One of the things I enjoy is scenarios involving mysteries where the PCs investigate the mystery and uncover it, I'm running one right now as it happens.

It seems though to be something lots of folk struggle with, either ending up leading the players by the nose through the scenario or moving the clues around so that whatever they do the PCs encounter them or just making up the answer based on the PCs ideas.

What I enjoy is none of that, I enjoy a mystery where there is a correct answer, and in which the players think about how to bust the mystery and find out what's really going on.  Not through a preplanned GM led path, but through thinking of ways to attack the problem and ways to get useful info.

Anyone else into this?  Anyone struggling with it?  I can share my tips and if anyone's into it others can share theirs...

In my most recent experience, two of the six slots I played at a con were investigations. The problem wasn't the investigation or mystery aspects - it's a fun approach to try to get the answer.

The problem was doing it in a Con - where you have a defined amount of time to finish. And that leads you to rush. And that leads you to miss clues. Which happened to us.

Now the interesting part was that the mod was written so that your answer, correct or incorrect, had consequences to the broader story arc of the region (it was Living Greyhawk).

The other problem was that it ended up like a Thin Man finale where we should have heard one of the characters say something that lead us to the right answer.  Again, given a less hectic pace, that might have occurred. But it's unlikely.

And I haven't even broached the subject of solving mysteries with dumb characters. We had one guy who really did keep his character quiet for much of the "figuring" as he was not intelligent. Don't know how fun it was for him, but he certainly did a good job of not meta-gaming the situation.

So all and all, it's a enjoyable approach for me, just difficult to pull off.

Quote from: BalbinusWhat I enjoy is none of that, I enjoy a mystery where there is a correct answer, and in which the players think about how to bust the mystery and find out what's really going on.  Not through a preplanned GM led path, but through thinking of ways to attack the problem and ways to get useful info.

How do you go about doing this, Balbinus ?

Regards,
David R

By preparing a strategic challenge, that has it´s deep roots in verisimilitude and plausability.

At least that´s what I suspect.

Actually, it´s the way RPGs where meant to be played...

Quote from: SettembriniBy preparing a strategic challenge, that has it´s deep roots in verisimilitude and plausability.

Yeah okay, what the hell does this mean?

Regards,
David R

I work out what actually happened.  

I work out who did it (whatever it is), how and why.

Once I know those things, who did it, how and why, I add in a few definite clues that I know will be present, so I have something to work with, I try to the extent possible to make information discoverable by talking to people and not just by making rolls.

So, I now have who, what and why and I have some predetermined clues.  As soon as play starts my players will likely ignore most of those clues and ask a bunch of stuff I haven't thought of.

However, because I know who, how and why I can now extrapolate and work out what else is likely to be out there.  If the players hit local papers I can work out if they are likely to contain anything relevant, if they dust for prints I can work out if any would be likely to have been left.

As Set put it, verisimilitude and plausiblity.  But the key is to know in good detail who, how and why.  Once you have those solidly bolted down, you can work out the logical implications in play and so respond on the hoof to the unexpected stuff the players do.

Here's an actual note from an adventure I ran, retyped here:

QuoteMarcus Tullius Scipio has hatched a plot to murder Gaius Tommidius Cladius, his political rival.

Gaius enjoys a rare Egyptian bread.  Helena Gracchus, his host, knows this and has arranged for a special batch to be prepared by famous baker Decius Cornelius.  [My note doesn't mention a key dinner party, presumably I assumed I would remember that bit.]

Decius employs two master bakers, one of whom recently left and the other of whom has fallen mysteriously ill.  This has left Decius painfully short staffed so he hired Egyptian baker Sekhmet without asking too many questions.

Sekhmet has poisoned the Egyptian loaf.

Now I had other, more detailed, notes.  But that was the key bit.

What happened?  Gaius Tommidius Cladius died mysteriously after attending a dinner party with society hostess Helena Gracchus, others fell ill but only Gaius died.

Who?  Marcus Tullius Scipio, Gaius's political rival.

How?  Gaius is known for his fondness for a speciality bread.  Marcus knows that Helena uses a particular baker who is the best in Rome, he had one baker scared off and the other beaten by thugs then arranged for his agent to show up "coincidentally" looking for work.  Decius being desperate and having an order from Helena for Egyptian bread predictably hired the new Egyptian baker.  Gaius equally predictably ate more of it than anyone else.

Why?  Gaius and Marcus were running against each other in an election, Marcus was losing.

Now, there was more, but from that basis I could extrapolate tons and did so. The adventure was flexible, because it had a solid underpinning of who, how and why.

On that plot by the way, clues are already there.  Why did Gaius die and others only fall ill?  Logically, he had greater exposure or greater susceptibility than others.  Was anything odd about the meal?  Gaius is known for his fondness for a speciality bread, which few others in Rome enjoy.  Logically, the bread was poisoned as anyone who knew Gaius knew he would eat more of it than anyone else.

Logically also, the murderer was prepared to accept collateral damage if anyone else unexpectedly turned out to also enjoy it, that tells you something about the killer.

Ok, so it's the bread, but how do you make sure bread is poisoned?  Is there a clear source for that bread?  Actually yes, a fashionable society baker.  Investigate the baker, two employees missing, try to find them...

And so it goes, I had no idea how they'd investigate, but I knew the crime so I could react as stuff arose.

Quote from: BalbinusAnd so it goes, I had no idea how they'd investigate, but I knew the crime so I could react as stuff arose.

Interesting.

I'm pretty old school, everything I know about running mysteries and investigations I learnt from the WFRP campaign supplement Power Behind the Throne.

