Columboism
My first post here. Well, no sense in starting small.
Columboism: A Story-based Approach To Investigative Games
Alongside the 'kill them and take their stuff' adventure and the 'prophetic quest' set-up, the 'investigate this!' game is one of the most common paradigms in RPGs. Whether it's a who-killed-the-baron medieval murder mystery or a strange-goings -on -at -the-seaside Call of Cthulhu game, the investigative scenario has become a well-loved staple. One immediate question that springs to mind: why is this the case? I feel that the main reason for this is not simply ubiquity of detective shows and novels, but the ubiquity of the investigative situation in published RPGs and games supplements. Leading on from this is the lack of support that most games offer the GM when it comes to creating situation. So, the GM falls back onto a method that has familiarity, ubiquity and support across the board of gaming products.
How well-loved is this staple of gaming? Really? let's face it, we've all had those interminable sessions where you think "If the GM says 'The clue is there if you just think about it!' I'm going to choke him with his own dice bag!" Despite their ubiquity, investigative games can be nothing but a slog where players try to piece together increasingly arcane clues, musings from unhelpful NPCs and bits of evidence so slender they would get admiring glances at a convention of narcissistic supermodels.(
1) Investigative games can be (and often are) hellish, interspersed with very occasional glimmers of hope and joy. more often than not, there is an endless round of failed 'spot hidden' rolls before the GM gets frustrated and has the NPC detective point out the far from obvious. Cue annoyance all round and a less than satisfactory gaming experience for everyone.
GMs often forget one small, but vitally important piece of information: The players are not detectives. Neither are they criminologists, doctors, pathologists, FBI agents or criminal psychologists. Well, some players might be, but we’re not gamin' with Gil Grissom. As GMs, we delight in coming up with a fiendish set of clues that will test the skill of even the great Sherlock Holmes. But Holmes was fictional and didn’t have to do the work.. But the players aren't. Sitting in the GM seat, it's easy to get frustrated and think that everyone else just isn't trying hard enough or just isn't as invested in the game as you. However, looking at the player side, it can be very hard to see what it is that the GM is getting at. It can be likened to the GM trying to emulate CSI, but in the game actually turns out like a Poirot mystery, i.e.: nobody has a clue what is going on until the very end, when Poirot reveals a tiny bit of evidence that nobody other than him could possibly have seen. The GM here is Poirot and everyone else is poor old Captain Hastings, bumbling around in the dark..
A lot of games put you in an equally clueless position to Hastings. You have to work it out and only at the end is comes the big reveal in the drawing room of Bigglesthorpe Manor. Using the Poirot example, this will often involve pieces of evidence that nobody but the detective could possibly have been aware of. In gaming terms, it's not even the players who are Poirot in this situation, but the GM who has the role of the great Belgian detective. Only they have the ability to reveal that previously unseen, impossible to find clue. But, Columbo doesn't do this.(2)
Right from the start of a Columbo episode, you know who committed the murder, how they did it, where they did it and how they plan to get away with it. We, the viewers, know far more than Columbo. The joy of the show comes not from finding out who did it and how, but in the telling of the story of how Columbo discovers the secrets of the crime (and how he fools the killer into revealing himself).(3) This is not Bigglesthorpe Manor. Here, we, the viewer (or, in a game sense 'the players') know everything that has happened prior to Columbo (or, 'the player characters') coming on to the scene.
The question is: why do we not use this structure more often in investigative games and how could such a structure benefit our games?
The basis of taking a Columboist approach to investigative games presupposes that everyone in the group is primarily interested in creating a cool story involving their characters rather than the problem solving aspects of an investigative game. That's not to say that using this approach doesn't involve problem solving, but I’ll explain that later.
At the outset of the game, the GM details what has gone on: who the murderer is, how they did it and so forth. It's up to the players and GM to create the story of how the characters catch the criminal. So, the key thing for the GM to do is set up a situation that is primed with interesting stuff about the characters involved in the crime (be they PCs or NPCs).These drives stories. The characters should also have drives which not only relate to the need to investigate but also to tell their own personal stories. We are fascinated by Columbo, not just because of his crime solving, but because of his personality and little seen personal life. Who is Mrs Columbo? What is Columbos past?
