Unwritten: System Reference Document/Discovery and Investigation

More on the Discover Action

Choosing a Skill

Almost all skills can be used in some way in discover actions. However, some naturally fit for particular situations.

Experiment vs. Notice vs. Research

The obvious trifecta of skills to use on a discover action is Experiment, Notice, and Research. Each of these skills fills a different role in discovery; understanding those roles will prevent a lot of confusion.

Experiment is the skill used for experimentation. It is an active skill that takes some time to utilize. Use Experiment when you are actively testing, checking, and re-checking. An easy trap to fall into is to use Experiment for any process of mental evaluation, but Experiment is not suitable for situations that require quick decisions, or that rely on significant amounts of digging through information.

Notice is your skill for things that happen quickly: perception that happens on the fly while other things are happening. What you notice is colored by your aspects and stunts, of course; someone with the aspect Trained Paleontologist will notice things that a Former Beat Cop would not, and vice versa.

Research revolves around hitting the books. In general, Research is a procedure that takes a long time. You will be digging through archives, comparing texts, asking experts, etc. You will use it in interlude scenes more than anywhere else. However, a gamemaster may allow you to use Research to represent the knowledge that you have already accumulated. Once again, your aspects and stunts will affect this and reflect the sort of knowledge you are assumed to have.

Other Skills

The three above are the foundation of discovery. However, other skills can be used and will have more specific areas of application. Craft and Engineering will be used for discovery on crafted items or machines, Surveying is used on the lay of the land, Survival on the elements of an environment, Medicine on medical subjects, etc. Each of these skills can be used in place of Experiment, Notice, or Research as appropriate.

Asking Questions

As part of the Discover action, you will be asking the GM questions to tease out information. You want to make your questions count, so keep the following principles in mind.

Your question should be rooted in what your character is capable of doing. If your character is an engineering expert, asking a question that involves mechanical details of a machine makes sense. It will not make sense if their expertise is in linguistics and not in any way mechanical.

Refer to the skill you used, as well as relevant aspects or stunts, when you ask your question in order to frame the context of the question and tune the information you will get.

Explain your intent with the question. Don’t assume that the GM is following your specific train of thought. You are more likely to get a useful answer if the GM knows what you are aiming for.

Don’t ask questions for which there is an obvious answer. You want questions to reveal new information whenever possible.

What if I don’t know what to ask?

Even the cleverest people draw a blank sometimes. So when you don’t know what questions to ask, try one of the following strategies.

• Open it up to the others at the table for suggestions.
• Ask for more information on an aspect or existing detail.
• Pick a question from the suggestions under each skill description.
• Force a hint.

Forcing a Hint

Excelling on a discover action allows you to request the GM reveal an important bit of information, so if you are ever stuck, this is your out. You just have to engineer a situation where you excel. The easiest way to do this is to use Advantage actions to create situation aspects and build free invokes up until you can ensure that you excel at the action. The teamwork rules may help as well.

Uncovering Aspects

Generally speaking, we assume that most of the aspects in play are public knowledge for the players. The PCs’ character sheets are sitting on the table, and probably the main and supporting NPCs are as well. That doesn’t always mean the characters know about those aspects, but that’s one of the reasons why the create an advantage action exists—to help you justify how a character learns about other characters.

However, GMs, we know that sometimes you’re going to want to keep an NPC’s aspects secret, or not reveal certain situation aspects right away, because you’re trying to build tension in the story. Questions can reveal aspects as answers reveal information.

Known aspects can change as a result of the questions you ask as well. If there is an aspect on the scene of Signs of Forced Entry, for example, and questions reveal that the doors bear the marks of D’ni stone sculpting devices, change the aspect to Telltale Marks of D’ni Sculpting Devices or something similar.

You should never have to use a question to ask “Is this an aspect?”; the GM should just tell you.

Puzzles

Puzzles are the cornerstone of all of the Myst games, and you will likely encounter them in your Unwritten games as well. You may stumble upon obvious puzzles like you’d find in a Myst video game, or they may be integrated into the environment as a situation that you must use cleverness to resolve.