Also Set, sorry if my post come off sounding hostile. Not my intention.

Regards,
David R

Actually I keenjerked back. So it might be time for a group hug...

A friend of mine found a post on the D&D boards about this (I'm afraid I don't have a link handy) which had a good take on investigative adventures.

Specifically, the poster in question made a distinction between "clues" and "evidence". "Clues" are bits of information which let the player characters work out what is happening. "Evidence" consists of bits of information, items, people to talk to, and anything else which actually helps the players successfully conclude the adventure. So, for example, "A ghost is haunting the manor house" is a clue whilst "The ghost haunting the manor house may be exorcised by this ritual" is evidence. (This distinction doesn't quite fit the standard English definitions of "clues" and "evidence" but it's good enough for the discussion).

Now, "evidence" can obviously take many forms, depending on what the characters actually want out of an investigation. If they're trying to bring someone to trial, it's court-admissible evidence. If they're trying to exorcise a ghost, it's information which helps them do that. If they're trying to stop a Great Old One from coming back to Earth, it's anything which might help them do that.

The important thing is that an adventure will bog down if the player characters don't pick up on the clues. It will not necessarily do so if they miss out on the evidence, although if they do it's less likely to turn out well for them. Therefore, when designing investigations you should make sure that the clues are reasonably easy to gather whilst the actual evidence is the thing that they have to work for.

I do that, Balbinus, and I love it.

My favorite experience was starting up a police detective drama / Eberron game set in Sharn.  I'd lay out clues, motives, etc. but it was ultimately up to the police to collar the badguy.

One thing I did learn is that if the characters collar the wrong person, don't tell the players after the session.  That just aggravates them.  I think it would be more fun, if I were to do it again, to leave whether the solution of the mystery was really the solution up in the air.

The only tip I can think of right now is don't have just one clue, particularly for important elements, items, etc.. An example of this would be a CoC adventure I vaguely recall in which, during act three, a scrap of a Latin text is hidden in the base of a lecturn. If the PCs find it, during act seven, they can find the ritual that sends the Big Bad back into the nether without a PC-tromping fight. If they happen to not check the lecturn, they're screwed.

Now if there were a couple of ways to find the ritual, finding the correct pixel wouldn't be a problem...

Seanchai

I thought I'd just expand on what I learnt from Power Behind the Throne. Remember this is old school advice

The Usual Suspects : Know all the NPC participants in the mystery. Figure out what their motivations are. How are they connected to the mystery in question. Are these NPCs connected in some way to each other, and if so how? What do they know/can do to help "move" the players further along in solving the mystery? How are they predisposed to answering questions? What have they got to gain/lose by helping the pcs? What resources do they have at their disposal to either frustrate/help the pcs?

How to win friends and influence people : Okay these NPCs know something, right? What are they hiding and why? PCs will have to find a way to influence these characters to reveal what they know. How can they do this? Do they "help" the NPC in question as a trade off for information? Do they bribe? Blackmail. Here's where the ingenuity of the pcs comes into play. It's also a good opportunity for side treks which have nothing to do with the mystery at hand. Okay sometimes it does, but the NPC in question could be hiding info for fear of something bad happening to his/her loved ones. The pcs have to find away to get assure this npc that nohing bad will happen if he/she reveals all all.

Accessibility : The above npcs sometimes move in different social circles or have occupations that make it nearly impossible for the pcs to "interview" them. So how do the pcs get into contact with these folks? Depending on the type of campaign/genre being run, there are a variety of methods to do this. The important thing to remember is that this is where the pcs have the most freedom of doing things. Bribing subordinates, getting close with underlings etc.

Time : Time limits are a good way of creating tension. For instance, say the pcs "know" that so and so committed a crime, but they had a limited amount of time to gather evidence before the "suspects" leaves the country/city whatever...an urgency is created which adds to the atmosphere of the whole game. When time becomes an issue the stakes are raised . When the stakes are raised, the pcs become more desperate.

Or Time need not be an issue at all, and the pcs have as much time to gather info/clues. If this is the case, then the BigBad behind it all also has time to deal with the pcs. The things is how, he/she deals with the pcs should not drawn attention to what the pcs are investigating. Here again it depends on what resources the BigBad has at his/her/their disposal.

Well that's about it.

Regards,
David R

I ran investigative games, usually CoC, for over a decade and never encountered a problem. I got so good at it, over the Xmas break I spontaneously wrote a D&D whodunnit in a single day (for my old high school RPG gang, they know my ways).

I write 'em by starting at either end and then converging on the point where the PCs enter the story.

So, I start off figuring out what the crime is, who did it, and why. That gives me an idea of clues they could find, and potential paths the PCs could follow to investigate the crime. Then I start work on ideas for what the end of the story will be - what do I want to've happened? Who'll be dead or in jail, and what should the PCs know by the end?

Then I start tracing paths between them. I draw up two relationship maps of all the principal NPCs and the PCs - one at the time of the crime and one at the time of solution. I put the two pieces of paper next to one another and try to figure out how to shift the arrows and descriptions to get from the one to the other. Every shift gets matched up with at least one piece of information and at least one scene.

The main trick in this is to build in lots of redundancy. There should be a couple of clues pointing to each development in the mystery's plot, though you don't have to pack them all into the same scene. I develop this redundancy by drawing multiple arrows on the relationship map, and numbering them both in order of importance and then roughly in the order that I want the PCs to discover them.

By the end of all that, the story's mostly written itself, and I just have to flesh things out. I find that it tends to provide pretty robust stories, so even if the PCs start smashing things, you've at least got a pretty strong framework to improvise from and you can still keep the story moving in the general direction you want without having to railroad them.