Getting the PCs somewhere without bludgeoning them over the head

[oxybe]

So I'm working on an adventure.

Having been inspired by a previous post of mine, which caused the idea to stew and ferment for a few weeks, and spurred on by 2 weeks of no gaming, I want to finally run the Kegger of Kyle Korvid, Vampire Bro-verlord.

The setup is simple: I kinda want the first part to be investigative-ish followed by a non-linear dungeon crawl in the university, with a bombastic final battle against Kyle and his minions.

PC are sent to an academy town because McGuffin demands it and are initially beset with annoying pranks until they start becoming deadly, as the adventurers drew the attention of bored Frat-Vampire Kyle.

The party then goes check out the university campus Kyle is using as his base due to leads, and find out he is planning a massive kegger, where he will taint the brew to make all who drink it his permanent entourage. They can take steps to halt Kyle's efforts giving them boons and rewards until the eventful night where a battle ensues and the vampire is killed or run out of town.

How do people normally hand out clues in a... non bludgeon-y fashion?

How often can I go "you find yet another hypnotized student wearing a Grovington Academy Growlbacks jersey mumbling about an Eternal Party on Friday evening." before it feels too railroady? I understand the rule of 3, give three hints and then drop the big GO HERE YA DOLTS if they can't pick up on the meaning, but I'm kinda bad at the subtlety of it all. Subtlety is not my middle name.

But I suck at the investigative section. Help playground, you're my only hope!

Can anyone recommend good adventures/setups I can read up on for examples?

[Shinizak]

Easy, for a linear game you need to remember that the party is NEVER going to go where you want. So, you take the clues to them. Create a list of clues, make them interchangeable with any important location. Then, when a player searches those key areas, make it so they encounter the next clue on the list.

Trust me, writing it out and reading it sounds really cheap, but it's the most satisfying way a murder mystery comes together.

Reason? A dungeon crawl is an open ended tale of the party's own making. A mystery is a complete tale with a story on are, start to finish. Complete with motivations already enacted. Therefore, you need to treat it as such.

[MoiMagnus]

I find that the easiest way (though not a subtle one) to give the clue to your PCs without hammering them in their heads is "everything is connected". Build a situation where everything that happen in the city is somewhat linked to Kyle (even indirectly). So that whatever the direction the PCs take, they find information about Kyle.
+They search for criminal/mafia/black market/...? Maybe they are afraid of Kyle, trying not to be remarked by him. Or maybe they are cooperating with him, capturing peoples for him.
+They search for social unrest/poverty/...? Have some poor child say their father went to the university and never came back.
+They try to learn more about the problems at the university? "You know, some says the university is alive. Every few years, the local priest dies in a tragic accident, often falling from stairs, as if the building themselves where saying 'faith has not place in the kingdom of reason', go away!".
+...
[The fact that you don't give always the same information, but different information that leads to the same conclusion, is what helps to not feel too railroaded. Don't hesitate to improvise.]

[Balmas]

If I might offer a bit of controversial advice? This might sound super weird and maybe a bit aggressive, but hear me out.

Your job, as the GM, is not to solve the player's problems. (I'd also argue that it's not the DM's job to create the plot of the story, but that's neither here nor there.) You create the situation, and then let them figure out the solution.

That also means that it's not your job to make them succeed. Give them clues, certainly. Give them the tools they need to succeed, certainly. Don't try to cheat them out of their success, and be a fan of their characters. But if they ignore the clues you give them, then it's not your job to pull them back from the brink. They don't solve the mystery, Kyle's party is a banger, and the PCs wake up in the morning to the city guard being slaughtered by a kegger-fueled army of mind-controlled college students.

The crucial bit is to be open to that failure, and to then figure out what happens if the PCs fail. What does Kyle, Vampire Broverlord, do with his army of minions? How does this affect the PCs? Can they stand against a newly empowered Kyle, and if not, where do they go to regroup? Make failure interesting, and it's not "that one failed session," but "that one time we rammed a runaway beer wagon through the city gates to get away from the entirey of the Fighting Honey Badgers Football team."

[jk7275]

The crucial bit is to be open to that failure, and to then figure out what happens if the PCs fail. What does Kyle, Vampire Broverlord, do with his army of minions? How does this affect the PCs? Can they stand against a newly empowered Kyle, and if not, where do they go to regroup? Make failure interesting, and it's not "that one failed session," but "that one time we rammed a runaway beer wagon through the city gates to get away from the entirey of the Fighting Honey Badgers Football team."

And what happens if the party keeps failing?

[BWR]

And what happens if the party keeps failing?

Play the Benny Hill theme/Yakety Sax and change the genre of the game.


For investigative games (Laundry files) I've had success with the PCs choosing their own adventure. I have a vague idea of what's going on, give the PCs a situation they are dumped in, have a vague idea of what's going on, then let the players choose how to investigate. Most avenues they try will yield something.
This way of doing things does require a lot of intiative from the players, a lot of winging it on your part, and you should have a bunch of NPCs ready and know their personalities and roles well before getting into it, but it can work well.

[noob]

And what happens if the party keeps failing?

The problems they face keeps getting more awesome until vampire lich werewolf half angel Chuck Norris merge with a super ai gone rogue or some other silly kind of problem stack at which point the party will finally find the problems they have been worsening(because it will be too big to hide) and they just have to destroy it with nuclear solutions(failure does not means you do not get xp so at that point they will have reached a level high enough to use nuclear solutions like ice assassin as a simple action(there is a feat that allows that)).
If it is not dnd then you probably just die at that point.