Adventures versus fiction

I just noticed an interesting thing about roleplaying adventures versus fiction. They require different kinds of specificity.

What brought it to mind is that I'm writing a story built on the idea that an escape room gets suborned by a supervillain and the heroes have to solve the puzzles and defeat the supervillain while still hiding their secret identities.

In a roleplaying adventure, you probably have to come up with every puzzle in the escape room. Players can either solve the puzzles or bypass them, but the puzzles have to be there so that the players can choose whether or not to engage with them. The other stuff — the stuff about secret identities and figuring out the supervillain's plan and who (if anyone) is also a superhero in secret identity, and if there are others, who is the supervillain really after? That stuff gets set up but it emerges in play.

Like, if a player says, "Fuck it, I'm Hyperman!" that's a valid player choice. It's not in the spirit of the problem I put forth, but it's a valid choice.

In a story, however, the puzzles of the escape room are secondary — they're explained only to further some other concept, either showing who's really clever in the group, or that so-and-so really knows about locks, or whatever. The relationships turn out to be the important thing. So-and-so is a villain, or is probably a hero, or hates the person who makes their powers happen so didn't show up with that person tonight.

I have begun to think of this as putting a bathroom on the U. S. S. Enterprise:

In a story, it's not relevant to what you're doing. In a roleplaying adventure it has to be there. Someone might come up with a clever idea to fool the Klingons using the vanity mirror or something. Some player is going to ask about it, and having it helps their immersion.