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Noje
2018-12-27, 01:00 AM
I'm GMing a game in a modern setting for the first time and I have realized that building a dungeon and putting a big bad in it won't cut it. I'd like to construct a mystery for my players to solve, but I'm not sure where to start. How do you guys build mystery adventures?

Son of A Lich!
2018-12-27, 01:35 AM
Probably the most controversial way to be posted here; but Imma say "Let your players write it for you".

If you've ever had a DM think "And then a Labyrinth!" and you had to tell him when you were turning left or right, until you got frustrated and felt like you were being crushed with the most banal boring "Adventure" possible, you already have the biggest issue with trying to write a mystery in your lap.

Your players will always think of avenues you didn't even consider to explore when they are examining the body with a chalk line around it. They'll ask for details and clues, but if you try to pick out what the clues are going to be for them to find, then you are expecting them to think exactly like you do. This is what killed the Point and Click mystery genre.

But you are not a computer, you can always react to the clues the players are looking for and lead them into solving the mystery organically.


So, lets say you have the idea of a Cannibal. Lets say a middle-aged woman, Family attorney, who has made a Faust like pact with an evil god to see the future if she eats people.

Then you set up the basics of the event that kicks off the mystery.

Body is discovered by a homeless guy. The body was obviously butchered but not by someone who knows how to cut a flank.

We'll give this guy a name and an occupation and few people he was close too, but include the Family Attorney.

Now, regardless of what they look into, you start connecting these details to these NPCs. You don't want to give away anything; Just flesh them out like you would any other character. Maybe they liked the victim, maybe they didn't, but don't try to give them red herrings. Red Herrings work in TV, because we can always fall back and assume we weren't tricked like the characters were, Red Herrings at the table however is lying to your Players and they can only perceive the world trusting that you are being honest with them. Don't abuse that trust.

So, we're NOT going to have Mitch, the car mechanic, who has suspiciously red stains on his pants and he later explains that he likes rare steaks. The Players ARE NOT going to have those steaks analyzed, only to discover that they are indeed Beef and not human. Because your just going to make your players suspect what you put in front of them, and you don't want them to not trust that the information they are getting is reliable. Right? Yeah? Cool.

How they are going to follow this trail will be completely up to them, make sure you have a magic mcguffin device that accurately details things to an annoyingly specific degree: The Crime Lab. Victim had a strange rusty stain on his sleeve. Take it to the crime lab. Its going to take time to analyze. When the players start kicking cans and dragging their feet because they don't know where to go? Call just came in from the crime lab - It's Lipstick, but not just any lipstick - [Brand][Age][Color][Chemical Compound] etc.

This is going to lead them back to any character that could wear lipstick. Hey, Mitch wears lipstick when he's at the community theater! Also, there is the Family Attorney!

Then when they dive into figure out whose lipstick it is, you can say 'Nope, ain't Mitch, he wears a very specific brand of Lipstick for the shows'.

Then, it comes down to the hard part - regardless of what you think the order of events are, your players are going to want to be right. When they start formulating their understanding of the timeline, you need to listen, and reinforce whatever is closest to what you have prepared but let them have the details perfectly.

If they say "The Family Attorney was having an affair with the Victim!" then that becomes the new ending, even if you were going to go with a rightous "I only eat people that are not morally fit for this world" kind of vibe. This is going to result in some cliche story lines, but as you learn your party and how they think, you can learn to start harnessing their expectations and lead them into more dynamic and interesting mysteries.

Oh, and have fun! I think making a murder mystery is easily the best exercise a GM can have when it comes to character development and improvising answers to questions they weren't expecting.

Florian
2018-12-27, 02:06 AM
Short rundown of the approach common to the games based on the Gumshoe system, which are all about investigations:

- First, you need a spine. This is the order of scenes, from start to finish, how the characters get into the mystery and how they will solve it. The assumption is that we're talking about professionals who know their job, so what they get out of each scene are direct and very concrete clues that lead them to the next scene. No guesswork, no puzzles, straight info.

Sounds odd, right? Thing is, this is really the barest of bare bones. No background information, no motives, no heaping up the coffin nails for the trial. On TV, it would be a boring show.