Solving Puzzles

When solving the puzzle in front of you, you and the gamemaster will be acting out the situation. You ask questions about what you see, and try different things out to see what happens. Some of the things you attempt may require actions to complete, but a lot of what you will do will just be talking back and forth with the gamemaster.

There are pitfalls to this approach, however. Sometimes you just draw blanks on a particular puzzle, or you are in a situation where your character would know what to do, but you as the player do not. That can bring the game to a screeching halt. When this happens, you have a few tools available.

Asking Questions with a Discover Action

When you need guidance, you can use the questions gained from a discover action to help you out. Ask questions that give you information you might not be able to get through role-playing. This is ideal for characters who have expertise that you do not (“My character is a trained physician, what would they think made sense when dealing with this plant?”)

You can also use questions to double-check the solving process. Describe how you think something works and ask if you are correct. Or, ask if a particular detail you are looking at is relevant. Even on a tie, the gamemaster should tell you if you are ‘hot or cold’.

Aim for a Hint

When you get stuck, you can aim for excelling by carefully choosing a high skill, creating situation aspects and free invokes to use, spending fate points, etc. When you engineer the situation to get that hint, ask for what you have been missing. Or ask the gamemaster to consider letting you solve the puzzle using the hint.

Change the Situation

If you just can’t get past the puzzle, think about how you can change the situation to your advantage. Is there a way you can move the focus of the situation to one of your higher skills, or where you might be able to invoke relevant aspects? Also consider if there is a way for you to spend a fate point to declare a minor detail that will give you an opportunity to use your skills and aspects more effectively.

Investigations

The questions you ask as a part of a discover action will often be enough to uncover any information you need so you can get to more interesting encounters. But there will be situations where delving into the unknown is what is interesting. Like in the scenes of a police procedural or a Sherlock Holmes investigation, the ‘action’ is all about the inquiry itself. In these situations, how you discover the truth is as important as what you discover.

An investigation is a sequence of actions that focus on the process of discovery. As the investigation progresses, your character will discover clues and ask questions in hopes of finding out more information about the situation in front of them.

Leading to the truth is a set of clues: sign-posts lead to information, and that information leads to the truth. You can think of it like a tree: the root of the tree is the truth, and it splits off into branches that end at leaves. The characters start with the leaves of the mystery. From there they follow the branches back to the source.

The Process

An investigation consists of the following steps:

• The first look
• Action rolls
• Asking questions
• Digging deeper

First Look

An investigation begins with a first look. We assume that the first question your character will have is “Because of who I am and what I know, what do I notice?” If it makes sense that a clue would be obvious to your character, the GM tells you the clue. That’s it. No rolls involved. You can mention why you think that an aspect, stunt, or high skill is relevant to the investigation, but the GM won’t base the first look entirely on that.

So how do you know if ‘it makes sense’?

• Aspects - If you have an aspect that implies that you would know about the subject or that the clue would be apparent to you, that is justification enough.
• Skills - If you have a high enough appropriate skill, then the GM can decide that it would make sense that you would see the clue.
• Stunts - You may have a stunt that makes certain clues easier to find. Or a stunt that implies knowledge that might justify discovering a clue.

Each involved character gets a first look at the situation.

Action rolls

After the first look, all of the characters involved declare what they are going to be doing:

If you are looking for answers, you describe what you are doing and how. Then attempt a discover action.

If you are assisting others, you describe what you are doing toward that end. You can then attempt overcome or advantage actions to reflect that.

The actual order in which these actions are taken is flexible. If you are attempting advantage actions to give other investigators an edge, or overcome actions to remove obstacles, then you will want to do those first so those benefits are available to those performing discover actions.

Asking Questions

At the end of the action rolls, your characters will have a set of questions to ask. Each player asks their questions. Keep in mind that the questions you ask must relate to the process that you described when making the action rolls—if you were taking samples for chemical analysis, then you won’t be able to ask questions about the demeanor of the frightened explorers that were found near by.

