Why do you play games other than D&D?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

It’s not over the line yet, but some of the posts in here are getting a little bit more heated than they need to be. Let’s keep from getting too much more confrontational.

 

[HoodedRat575]

Maybe there needs to be a separate thread for this Brindlewood Bay discussion?

 

[MGibster]

haven't played the games being discussed but I work as an investigator in real life and I've definitely learned that you never (or almost never) really know 100% what's happened. You can build evidence and see patterns and figure out broadly what happened and how, but there are always little details that you don't understand or that don't quite fit. Real life is complicated.

This is where a lot of conspiracy theorist get turned around. They become hyper focused on some detail they can't find a good explanation for or they just don't understand it and it's proof the generally accepted narrative is wrong. Real life is complicated and you'll rarely be able to fill in all the details and some things just won't make sense.

I do, too. In one, I’m playing through the GM’s predetermined story and in the other I’m not.

From the perspective of Gumshoe, it's not following the clues that makes for an interesting story it's how the players respond to the clues. I may GM a mystery game where the PCs are investigating the murder of Winfred Turnbull. Before the game even starts, I know who did it, how, and why. That doesn't mean I've predetermined the story. I don't know how the players will react to the clues or how they will find them. For all I know, the killer might even get away.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The players in a Call of Cthulhu game can absolutely solve puzzles and mysteries, in a very similar fashion to how they would if playing an escape room game. For many people, this is literally part of the appeal of investigative games -- actually, as a person in the real world, solving puzzle (while doing so in character). That they are doing this through the characters in the game doesn't change this fact. This doesn't mean the characters aren't also solving the puzzle.

Conversely, a lot of people would not be happy with an escape room game where there was not a clear correct answer to the final puzzle, but "success" or "failure" came down to a random check. In this case, the players are not actually solving a puzzle at all.

So a couple thoughts in this.

First, and simply, describing the process of Brindlewood Bay as “a random check” is way off. It’s like saying that a CoC game comes down to a “random guess” by the players. It ignores so much of what is happening in play.

More importantly… as far as addressing the gap in understanding here… what’s being talked about most of the time when the word “mystery” is used in a traditional game like CoC is a puzzle. If the point of play is to solve a puzzle, then yes, I imagine most folks want some kind of solution to be known ahead of time.

What often happens in these discussions is people begin to talk about how something “feels”… and they then proceed as if that is not a subjective matter.

So if we want to talk about what makes for a satisfying puzzle to solve… then a solution becomes a pretty obvious requirement. But instead, people say that some players want to “solve a mystery”, or in this case, that they “want to solve a mystery instead of tell a story about solving a mystery”. But then we’re shifting into subjectivity. What type of play “feels like solving a mystery” will vary.

So to me, both types of play may feel like solving a mystery, depending on the participant. Neither of them are actually doing so,

Both Call of Cthulhu (and similar games) and Brindlewood Bay (and similar games) are games about investigators attempting to solve a mystery. They have different methods of producing the outcome… both the “solution” to the mystery and whether or not the investigators succeed. Different folks will have different preferences about which game is better or “feels like being an investigator” or what have you.

Neither is “closer” to solving a mystery. I would say that they have much more in common with each other than either has with a real life investigation.

 

[MGibster]

There's a reverse of this. I had a friend, an avid board gamer, who couldn't quite wrap his head around always played D&D. He could not understand why someone would use the same set of rules week after week after week. I had to explain to him that each weekly scenario could be quite different from another, so it didn't really get stale like you might think. He politely responded that I made sense, but deep down I knew he was still perplexed.

 

[SableWyvern]

What often happens in these discussions is people begin to talk about how something “feels”… and they then proceed as if that is not a subjective matter.

Sure, I'll happily accept I'm talking about how I feel and not hard, objective facts...

Neither is “closer” to solving a mystery.

As long as you accept the the same here.

 

[pemerton]

what’s being talked about most of the time when the word “mystery” is used in a traditional game like CoC is a puzzle. If the point of play is to solve a puzzle, then yes, I imagine most folks want some kind of solution to be known ahead of time.