When running my own game of Cold City(4), I've found (through hard experience) that this approach works well. So well, in fact, that I made it a fundamental feature of the expanded advice in the Cold City Companion. This approach boils down to the group sitting down at the outset of the game and thrashing out what they want to see and happen in-game. The questions, are a lot like this:
What are we all doing?
What is the tone of the game going to be like?
Who are our antagonists and what are they doing?
Who else might be involved in the goings-on?
What specific scenes would we like to see in the game?
This takes a very Columboist approach: at the very start of the game, people (including the GM) have the chance to say "I think the bad guys are [THESE GUYS] and they will be doing [THIS]" At the outset, we all know what is happening - what 'crime' is taking place is and who is committing it. Obviously, the GM has the power to fill in little details, characterise the NPCs and so forth, but the basic building blocks of the story are right there in front of everyone before the first scene takes place.
Investigative games do not have to be about puzzling out clues and spending frustrating hours scratching your head. They can be about puzzling out an interesting story, putting together the pieces of the PCs and NPCs and how they relate. What's more, they focus on the characters far more than the players. Like it or not, traditional investigative games have a very strong focus on the abilities of the players to figure things out, rather than the abilities and stories of the characters being the driving forces. As an example, having met numerous NPCs, knowing that there is some form of conspiracy and connection, it is often beholden upon the players to sit, looking at a list of names and notes, attempting to figure out. through what they have discovered in play, they must attempt to infer the connections that exist in the mind f the GM. Referring back to some of my initial comments, this will often be complex, arcane and something that only the GM really understands or appreciates. In a Columboist game, we know the connections between the NPCs there and then and concentrate on how the characters relate to them. This method of laying everything out up front is also much more collaborative and communal than the fundamentally adversarial set-up of the usual investigative game.
One game that takes an interesting approach to what could be a formulaic investigative format is 'Dog In The Vineyard' (DitV) by D Vincent Baker. For those who might not be familiar, DitV sets the players in the role of religious watchdogs who root out trouble in towns of a mythic West. The advice on providing information to the players is particularly interesting. The designer makes it plain that the GM should let the players know what the trouble is in the town as soon as they want to know, if not right at the very start of the game. The game is not, fundamentally, about investigating and finding out who is doing what. It's about making moral decisions and taking actions to resolve the situation. It could easily slip into the traditional investigative format in which it sucks, but through this advice, it is made plain that this should not be the case.
DitV does feature 'detectives' of a sort, but the investigation is not the core of on the story. The core is how the problem is handled and the stories of those who are involved. Having to spend hours wandering about town, talking to people to try and piece things together would take away from the ethical quandaries of the game.
And that's where the fundamental questions lie:
Do you want to play/run a game where there is that adversarial element, where the GM authors the vast majority of the story and where the main thrust of the game involves the players figuring out stuff and engaging in problem solving?
Do you want to play/run a game where everyone is working together to create a story about how the crime was solved and how the characters reacted to, and drove, the situation?
I'm not saying one is intrinsically better than the other, but it should be very obvious which one I favour these days. Both forms have their own rewards and issues and focus on different wants and needs coming out of the gaming group. If probing at mysteries has been frustrating, or even if you fancy a change, why not put on a dirty mac, light a cigar see how Columbo would do it.
Some Useful Links
The Ultimate Columbo Website, a useful resource for all things Columbo.
Adictive Books, a huge listing of crime fiction.
This thread on the Forge contains some very interesting stuff about investigative games, particularly Chris Lehrichs first post.
A current debate on the Collective Endeavour site about investigative games.
Cheers
Malc
(1)Yes, I realise the redundancy of that phrase. So?
(2)Although, Columbo by no means invented this format. Credit for the creation of the 'inverted detective story' is generally given to early 20th century English crime novelist, R Austin Freeman.
(3)Always with "Just one more thing..." and a raising of a finger.
(4)I never said I wouldn't engage in a blatant bit of shilling now, did I?
I'd also like to extend my thanks to Joe Murphy for his comments on this piece.
