No investigations?
contracycle:
Well, so what, if we are enjoying it?
Now I'm not saying this can't break down. I fully acknowledge that can happen. But I could just as easily say that readers of an Agatha Christie novel are "guessing what the author wants". It's true enough, but it's also popular enough to be its own genre. In addition I don't think the criterion about players doing it is a negative; it's players who address premise, players who step up, players who explore, not characters.
Callan S.:
Gareth, that's not really fair. You asked 'How is this not "really investigating"?'. It's still possible for you to enjoy something even if it turns out not to really be investigating.
Personally I think stefoid's number example is actual investigation, if at the less complex end of the investigation spectrum. What I think Ron is refering to isn't even that - it really is the GM deciding the pace and whether you have futtered around enough to move on to the next penciled event. In the number guessing game, unless the dudes just cheating, you have to get the number right to move on. What Ron's refering to, if I understand him, is a GM who lets you stew for how long he thinks he needs you to, then you find the gun in the alley. You only find the gun when he wants you to, while with the number guessing game you might just nail it on the first guess, whether he would want you to or not.
contracycle:
Quote from: Callan S. on March 11, 2011, 05:58:42 PM
Gareth, that's not really fair. You asked 'How is this not "really investigating"?'. It's still possible for you to enjoy something even if it turns out not to really be investigating.
Granted. But as above, I said that to head off the argument that the investigation was just a means to project the characters into "action scenes" or whatever, and that bit is these scenes which were in fact the point of play. That the investigation was purely a structure. Can be, I happily acknowlegde, and nothing wrong with it if it is. But tI don't think it automatically has to be.
Quote
Personally I think stefoid's number example is actual investigation, if at the less complex end of the investigation spectrum. What I think Ron is refering to isn't even that - it really is the GM deciding the pace and whether you have futtered around enough to move on to the next penciled event. In the number guessing game, unless the dudes just cheating, you have to get the number right to move on. What Ron's refering to, if I understand him, is a GM who lets you stew for how long he thinks he needs you to, then you find the gun in the alley. You only find the gun when he wants you to, while with the number guessing game you might just nail it on the first guess, whether he would want you to or not.
I acknowledged that the form is prone to flaws. I don't dispute at all that this happens. I DO dispute that this always happens. This rests on the assumption that the investigation is merely a sort of disguised dungeon. But that isn't necessarily the case. It presumes that the players are not frex initiating an investigation into something on their own account. That it always has to do with revealing the "plot", rather than revealing the setting. That the solutions are merely waypoints that the PC's have to hit in order to meet a GM's prefigured outcome.
What if those aren't the case?
Callan S.:
I would measure unless the GM makes up game like the number guesser, or clue sweeper or the rules already have something like those (or a player makes it up on the spot and it's used), it doesn't matter if the players initiated the 'investigation' - it's still that thing Ron mentioned.
If players press on in a fictional direction the GM didn't decide stuff in advance about, it doesn't mean no ones predeciding things and it that it then becomes like a real life investigation. It just means the person who is in control isn't aware they are, nor is anyone else aware they are.
contracycle:
Well it does matter, because (what you deduce from) Ron's argument suggests that it's always GM-driven outcome manipulation. But if it's not prepared material the GM is insisting upon, but something the players chose to explore of their own volition, then I don't see how that argument holds.
I'm not sure what you mean about the number thing. There is a big difference between "I'm thinking of a number", in which I can always change the number, or not think of one at all, and a situation like "I have written a number down on a piece of paper, which I have placed in this sealed envelope". The latter can be checked, and the problem with the former lies in the fact that it can't.
So it not just a guessing game in which the players are being strung along at the GM's whim. There is a solution; the "clues", as such, do have a particular, grounded, meaning. It's not an arbitrary process.
I don't follow your last paragraph. I didn't refer to anything being undecided, I referred to things not being plotted.
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