No investigations?
Roger:
There was recently a bit of an investigation sub-plot in the D&D game I run. The usual: oh no, someone is stealing orphans.
The PCs ran around and investigated a bit. Used skills, interrogated people; you know, the usual.
They picked up a lead and, being the violent thugs they are, killed the suspect and all the suspect's friends. It's what passes for justice.
There was a very real possibility that they would have settled on a different suspect. Or they might have reached the conclusion that they didn't know who was stealing all these orphans. Both of those outcomes would have been perfectly fine and functional.
It seems reasonable to characterize that as the PCs doing the investigating, the interrogating, the killing. The players were not doing those things. They're pretending to, though. Maybe pretending to investigate is enough.
So that's a specific anecdote. In the most general sense, my understanding of this topic is that it is about a pretty fundamental question: Is the fiction available to the players as a subject of the scientific method? In my opinion the answer is "It depends; it might be." and perhaps I'd even go so far as to say "It depends; it usually is." Perhaps unfairly, I guess I'd characterize our topic's original statement as the answer of "No, it's literally impossible."
Cheers,
Roger
contracycle:
David,
I agree that in in some sense it could be argued that being genuinely engaged in an investigation is a form of "stepping out of the game", in the way you describe with the dwarven door. But I would suggest that this is equivalent to players actually, personally stepping up, or actually, personally addressing premise. I would agree that with the murder thing I mentioned above, I suppose it could be said that I was "not roleplaying", in that I was engaged with it directly rather than through the vehicle of my character. I don't think that is inherently a problem though.
But I would also agree that, aesthetically as it were, it is a problem when this content is divorced from the rest of the setting and colour. I dislike the sort of puzzle you've described, and indeed puzzles of that nature in general for that reason. But contrast that with a classic form like the locked room murder mystery; you can do that completely within the context of the imaginative setting and all its colourful details. I played in a game that was builkt exactly like this, a sort of intro to Call of Cthulhu done for two of us who'd never played any of it. And we did that all in character, from the dinner table conversaiton before the grim deed, to roleplaying through the interviews with the residents of the house, to poking around in the coal cellar. In this case, my character was also being sort of framed for it, so the frustration of the mystery I felt as a player mapped directly onto the frustration I felt on behalf of the character. All in all it worked wonderfully, and was one of the most powerful experiences I've had in RPG.
So, when it coincides with the topical content of the game as a whole, I don't think the personal engagement produces a problem. What it shouldn't do is contradict the content (one of the Fighting Fantasy game books required the player to deduce binary arithmetic, frex), and it shouldn't stop the progress of play until the investigation is complete (like your door). But as long as it avoids those, it can be integrated and healthy and conducive to deeper engagment with the game as a whole.
David Berg:
Well put, and I agree completely.
As for not stopping play and not breaking aesthetics, the solution I keep coming back to is to design scenarios in which the acquisition and analysis of puzzle pieces entails appropriate fiction. That is, investigation in a Cthulhu game should involve grabbing evidence from a claustrophobic crawlspace and then scrutinizing that evidence via a demonic spell that has some chance to kill you. Not exactly revolutionary, but pretty reliable, I think.
Of course, such play tends to leave "the point" a very open question -- are we investigating as a vehicle to experience claustrophobia and demons, or are we tacking on that color to spice up the investigation that's the real meat of play? This could be an academic distinction ("who cares?") or a point of pretty serious clash within a group (if I'm all about reveling in demons and you're hand-waving that to focus on problem-solving). I still don't have a good way to forge agreement on this via design; I tend to resort to pre-game chat. Great when the players are self-aware and adept at communicating this stuff; useless otherwise.
I know that was a semi-tangent, but I think arguments about whether RPGs contain "real" investigation stem largely from this type of murkiness.
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