Columboism: A Story-based Approach To Investigative Games
Alongside the 'kill them and take their stuff' adventure and the 'prophetic quest' set-up, the 'investigate this!' game is one of the most common paradigms in RPGs. Whether it's a who-killed-the-baron medieval murder mystery or a strange-goings -on -at -the-seaside Call of Cthulhu game, the investigative scenario has become a well-loved staple. One immediate question that springs to mind: why is this the case? I feel that the main reason for this is not simply ubiquity of detective shows and novels, but the ubiquity of the investigative situation in published RPGs and games supplements. Leading on from this is the lack of support that most games offer the GM when it comes to creating situation. So, the GM falls back onto a method that has familiarity, ubiquity and support across the board of gaming products.
How well-loved is this staple of gaming? Really? let's face it, we've all had those interminable sessions where you think "If the GM says 'The clue is there if you just think about it!' I'm going to choke him with his own dice bag!" Despite their ubiquity, investigative games can be nothing but a slog where players try to piece together increasingly arcane clues, musings from unhelpful NPCs and bits of evidence so slender they would get admiring glances at a convention of narcissistic supermodels.(
1) Investigative games can be (and often are) hellish, interspersed with very occasional glimmers of hope and joy. more often than not, there is an endless round of failed 'spot hidden' rolls before the GM gets frustrated and has the NPC detective point out the far from obvious. Cue annoyance all round and a less than satisfactory gaming experience for everyone.
GMs often forget one small, but vitally important piece of information: The players are not detectives. Neither are they criminologists, doctors, pathologists, FBI agents or criminal psychologists. Well, some players might be, but we’re not gamin' with Gil Grissom. As GMs, we delight in coming up with a fiendish set of clues that will test the skill of even the great Sherlock Holmes. But Holmes was fictional and didn’t have to do the work.. But the players aren't. Sitting in the GM seat, it's easy to get frustrated and think that everyone else just isn't trying hard enough or just isn't as invested in the game as you. However, looking at the player side, it can be very hard to see what it is that the GM is getting at. It can be likened to the GM trying to emulate CSI, but in the game actually turns out like a Poirot mystery, i.e.: nobody has a clue what is going on until the very end, when Poirot reveals a tiny bit of evidence that nobody other than him could possibly have seen. The GM here is Poirot and everyone else is poor old Captain Hastings, bumbling around in the dark..
A lot of games put you in an equally clueless position to Hastings. You have to work it out and only at the end is comes the big reveal in the drawing room of Bigglesthorpe Manor. Using the Poirot example, this will often involve pieces of evidence that nobody but the detective could possibly have been aware of. In gaming terms, it's not even the players who are Poirot in this situation, but the GM who has the role of the great Belgian detective. Only they have the ability to reveal that previously unseen, impossible to find clue. But, Columbo doesn't do this.(2)
Right from the start of a Columbo episode, you know who committed the murder, how they did it, where they did it and how they plan to get away with it. We, the viewers, know far more than Columbo. The joy of the show comes not from finding out who did it and how, but in the telling of the story of how Columbo discovers the secrets of the crime (and how he fools the killer into revealing himself).(3) This is not Bigglesthorpe Manor. Here, we, the viewer (or, in a game sense 'the players') know everything that has happened prior to Columbo (or, 'the player characters') coming on to the scene.
The question is: why do we not use this structure more often in investigative games and how could such a structure benefit our games?
The basis of taking a Columboist approach to investigative games presupposes that everyone in the group is primarily interested in creating a cool story involving their characters rather than the problem solving aspects of an investigative game. That's not to say that using this approach doesn't involve problem solving, but I’ll explain that later.
At the outset of the game, the GM details what has gone on: who the murderer is, how they did it and so forth. It's up to the players and GM to create the story of how the characters catch the criminal. So, the key thing for the GM to do is set up a situation that is primed with interesting stuff about the characters involved in the crime (be they PCs or NPCs).These drives stories. The characters should also have drives which not only relate to the need to investigate but also to tell their own personal stories. We are fascinated by Columbo, not just because of his crime solving, but because of his personality and little seen personal life. Who is Mrs Columbo? What is Columbos past?
