Railroading Encounters

[RandomCasualty]

1111832983[/unixtime]]
Preventing them from doing so because they didn't try to solve it in the place or way you anticipated is not their failure. Its yours. And it makes their decision meaningless. Aparently therefore blowing.

If they come up with another logical way that would work, then sure you can let them use it. But if they want to search the docks for clues and you've already predetermined that there aren't any clues at the docks, then you shouldn't place clues there.

If they do attempt to solve it in the right way or place, or with some sane flexibility on the DMs part, and yet they still fail. Then the mystery offered to them was beyond their ability to solve, rendering their decision to solve it meaningless. (Again this is a failure of DM, not a failure on the part of the players) And apparently therefore blows.

Just because they can't solve it easily doesn't mean it's beyond their ability to solve. The only time it is beyond their ability to solve is if it requires a DC 35 search check and nobody can make that for instance, or something else similar. And if the DM places something like that in the quest, then he isn't being very nice at all.

While also saying that a good DM should ensure that if the PCs fail to find the kill the assassin fight there should be a contingency where it should go to them instead. And that that is not railroading and is the preferable choice to railroading.

It looks like they are both the same thing to me.

No, it's a natural consequence of failure. If you don't for instance find the assassin who tried to kill the king, maybe he tries again. Maybe his employer hires someone else and this time he succeeds and the king is dead. Whatever evil plan the villain had in mind actually works, or at least progresses to the next stage. And now the PCs are going to be left with a choice further down the road against a more powerful villain.

And also means that in an actual D&D game, as opposed to Clue, where the main focus of game play is the killing the bady bit, that they just totally wasted two or three hours of game time. There is no contingency where you get three hours of your life back.

Well if you're playing with PCs who have that hack and slash attitude then you probably don't run mystery quests. Some players actually like solving puzzles and roleplaying encounters with people as opposed to just cutting up orcs and bugbears.

Just because you hate mystery quests in general is no reason for the DM to railroad the PCs to its completion. WOuld you also want the DM to railroad the PCs in combat, constantly fudging rolls so they succeed all the time? Regardless of how crappy their tactics are?

[PhoneLobster]

If they come up with another logical way that would work, then sure you can let them use it. But if they want to search the docks for clues and you've already predetermined that there aren't any clues at the docks, then you shouldn't place clues there.

And if they logically determine that there SHOULD be clues at the docks? What then?

The only time it is beyond their ability to solve is if it requires a DC 35 search check and nobody can make that for instance, or something else similar. And if the DM places something like that in the quest, then he isn't being very nice at all.

The D&D rules for social and plot based encounters are somewhat underdeveloped. Leaving much of the "ability" to solve them exclusively down to player rather than character ability.

If they can't read your mind to determine that there in fact will never be clues at the docks no matter how hard they try then it was beyond the players abilities (character ability being irrelevant).

But it amounts to the same result.

Well if you're playing with PCs who have that hack and slash attitude then you probably don't run mystery quests. Some players actually like solving puzzles and roleplaying encounters with people as opposed to just cutting up orcs and bugbears.

Remember this is D&D, not a variety of other games built around mystery. Its social and investigative mechanics are underdeveloped, full of horrid divination loopholes and generally suck.

So while "mystery" adventures can happen in D&D, well, in the end its just the fluff that leads you to the next fight. Because D&D, by its nature, not by my preferrence, is about the fights more than the bit between the fights.

What you seem to be saying is they don't actually get to start the actual game as such until they answer the included RIDDLES in between the bits the game is designed to actually do/be. And if you aren't satisfied by the player (not the characters) ability to answer the riddle, you punish them by cancelling the next fight and making them start a new riddle.

[RandomCasualty]

1111889996[/unixtime]]
And if they logically determine that there SHOULD be clues at the docks? What then?

Then likely their thinking is wrong.

When you assume where clues should be, you're making assumptions about how the mystery took place. If you assume "the killer came by ship, there should be a log of it at the harbormaster", and you turn up nothing. You have to either conclude that the harbormaster might be paid off, or perhaps your original assumption is wrong and the killer teleported in or whatever.

Part of any investigation is coming up with a few dead ends.

The D&D rules for social and plot based encounters are somewhat underdeveloped. Leaving much of the "ability" to solve them exclusively down to player rather than character ability.

If they can't read your mind to determine that there in fact will never be clues at the docks no matter how hard they try then it was beyond the players abilities (character ability being irrelevant).