It’s likely that all of the PCs will be working together on the mystery in front of them. You can as well. Questions can be asked in any order, and you should use the answers to inform what question you or another player asks next. Build off of each other’s work. If anyone has hints available from excelling at a discover action, they can be spent during this time as well.

Questions continue until all the players involved run out of available questions or feel that they have uncovered enough information.

Digging Deeper

What happens if you have used up all of your questions, but you still want to know more? You have the option of digging deeper by changing the situation.

You and the other players must do something to change the situation at hand in order to justify another round of questions. Some options are:

• Change things in the scene using an overcome or advantage action, such as setting up specialized equipment, performing extra experiments or tests, or sweet talking someone who doesn’t want to talk any further.
• Take a scene to go perform research or collect relevant information and support.
• Spend a fate point to declare a relevant minor detail based off of one of your aspects.

The GM decides what would be appropriate. It should be something that requires thought, effort, or time (or a combination of the three).

Once the change has been made (and the GM is satisfied), go back to the Action Rolls step and start the process again.

Avenues of Investigation

On-the-scene investigation

The most obvious example of an investigation is where you arrive on the scene where something has happened and try to divine the details. Skills and aspects that allow on the spot observation will help you find clues on the first look. Clues in this kind of investigation will most likely be the description of details that are significant and out of the ordinary. These will usually presented as the details themselves without much context.

Advantages in Investigations

You can create advantages by doing preparation work. Setting up additional equipment and doing research ahead of time make an excellent basis for rolls and a way to bring in skills that may not have direct investigative uses into play.

Costs for success can include accidentally destroying evidence, otherwise cutting off access to other clues, or angering others involved in the situation.

Clues may or may not be aspects, but an advantage action could make one more relevant by making it a situation aspect. Reserve the aspect and it will continue to be useful, maybe in subsequent investigations.

Questioning

People may have witnessed important events or may know critical details. Exactly how that plays out depends on the questions that the characters are asking and how they are doing it. If the characters are simply asking the locals general questions, then they can just state that without needing to go into detail. Questions and answers can be done in vague terms. Clues from a first look would reveal details one could discern from the person’s dress or demeanor.

Additional details will come from the usual process of questions and digging for more information. How they exactly get there will depend on the tack the characters take with the NPC. Clever role-playing should be rewarded with clearer answers and possibly the revelation of extra clues.

The ramifications of the discussion should linger with the characters. Not only are the characters digging for information, they are establishing relationships with others. Notably dramatic and entertaining interactions should lead to the questioned character becoming a returning character. If the PCs are nice to a downtrodden native of an Age, that native may be more likely to help them later on. However, if they subject someone to an intense interrogation, they may have earned an enemy.

This is also an excellent excuse for character development. How the PCs act and react in these discussions will go a long way toward rounding out their characters. These should also be kept in mind during interludes when looking at a character’s aspects. A character’s actions might prompt the player to adjust an aspect to reflect allies or enemies made, for example.

Advantages in Questioning

The characters involved can use advantage rolls to butter up, outwit, or intimidate others and use invocations to get people to talk. Character aspects on all sides of the interaction are ripe for invocation. Compels are also appropriate, more so in these cases than in other types of investigation.

Previous clues can be used as leverage in trying to get someone to talk. You can use an Advantage action to bring up the clue successfully and use fate points and free invokes to press your advantage. GMs, roll with the invocations and be creative on fumbles and costs.

Contests in Questioning

It’s possible that you might end up trying to get information out of an unwilling subject in a more confrontational way. This could be an intense bit of back and forth, or it could be a full on interrogation. One way to model this is through a contest between you and the other person instead of an investigation. Run the questioning as various exchanges based off of social skills. You should be describing what you are doing and including bits of dialog with each exchange.

