Here's an assertion that should be fairly agreeable with a second of consideration:
In a trad game, when it comes to how much gravity the game mechanics exert on play, the pull of the character sheet and the things the player imagines based on it is notably stronger than the great majority of of other rules. It's the dwarf star of rules gravity.
@LeviKornelsen It's for this reason that even though I've pinned down some important off-sheet mechanical and procedural ideas, I'm still not sure I quite have enough to go on to make my own game. "What makes players look up from their character sheets to look at the clue cards thus far long enough to note their actual status and try to discuss and advance them?" is a problem I've only just now put into actual words.
@LeviKornelsen ...Heck, thinking about it, there's a second thing this clarifies: it seemed particularly perverse that the so-called "detective" in That One Game wasn't interested in doing detective things because her character sheet was full of detective stuff. That should have stood out as shifting things away from a pure combat focus, but somehow it didn't. Her presumption of D&D as a combat game overrode even the power of the character sheet (and the urban setting of the campaign).
@LeviKornelsen Notably, we were generally maintaining our own sheets in text files, rather than using anything standardized like in a VTT. So I couldn't say how her own sheet was laid out to emphasize or obscure different things.
(Plus, as I've said before, the idea originally had been that detective stuff would be a smaller portion of the campaign than combat, and her being Like This actually inflated its presence...)
Second, the missing half of mystery tabletop RP (though by now I figure full clue cards are sadly inevitable and I just need to figure out some online way to do those):
@Silverlion@LeviKornelsen I figure the so-called "detective" is one extreme of the bell curve, and the late comer who actually was familiar with the mystery genre is the other extreme — that the norm is players who're perfectly willing to indulge the concept of a mystery RPG, but have no idea that means they do anything other than roll dice to find clues and then have the mystery automatically solve itself as a "reward". The game itself needs to teach how to think a mystery through.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen Let me think on this. Generally, I handle mysteries where the clues are semi-determined by what the player asks to look for, and I let them think about them a bit and then as a GM encourage them to work on what it means through RP and experience rewards. However, I see how that would be a problem for your style.
@Silverlion@LeviKornelsen Basically, the rolling-dice-to-find-clues part of things works fine, particularly when combined with the principle of redundant clues and a strong enough GM-side understanding of the mystery's underlying truth to be able to improvise even more clues. It's to the point that I find it profoundly strange that people keep trying to recommend Gumshoe to me, which solves problems that I'm not having and leaves the problems I am having untouched.
@Silverlion@LeviKornelsen The tricky part is getting players to understand that clues are not a simple progress bar towards an ending cutscene. You're supposed to use clues — discuss them with fellow PCs, compare them with each other, run tests on them, shove them in NPCs' faces, that sort of thing. I figure an important part of that is giving clues status levels as mentioned in one of those blog posts of mine, and making clear that you're supposed to advance them.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion
It's easy to list ways to find clues on a character sheet because those are things you can obviously roll dice for, but how the hell do you put "stop and have a discussion with the other PCs once in a while about what the clues might mean" there? Or "it's normal for understanding of a mystery to be gradual, and being wrong early in the story does not make you look stupid or make you automatically lose the game?"
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Furthermore, how do you have a GM prompt players to do things without it turning into or being perceived as railroading? How does that prompt players to actually think instead of following instructions from the resident authority figure — or worse, doing nothing but looking at the GM expectantly to tell them what to do or what their own characters think? I want to avoid having the putting-pieces-together parts boil down to "roll Deduction to win", after all.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen Have you considered a set of mechanics that are basically "Clue A+B+C=X" and then slowly wean them off the X, by asking them to make their own suppositions about it?
@Silverlion@LeviKornelsen I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly. Do the work for them anyway, thus setting up the expectation that I'll keep doing the work for them, and then pull the rug out from under them?
Essentially, I want to:
Set up the expectation that players as their PCs, not the GM, draw conclusions from clues.
Give players a sufficient understanding of how to draw conclusions to be capable of actually doing this.
@Silverlion@LeviKornelsen That's just circling back around to "have you tried turning it off and on again?", though... when I want to give players some actual affordances for the missing half of the mystery gameplay loop, not just trust that it'll all work out instead of going in one ear and out the other yet again.
@Silverlion@LeviKornelsen That's why tracking the status of clues on clue cards is an important feature. I just worry that if there isn't also something on the character sheet pointing at the other half of the gameplay loop, that won't be enough. Hence this discussion having specifically started in response to the mention of the immense pull of character sheets in shaping gameplay expectations.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I'm curious as to why you figure PBtA moves, specifically, would be more applicable than any other kind of dice-rolling here.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I guess I don't have nearly enough knowledge of PBtA to understand how that's different from skills in terms of suggesting actions.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I suppose one of the confusing bits here is that in my experience, the mere suggestion of capacity provided by skills has proven enough for actually finding clues. It's specifically doing things with clues that is somehow a much less obvious category of actions to players, regardless of the presence or absence of relevant skills. That there even need to be "doing things with clues" scenes between the "finding clues" scenes is somehow not obvious.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Worse, a number of those kinds of actions don't even make obvious sense to have be rolls, and/or would constitute an introduction of chokepoints if they were. What would rolling to talk to each other accomplish?