- Second, we need those fat and juicy ribs. This is were we can go into the details, make those dice and class features count, interrogate/beat up additional suspects, talk with the witnesses and such. Go into oder botch at the whole background stuff.

Aetis
2018-12-27, 02:23 AM
Probably the most controversial way to be posted here; but Imma say "Let your players write it for you".

If you've ever had a DM think "And then a Labyrinth!" and you had to tell him when you were turning left or right, until you got frustrated and felt like you were being crushed with the most banal boring "Adventure" possible, you already have the biggest issue with trying to write a mystery in your lap.

Your players will always think of avenues you didn't even consider to explore when they are examining the body with a chalk line around it. They'll ask for details and clues, but if you try to pick out what the clues are going to be for them to find, then you are expecting them to think exactly like you do. This is what killed the Point and Click mystery genre.

But you are not a computer, you can always react to the clues the players are looking for and lead them into solving the mystery organically.


So, lets say you have the idea of a Cannibal. Lets say a middle-aged woman, Family attorney, who has made a Faust like pact with an evil god to see the future if she eats people.

Then you set up the basics of the event that kicks off the mystery.

Body is discovered by a homeless guy. The body was obviously butchered but not by someone who knows how to cut a flank.

We'll give this guy a name and an occupation and few people he was close too, but include the Family Attorney.

Now, regardless of what they look into, you start connecting these details to these NPCs. You don't want to give away anything; Just flesh them out like you would any other character. Maybe they liked the victim, maybe they didn't, but don't try to give them red herrings. Red Herrings work in TV, because we can always fall back and assume we weren't tricked like the characters were, Red Herrings at the table however is lying to your Players and they can only perceive the world trusting that you are being honest with them. Don't abuse that trust.

So, we're NOT going to have Mitch, the car mechanic, who has suspiciously red stains on his pants and he later explains that he likes rare steaks. The Players ARE NOT going to have those steaks analyzed, only to discover that they are indeed Beef and not human. Because your just going to make your players suspect what you put in front of them, and you don't want them to not trust that the information they are getting is reliable. Right? Yeah? Cool.

How they are going to follow this trail will be completely up to them, make sure you have a magic mcguffin device that accurately details things to an annoyingly specific degree: The Crime Lab. Victim had a strange rusty stain on his sleeve. Take it to the crime lab. Its going to take time to analyze. When the players start kicking cans and dragging their feet because they don't know where to go? Call just came in from the crime lab - It's Lipstick, but not just any lipstick - [Brand][Age][Color][Chemical Compound] etc.

This is going to lead them back to any character that could wear lipstick. Hey, Mitch wears lipstick when he's at the community theater! Also, there is the Family Attorney!

Then when they dive into figure out whose lipstick it is, you can say 'Nope, ain't Mitch, he wears a very specific brand of Lipstick for the shows'.

Then, it comes down to the hard part - regardless of what you think the order of events are, your players are going to want to be right. When they start formulating their understanding of the timeline, you need to listen, and reinforce whatever is closest to what you have prepared but let them have the details perfectly.

If they say "The Family Attorney was having an affair with the Victim!" then that becomes the new ending, even if you were going to go with a rightous "I only eat people that are not morally fit for this world" kind of vibe. This is going to result in some cliche story lines, but as you learn your party and how they think, you can learn to start harnessing their expectations and lead them into more dynamic and interesting mysteries.

Oh, and have fun! I think making a murder mystery is easily the best exercise a GM can have when it comes to character development and improvising answers to questions they weren't expecting.

Wow, this is some fresh insight!

Pauly
2018-12-27, 02:27 AM
The way I do it

1: think of the set up (who died/what was stolen etc)
2: think of the resolution (whodunnit and why)
3: set in place
- red herrings (clues pointing to an innocent party);
- smokescreens clues that lead away from the real culprit;
- baubles (irrelevant clues)
- barriers (things that will make accessing clues more difficult)
- real clues
- a ticking clock (some sort of pressure to solve the mystery quickly)
- deus ex machina (some methods to bring the party back onto the right track if they go down the wrong track too hard, for example clear proof the red herring is innocent)
4: let the players loose.
5: be flexible when the players do off the wall things and be prepared to create clues (real or misleading) as needed.

