Play to (incrementally) find out

There are RPGs that ask you to think of complications, setbacks, plot twists etc. in response to certain results. I've sometimes experienced fatigue with this. It feels difficult to keep coming up with complications, even when the game provides prompts for doing so. I think I've worked out the fatigue problem, in my case, and at the root is the idea of playing to find out.

"Play to find out" is one of those things that I've heard and read so often that I took it for granted that I had internalised it when actually, I don't think I had.

At first impression, "play to find out" means "don't plot out a complicated story before the game starts". But there's a risk that you take that advice and focus on the timing element. So, during play, you get to a moment when you're asked to introduce a narrative element, and you start plotting something complicated. You may think you're still playing to find out, because the complicated plot you are devising is being added during play rather than before it.

I think this interpretation can easily lead to fatigue. I've done this, and essentially it is taking the challenging work of plotting a story and moving it from the low pressure context of prep to the higher pressure context of in-game improv.

A fuller interpretation of "play to find out" is freeing and less likely to cause fatigue. At those moments when you need to introduce a complication, you don't need to approach it as if you are writing a story, where disparate threads are tied together in a satisfying way. You just need an incremental change. And you don't need to understand what that change means yet, because you'll play to find out.

Here's an example. I was playing a solo game where my character was tracking a thief who had taken something valuable. At the outset I didn't define what the valuable thing was, or any details about the thief. That all sounds reasonable from the perspective of playing to find out. My character entered a building during the pursuit and I rolled a result that prompted a new story element. I then did the work of defining the faction that had hired the thief, and some detail on what was stolen and what they want it for.

That was just traditional prep, moved from before the session to during it. It's a lot of decision making and consideration to be prompted by one die roll.

Consider this alternative: The character pursues the thief into a building and there is a complication. The complication is "you hear them talking to someone else". That's an incremental change that ultimately may lead to the same plot, but it's mentally easier and it is more playable. The PC now has choices about confronting the other characters or waiting to assess who they are first. Instead of thinking about information unknown to the PC, I'm just presenting them with the next thing they are aware of.

The writerly instinct may say "Yeah, but I'll still need to come up with who that other person is. Why not do it now?" Not necessarily. Maybe the PC will think they are outnumbered and retreat. Maybe they'll go in guns blazing and this new character won't last long enough to do anything. Maybe the pursued thief is just playing a recording, Home Alone style, to make it seem like they have reinforcements. Play to find out!

The other type of fatigue that can arise here is a kind of repetitive distortion and twisting of the story itself. If you introduce an elaborate narrative element every time you roll a complication - new characters, factions, plot twists - then the result is a story that becomes so twisted that it's like a worn piece of metal ready to snap. Incremental changes or hints at new circumstances, are far better at maintaining the integrity of the story.

The writerly instinct may pop up again now and say "Yeah, but eventually you have to do some work of tying things together." Yes, I think so too. But (I hope) the longer you hold off on "writing to find out" the more pieces will have fallen into place. The mental energy required to complete the puzzle should be lower. Remember, I'm not trying to solve the problem of how to write the best story, but rather the problem of how to spend mental energy while playing a game.

One more example that I think is useful is from the Ironsworn move Pay the Price. The move gives you the options of suffering the most obvious negative outcome, rolling to choose between two negative outcomes, or rolling on a d100 table to choose the outcome. In the past,  I tended to shy away from the first option of the most obvious negative outcome. It seemed like the lazy option with the less twisty and interesting outcome. And, I suppose, it is that. But sometimes lazy and less twisty means things progress smoothly.

At some point, when you're always reaching for the more challenging answer to a question, you've got to ask who is actually Paying the Price. Ahhhh.