I just finished playing my first game of ToC, and I don't think that the clue-finding mechanics came into it really that much. Most of the time we didn't need to spend points as we specifically said "I search the chest" or "I look more closely at the ruins of the village; is there anything on the stones or the walls that I notice?" and then, yes, we'd find what was there ...

I still think that there were clues that we missed, and to be honest, the scenario we were playing "Dance in the Blood" [SPOILERS, maybe]

did make the chance that we would all go insane and die particularly high even for a Cthulhu scenario, due to our characters previously unknown and now uncovered heritage.

It all ended with my character going insane and going over to the Dark Side, and trying to accomplish a dread ritual, at which the only character who had managed to keep making Stability rolls somehow blew his head off and then, using her last bullet, turned the gun on herself to prevent the ritual being carried out.

So. Par for the course, really. We all ended up dead, but she sort of "won" .... In the end, I thought the scenario was a bit rail-roady, as characters were compelled by dread forces to go to certain places and do certain things, but that might have just been the way it was GMed. It was still genuinely creepy, and I particularly liked the way when horrific things happened you'd get the players actually ASKING to roll Stability. This may happen in CoC with SAN rolls, but it's specifically mentioned in ToC materials that this happened in playtesting, and it was certainly our experience.

Quote from: Simlasa;732470It's the Three Clue Rule.
ToC has some great write-ups of the Mythos, good scenarios... but it tried to 'fix' what wasn't broken. To my tastes its 'fix' kinda removes some of the fun.

Plus you don't necessarily need the three clue rule if you structure investigations about ongoing events that continue to develop if the players don't stop them. If the players missed the clue that would let them catch the serial killer, the next victim dies, and their killing generates more clues, increases the intensity of the scenario, plus can become a great source of IC drama and roleplaying if the PCs realise they could have prevented this from happening.

Yeah, it also became apparent that there was a race against time going on, and that eldritch events were happening outside our control, affecting us and others in the locality, and so sometimes "clues" were cropping up that were horrific and linked to a timeline of ancient evil reawakening that, rather than us finding them or not, were making things progressively worse while we were failing to do anything to stop them. So that certainly added to the horror, and was distinct from any Three Clue Rule shenanigans ....

Delta Green and Hunter: The Vigil for me. Really looking forward to a new edition of DG but not holding my breath.

I also really enjoyed the oWoD Twilight Project sourcebook. G-Men vs. vampires, what's not to love? Maybe I should check out Night's Black Agents after all.

I'd love to have more non-supernatural conspiracy (read: spy thriller) RPGs. The only spy thriller-specific RPG I really enjoyed is Brendan's Terror Network RPG, which is a treasure trove of data on intelligence agencies and relevant tech.

Oh, and there's Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies too. It was the Street Fighter RPG before we had a Street Fighter RPG, but I ran it equal parts spy thriller and corny martial arts movie.

Hunter: The Vigil was definitely the nWoD book that most captured my imagination ... After the initial charm of Vampire: The Masquerade wore off back in the 90s, it seemed to me that WoD in general just has far too much detail on the amount of politics and factions that go on between each given set of splats.

If I were to get a game of it together now, I'd much rather go for the "gradually getting sucked into a world of impenetrable conspiracies" that could, I think, be best provided with working from the core book to a Hunter game, as characters gradually become aware that there are things in the shadows, but never get the level of detail on them that the standard archetypes/factions of the other lines seems to inevitably become.

I did think that Changeling: The Lost provides possibly more of that unknown/unknowable infinity of weird in the background than the others ...

Conspiracy X for the X-files vibe to it and Kult for being an absolute awesome game (both the world and the system).

Quote from: Warthur;732502Plus you don't necessarily need the three clue rule if you structure investigations about ongoing events that continue to develop if the players don't stop them. If the players missed the clue that would let them catch the serial killer, the next victim dies, and their killing generates more clues, increases the intensity of the scenario, plus can become a great source of IC drama and roleplaying if the PCs realise they could have prevented this from happening.