It’s different from a mystery story in that there is no set series of how the investigators will come across the clues. Sometimes the players will nail the mystery quickly, other times they will explore every blind alley and take each red herring hook, line and sinker.

Once the players have accessed all the real clues the solution should be able to be logically deduced. The art is keeping them distracted with enough problems so that the solution isn’t immediately obvious, yet not not so baffling as to present an insurmountable problem.

- ecit to add
After reading Son of a Lich’s post.
I think it is ok to have some misdirection. However the misdirection should be able to found to be misdirection relatively quickly and painlessly. You don’t want a tv show type situation where 3/4s of the plot is the red herring. You want the players to feel that they outsmarted you, not that they wasted most of the gaming session on an irrelevance.
For example if the murderer has an alibi that he was with Person A at the time of the murder, when the players question Person A he/she will say something obviously incorrect. At which point the players can interrogate person A to find out that it was a fake alibi. You don’t have person A be unshakeable in the alibi.

Yora
2018-12-27, 03:54 AM
For everything that the players are meant to learn, prepare at least three clues. You can never be certain that players will find every single clue and interprete it correctly. With three clues, the odds are getting pretty good.

jayem
2018-12-27, 04:32 AM
To repeat you are making a game not writing a book or a film.

a) You can't assume they'll be presented with everything you want them too (it's not like the book riddle)
b) Be very careful with red herrings as they'll have enough from your (improvised) mistakes and their speculation
c) They can totally interact from the first phase, you don't need to suppress info
[wrt b&c if youend up with a big sign saying "it was im", you've taken that far too far]
d) There need not be one true path
e) If they solve it 'too' quickly it shows how clever they were. If they solve it 'too' slowly it shows how challenging the story was and hence how clever they were
[provided of course they were indeed reasonably clever], in neither case is it too much of a problem.

I'm not too sure I like the Schrodinger's solution, Although there will be times when you have to invent/change backstory.

Florian
2018-12-27, 11:16 AM
For everything that the players are meant to learn, prepare at least three clues. You can never be certain that players will find every single clue and interprete it correctly. With three clues, the odds are getting pretty good.

Alexandrian, eh?

Fundamental D&D thinking: Roll the dice.

Totally unnecessary when going into a (murder) mystery. Just nam the clue directly.

Aneurin
2018-12-27, 12:47 PM
If something is absolutely essential to moving things forward, make sure the PCs can't miss it. If they absolutely must find, say, the relevant section of the security footage to advance things... then for pity's sake make sure that they can't fail to find it (at least by accident - if they refuse to go looking that's their problem), and that they know to look for it. You can still gate the information behind rolls or events if you like, so that there are consequences for failure and poor decision making (maybe failing the Perception test to find the relevant section of footage means they lose a lot of time in their time-critical investigation. Or maybe it keeps them up all night, and the next day they're completely knackered).

This isn't exclusive to mysteries, by the way.


I also recommend taking a look at police investigative techniques. Not so much for what they do, as how they structure an investigation - you know at least one player's going to have looked this up, so it never hurts to at least be aware of what they are. And it might help you design your mystery and flesh out details.

Consider, too, establishing a rough idea of What, When, Where, Who and How if you want a set solution, rather than the flexible one that Son of A Lich! suggested. Both are viable, though the his is probably easier to run and less prone to players making incorrect assumptions or you inadvertently giving them incorrect information.

The use of red herrings is... not straight forward. A red herring that does nothing but derail the game is bad design. A red herring that offers pertinent information to the main mystery is... potentially something that will annoy your players, so think carefully about how your players are likely to react. There's nothing wrong with the players and PCs being wrong about things, but it can sometimes cause problems depending on your handling and their attitudes and expectations.

Son of A Lich!
2018-12-27, 08:23 PM
I think it is ok to have some misdirection. However the misdirection should be able to found to be misdirection relatively quickly and painlessly. You don’t want a tv show type situation where 3/4s of the plot is the red herring. You want the players to feel that they outsmarted you, not that they wasted most of the gaming session on an irrelevance.
For example if the murderer has an alibi that he was with Person A at the time of the murder, when the players question Person A he/she will say something obviously incorrect. At which point the players can interrogate person A to find out that it was a fake alibi. You don’t have person A be unshakeable in the alibi.



