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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7343485" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's very little like real life. In real life I can, for instance, try and find foot prints and draw inferences from those; or try and dig up a new witness who might know something; or try and outwit a suspect through a clever interrogation.In a RPG, though, the "world" has no independent causal power. So - in a "hidden backstory" game - if the GM hasn't authored any foot prints, there are none to draw inference from. If the GM hasn't authored any further witnesses, there are none to find. If the GM doesn't find my interrogation sufficiently clever or threatening or overbearing or whatever, then I don't outwit the suspect.This is nothing like real life. It's very much as I described - the players declare moves for their PCs that try to trigger the narration of salient bits of info. (GUMSHOE strips out some of this through its "automatic clue" rule; but you can spend resources to get extra info narrated to you.) The GUMSHOE rules (I'm copying from p 52 of Trail of Cthulhu) actually make the process very clear:Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is: 1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered, 2. Have the right ability to discover the clue, and 3. Tell the Keeper that you’re using it.In other word, you have to (1) declare moves that establish an appropriate fictional positioning for your PC vis-a-vis the hidden backstory, and (2)+(3) declare an action that will trigger the GM to narrate you some of that hidden backstory.I'm not saying that this is or isn't fun, but I think it's clearly not all that agentic on the part of the player. The player is not establishing the content of the shared fiction; s/he is learning it by triggering narrations on the part of the GM.This is a description of GM agency. It doesn't show any player agency, though. To the extent that the players have a reason to try to learn who the antagonist might react, that is more obtaining of hidden backstory from the GM.The principal mysteries were what happened, and why? The answer to the first was known, by me as GM, ahead of time: The manor became abandoned when the pending fall of Nerath to gnoll invaders (the downstream consequences of which have been a bit part of the campaign to date) led its wizard owner to go mad with the strain and kill his apprentices.The answer to the second was established during play, and the PCs learned it by piecing together clues that were also established during play: the last work the wizard who owned the manor had been undertaking before he went mad was to try to find a way of harnessing the power of the Raven Queen without compromising the principles of his cult, in order to create more powerful defences by which Nerath might resist the invading gnolls - he snapped when his most religiously devout apprentice learned what he was doing and accused him of treachery.Other things that were unknown by the players and PCs at the start of the scenario, but were learned on the way through to solving the big mystery of why?, included that the religion of the dead mage was a particular cult combining worship of Bahamut (god of the east wind and also of the dragonborn), Kord, Pelor and Ioun; and that the burial practices of the cult had the intention of trying to avoid the dead being dealt with by the Raven Queen, instead going directly to Mount Celestia or Hestavar as exalted.These elements of the fiction were also established not in advance but in the course of play. Thus, as the post concludes, "I learned that while sandboxing might rely heavily upon exploration, exploration can be done without sandboxing. Most of the interesting details of the exploration were worked out by me on the fly, whether as needed or even in response to player actions (like the invisible ink)."</blockquote>

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