Considering we've got all sorts of game genres already, I didn't think of this before.

I just realise that there are games like CoC and those Agatha Christie inspired murder mysteries, paranormal investigators, CSI and whatnots that don't really have a genre to describe the game might have puzzles to solve or elements of the unknown in it.

There really isn't a genre for "Mystery" yet. Should there be?

I think 'contemporary' would fit those... You can also look for the thread in beta where I suggested adding 'Drama', and got a similiar response (if you can't find it I'll look for it and tell you where it is...).

"Drama" to me is what all games contain to some extent, and that's probably why it's somewhat redundant as a genre.

But mystery is something a bit different for me. At least a few of my games would fall into Fantasy/Horror/Mystery or Contemporary/Horror/Mystery in my case...

But that's just me, and I thought to toss the idea out here to get some feedback. I honestly don't know if it's a good or lousy idea, so I ask what everyone else thinks.

Why don't you use "Fantasy/Horror" and "Contemporary/Horror" then ?

But I agree that it is sometimes hard to decorticate a game's genre with just a few words.

But "contemporary" is very wide.

It could encompass a high school drama as well as police work, or a parallel reality set in contemporary times. A game with an element of mystery in it could be a historical or a sci-fi game dealing with an element of the mysterious as well.

I can't see why it would fall automatically into contemporary. I know English is my third language, but it's not my worst language, either. What makes mystery be exclusively a sub-category of contemporary?

Definition of "Contemporary":
# characteristic of the present; "contemporary trends in design"; "the role of computers in modern-day medicine"
# belonging to the present time; "contemporary leaders"
# a person of nearly the same age as another
# contemporaneous: occurring in the same period of time; "a rise in interest rates is often contemporaneous with an increase in inflation"; "the composer Salieri was contemporary with Mozart"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Definition of "Mystery":
# something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained; "how it got out is a mystery"; "it remains one of nature's secrets"
# a story about a crime (usually murder) presented as a novel or play or movie
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
This message was last edited by the user at 13:07, Thu 19 June 2008.

I quite agree with Lady Viktoria.

'Contemporary' does not equal 'mystery'.  And in that vein, 'mystery' games are going to necessarily be 'horror' either.  'Horror' implies some sort of fear or death.  I can think of a dozen mystery scenarios off the top of my head that would definitely not qualify as 'horror'.

I'd also like to see a 'mystery' genre, personally.

Not to mention the scads of non-contemporary mysteries...

The important bit here - the reason that it needs a category - is that while some people LOVE mystery games, others are bored by them.  Mystery games focus on interaction and investigation... some players prefer something focused far more on action.

That's why we have categories, right?  To quickly and easily identify games we might be interested in.  Some people really dig on mysteries.  Others don't.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:01, Thu 19 June 2008.

I've suggested it on the beta site, where jase seems to keep notes for things to implement.  I'll let you know if there's any official feedback.

By all means disagree with me, but as far as I can see, I think Mystery is at best, a Sub category. Lets take use an example that’s a bit easier to see.

Action Adventure could be a category. You know, to distinguish from the games that focus on questing, monster killing, item finding, level build, versus those games build around mundane things, and exploring the nuances of human interaction. Why shouldn’t Action Adventure be its own category? Because it never travels alone

(Main Category)
Sub Genre
Sub Genre
Sub Genre

Fantasy is a pretty loose term, but really, it comes with its own stuff. You expect fantasy to be elves and wizards, monsters and dungeons. Fantasy is an Acceptable main category for games. There is a major difference between a Fantasy/Action Adventure versus a Western/Action Adventure. You can’t really just have general Action Adventure

Mystery also does not come alone. Not to sound rude, but can anyone tell me what a game that would just be classified as mystery be? If you can ill gladly retract this, but as far as I see, you need two partners to tango with the mystery label.

You can have a:
Superhero Mystery Game, Fantasy Mystery Game. Contemporary Mystery Game, Vampire Mystery Game, Werewolf Mystery game. Pokemon/Digimon Mystery game.

Each one would hold up if the Mystery Sub Genera was dropped, but if you take away its partner, and it fades in to a grey area of no one knowing just where it falls in the sea of possible categorical data.

In my opinion, we have enough catagories that do all the jobs we really need. Sure, we could add more, but when will it end?

I quite like the idea of a  mystery categoy  :)  Especially in these days of multiple classifications.  It would help indicate games that I wouldn't want to join.

I feel it makes sense.  Some people love these games, others shy away from them.  Beside, it is a big part in the library, at least in Sweden.

I'd have been against it before the most recent software update.  While it's a big genre in fiction, even there it overlaps with other genres (there are a lot of historical mysteries, for instance).  And I don't think that it would have been very helpful in managing the size of the various categories, either.

Now that a game can be multiple genres, so there's no problem with having a second genre to describe the setting it seems to be a reasonable option.

I thought about the 'Action' label myself, and know right away that my association is that action games are games where dies roll and things go kablooie a lot.



However to some, the 'Fantasy' label only means that the game has an element of the fantastic, it could be magic, or magical creatures, or magic-like abilities such as psionics in the good old site version's old genre "Sci-fi fantasy". To me, fantasy doesn't equal DnD and Tolkien.



I will have to disagree. As JohnB points out, the 'Mystery' label would scare him off, but there are people who want games with puzzles and mysteries to solve. There are people who want to know when looking at game ads what the game might contain. And as PaulK points out, we can finally make multi-genre games that are labelled as such, so some of the older restrictions of game genres and classifications do not have to apply anymore.

I'd be very reluctant to join games with the 'Action' (to me synonymous with John McLane type of action. Eeeewww...) label, unless the GM were an old acquaintance and one whom I trust to run a good game. Otherwise, I'd have mysteries anytime.

And yeah, we've got quite a lot of crime mysteries in our libraries in Finland, as well.

Also, there have been even some murder mysteries set in the Forgotten Realms universe, I think...

* Essentially for example an Agatha Christie inspired game would be, setting could be any (historical, contemporary, fantasy western, it doesn't matter), the classical alone-snowed-in-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-when-someone-dies/butler-did-it game... ^.^

To continue the speculations and idea tossing, has 'Steampunk' ever come up in genre suggestion discussions?

Thought I'd just put it in here with the rest of the stuff...

Yes, it has, some time ago.

link to a message in this forum

Dated in December 2006?

No wonder I haven't come across it, as my career on this site started in the autumn of 2007.

Thought I'd just ask. For me, Sci-Fi Fantasy would have covered it of the old genres, and it can always be specified in a game ad that a game has steampunkish elements in it.

I'm still wholeheartedly supporting 'Mystery', though. :P

why not have a category called other?

when the GM posts the ad, he puts something in the box and thats what it comes up.  Searches would probably just be other and it pops up all the other listings, but as long as the category in the other slot is appropriate for rpol, I see no problem with it

just sitting here brainstorming.

From the FAQs (/help/?t=faqs&page=frf)...

i was thinking more.... they have to fill in a text box with what other is, but I see where you stand.

Yeah... but the way you described, no matter what the GM typed in, the game would still be listed on every search for "other".

If the search was for the specific word that the GM typed in, you'd then have the problem of making sure that the GM and the person doing the search were spelling the word in the same way (quite apart from typos, you also have the fact that there isn't a standardised/standardized spelling between different countries).

yeah.  that could be an issue.   i'll think about it and let you know

*lighning starts coming out of his nose*