Consider, too, establishing a rough idea of What, When, Where, Who and How if you want a set solution, rather than the flexible one that Son of A Lich! suggested. Both are viable, though the his is probably easier to run and less prone to players making incorrect assumptions or you inadvertently giving them incorrect information.

The use of red herrings is... not straight forward. A red herring that does nothing but derail the game is bad design. A red herring that offers pertinent information to the main mystery is... potentially something that will annoy your players, so think carefully about how your players are likely to react. There's nothing wrong with the players and PCs being wrong about things, but it can sometimes cause problems depending on your handling and their attitudes and expectations.

Just to be clear, here on the terms -

Four of the 5 suspects are right handed and we know the killer is right handed.

If the killer is in that group but three of the four dominant hands aren't known (Despite all four being Right Handed), this is a misdirect - the answer is skewed but the options are being narrowed. South-Paw has been cleared, but it doesn't disprove anyone else until the handedness of the suspects is discovered.

If the Killer IS South-Paw, then you have a Red Herring. Even if South-Paw was technically ambidextrous, and prefers his left hand, if the players are under the assumption that the killer is right handed, they had no reason to look any closer at South-Paw. If this is an early game in the series, the party will start to badger for more and more inane details Because they don't trust you to tell it to them straight.

Just wanted to make sure this distinction is clear; needing more information to proceed with the facts of the case is fine, details that don't matter in the long run (An armband that came from a punk rocker club, who turned out to be just a bystander from before the murder) is absolutely cool, telling your players something that they need to know specifics and giving them the wrong specifics is where things fall apart.

In literature, Red Herrings are a fish that were used to train bloodhounds to catch escaped convicts. The idea is that a convict brought the Red Herrings with him and threw them so that the Blood Hound was following his training rather then chasing the criminal. It's pretty common for people to associate a Red Herring with a Bad Lead, but from a trope perspective, we're focusing on the Deceit not the misdirect. We were supposed to trust the hound to find the criminal, but it found fish instead.

Does that make sense?

Pauly
2018-12-27, 10:21 PM
Just to be clear, here on the terms -

Four of the 5 suspects are right handed and we know the killer is right handed.

If the killer is in that group but three of the four dominant hands aren't known (Despite all four being Right Handed), this is a misdirect - the answer is skewed but the options are being narrowed. South-Paw has been cleared, but it doesn't disprove anyone else until the handedness of the suspects is discovered.

If the Killer IS South-Paw, then you have a Red Herring. Even if South-Paw was technically ambidextrous, and prefers his left hand, if the players are under the assumption that the killer is right handed, they had no reason to look any closer at South-Paw. If this is an early game in the series, the party will start to badger for more and more inane details Because they don't trust you to tell it to them straight.
?

But if the party make an observation check and notice the southpaw opens the door to leave the interrogation room with his right hand you give them information that it his apparent handedness a red herring.

Or if the miss that then shortly after they see a surveillance tape where southpaw uses his right hand.

The point I’m saying is that misdirection is OK as long as the players get the opportunity to quickly spot it as misdirection. It helps make them feel smarter and more sherlockian.

If the misdirection sends the players chasing the wrong direction for too long then it is a problem. Which is why there should be several methods to get the information, why the red herring should not lead to another red herring, why if they follow the red herring they get proof it is misdirection.

Son of A Lich!
2018-12-28, 05:25 PM
But if the party make an observation check and notice the southpaw opens the door to leave the interrogation room with his right hand you give them information that it his apparent handedness a red herring.

Or if the miss that then shortly after they see a surveillance tape where southpaw uses his right hand.

The point I’m saying is that misdirection is OK as long as the players get the opportunity to quickly spot it as misdirection. It helps make them feel smarter and more sherlockian.

If the misdirection sends the players chasing the wrong direction for too long then it is a problem. Which is why there should be several methods to get the information, why the red herring should not lead to another red herring, why if they follow the red herring they get proof it is misdirection.