I should also make clear at this point that I have zero interest in "let the players make things up" style of "mystery" game, or I'd invest in one of the games already on the market for that purpose.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion That's the big thing, yes. They're not going to go get more clues if they don't come up with ideas about where more clues might be, after all. As I said in my blog, my experience has been that PCs just fetch clues, report them to each other, and then stare blankly, as though I as the GM were the detective, and the PCs were mere CSIs tasked with bringing the clues to the cusp of the fourth wall.
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I worry that even a corkboard (or the equivalent I've already come up with and discussed, involving clue cards with status levels) wouldn't be enough to prompt doing anything more than that, because neither a corkboard nor a matrix of clue cards sorted by interpretation status is on the character sheet.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion OK, this thread has my attention because I've run into similar issues as Pteryx [and similar dissatisfaction with Gumshoe].
My solution is leaning into emergence.
Decide how big or complex the mystery is. Translate that to phases/steps and clues per step.
Accumulate at least the minimum number of clues through investigation.
Once enough clues are accumulated, the players make a theory and roll an oracle to see how close they are.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Sometimes it will be wrong or you'll be short a piece of evidence to be sure. Even Holmes and Poirot ran across dead ends and red herrings or needed to revise initial theories.
But it's a very direct structure that tells the players to chase clues and build theories. And making oracles rolls for theory accuracy gives uncertainty and surprise, while leaving it player directed.
Include an oracle for dead-ends & cold trails to prevent stalls.
@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion You lost me at step 3. I'm not interested in running mysteries where there is no truth. Even step 2 is just treating clue accumulation as a progress bar, which, as I've already said, is exactly the mindset I'm trying to pry players away from.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I've badly misunderstood you in some ways. Though that comment helped clarify context/meaning that wasn't apparent to me on first read I have to admit still being at loss and not quite wrapping my head around what you're getting at. I can get to the ballpark but there's tensions there for me throwing me off [like player-driven & design focused with a GM-set objective truth].
I may just be having an off night. Apologies for any unintended disruption.
@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Don't worry, you wouldn't be the first person to have no clue what I'm talking about with all this. There's a reason that I wrote a whole blog post about the missing half of tabletop mystery RP, which is the second of the two links in the post with links.
(See also how many times I had to mention players not talking to each other before anyone realized that I was having the problem of players not talking to each other...)
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion My screenreader is working on the first one about the disaster campaign right now. The mystery one I have opened in the next tab when this one finishes! I very much enjoy our conversations and your thoughts, so I'm already investing the effort to better understand it. I'm already getting more context for some of what you're getting at in here. If I have anything useful or interesting thoughts in brain after finishing both posts, I'll chime back in.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion If I only read those, I'd still have offered the oracle approach! It fits forcing players to use clues/make theories and accepting the possibility of incompleteness/wrongness. But combining the posts here and the blog entries, I see why that's exactly the wrong solution for you. Ideas incoming.
Elimination as progression. Count interpreting evidence to rule out likely theories/suspects as a clue/evidence gain itself. Example: Give a bonus to chasing leads.
Sum is more than the whole. Treat clues/evidence like alchemy. Stacking complementary clues is a new clue or lead, or turns clues into solid evidence, or the like.
Award resource points, free ally use, or some equivalent for running into dead ends, red herrings, and bad theories. Reward the deeper exploration that leads to those obstacles.
Evidence timers. The longer clues are sat on, the likelier leads are to grow cold, evidence is to be lost, etc. Bit of stick to complement the carrots and create a sense of urgency to examine and use clues.
Crime/problem timers. Like the prior, but triggering troubles.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I think there's more stuff percolating but that's what my brain has for now. Those are basically placeholders/brainstorm output. They can be varied with any number of equiv examples. Couple carrots encouraging direct clue usage. Carrot for dead ends/false starts. Stick or two to create pressure and urgency to examine clues and build theories to move forward.
@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Warmer, but missing the fundamental problem of "how do I get players to understand to even try these things, and how to do so?" Carrots and (especially) sticks for actions/inaction the players don't understand would just seem arbitrary.
Basically, I get the sense that a lot of people interpret mystery plots without any concept of them involving reasoning; in a cooperative game like your typical TTRPG, that reasoning should be done as a group.
@pteryx@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion can you elaborate a little on the gap between the incentive triggers and what you'd like to arrive at? or alternatively, what the gap between player understanding and triggers like that would be in your experience?
@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion That I worry the players would fundamentally not understand what behavior would be incentivized and/or disincentivized. I worry that sticks, especially, would turn into, "Why are you punishing me?! I'm doing everything right!"
