Why do you play games other than D&D?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I get the solve vs. create a mystery argument in B. Bay, but the game does play tricks on the mind.

All this talk of the emergent mystery solving in BB reminds me of an episode of Dawn French’s Murder Most Horrid. In it, she (as a police officer) investigates a murder with Masonic symbolism and customs. And the local masons are seemingly trying to thwart her.

After following all the clues, she comes to the conclusion that the murderer is…HERSELF.

 

[Fenris-77]

good to know, but then I am confused why they misrepresent the mechanics


they acquire clues, they come up with their theory, that much represents the investigation part, sure. But then a die roll decides whether their theory is correct and the DM never really set up a predetermined puzzle with one specific solution / murderer, and that is where it does not match up with actual investigations.

Hence it is telling a story about solving a mystery, but there is no actual predetermined mystery that is being solved, it is smoke and mirrors.

That does not mean it cannot be enjoyable, and it probably reduces the load on the DM, but it doesn’t change that there was not actually any mystery solved, even if it may feel like that for the players

I'm not misrepresenting the mechanics at all. I'm disagreeing about whether or not they work as advertised. In fact, my entire participation in this thread started with some pretty significant misrepresentation of the mechanics by someone else. I can see that you know how the dice are rolled, but that's not the whole story of how RPG play works or how this specific mechanic works at the table and in the context of play. @pemerton covers this quite well above, so I wouldn't repeat him here.

 

[dbm]

I haven’t played Brindlewood Bay but I know my group would see a very big difference between acquiring clues to solve a pre-designed mystery and acquiring clues to a point where they can roll to see if their theory is correct (which would solve the mystery).

While the second option might leave them with a cool narrative outcome externally no different from the first, it would scratch a very different itch than solving a mystery through application of character skill and player problem-solving. The trappings would be the same, but the internal experience would be different (I have tried no-prep mysteries using Fate so know how they feel about this concept).

 

[pemerton]

I am confused why they misrepresent the mechanics

@Fenris-77 hasn't misrepresented the mechanics. Here are the posts that I've had in mind in making my posts about Brindlewood Bay:

The range of possible outcomes for a given mystery in BBay is far more limited than people sometimes suggest. The careful curation of NPCs and clues in a given mystery has the effect of narrowing that field quite a bit. I won't quibble with a description of BBay play as emergent, but I find it gets used (quite poorly) as an example of all kinds of things it doesn't actually do at the table in that regard

I do disagree that BBay 'fails to deliver' and that a die roll 'blurts out lame theories'. The latter especially is a pretty strong mischaracterization of how the mechanic functions. If the theory is lame it's because the players had a lame theory, which might either be well or poorly supported by the available clues. Don't blame the mechanic for the lameness though. It's also the case that if the players are patient, and bide their time and uncover lots of clues, that there is only a small chance that their theory will be wrong and an increasing chance that it won't be lame. How ultimately satisfying that theory is, and thus how satisfying the ending of that arc is, relies completely on the players to uncover clues and weave them together with the diegetic elements revealed by play, and for the GM to positively scaffold player choices during play.

My suspicion is that the nature of BBay mechanic has led people to try and describe it as 'not really about solving a mystery' and this in turn leads to trying to define what it might be if it's not that. I think that the difference between emergent and prepped play (or whatever term you prefer) covers the difference between CoC and BBay without the need to split the Gordian Knot of 'what is a mystery, anyway'.

they acquire clues, they come up with their theory, that much represents the investigation part, sure. But then a die roll decides whether their theory is correct and the DM never really set up a predetermined puzzle with one specific solution / murderer, and that is where it does not match up with actual investigations.

What actual investigations are you saying involve a predetermined puzzle set up by a GM? I mean, crossword puzzles are a bit like that, but outside of Agatha Christie novels murders generally are not. The investigator, like anyone else trying to learn things, acquires information, looks for patterns, and forms conjectures. There is no authorial voice from the heavens that then tells them whether or not they solved an author's plot!

Hence it is telling a story about solving a mystery, but there is no actual predetermined mystery that is being solved, it is smoke and mirrors.

I don't know what you mean by "smoke and mirrors". If you mean it's all imaginary, that's true, but is true of any RPG. And everyone knows that there is no pre-determined mystery: that's part of the point of the game. It doesn't follow that it is "telling a story about solving a mystery", anymore than (say) CoC play is. Both involve people imagining themselves as solvers of mysteries. Both involve people reasoning about fiction to form conjectures.

That does not mean it cannot be enjoyable, and it probably reduces the load on the DM, but it doesn’t change that there was not actually any mystery solved, even if it may feel like that for the players

What answer do these clues, and the relationships between them and patterns they establish, suggest? That's a question to which the answer needn't be arbitrary. Answering that question looks to me as much like solving a mystery as does playing a CoC module, and thus working out what the module author wrote down in their book.