This is why I was trying to define Red Herrings so that we don't have a back and forth on what is meant by Red Herring.

You are the eyes and ears of the players in their world. They HAVE to trust you. If you tell them something that is NOT true, they will question everything, just in case.

So, South-Paw killed the Dead guy. Crime Lab calls in and says that the victim was killed by someone right handed. The players investigate the suspects, and South Paw comes up, but he is Left Handed.

When given the chance to investigate South Paw further, most players will ignore him because he has been cleared. he is as good as having an Iron Clad alibi. The Killer (A) is Right Handed (B), and South Paw is not right handed (C). C=/=B. A=B, Therefore A=/=C. Right?

The reveals of information that South Paw IS Ambidextrous requires that the players look closer at him, but if they are, then they are already questioning the validity of the information they've gotten. If they are at a point that they can't possibly prove anyone is guilty, so they need to start from the beginning, they are already questioning everything.

This is when you end up in Schrodinger's rogue situations. Anything could be a perfectly concealed lie to trick and deceive you, including the possibility for you to test valid answers.

Maybe he is Ambidextrous, but that doesn't mean that he is the killer! Maybe the Computer Tech changed his key card punch in and out data to give himself an alibi. Can we check for evidence of tampering the key card? "There is no evidence of Tampering" See! He is the killer! He's the only one that could cover his tracks with the Key Card!

and they're already off the trail you're trying to set up for them.

Barring a direct admission of guilt from South Paw (Which never plays out positively if it was the only way to prove the case), or video evidence of South Paw killing the victim (which makes the investigation meaningless), the cycle of doubt spins out of control.

...

A misdirect is different.

The killer drives a Ford Focus. We have 4 suspects, three know the victim personally, 2 have sedans, 1 has a pick up truck and 1 is unknown. If they investigate the unknown, and find that he has a scooter, they didn't waste their time. Even if he seemed really suspicious, if he does not have a Ford Focus, he is not the killer.

If all four are discovered to not have a Ford Focus, this is still a misdirect. Then they have to figure out who knows someone with a Ford Focus, or has rented one. Or, they may not have the killer on their suspect list. They have still made progress, the information is all still valid, and the keys are still turning.

It just needs to be developed further.

And who knows, maybe Scooter dude has stolen a Ford Focus for the crime, and that can be uncovered by looking at his criminal record (A history of Grand Theft Auto).

The difference is that Scooter Dude was always capable of driving the car, while South Paw had been cleared based on the information of the case and who South Paw is. Scooter Dude could be the Killer. South Paw can't be, but is.

This would be a Red Herring if Scooter Dude was... I don't know... under house arrest and had an ankle bracelet on. But he found a way to remove the ankle braclet to commit the crime and stole the Ford Focus, thus the players clear him when he isn't supposed to be cleared and resulting in the all their options being exhausted until falling back into checking their information again for any possible solutions.

No one likes double checking everything they've done for ways you might have been sneaky. The player's aren't mind readers, and being told that 'You would have known if you passed this skill check' is just shifting the blame onto the players.

... Actually, this is a good point; Don't think of a Mystery as a Social interaction challenge, think of it as an exploration. The players are exploring what has happened in the past, not trying to figure out how to make Joe confess to his crimes.

KarlMarx
2018-12-28, 06:52 PM
I second everything above.

And, depending on the party level, make sure you can counter divination. Nothing will mess up, say, a murder mystery like a zone of truth forcing a confession out of the one who did it. At the same time, don't just handwave divination and say it doesn't work because the location is warded, or at least not every time. Rather, know the limits of what the PCs have, and make sure to throw in plenty of red herrings and superfluous details at them, making them use divination as a tool rather than a magic solution.

Thinker
2018-12-29, 12:17 PM
My advice is to give players the clues they encounter. Don't make them search to find the bloodstain under the carpet - just describe that they do so when they go to the room with the bloodstain under the carpet. What they do with the clues is the interesting part.

Altair_the_Vexed
2019-01-05, 12:10 PM
For everything that the players are meant to learn, prepare at least three clues. You can never be certain that players will find every single clue and interprete it correctly. With three clues, the odds are getting pretty good.


Alexandrian, eh?

