The difficult part is to devise fairly discoverable clues and puzzles so as not to be opaque but not so easy and transparent that it is not a challenge. Many will argue that Tomb of Horrors leans to opaque, but then Gygax was running that adventure for seasoned vets. Mixing and changing monster abilities and tactics, and new devious traps made for many a Dragon article back in the day.
Yes. I had an issue with groups like this where players felt like they needed to "win" the game and there was an antagonistic relationship between players and DM.
The 'arms race' aspect of all this was really in the early days of the hobby. When it was assumed only way to challenge a party was to devise new monsters the party hadn't encountered yet, or the players had bought and read all the books. As the hobby grew, there came more creative ways of challenge than simply introducing a new monster.
Yeah, yeah. I view resolving problems with rolls the same as combat. To me, both are fail states. You didn’t sufficiently engage your creativity and/or interact with the fictional environment enough to avoid using the dice. Stack the fictional odds so much in your favor via player creativity that you don’t need to roll. To me, it’s “I don’t want to think, so I’ll roll instead.”By means of challenging the PC in the fiction. The challenge to the player is corollary to that.
That's just an alternate means of resolving the same challenge (and it ain't the PC making the roll...)
I actually don't allow players to push the I Solve The Mystery button, though I'll give them plenty of clues with rolls.
I give them the clues for free, no roll required. It’s up to them to solve the mystery though. I will use a Call of Cthulhu 7E trick though. If they’re really, truly stumped someone makes an INT check. If they succeed, we move the story ahead to where they get another clue. If they fail, we move the story ahead to where the bad guys take it personal that the PCs are sticking their noses where they don’t belong.
I was thinking more like when a player says they want to use some observation skill, I usually let them roll to notice something, but yeah these succeed almost all the time.
I'm talking about things like "you need fire or acid to kill the troll." The bit of text quoted in the OP suggests that in those early days of the hobby, players learning those things was how they improved and so the GM needed new secrets, puzzles and gotcha monsters.
Ah, right. I do the bit where I make the player describe where they search and what they’re searching for. They find whatever they would find. I don’t do pixel hunting. That can die in a fire. If they’re close enough on either what or where, I’ll give it to them. For a real mystery scenario, the clues are all obvious, as in out-in-the open. No in-depth search required.
