[The Pool]

Hi Latreya.

About the "what if they say that someone is the killer": the real problem is when they want to _create proof_ that someone is the killer, or when they think that they can designate someone as the killer in a game where they really don't have content (backstory) authority. It can be difficult to explain to players not used to have any authority in game the difference between narrating what happen during a conflict (and afterwards) and creating what happened before.It's something they always saw as something done by a GM and whey get that kind of "power" they think that it's always the same thing, "narrating what you want".

Explaining all the theory behind isn't always the best solution (and if you have to do it at the table, it never is...). It's better to explain the difference in a simple and direct way, tailored to the people at the table. This is the way I do it, as an example:

I make an example, using a dinner knife. And I say than, in a story, a dinner knife isn't always the same thing. I explain that, when you do a monologue of victory (or, in another game, you narrate an outcome) I can "create" a dinner knife to use as a prop. If I win a conflict about killing someone in his home, I can say that I take a knife from the kitchen ad do it with it (but I could have used any other object in the house). If I win a conflict about framing someone with a crime, I can narrate that I, take a peculiar dinner knife from his home, and use it to commit a crime (but I could have narrated framing him in any other way). In any of these situation the dinner knife is a scenic prop. But let's say I want to narrate that I find a dinner knife that was used for a crime and I want to say that that knife has over it the fingerprints of a specific character. In this case, that knife isn't a scenic prop, is object very important in the story, a turning point in the plot. And I can't create it from thin air.

I specify that nor them, nor their character, has any "superpower" of creating dinner knives from thin air. It's not physics. It's narration. It doesn't follow the laws of physics, it follow the rules of fiction. And they can create every scene props they want, but they can't create "the murder weapon with fingerprints over it". Any other knife in the scene yes, but not that one.

This is only an example, it worked for me and for the players I used it. You should create a clear example that work for you and your players and make them understand that difference.