When running my own game of Cold City(4), I've found (through hard experience) that this approach works well. So well, in fact, that I made it a fundamental feature of the expanded advice in the Cold City Companion. This approach boils down to the group sitting down at the outset of the game and thrashing out what they want to see and happen in-game. The questions, are a lot like this:
What are we all doing?
What is the tone of the game going to be like?
Who are our antagonists and what are they doing?
Who else might be involved in the goings-on?
What specific scenes would we like to see in the game?
This takes a very Columboist approach: at the very start of the game, people (including the GM) have the chance to say "I think the bad guys are [THESE GUYS] and they will be doing [THIS]" At the outset, we all know what is happening - what 'crime' is taking place is and who is committing it. Obviously, the GM has the power to fill in little details, characterise the NPCs and so forth, but the basic building blocks of the story are right there in front of everyone before the first scene takes place.
Investigative games do not have to be about puzzling out clues and spending frustrating hours scratching your head. They can be about puzzling out an interesting story, putting together the pieces of the PCs and NPCs and how they relate. What's more, they focus on the characters far more than the players. Like it or not, traditional investigative games have a very strong focus on the abilities of the players to figure things out, rather than the abilities and stories of the characters being the driving forces. As an example, having met numerous NPCs, knowing that there is some form of conspiracy and connection, it is often beholden upon the players to sit, looking at a list of names and notes, attempting to figure out. through what they have discovered in play, they must attempt to infer the connections that exist in the mind f the GM. Referring back to some of my initial comments, this will often be complex, arcane and something that only the GM really understands or appreciates. In a Columboist game, we know the connections between the NPCs there and then and concentrate on how the characters relate to them. This method of laying everything out up front is also much more collaborative and communal than the fundamentally adversarial set-up of the usual investigative game.
One game that takes an interesting approach to what could be a formulaic investigative format is 'Dog In The Vineyard' (DitV) by D Vincent Baker. For those who might not be familiar, DitV sets the players in the role of religious watchdogs who root out trouble in towns of a mythic West. The advice on providing information to the players is particularly interesting. The designer makes it plain that the GM should let the players know what the trouble is in the town as soon as they want to know, if not right at the very start of the game. The game is not, fundamentally, about investigating and finding out who is doing what. It's about making moral decisions and taking actions to resolve the situation. It could easily slip into the traditional investigative format in which it sucks, but through this advice, it is made plain that this should not be the case.
DitV does feature 'detectives' of a sort, but the investigation is not the core of on the story. The core is how the problem is handled and the stories of those who are involved. Having to spend hours wandering about town, talking to people to try and piece things together would take away from the ethical quandaries of the game.
And that's where the fundamental questions lie:
Do you want to play/run a game where there is that adversarial element, where the GM authors the vast majority of the story and where the main thrust of the game involves the players figuring out stuff and engaging in problem solving?
Do you want to play/run a game where everyone is working together to create a story about how the crime was solved and how the characters reacted to, and drove, the situation?
I'm not saying one is intrinsically better than the other, but it should be very obvious which one I favour these days. Both forms have their own rewards and issues and focus on different wants and needs coming out of the gaming group. If probing at mysteries has been frustrating, or even if you fancy a change, why not put on a dirty mac, light a cigar see how Columbo would do it.
Some Useful Links
The Ultimate Columbo Website, a useful resource for all things Columbo.
Adictive Books, a huge listing of crime fiction.
This thread on the Forge contains some very interesting stuff about investigative games, particularly Chris Lehrichs first post.
A current debate on the Collective Endeavour site about investigative games.
Cheers
Malc
(1)Yes, I realise the redundancy of that phrase. So?
(2)Although, Columbo by no means invented this format. Credit for the creation of the 'inverted detective story' is generally given to early 20th century English crime novelist, R Austin Freeman.
(3)Always with "Just one more thing..." and a raising of a finger.
(4)I never said I wouldn't engage in a blatant bit of shilling now, did I?
I'd also like to extend my thanks to Joe Murphy for his comments on this piece.