Actually finding no clues at the docks is simply a regard of them searching and turning up nothing. And that's ok. Turning up nothing is something people live with. If you've ever watched an episode of Law and Order you'd see that clues aren't always in the first place you look and sometimes your original suspect isn't necessarily the guy who did it.

As for solving the mystery being beyond the player's abilities, that's something the DM can't possibly know. Assuming you're gaming with rational thinking people, there's a possibility they can solve a mystery, and they might also be off that day.

It is not the fault of the DM if the PCs happen to have a bad day, so long as there are indeed clues to find somewhere.

So while "mystery" adventures can happen in D&D, well, in the end its just the fluff that leads you to the next fight. Because D&D, by its nature, not by my preferrence, is about the fights more than the bit between the fights.

Just because you believe the game should revolve purely around combat does not mean it does. Some DMs downplay combat, it's all about gaming style, and when it comes to style there is no right or wrong.

What you seem to be saying is they don't actually get to start the actual game as such until they answer the included RIDDLES in between the bits the game is designed to actually do/be. And if you aren't satisfied by the player (not the characters) ability to answer the riddle, you punish them by cancelling the next fight and making them start a new riddle.

Spoken like a true hack and slasher.

So far your entire argument seems to be "I hate mysteries, lets just not have them at all and get to the combat."

Sometimes you know, it can be a reward to avoid a fight. You can actually solve a mystery and not have to fight someone.

But clearly I don't know why you're arguing about mystery plots, because you hate them in the first place. You want a game that's just about kicking down doors and killing shit, and that's ok. But just because you hate mysteries doesn't mean everyone has to buy into your idea that the center of the universe is combat, and mysteries are some torture that the DM decides to inflict on his players.

A great many players (myself included) like mystery plots. I like to do some thinking when I play, and I certainly don't want a mystery that solves itself, because I lose my sense of fulfillment when I solve it. I don't want little hints thrown at me all the time when I'm stuck. I want to solve the mystery with my own ability, and if I can't, then so be it. I deserved to fail. It's a heck of a lot more of an acceptable failure than a TPK just because I rolled a natural 1 on my fort save.

If the PCs don't want to think and just want to start hacking shit up, then that's a matter of the wrong type of DMing style for hack and slash PCs. In that case you shouldn't be running mysteries at all. But if you do like mysteries, you shouldn't have them solve themselves.

[Essence]

My fundamental assumption about the game of D&D is that the players want to have fun.

My fundamental assumption about failure is that, unless the DM and the player have discussed it beforehand and agreed that it would make an excellent story, it is not fun. Extrapolated to DM-controlled events (which cannot be resolved with die rolls within the RAW), that means that the DM can't give a player's plans the big vinyl dick without the player having a shitty evening.

My fundamental assumption about mystery plots is that two elements of the mystery are fun: the suspense, and the resolution.
Suspense, in my experience, ends after about the second false lead or third plot twist. The players simply decide that the DM is fucking with them, and they either get pissed off or they give up and basically tell the DM to let them know when he's done waving his dick.

The resolution...cannot possibly be fun if it never happens.


Now, nothing about this logic says that the players are going to find a clue no matter what they do. If the players indicate that they don't give a rats ass about the mystery, they don't get any clues. (For example, just last night, one of my PCs had a stanger appear hogtied on her doorstep with an obviously misdirected threatening note next to him on the ground. She untied him, gave him the letter without reading it twice, and asked him where he lived. When he responded, she Plane Shifted him to his home plane and went about her day without thinking about it a second time. You know what? No further clues came up about what the hell happened or why he was there.)

Also, if they're incredibly stupid about trying to find clues, probably none will come up. (A player in one of my parties tried to uncover a lead about a murder by burning the house down. Not only did he not discover the hidden underground catacombs he had deduced the existence of, but he destroyed all of the other evidence in the process.)

But if the PCs want to solve a mystery, and they apply themselves in an intelligent manner, I will lead them through a few hoops, navigate a few false leads and plot twists, and then reveal the truth. Universally. Because not having fun is not part of my game plan.

[User3]

DM: Think of a number between one and ten.
PC: Five.
DM: No.
PC: Seven?
DM: Nope.
PC: Six.
DM: Uh-uh.
PC: Is that "Uh-huh" or "Uh-uh"?
DM: No. Guess again.
PC: Fine. Four.
DM: No.
PC: Three.
DM: Nope.
PC: Two?
DM: You're really bad at this. Keep trying.
PC: OK fine. It's Eight.
DM: No. It isn't eight.
PC: It's got to be eight, there aren't any more numbers left.
DM: No, it's not eight. Keep guessing, you're close.
PC: Look, there are no more numbers left, I'm not playing anymore.
DM: Fine, but if you don't guess it, you won't win the challenge.
PC: Honestly, I don't care anymore, because I've guessed all the numbers. What was it?
DM: It was ten. I thought that was pretty easy, because the answer was actually in the question.
PC: Ten is by defintion not between ten and anything, on account of actually being ten.