 

[mamba]

I'm not misrepresenting the mechanics at all. I'm disagreeing about whether or not they work as advertised.

you disagreed that it was a story about solving a mystery and said it is actually solving a mystery instead

I don't disagree with you, in principle anyway. I supposed where I begin to disagree is with the notion that Brindlewood Bay is the latter rather than the former, which it plainly isn't

Yet there is no actual mystery that has a predetermined solution at its core. There are only clues, theories the investigators come up with, and a die roll that decides whether their theory is considered correct.

Do you agree with this summary? Then that does mean to me that it follows that it is a story about solving a mystery rather than actually solving anything. I am not sure where you see this as actually solving a mystery

 

[Fenris-77]

you disagreed that it was a story about solving a mystery and said it is actually solving a mystery instead

That's not a mechanic my friend, that someone's opinion about how to describe the game.

Yet there is no actual mystery that has a predetermined solution at its core. There are only clues, theories the investigators come up with, and a die roll that decides whether their theory is considered correct.

Do you agree with this summary? Then that does mean to me that it follows that it is a story about solving a mystery rather than actually solving anything. I am not sure where you see this as actually solving a mystery

Your 'summary' of what's going on in Brindlewood Bay play is overly facile. Telling me how the dice are rolled doesn't describe how the game is played - not for BBay or for any RPG. The difficulty with Brindlewood is that it succeeds brilliantly (for some gamers) despite the fact that a facile reading suggests (to others) that it perhaps shouldn't. Everyone is focused on the fact that the mystery doesn't have a predetermined outcome when that is not, in fact, all that important to whether or not the game functions as a satisfying mystery solving game.

This entire tangent is at least as much a repetition of the emergent versus prepped gameplay argument dressed in a trenchcoat pretending to be about solving mysteries.

 

[mamba]

What actual investigations are you saying involve a predetermined puzzle set up by a GM?

none, but actual investigations tend to have actual persons doing a specific thing in a specific way and either the investigators discover this, or they fail.

In the absence of an actual murder to investigate the equivalent would be for the GM to set up a predetermined mystery / crime for the players to solve.

There is no authorial voice from the heavens that then tells them whether or not they solved an author's plot!

and that basically is why they do not actually solve a predetermined mystery

I don't know what you mean by "smoke and mirrors". If you mean it's all imaginary, that's true, but is true of any RPG.

Of course any RPG is imaginary, we are not investigating actual crimes here. The difference is that the DM did not set up a predetermined mystery that the players either discover or fail at discovering, the way an investigation of a real life crime would

What answer do these clues, and the relationships between them and patterns they establish, suggest? That's a question to which the answer needn't be arbitrary.

it’s not arbitrary in the sense that any nonsense is equally convincing to the players, even if the die roll were to say it is the correct answer because they collected enough clues at that point. It is arbitrary in that the die roll decides whether it is the solution even if the theory feels pretty unconvincing

If the theory is lame it's because the players had a lame theory, which might either be well or poorly supported by the available clues. Don't blame the mechanic for the lameness though.

Answering that question looks to me as much like solving a mystery as does playing a CoC module, and thus working out what the module author wrote down in their book.

it doesn’t to me, which is not meant to imply that BB fails at its goal or is not fun to play, only that I see a difference between these two cases

 

[mamba]

That's not a mechanic my friend, that someone's opinion about how to describe the game.

yes, but that description is based on its mechanics

The difficulty with Brindlewood is that it succeeds brilliantly (for some gamers) despite the fact that a facile reading suggests (to others) that it perhaps shouldn't. Everyone is focused on the fact that the mystery doesn't have a predetermined outcome when that is not, in fact, all that important to whether or not the game functions as a satisfying mystery solving game.

no disagreement here, I did not mean to imply that it therefore fails at being a good mystery solving game

This entire tangent is at least as much a repetition of the emergent versus prepped gameplay argument dressed in a trenchcoat pretending to be about solving mysteries.

probably accurate, it ultimately is about the same things

 

[Fenris-77]

yes, but that description is based on its mechanics

Faintly and fuzzily, at best, which is why it's an unsatisfying account of how the game actually works (or doesn't).

no disagreement here, I did not mean to imply that it therefore fails at being a good mystery solving game

I'm not trying to be a pedant here, I can see we have some things in common. The crux of the matter is the extent to which a predetermined solution changes, or improves, or in some way makes possible the description of 'solving a mystery', rather than the watered-down version with the story qualifier. So the extent to which the presence of a predetermined solution is a useful hook on which to hang a description of the game and what it does. So back to where I started, I don't think it's a productive place to do that definitional work.

probably accurate, it ultimately is about the same things

Recognizing the underlying strata of the discussion makes it much easier for us to be forthright and explicit about the topic at hand. It's not a bad thing. It doesn't mean we have to agree about the issue at hand either, it just mitigates a certain set of misunderstandings and tangents.

 

[John Dallman]

It seems to me that there's an important difference between "this scenario is about solving a mystery" and "the mystery in this scenario is part of a larger story arc." In the second case, some things about the mystery are predetermined, and much of the significance of the mystery is tied into them. That may not be obvious to the characters at the start, but it's another thing that clues need to gradually reveal.