Why do you play games other than D&D?

[pemerton]

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".

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 hereis under the illusion that RPGs are just like real life murder investigations.

Sure, but then I can assert that Brindlewood Bay players also solve a mystery - namely, of how to integrate the clues and observations and etc they have acquired, via their play of the game, into a coherent and plausible account of what happened. That's a demanding cognitive task, which even if it doesn't have one unique solution has many possible dead ends on the way to any particular candidate solution.

And it's a cognitive task that, as I've posted upthread, has some resemblance to the cognitive task involved in actually trying to solve a mystery in real life.

I agree it's not that much like solving a puzzle, because of the absence of (i) a unique solution being known to exist, and (ii) the clues being known to have been written to permit inference to (i). But the absence of (ii) actually makes it more like solving a mystery than solving a puzzle.

All of which is why I don't agree that CoC involves solving a mystery, as opposed to playing at solving a mystery, to a degree that Brindlewood Bay does not. But I do agree that a CoC module is more likely to involve solving a puzzle to a degree that Brindlewood Bay will not.

 

[SableWyvern]

Sure, but then I can assert that Brindlewood Bay players also solve a mystery - namely, of how to integrate the clues and observations and etc they have acquired, via their play of the game, into a coherent and plausible account of what happened. That's a demanding cognitive task, which even if it doesn't have one unique solution has many possible dead ends on the way to any particular candidate solution.

And it's a cognitive task that, as I've posted upthread, has some resemblance to the cognitive task involved in actually trying to solve a mystery in real life.

I agree it's not that much like solving a puzzle, because of the absence of (i) a unique solution being known to exist, and (ii) the clues being known to have been written to permit inference to (i). But the absence of (ii) actually makes it more like solving a mystery than solving a puzzle.

All of which is why I don't agree that CoC involves solving a mystery, as opposed to playing at solving a mystery, to a degree that Brindlewood Bay does not. But I do agree that a CoC module is more likely to involve solving a puzzle to a degree that Brindlewood Bay will not.

I don't know if you missed it, but I did early retract my "telling the story of solving a mystery" phrasing.

I believe:

In Brindlewood Bay, the players are not solving a mystery, but are playing characters who do

is a more accurate expression of the distinction I was trying to make.

I'm not seeing much of a difference between puzzles and mysteries in this context, but if replacing the world mystery with puzzle enables you to understand the main thrust of my point, then so be it. I do also agree with @hawkeyefan that we're talking more about how things feel to players than anything else, but it seems quite clear to me from reading a lot of feedback from actual Brindlewood Bay fans that many people who love the game feel similarly to me on this.