---

You can't expect the players to read your mind, because for one thing it's entirely possible that the super-cool-obvious-and-singular answer you have in mind is in fact actually wrong in a subtle fashion that you didn't think of and you can jolly well wait until the sun becomes cold and dark and noone is going to "guess" it.

You have to adapt the storyline to what the PCs are actually doing. This means in some cases that it will become imperative that you actually change who the villains are if the players come up with a hypothesis for what's going on that is more awesome and believable than your original idea.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Then likely their thinking is wrong.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Specific examples on this one is a mugs game, but regardless...

The Players might follow a line of logic OTHER than the assassins personal origin to determine that the next clue is at the docks. So you predertmined there are no clues at the docks because the assissin came from somewhere else, but that ain't the clue they are looking for, they are trying to intercept Larry the snitch before he flees the country, or trying to trace the smuggler importing the rare poison used in the attempt or what have you.

What then?

If you've ever watched an episode of Law and Order you'd see that clues aren't always in the first place you look and sometimes your original suspect isn't necessarily the guy who did it.

As a guy who lives in a country where in excess of half our free to air television seems to consist solely of law and order, csi and all the damnable spin offs I resent all things to do with those low quality repetative hack writen shows on principle.

But, that paragraph perfectly describes a situation where the characters eventual (inevitably) find a path of clues to get to the bit that was gonna happen anyway. Which oddly is what always happens in Law and Order and CSI anyway (they almost always get their man after all, and when they don't THAT is predermined, just look at the damned ads "The evil bad man who will stump the CSI/Law and Order/Law and Order Special Investigations Transylvania Branch/etc... team and get away with it...yadayada")

Spoken like a true hack and slasher.

Bad judgement call. I'll run a mystery with the best of them. But if so I won't go near D&D with a ten foot pole. I run a REAL mystery game, like Cthulhu or something.

So far your entire argument seems to be "I hate mysteries, lets just not have them at all and get to the combat."

Close, really close but wrong.

Its the D&D rules that hate mysteries and want to get to the combat, for instance...

You want a game that's just about kicking down doors and killing shit

And that describes D&D, the game in which there are actual rules for kicking down doors, actual rules for killing shit, but no rules for looking up important clues and information in a library.

And where the game (not me, the game) itself HATES mysteries so much there are whole rafts of spells that are designed exclusively as shortcuts to the end of the mystery where the fight happens. Many of those spells not being readily compatable by anything but other spells of significantly higher level (thus being a bit of a poor DM cop out if used before then).

Sometimes you know, it can be a reward to avoid a fight. You can actually solve a mystery and not have to fight someone.

No it isn't.

See now in Cthulhu, a game designed to be a mystery game, that is the case because not being torn apart and driven insane is a nice reward. See its designed to reward mystery solving over combat.

But in D&D it means three different kinds of punishment.

Less XP (yes there are two different methods to get XP in this situation, but in practice good luck getting as much, especially from a DM who thinks this is a good idea in the first place).

Less Loot. Again this could be given in some other way, and again good luck with matching the combat loot in this situation.

Less Combat. Yet again, this is D&D, the "lets go hack some shit up" game, when we agree to play it we are saying "bring on the combat" because D&D doesn't really DO anything else. If we sit down and avoid combat all day we have essentially sat down and avoided D&D all day and played "the I ask you riddles game" instead.

Your admission that having mechanically impossible challenges in the mystery, like the high search check, but still a puzzle with a possibility of failure is what moves this into riddle territory.

Because this means that the success or failure of any "good" mystery plot by your definition is exculsively dependent on the players doing what you determined is right. No rules involved, only player ability.

Just the same as if they ran into an impervious locked door that can only be opened by a single predetermined answer to a vague riddle.

And when they can't answer it, they just lost at D&D. Not a big deal if it took them five minutes, but they may well have just taken 3 or more hours in which to do it.

Maybe you like that idea. I do not. Because in any context, mystery or hackfest, it sucks.