Of course, I'd also very much prefer an approach less authoritarian than a carrot-and-stick one, if it's at all possible without throwing out the entire concept of truth.
@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion (As an aside, that it's this hard for me to get people on the same page as me, even over the course of a long thread and with blog posts I've written to help, is disheartening, both in terms of my ability to design a game and my ability to GM. If I'm supposedly such a good writer, then why can't I communicate anything?!)
@pteryx@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Part may just be that "here are some clues, now go do something with them" might just not be in the players' specific skill set. Part may be that the players aren't genre savvy in this genre and may need slightly heavier handed clues (remembering that we as GM know the truth so our clues can seem extremely obvious to us).
Maybe introduce some sort of NPC prompting to have a discussion of the clues and ask about thoughts (at least to start)
@squishymage42@thoughtpunks@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion Concerning genre blindness and making use of clues once they have them not being in the players' skillset, I think both of those are very likely (alongside fear of looking stupid), hence why I think the game needs to make the methods of that skillset very, very obvious without actively forcing the players through it.
@LeviKornelsen@squishymage42@thoughtpunks@Silverlion It would be limiting, suggesting that this is ONLY a game about being a cop and not many other kinds of investigator... and for obvious reasons, being a cop specifically could make people very uncomfortable.
@LeviKornelsen@squishymage42@thoughtpunks@Silverlion It's enough on the right track to be worth thinking about, though I remain skeptical that people who react to even so much as scheduling a game or talking through out-of-game problems as "unimportant" and "boring" things that the GM should do themselves (somehow) would actually treat turning in a written status report as anything but busywork getting in the way of the game...
@LeviKornelsen@squishymage42@thoughtpunks@Silverlion Another issue that comes to mind with "writing a report" specifically is that writing a report doesn't in and of itself imply that the entire group participates. Writing is traditionally a solitary affair, and I want to massage people into doing this as a group. (Would probably make an ideal central pillar for a solo game, though!)
@LeviKornelsen@Silverlion I guess I'm not sure what the distinction is, when the particular way I want to implement clue cards implies interaction already.
Since I haven't said it in the thread itself: I see clues as having four statuses in a line:
Unshared (at least one but fewer than all PCs know the clue exists; the purpose of this status is to prevent players from hoarding information to make their own character "seem smart", and thus ensure that reasoning is a group activity)
@LeviKornelsen I think @GregStolze once said that for RPGs the character sheet is like the board in a board game. There may be many bits, but its the thing everyone looks at and looks at most often.
@LeviKornelsen Actually, I will raise one point of distinction: I'm not sure it's just a trad game thing.
I mean, yes, some games don't have character sheets, but many of those game still have something that you put in front of the player which focuses the experience, and the design of that is similarly impactful.
@LeviKornelsen@rdonoghue This might only be tangentially relevant to your conversation, but nevertheless. Fate Condensed came out, gosh, almost 3 years ago now? And I used it to build pre-gen characters for a Bad Batch-inspired one-shot. I ran the one-shot, and it was pretty obvious that grokking the game on the fly was a challenge. So I set out to create a play aid/play mat to sit alongside the condensed sheet to try and help the new player make decisions about what to do with their character.
@LeviKornelsen I have a lot of framings for the importance of the character sheet, and one fun one is as the player’s primary interface to the system. Through that lens, there’s a lot of neat stuff to learn from UX.
@LeviKornelsen absolutely. The interesting question to me is how deliberate it is or is not, especially historically. For every example of a sheet designed to convey intent, I can think of examples designed with other priorities (usually “look cool”, “fit it all on one page”, or “fuck, right, I need a character sheet.”) and how that then impacts play.
@LeviKornelsen I half agree. The character sheet is about as much if the rules as the player can see at any one time, so I’d expect it to have a large influence on players who don’t keep a bunch of additional mechanics in mind…but I think the design of official characters sheets obscures rather than reveal rules that are actually used.
Look at all the space set aside for attributes- how often does 5E actually care about attribute values? Meanwhile the list of actions is crammed in the bottom right with Attack and Cast Spell given just as much space as Shove, Dodge, and Dash. Players will think about the former 2 much more than the latter 3
@LeviKornelsen do you think that perception survives play? I would expect it to have an effect on first impressions, only to have players realize in just a few levels that 5E only cares about. I’m just guessing, though - I don’t know a significant number of 5E players
@LeviKornelsen It depends on how far back "trad" goes. In a 21st century "trad" game, the character sheet is a list of buttons you can push to make things happen. In a 20th century trad game, the sheet is a bunch of notes that help you remember who your character is and a bunch of loose parts that can be cobbled together to make things happen.
"I cast 'Solve Problem'. Does that work?"
Vs
"I have a Grease spell, a wagon wheel, and 50' of rope. First, I will construct a rudimentary lathe..."
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