If you win the contest, then you get the information out of them. You might be able to push the contest a few more rounds in order to get more advantage actions in, if the GM is willing. If you lose the contest, then you aren’t getting any information out of them; they’ve won the battle of wits. Even if the subject is confined and can’t get away, you can’t go back and press the issue. You’ll have to change the situation enough (get a new bit of information, find some different leverage, wait a chunk of time) before you can go back in.

Research

In many cases, a character will need to hit the books for answers. Authoritative sources, research materials, and expert commentaries are a wellspring of useful information. This is especially the case when dealing with scientific, anthropological, or archaeological mysteries. Characters with access to appropriate libraries, databases, etc. can ask questions.

Research will rarely happen ‘on-stage’ as it is a slow and often boring process, narratively speaking. Characters who want to do research should do it during interludes or opt out of scenes while other characters do on-stage activities.

Advantages in Research

There is not much maneuvering to research so it is not an interactive process. Nor is it one with much drama and of itself. Advantages used in research will most likely reflect helpful situations set up beforehand (consequences or situation aspects reserved in previous scenes) or character aspects and stunts.

Deductions

There are mysteries that you will encounter that require you to come together and consider the facts, one that are key to the direction of your story. Deduction is required.

Where an investigation is a method for you to uncover what the gamemaster has hidden, a deduction is a chance for you to shape the story. You and the other characters gather together, consider the facts around an unknown for several rounds and devise what is the truth of the situation.

Whenever there is an open question on the table, the gamemaster can decide to put you in the driver’s seat.

The Process of Deduction

• Frame the deduction
• Establish the participants
• Initial round of consideration
• Next round of consideration
• Final round of consideration
• Reveal the truth

Frame the deduction

To start off, you need to frame the deduction by clarifying what the question is, and then deciding who will be involved in the deduction.

The question itself should be stated simply, such as “How does this strange contraption work?” or “What is the explanation for all of the weird phenomena we have been experiencing?” Write it down.

Now, each character who wants to be involved in the deduction presents a reason they can contribute to the deduction. Usually this will be an aspect, but anything that makes sense will do.

First round of consideration

Next, everyone involved choose a skill and rolls against a passive opposition of Good (+3). The character that succeeds at the roll by the highest amount has won the round.

First, record progress on the deduction:

• If the winner excelled on their roll, then record two points of progress.
• If the winner succeeded, then record one point of progress.
• If the winner tied, record one point of progress and the group pays a minor cost.

Now, the winner declares a situation aspect as a fact. This fact is now absolutely true. It must derive from the skill the winner used, relate clearly to the situation, and must be stated as an objective piece of information. It may or may not be something that has been previously established in the game so far.

The fact should not be a potential answer to the question, however. Rather, it’s one of the steps toward the answer.

If two or more characters tie for the highest total, each gets to establish a fact, but only one records points of progress.

If no one wins the first roll, no facts are established and no progress made.

Next round of consideration

The discussion on the question continues and proceeds much like the previous step did: everyone picks a skill (either the same skill or a new one as makes sense) and makes a roll.

This time, the passive opposition of this roll is the result that won the previous round. So if the previous winner rolled a Great (+4) for their win, then that is the passive opposition this round. If no one won the first round, then the opposition remains Good (+3).

The winner of this round records progress and establishes a fact just like in the previous round.

Final round of consideration

This last round runs like the previous one, now with the passive opposition as the winning result from the previous round, or Good (+3) if there was none. 

Reveal the truth

If the characters have made at least three points of progress, then someone has divined the truth. All who are involved pick a skill and roll one last time. Whomever rolls the highest (no opposition) wins.

The winner devises an answer to the question that takes into account all of the established facts. The answer is now true and becomes an aspect. The three established fact aspects are subsumed into this new one.

The new aspect gets a number of free invokes depending on the progress made during the deduction:

3 points	no free invokes
4 - 5 points	one free invoke
6  points	two free invokes

If the characters have not made at least three points of progress, then the question remains unanswered. Any established facts cease to be aspects.

No matter what happens (a successfully answered question or not), the established facts remain true—they are just no longer aspects.