Mystery game, part 1

[inkylj]

Ok, so as mentioned on the mud, I ran a one-session mystery RPG, based on the principles discussed in this Forge thread.

Comments

[inkylj]

[..Continued..]

So I'm not sure exactly why we ran into problems with your deductions. I think a couple things were going on:

- Sometimes your theories were just wrong, like the "was he shot from far away? look for powder burns" one. I guess this is to be expected, and correct behavior is what happens, which is we reject the theory and move on.

- Sometimes I think I should have been a little more flexible about the Case. Like, I figured he put the gun in the corpse's hand, made it shoot itself, then let the corpse slump forward onto the desk. So technically speaking, no blood on the hand, yes blood on the desk. In practice, I probably should have just fiddled that detail -- it wasn't really important, and it would have been more fun for you to have the theory be right.

- Sometimes, hmm, it felt like your theory was right, but that you couldn't "realistically" determine things as accurately as you wanted. Like, with the blood/bugs, it felt like getting a couple hour range was about as good as you could get. I'm not sure what the correct GM behavior is here -- whether I should have again compromised "realism" for the sake of fun, or stuck to my guns ("realism" is quoted here since I don't really know the answer, right, but what I said seemed ballpark correct. Also, importantly, I actually mean "realism or narrative structure" or something -- again, this may be me clamping down too hard, but it feels like the time of death is important enough that pinning it down accurately needs to have a particularly good method, or something).

Rereading the forge thread, it's possible it would have helped if I said "hey, no theorizing til we see some more facts". Like, another reason I think I had problems is I was trying to divide my attention between thinking about your stuff and answering other people's searches. If we'd done like the forge thread says and had a fact-finding time and a theorizing time, maybe I would have handled it better.

[lpsmith]

Don't forget that another problem with my theories was that I thought he had fallen from a standing position (where it would be nigh impossible to prop him up and have the gun fired) while you were envisioning him in a chair. That part was a simply failure of communication, though its effects were unfortunate here.

As far as 'Case' flexibility, I think there can be *some* of that, but you don't want to go overboard. There should be a list of basic truths that don't change (like your timeline, say) and then some flexibility beyond that. The handkerchief evidence was a good example--IIRC, it sprung into existence when Duchess searched the fireplace. As far as my own theory, it's kinda 50-50; hard to say, since the standing/sitting issue obscured it.

And that's awesome about her private explorations into that. And, yeah, I *think* for something like this it's probably better if it ends up as public knowledge. But there's something to be said for it being private, too, if only that it cuts down on the commentary. Maybe have the 'spotlight' on one investigation at a time, while others theorize about their own parts? Hmm, that could work. Someone comes up with a theory, then they go test it on one channel while everyone else theorizes about the rest of the case on a different channel, but can watch if they like?