Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190425222457/@comment-26006155-20190525163626

You can come up with a lot of fancy words, and draw a lot of colorful graphs.

But what it all comes down to is this:

If you have a solution that accounts for all the strange observable evidence, that also tells a satisfying story complete with a point, what are the odds that this solution is random, rather than deliberately crafted by the author?

If you have a 1000-piece puzzle, and you find a way to fit all the pieces together, and the picture on top makes sense, what are the odds that this isn't the solution, but actually some alternative solution that just happens to be consistent with every possible point?

Astronomical.

Story potential is a way to identify promising avenues of exporation for greater study. It's like a compass, or a radar screen that spots an island in the vast ocean miles away.

As I've already said, it alone does not count as evidence.

But when you're dealing with a deliberately crafted mystery, by an talented artist who isn't scamming their audience, the story is that picture on top of the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. And it's by looking at that picture that you first get the idea that certain pieces might fit together.

And in a mystery game that does everything possible to hide the clues, you know that the most mysterious characters are bound to be the most important, and the little details that hide in the darkest corners are likely the keys to everything.

Paraphrasing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the little things are what matter most.

Story Potential is a way to reverse-engineer a story, and look for what the artist is *trying to do*, instead of what is *most probable*.

This is why you and I always seem to look in completely opposite directions, Ambassador.

Because I look for the art in things, rather than the odds.