Fundamental D&D thinking: Roll the dice.

Totally unnecessary when going into a (murder) mystery. Just nam the clue directly.

As we're quoting Justin, here's a link to his post on mystery design. (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37903/roleplaying-games/5-node-mystery)
At the bottom of that page, there's a few links to his other notes on Node-based adventure design, which will also be handy.

By the way - "just nam[e] the clue directly" is something Justin rather opposes (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/29334/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-gumshoe-approach-to-clues).

Pauly
2019-01-05, 08:20 PM
As we're quoting Justin, here's a link to his post on mystery design. (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37903/roleplaying-games/5-node-mystery)
At the bottom of that page, there's a few links to his other notes on Node-based adventure design, which will also be handy.

By the way - "just nam[e] the clue directly" is something Justin rather opposes (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/29334/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-gumshoe-approach-to-clues).

The big problem with “name the clue” is that it changes the session from a mystery into a police procedural session. At some point a mystery needs to be mysterious. The classic trope of the mystery is the locked room puzzle, the body is in a room locked from the inside with noother access. It appears to be impossible. For a mystery to be mystery proper at some point it needs to seem impossible, which involves misdirection

1of3
2019-01-06, 05:39 AM
I'm GMing a game in a modern setting for the first time and I have realized that building a dungeon and putting a big bad in it won't cut it. I'd like to construct a mystery for my players to solve, but I'm not sure where to start. How do you guys build mystery adventures?

I think, you might be jumping to conclusions in a way. I'd say it like this: Mystery at first only means that there are unknowns. When you watch the X-Files, there is a lot of mystery and most of it never gets solved. Also there isn't one mystery, there are probably several, or maybe mystery is uncountable in the first place, because it would be defined otherwise.

To get this working in a game, I often resort to a handful plotters. A plotter is an influential NPC or group of NPCs who want a certain thing. The PCs might be plotters in there own right, depending on the level you want to engage in.

Now these plotters do stuff. Some will ask the PCs for favors. Some things will just happen in the background; you can tell the players about it through the media, or by having them encounter some of the fallout. Or when they attempt to do something, they encounter a rival party on the way working for someone else.

If you do this right, the PCs will have questions.
- The Gang tells us that Arcways Industries hired them to steal some that cargo. Our contact with the authorities tells us they had a look at Arcways and they are clean. What's wrong here?
- The mage girl asked me to deliver a present to the Faerie Queen, because mage gilr helped me out before. Is that mage girl being nice or some kind of mischivious plan? Should I open the package?

So in a way, mystery is less about solving. More about handling. There is obviously stuff you don't know. You know you don't know some of what is going on. You have to proceed either way.

To make that work you need some plotters. Three is totally enough for the beginning.
You have to know what they want. Often there are two levels to this. An outward goal and special goal.
You have to some ideas of their resources and capabilities.
You have to have some ideas of their scruples.

The last one is important. Most people, even powerful plotters, won't hire a kill squad, if you look at them funny.

You also have some setup for the players:

- They should start with some information. It's alright if they know some of the plotters by name. Maybe they have ways to contact some of them, or have an idea about their goals and methodology.

For example, in the Dresden Files, Harry knows that Johnny Marcone is the boss of the local underworld. He knows that Marcone likes to act as gentleman, and that violence and gang fights have gone down, since Marcone is in charge. Marcone is obviously interested in extending his reach. This is all stuff, Harry's theoretical player got on a theoretical handout. In addition, Marcone also has a more private goal, which we don't learn about until the 5th novel, when Marcone makes a play to resolve it, although there were some hints before.

- You should also have some reliable ways for the players to get information. This can be further contacts, special rules for skill checks, a magic library, whatever. The point is, when the players really want to know a certain things, they have a predetermined chance to get it. Maybe with a cost attached, so it's harder to get other stuff later.


One more tip, I think it has come up before: You don't have to know everything in advance. It's quite alright to expand as you go, if you can make some sense of it. For example, one night, when game was slow to start, I delivered to the PCs a magical ashtray (literally) through the mail. I had no idea what it did, and the PCs had no ready means to find out. They did other stuff and came back to it two sessions later.

tomandtish
2019-01-06, 04:27 PM
.... So, South-Paw killed the Dead guy. Crime Lab calls in and says that the victim was killed by someone right handed. The players investigate the suspects, and South Paw comes up, but he is Left Handed.


