No investigations? II (split)
stefoid:
Im dredging this up again, because Im about to GM a game that will have some mystery in it, which I guess all games do to a certain extent, but some more than others. Mystery assumes there will be some sort of investigation, so its relevant, but in my game, the investigation wont be the focus of play.
Im just thinking of how to handle it.
Basically I dont want the players to have to guess whats going on, so I want the 'investigation' to be colour that leads to dramatic situations. I dont want it to BE a puzzle that needs to be solved before the next dramatic situation can occur.
The best dramatic situations involve NPCs, either in conflict with the PCs or perhaps having to be persuaded/bargained with to help. Troublesome PC decisions are also good.
I dont want the stakes of such conflicts to be 'do you find a clue or even do you understand what the clue means' that is taken as granted. What I want the conflicts to be about are 'what is the cost of finding the clue and its meaning?'
Does this sound reasonable? Any advice?
Ron Edwards:
Hey,
I think it's a perfectly reasonable way to play. In my experience, the best advice is to be up-front about this particular feature. The players shouldn't be under the mistaken impression that they have to dope out everything (or anything) or be stalled.
Now, exactly how you communicate this is up to you and this particular group of people. Some people like it stated right out, and others will be happier to see it expressed through play in some way, but my call is that however you do it, make it unambiguous.
Best, Ron
stefoid:
Hi Ron, I hope that is made explicit by the player-agreed premise of the game about what the aims of the players are and the ways they achieve them. If the premise is about solving mysteries using investigative skills, then I suppose the approach would be different than I have described above. But I dont think my game is well-suited to that sort of premise.
In this case its 'win the war against the axis using the secrets of the supernatural' which isnt an investigative focus, but may involve 'mystery' as the players try to work out what the nazis are up to and the methods they are using, in order that they can counter them.
Erg. On further thought, what I wrote previously sounds easy on paper, but maybe not so easy in practice.
In my game you have story phase and challenge phase. Challenge phase is where you roll dice that resolve player-set goals, and story phase is more of a narrated part, although players still express their characters concerns and they can be resolved by the GM. Its just that this happens without dice rolling. In other words, challenge phase is supposed to be high drama and story phase not so much.
So if a player sets a short term goal of 'find a clue to the murder' or 'determine the significance of the glyph ' in a challenge phase, which I think are reasonable goals for characters to have, then by the rules of my game, that becomes the focus of the drama of the challenge phase for that character, and whether or not they achieve that goal is very much in doubt.
I guess I need to rephrase my previous post to say that finding clues and uncovering significance CAN be in doubt, but that the failure to do so cant be allowed to halt progress for any significant period.
But how to achieve that?
stefoid:
OK, let me rephrase that babble in a general way.
How can the results of an investigation be dramatic? As in, if what is at stake is the success of an investigative activity = success means you succeed in the investigative activity and fail means you dont.
When you phrase it that way, as long as dramatic stakes are tied to the result, then you are right. Its only when one of the options is boring you have a problem. i.e. fail means nothing happens at all. fail means 'sorry, try again' as in 'youll have to wait until I drop another clue on you and then investigate the new clue before anything happens'
So although the goal of the character might be stated as "Find a clue", there has to be some dramatic consequences to not finding the clue, such that the goal could just as easily be stated as 'Prevent the dramatic negative consequences from occurring'
Ron Edwards:
See, there is no "investigation" in the generic sense. I don't know what you mean by saying it, you don't know what I read when I see it, and now we're in no-communication land.
This is clearly an Actual Play topic begging to be split. Please think of any concrete play-situation in your experience which brings up any aspect of this question, positively, negatively, even ambiguously. Write it out, say what happened. Then I can get to your questions.
Best, Ron
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