[Neeek]

1111894518[/unixtime]]

You can't expect the players to read your mind, because for one thing it's entirely possible that the super-cool-obvious-and-singular answer you have in mind is in fact actually wrong in a subtle fashion that you didn't think of and you can jolly well wait until the sun becomes cold and dark and noone is going to "guess" it.

A few things always bother me about mystery plots in RPGs.

1) The characters usually have no business even attempting to solve *any* crime. There are exceptions(CoC being the only game where it is likely that the characters will be properly equiped, trained, and authorized to do so), but for the most part it's "4 random people trying to figure out something that the police(or whatever) are already looking into.

2) Most GMs are simply not qualified to set up a crime. Really. Most *cops* aren't qualified to set up a crime for a simulated crime exercise(trust me. I've encountered anough that overlook fairly important details to know). So when a GM who is just playing at criminal tries to describe the scene it usually fails in some fashion or another.

3) Most players aren't really all that good at solving crimes either. There is no reason why they should be. The number of gamers with training in investigation isn't all that high, I'm sure. It does make it hard to know "what to do next" when you think you've exhausted all your leads.

[Maj]

You have to adapt the storyline to what the PCs are actually doing. This means in some cases that it will become imperative that you actually change who the villains are if the players come up with a hypothesis for what's going on that is more awesome and believable than your original idea.

The problem, in my experience, hasn't been the DM outwitting me too often, but the other way around. In complimenting Ess on his fine mystery stories and set-up, he confided that a lot of the time, my characters have brought up logic points and ideas that totally shatter the plans he had or are way cooler in the end and bring about better plot in the future.

There is a very fine line between the DM outsmarting the players and the players outsmarting the DM. A mystery can't be so easy that there's actually no mystery, and it can't be so difficult that the game becomes a waste of time. You can't lead the players to their next clue, but neither can you prevent them from finding one.

Walking the lines of balance in a successful mystery game requires heavy doses of adaptability, willingness to think outside the box, and imagination.

[RandomCasualty]

1111894518[/unixtime]]
You have to adapt the storyline to what the PCs are actually doing. This means in some cases that it will become imperative that you actually change who the villains are if the players come up with a hypothesis for what's going on that is more awesome and believable than your original idea.

Uh wow... that sounds like a really crappy quest.

The "player is always right" kind of quest. IF the PC says the prince did it, then the prince did it, if the PC says the cleric of Bane was responsible, then it was him.

That just plain sucks. There's no challenge in that, nor is there any satisfaction in "solving" a quest like that. That's like haivng a riddle with the answer "whatever the PC's happen to say", so if they say water, that's the answer, if they say fire, that can be the answer too. If they say rusty 9 inch nails, that's an answer too. I just can't see that being fun.

Reading the DM's mind is always part of a quest. Whether it's deciding to search for secret doors and find the secret door behind the waterfall or trying to figure out what the guard captain's motivation was for helping the assassin. That's actually unavoidable if you play any kind of quest that involves PCs finding stuff.

Perhaps I like a bit more risk and reward than most of you here, since the majority of people seem to disagree with me. But personally I hate to be deprived of the ability to fail. I don't like plots where I'm railroaded into failing, but I hate being railroaded into success too.

If you're going to have mysteries (and nobody says you have to), then they should offer the potential of failure and success. And nobody said failure can't be dramatic and cool too. Sometimes it's great when the PCs pick the wrong guy as their supposed killer only to have the real one reveal himself later, and to let the PCs know they've possibly destroyed the reputation of an innocent man. And there's all sorts of cool roleplaying scenarios that can come out of that.

Personally I couldn't play in a game where the PCs are always right, even when they're wrong. That just sucks. I want to play a real game, I don't want to play in the Special Olympics.

[Ramnza]

Being a Dm requires multiple talents. Included is the ability to adapt what you originaly wrote to what is actually happening.

...a lot of the time, my characters have brought up logic points and ideas that totally shatter the plans he had or are way cooler in the end and bring about better plot in the future.

And I agree with Frank...

You have to adapt the storyline to what the PCs are actually doing. This means in some cases that it will become imperative that you actually change who the villains are if the players come up with a hypothesis for what's going on that is more awesome and believable than your original idea.

You're going to wind up DMing by the seat of your pants, but that doesn't mean you led the PCs by the nose. They hopefully aren't children and don't need anyone to hold their hands while they try to figure out the plot that leads to the climax and so forth. I guess when you really think about it, it's a delicate balance.