What often happens in these discussions is people begin to talk about how something “feels”… and they then proceed as if that is not a subjective matter.

So if we want to talk about what makes for a satisfying puzzle to solve… then a solution becomes a pretty obvious requirement. But instead, people say that some players want to “solve a mystery”, or in this case, that they “want to solve a mystery instead of tell a story about solving a mystery”. But then we’re shifting into subjectivity. What type of play “feels like solving a mystery” will vary.

100% agreed with this. Solving a puzzle (like a crossword puzzle, or charades, or the extrapolation from CoC clues) is not like solving an actual mystery or murder.

I mean, in the CoC case I can be confident that all the salient NPCs have somehow been presented to me, directly or indirectly, by the GM; and that I will never need to (say) review a 100 phone records or bank records or passenger logs or similar, and cross reference those against other tedious data, to try and find a pattern or connection. I know that all the evidence is available to my PC by following cues or prompts or opportunities that the GM will present to me. If my PC is in (say) New York, I don't need to worry that I have to interview every bus driver and every bus ticket seller just to check that my suspect didn't take a bus to Milwaukee. I know that the scenario's fiction will be "bounded" by a sense of what is feasible, and what is fair, for a GM to present in the context of playing a RPG.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think that there is an ongoing issue in how people interpret and talk about RPGs that hits on this very issue - the extent to which it's possible or even desirable for an RPG to simulate in any detailed way the thing it trying to represent in play. I think in the case of mysteries and police investigations the thing that is being simulated, if we even want to use that word, is something that is more an artifact of books and shows than it is anything to do with real life. The idea of trying to simulate an actual police investigation in an RPG is pretty horrific IMO. Not in a blood and guts way, but in an OMG this is the most boring thing I've ever done way.

 

[SableWyvern]

I would say that they have much more in common with each other than either has with a real life investigation.

Solving a puzzle (like a crossword puzzle, or charades, or the extrapolation from CoC clues) is not like solving an actual mystery or murder.

I think in the case of mysteries and police investigations the thing that is being simulated, if we even want to use that word, is something that is more an artifact of books and shows than it is anything to do with real life. The idea of trying to simulate an actual police investigation in an RPG is pretty horrific IMO. Not in a blood and guts way, but in an OMG this is the most boring thing I've ever done way.

Is any of this actually in dispute? I'm sure it is somewhere, but not in this thread, from anything I've seen.

I said that some investigation games involve the players actually solving "a mystery" and I also mentioned "solving puzzles". I compared investigative RPGs to escape room games and murder mystery games, not to real police work.

At no point did I say anything remotely like, "Call of Cthulhu is an accurate, high fidelity simulation of a real life police investigation." I'm pretty sure no one else in the thread said it either. I don't think anyone here is under the illusion that RPGs are just like real life murder investigations. If I did appear to say something along those lines, it was simply sloppy wording on my part.

 

[pemerton]

I think that there is an ongoing issue in how people interpret and talk about RPGs that hits on this very issue - the extent to which it's possible or even desirable for an RPG to simulate in any detailed way the thing it trying to represent in play. I think in the case of mysteries and police investigations the thing that is being simulated, if we even want to use that word, is something that is more an artifact of books and shows than it is anything to do with real life. The idea of trying to simulate an actual police investigation in an RPG is pretty horrific IMO. Not in a blood and guts way, but in an OMG this is the most boring thing I've ever done way.

I think the books/shows that CoC most closely emulates are Christie-esque, somewhat baroque, "parlour game" mysteries.

Another thing that I think is completely different in RPGs (and many films/shows) compared to real life is scholarly research. And for similar reasons to the ones you give: scholarly research takes a long time, and while it is not necessarily tedious to the researcher (though it can be), it is certainly going to be tedious to an audience.

The way scholars work in CoC scenarios reminds me of Indiana Jones films, but not of any actual scholars I know (and given my job, I know many!).