The red herring here is the crime lab saying "victim was killed by someone right handed". Part of the problem is that crime labs DON'T say that. (Interesting tidbit: my cousin's primary job is scanning in handwritten reports for NYPD, and here's gotten very familiar with the lingo). They'll say that based on angle, etc., the victim appears to have been killed by someone using their right hand to strike the blow.

What then happens is people start operating under the assumption that the suspect is therefore right handed.

Son of A Lich!
2019-01-07, 07:19 PM
The red herring here is the crime lab saying "victim was killed by someone right handed". Part of the problem is that crime labs DON'T say that. (Interesting tidbit: my cousin's primary job is scanning in handwritten reports for NYPD, and here's gotten very familiar with the lingo). They'll say that based on angle, etc., the victim appears to have been killed by someone using their right hand to strike the blow.

What then happens is people start operating under the assumption that the suspect is therefore right handed.

Because you told them they were right-handed.

Again, the players only have access to the world through you as their eyes and ears. If you give them bad intel, they have to question everything.

You are physically capable of waiting for them to ask "right-handed or ambidextrous?" but when the players are at that point, they already had to go through the data and come up empty handed and are fishing for when the data turned sour.

So, my point is - Don't let the Data go sour. When players start coming up with their own explanations, run with them. They worked for it, found their answers and did a suffienant amount of work. Hell, they will probably make up their own red herrings (Just look at the MiTD thread to see how often "MiTD Fits this perfectly, if we ignore ____), but that's cool because they don't have to find YOUR solution.

Don't make the players Pixel bitch for an answer, just let them have fun.

TerryHerc
2019-01-07, 08:42 PM
The article on the Alexandrian is a great place to start, highly recommended reading.

In my experience for a mystery adventure to go off well, the characters really need to be invested in the outcome. This may sound obvious, but if the mystery isn't worth solving the players will get bored and simply move on. My suggestion is to have the setup scene and the villain planned clearly. They did this thing at this place, and the characters have access to these pieces of evidence (handed to them). But right out of the gate the stakes need to be high and clear, and that there are consequences to not solving the mystery - usually further evil actions.

On a more structural note, I suggest having at least two layers the characters have to peel back. One or more clues in the initial location could lead them to three possible locations. Let them choose. Each location presents more clues that reveal the information at the other two locations (paths not taken), and clues that let them go the next layer deep, which has 3 more locations. Again, let them choose. This keeps the action moving (literally), and lets the players move around the adventure in a free-form way.

It requires 8 potential stopping points for the characters, but could be simplified to 6. The aim is for each stop to presents more clues that link to more locations, finally driving to the final scene where the mystery is resolved with the final action. Resolving the mystery then becomes about connecting the clues to the places, and ultimately the villain.

Pauly
2019-01-07, 08:59 PM
The article on the Alexandrian is a great place to start, highly recommended reading.

In my experience for a mystery adventure to go off well, the characters really need to be invested in the outcome. This may sound obvious, but if the mystery isn't worth solving the players will get bored and simply move on. My suggestion is to have the setup scene and the villain planned clearly. They did this thing at this place, and the characters have access to these pieces of evidence (handed to them). But right out of the gate the stakes need to be high and clear, and that there are consequences to not solving the mystery - usually further evil actions.



In a lot of classic Agatha Christie style murder mysteries the real villain starts killing off red herrings and witnesses as the investigation closes in.
The other classic used by Agatha Christie was the murder on a plane, train or ship that needed to be solved before arrival.

Malphegor
2019-01-10, 06:24 AM
Murder's a nice one because the stakes are clear and there is clearly at least just one perpetrator to narrow it down to eventually.

I'd actually for a game play it in a Clue movie way- that any of the suspects 'could be the murderer', and the players have to determine through investigation which one is not responsible. Up until they've eliminated every option, all the remaining options are highly suspicious.

Replaying the adventure as written might end up with a different murderer unbeknownst to the players, simply because they investigated things in a different order.