[User3]

The Amber DRPG had a neat attitude where it encouraged the GM to let the characters solve some kinds of problems, rather than the players. The example being that the author, who hates riddles, might have his character study them ceaselessly, exchange them with passing strangers, etc. -- so that he can then just tell them GM "My character would obviously know the answer" when the GM springs some riddle on him.

And you know what? That's the right attitude to have.

I often play wizards. The one I'm playing at the moment is not only smarter than I am, but is also much, much better educated in things like the vagaries of spell research or how to tell when components have gone bad or what it's like to be a student at a prestigious academy of wizardry. We just assume that characters know a lot of stuff related to their background. And that's good -- because it would be completely stupid for the DM to turn to me, the player, and ask me to solve some puzzle he made up on the basis of some ideas he has about how the laws of magic work in his imaginary world.

The DM need not hand me the solution on a silver platter if for some reason this puzzle is a vital turning point in the game -- but when he says 'Solve this puzzle' and I ask 'Well, what does my character think the best way to solve it would be?', I expect a useful answer, because there is very little that interests me less in roleplaying than sitting around trying to think my way through what I can best guess my DM's idea of how the laws of magic work is.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

I've always believed that anytime the player can make a meaningful choice, he should be allowed to. If a puzzle is totally based on the laws of magic, then likely it's a puzzle for the character, not the player himself. These kind of things aren't even true puzzles. They're just a skill check.

Good mysteries tend to be puzzles for players, not characters, since just making skill checks is rather boring, and completely unfulfilling because it lacks any real player choice in the matter. It's just "if you roll from 1-4 you fail, if you roll a 5+ you succeed" and when the whole quest is in the hands of one die roll, that tends to really suck.

It is why I try to avoid having characters solve puzzles at all costs, unless it truly is on a matter the player would have insufficient information.

[Murtak]

This

The DM need not hand me the solution on a silver platter if for some reason this puzzle is a vital turning point in the game -- but when he says 'Solve this puzzle' and I ask 'Well, what does my character think the best way to solve it would be?', I expect a useful answer

sounds nothing like this

It's just "if you roll from 1-4 you fail, if you roll a 5+ you succeed" and when the whole quest is in the hands of one die roll, that tends to really suck.

What is wrong with the DM telling you "well, referring to Mordenkainen's theory of grand unification, it seems to you like the only way to do this much elemental damage in one go is to have a ritual with at least 5 additional wizards powering the spell." ?

[User3]

That's just the thing, though.

Why is a mystery necessarily a puzzle for the players?

If, hypothetically speaking, I've modelled my character after Sherlock Holmes -- if I've invested roleplay time in building up that schtick, if I've made it a significant character point -- what sense does it make for me, the player, to be stuck puzzling over something that the character actually investigating would find much, much easier than I do?

That's an extreme case, but remember, in any midlevel D&D game, there is likely to be a wizard who is, in fact, smarter than every player involved in the game. There is likely to be a cleric or druid who is more observant and sensible. There is likely to be a rogue who, depending on his or her temperment, may know far more about crime. These are not at all uncommon situations, even if you don't happen to have bought ranks in "Profession: Detective". In fact, it's pretty much the default.

The divide mystifies me. There are some things we'd never dream of asking players to know how to do, in order to have their characters do them. What determines where we draw that line?

--d.

[Essence]

The "player is always right" kind of quest. IF the PC says the prince did it, then the prince did it, if the PC says the cleric of Bane was responsible, then it was him

Frank said "in some cases" for a reason.

[Username17]

The "player is always right" kind of quest. IF the PC says the prince did it, then the prince did it, if the PC says the cleric of Bane was responsible, then it was him.

I know you're trying to be extreme and humorous here, but actually this is perfectly true. The player actually can't be "wrong" about the story. The stroy exists inside the player's head!

There is no objective reality to a cooperative storytelling game to which things can be compared. If the players think that yellow marmoots are descended from green marmoots - that's actually true in the stories that are generated in their minds.

The player is always right. Always. So are all the other players, and the DM is always right too. That's why we have rules and die rolls to mediate the contradictions which are inevitable in this situation. We need them, because there are three to eight people at the table with potentially different ideas of how things should proceed who are all always right.

The player can't be wrong about how the story is going because he is an author of that story. You can have a disagreement and evewn pull the occassional surprise - but remember that if you pull off the scooby mask and it's the prince instead of the diplomat from Markhutia, that means that the story is being changed so that retroactively it was the prince in the mask the whole time.

Until the very instant of the twist "revelation", the diplomat actually was the guy in the mask in the story that everyone's minds were generating. And if you had stopped playing before that revelation, it actually would have been the diplomat in the mask for all time.

