I think the key issue here is
what does the GM say when? I think there's no formal objection to the GM preparing a threat clock which includes
if such-and-such a thing happens, then the Duke gets his factotum to hide his diary in the billiard room cupboard. I also think there's no formal objection to the GM writing a custom move for the billiard room. Baker gives the example of a custom move (AW p 144):
When you go into Dremmer’s territory, roll+sharp. On a 10+, you can spot and avoid ambush. On a 7–9, you spot the ambush in time to prepare or flee. On a miss, you blunder into it.
So speaking purely from a formal point of view, the following seems an acceptable custom move:
When you search the billiard room, roll+sharp. On a 10+, you find whatever others have hidden there; the MC will tell you what this is. On a 7-9, you locate something interesting before the Duke's help arrives: you can re-hide it just before they come in, or you can grab it as they enter (they'll see you taking it!). On a miss, you've been caught red handed!
Moving from the formal to the substantive, though, we have to ask: what would the point of such a custom move be? It rests on a premise that
the billiard room and its hidden stuff has the same sort of significance, for play, as does
Dremmer's territory and his ambushers. So how would that happen? Well, one of the basic principles is
say what prep demands. And one of the GM moves is
make a threat move. So if the GM has authored a front and threat in such a way that the billiard room is significant,
that should emerge in play via the GM's moves; so that when the PCs are searching the billiard room, the custom move makes sense.
So where I'm heading with these ruminations is here: AW doesn't object to prep. But it has clear principles about who says what when.
Consistently with those principles - and assuming now that there is
not a custom move for searching the billiard room - the GM might even say that
a search of the billiard room reveals nothing. But that wouldn't be
all that the GM says, because that's not a move. So let's suppose that a player has their PC go off to search the billiard room. And (for whatever reason) it's not a charged situation, and there's no one there to interact with. So no player-side move has been triggered, and the GM just makes a move as normal. And that move could be
your search of the billiard room reveals nothing; but when you come back home, you find that someone took advantage of your absence to really turn over your place! What do you think they might have found that you'd rather they didn't? (To some extent I'm taking my cue here from the Moves Snowball example of play, where Marie goes back home after Isle collapses.)
Whether what I've just described would be fair play, or crappy (even "gotcha") play, would depend on all the surrounding context. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's helpful to say that AW can or can't do
fictional situation of such-and-such a sort. Putting to one side basic questions of genre (like maybe we should really be talking about car sheds rather than billiard rooms) I don't think AW puts any limits on the possible fiction.
The key question is always
who is getting to establish it, when, in accordance with what rules and principles?