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One thing that readers will probably notice as I publish more of my games is that many of them revolve around investigation.
This is perhaps unsurprising given that mystery is one of my favourite genres. While fantasy has always been my primary reading staple, mystery has occupied the second place for many years.
Looking back, I suspect my preference for investigative games actually predates my involvement in tabletop roleplaying altogether.
As a reader, I have always been far more interested in discovering what happened than watching people fight.
Part of this may simply be personal taste. I tend to prefer fantasy that leans towards magic and lore rather than long sequences of battlefield action. While I certainly enjoy the occasional sword fight, combat has rarely been the thing that keeps me turning pages.
I also have aphantasia. Descriptions that rely heavily on visual imagery often do very little for me, and combat scenes are perhaps where I notice this most strongly. When an author spends a great deal of time describing precise movements, positioning and visual details within a fight, I can find the experience frustrating. It sometimes feels as though the text is asking me to construct a mental image that I simply cannot construct.
I do not mean to suggest that combat-heavy fiction is inherently worse. Plenty of readers clearly enjoy it. This is simply one of those areas where I have gradually come to recognise a difference between my own reading preferences and those of many fantasy readers.
It also does not mean I dislike combat in stories. What tends to interest me more, however, is the purpose of the confrontation and its consequences. Why are these characters fighting? What changes as a result? What does the outcome reveal about them? Those questions tend to hold my attention far more than the mechanics of the fight itself.
Mystery fiction appeals to a similar instinct. The pleasure comes from uncovering information, connecting clues and gradually revealing a larger picture that was previously hidden from view.
Apparently I bring the same habits to game design.
Looking back, I do not think I consciously set out to design investigative games.
Most of my projects begin as setting ideas. I am primarily a worldbuilder and many of my ideas start with a premise, a question about how a world works or the consequences of a particular historical event.
A.R.C.H. was no exception. The original idea was not “investigators travelling through time”. The original idea was a world that had survived a dimensional incursion and inherited access to timeline technology.
Once I started thinking through the implications, however, a natural question emerged: what happens when people begin interfering with history?
The answer eventually led to Time Line Protectors, historical anomalies and timeline investigations.
All of these do not mean combat has no place in my games. Sometimes direct action is necessary. Sometimes people simply refuse to cooperate. Sometimes a sword, a gun or a well-placed punch genuinely is the solution.
However, I have noticed that when left to my own devices, I almost always design the mystery first and the confrontation second.
A.R.C.H., my current publishing project, is probably the clearest example of this tendency. The game is built around teams investigating disruptions to history. The central challenge is not defeating an enemy but understanding what happened and deciding what to do about it.
Perhaps that should not have been a surprise given how many detective mysteries I read.
I enjoy discovering answers.
It turns out I enjoy designing games around that process as well.
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