---

A good game should have a story consensus. Everyone should be on the same page as to what the story actually is. This isn't just so that people can talk to each other about what's going on without incomprehensibly talking past one another - it's also so that if the game unexpectedly ends or if someone else takes over DMing for a while the game stays coherent in everyone's minds.

Secrets are basically bad. Don't take players aside to have secret adventures just because the other characters don't know what's going on. It's a story, and if the player doesn't know what's going on with the other characters there's no story, and it's boring and meaningless.

Hell, I'm in favor of having "meanwhile" style cutscenes where the players are told short set pieces that their characters have no way of ever having seen. It sets the mood pretty well. This is just like a movie or a book. The players are authors and should have access to enough information to keep the plot going and to be on the same page as everyone else while the story is being written.

-Username17

[Murtak]

Hell, I'm in favor of having "meanwhile" style cutscenes where the players are told short set pieces that their characters have no way of ever having seen. It sets the mood pretty well. This is just like a movie or a book. The players are authors and should have access to enough information to keep the plot going and to be on the same page as everyone else while the story is being written.

I remember this technique actually being advocated in the d6 Star Wars. Do other RPGs actually have this bit also? In my opinion this belongs into every DM guide, although with a large disclaimer that this won't work for every type of game.

[RandomCasualty]

1111949431[/unixtime]]
Secrets are basically bad. Don't take players aside to have secret adventures just because the other characters don't know what's going on. It's a story, and if the player doesn't know what's going on with the other characters there's no story, and it's boring and meaningless.

If you are running a mystery, secrets are actually good. Mysteries can't exist without secrets. Without secrets and suspense there's very little point of actually playing out the story, as it feels like little more than a boring trek from point A to point B. It's like playing a game like Myst after you've read the walkthrough. There's no accomplishment from doing it, it's gruntwork and that's it.

And it depends on what the group wants, but let me say that everyone is not always right. The only person who can truly be right or wrong with regards to the campaign world is the DM. He's the one who actually knows if its the prince under the mask or the high cleric. And what everyone else thinks is right if they chose the guy the DM picked or it is wrong if they chose some other guy. Now if the story is bad, the DM's choice may make no sense and the player's choice may be more logical, better dramatically and all sorts of other stuff, but the DM's perspective is still right. Because he represents the game world.

If he says there's a tree in the center of a grove, then there is a tree, whether the PCs want to imagine it there or not. If he says the head of the assassin's guild has blond hair, then he does, even if the PC's imagined he had black hair.

The DM shouldn't indulge in temporal alteration just to make the PCs right when they shouldn't be. That's just depriving the PCs of the chance to fail.

The divide mystifies me. There are some things we'd never dream of asking players to know how to do, in order to have their characters do them. What determines where we draw that line?

I've always believed games, any game, should have the potential to challenge the people playing it. If you view it as purely a challenge towards acting skills, that's ok too. If you view it as an intellectual challenge, that's ok too. But somewhere there should be a challenge of sorts. Something you can do well or suck at, not as characters or playing peices but as people playing a game.

And where that line is is totally a matter of style. There are lots of points you can emphasize in RPGs, but you must emphasize at least one, possibly all of them. But every point you emphasize is an area where the player is put to the test instead of the character.

Your choices are:

A-Character building and Wargame Tactics
B-Acting
C-Intellectual Ability

There may be more subdivisions of these, but those are the basic choices.

The default D&D is actually A and C combined. If you eliminate social skills, you can actually emphasize B. If you run your game emphasizing acting and not intellectual abilities, then your focus as a person is more on playing your detective, questioning suspects in the right way and so on. More or less the DM is going to tell you "this guy looks suspicious and you think he's hiding something" and your challenge is to act out how you're going to get information from him.

If you're emphasizing intellectual ability. It's actually up you most of the time to figure out the guy is hiding something and then try to find out what he's up to. When you actually try to get information from him, it might just be a die roll once you know what to look for, assuming your game doesn't emphasize acting.

If you run a pure tactical game, mysteries are a moot point. There's no reason for them to exist at all. They really are wasting everyones time because they're nothing more than dice rolls without any player interaction.

Presumably though, if you're running a mystery game, you're focusing on acting and/or intellectual ability, at least partially.

[rapanui]

If you take RCs no on-the-fly plot changing rule, then the critiques raised in Neeek's last post are unfortunately valid.

That said, I'm not sure which style I prefer more... RCs or Franks.