As long as the stakes don't involve 'the end of human civilization' then yeah, totally. I generally favor smaller scale tragedy anyway... more missing persons, serial killers and stolen relics vs. 'Paris will be destroyed!'

Quote from: Simlasa;732515As long as the stakes don't involve 'the end of human civilization' then yeah, totally.

And even then, some groups might be down with playing through the end of human civilisation, or with the campaign ending in apocalyptic failure...

Then again I'd typically go with the three clue rule if the stakes were that high because any dark ritual/alien incursion/whatever that prompts the end of human civilisation shouldn't be a small, subtle thing that you could easily fail to notice - you're talking a major effort by an expansive conspiracy, and that's the sort of thing which leaves a deep footprint. (Plus conspiracy members might get sloppy about cleaning up after themselves close to the big ritual as they get more and more excited and zealous about it.)

Quote from: The Butcher;732505I'd love to have more non-supernatural conspiracy (read: spy thriller) RPGs. The only spy thriller-specific RPG I really enjoyed is Brendan's Terror Network RPG, which is a treasure trove of data on intelligence agencies and relevant tech.

Working on it. Well on and off, when I have time/inspiration hits.

Quote from: The Butcher;732505I'd love to have more non-supernatural conspiracy (read: spy thriller) RPGs. The only spy thriller-specific RPG I really enjoyed is Brendan's Terror Network RPG, which is a treasure trove of data on intelligence agencies and relevant tech.

Perhaps you'd like DwD Studios' Covert Ops RPG.

Quote from: Warthur;732436What's a basic clue? A clue that's needed to win the scenario? A clue that's needed to understand what's going on? A clue that's needed for the game to progress? I'm comfortable with not finding the first and second as a player (as are my players when I run stuff) and consider the third part to be all about scenario design. If you don't design investigations with such choke points then you don't need to spend any time at all keeping the game "on track".

I always use clues to progress. That leads a little bit to railroading.
I do often use multiple outs. For example they may need to interrogate a suspect for info. They also might break into his home and crack his safe for the same info. Or they might visit the city library and use their academic skills to find a long forgotten occult book sitting on a shelf. That's how I do it.

You design it without choke points. How do you do that?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;732564You design it without choke points. How do you do that?

You have multiple ways to find the information in question. For instance, finding evidence of blackmail could result from discovering the letters at the deceased's apartment, talking to his ex-wife, checking his bank account, talking to his accountant and friend of many years. You could discover he was part of a cult not only by finding the carton in the attic of his mansion, but by talking to his relatives, finding records of an event where he acted as the cult's face in the local newspapers, talking to an ex-member of the cult who knew he was part of it, and so on.

Investigation choke points are not only bad scenario game design, but also in many (not all) cases failures at modeling the complexities of our ties and interactions in real life, especially when talking about modern life in games like CoC, Vampire and so on.

Quote from: markfitz;732508Hunter: The Vigil was definitely the nWoD book that most captured my imagination ... After the initial charm of Vampire: The Masquerade wore off back in the 90s, it seemed to me that WoD in general just has far too much detail on the amount of politics and factions that go on between each given set of splats.

Yep. Agreed 100%. Vampire has 30+ books and only two of them are monster guides. It does have 5 clanbooks and 5 covenant books. Most hunter books are monster guides and only one of them has info on the splats.

Quote from: markfitz;732508I did think that Changeling: The Lost provides possibly more of that unknown/unknowable infinity of weird in the background than the others ...

I think werewolf could be very investigation based, much like hunter. Both are very party focused instead of faction focused. And werewolf has the shadow, spirits, ridden and hosts and other weird stuff happening. All worth investigating.

Quote from: Benoist;732568Entire post

I already do that. See the rest of my original post.

I already found the info in one of the other posts. Basically on ongoing story which generates more clues during time. I will check out the three clue rule. I believe it's slightly different from what I am doing.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;732575I already do that. See the rest of my original post.

You're already doing it, cool. You asked how you design an investigation scenario without choke points, I answered. But then... why did you ask if you were already doing it? I'm not sure I understand.