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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7344926" data-attributes="member: 42582">The players don't necessarily invent their own clues (depending, I guess, how broadly you interpret that phrase). For instance, the players might declare "We look to see if there is anything interesting in the [place XYZ]." That can then be resolved, and if the check succeeds the GM narrates something which (if the GM gets it right) will be interesting. Because what counts as interesting is going to be highly contextual, depending on what has already happened in play and what other backstory has been established; and because it has to be consistent with whatever else has been established about [place XYZ]; pre-authorship is not likely to provide much help, although preparation of some basic ideas may well be useful.Whether the "looking for something interesting" action declaration is a permissible game move is of course a further thing. In Cortex+ Heroic it really isn't - the player has to declare what particular asset s/he is trying to establish. I've been re-reading the Fate Core rulebook over the past few days, and I think in Fate it is permissible - the player can fish for a GM-authored aspect rather than try to establish one him-/herself. In 4e it is absolutely permissible, and quite common in my 4e game. From a practical point of view, I regard the pressure point in that sort of action declaration in 4e being between asking the GM to provide more framing and backstory - all well and good - and asking the GM to provide an answer to the players' problem (eg the player of the paladin of the Raven Queen has to choose between Osterneth and Kas, and wants the GM to tell him/her which way the Raven Queen advises his PC to choose - I turn such things back on the player, as I don't regard it as my job to relive the player from the burden of thematically hard choices).I agree that playing or GMing this sort of RPG episode is not like solving a mystery in real life - no detective work is taking place. And I agree that it is not like trying to solve a mystery in the way that watching Gosford Park or playing a CoC module is - there is no parcelling out of bits of the story from which the reader/listener/viewer might then draw inferences as to how the murder happened. It's its own thing. It can certainly result in moments of revelation, moments of surprise, recognition of foreshadowing, etc.</blockquote>

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