Creating a Mystery for D&D

[@BanditsKeep]

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[@ericpug9154]

A nice ticking clock is having to prove someone innocent before they are tried and hung for a murder they didn’t do (or did they?) so the players would have to come up with proof for an alibi, and also finding the real killer would be another goal. The chandler stories are great!

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice!

[@stewi009]

I'll be honest: one of the reasons I wanted to see your take on how to do a mystery is because I know you lean toward the "old school" open-ended game style, and mysteries seem like one of those things that need a narrative structure to make sense. I was curious to see how you reconcile those two things. And boy howdy, you did not disappoint! That bit at the end (no spoilers people, watch the video, give him the views!) was old school gold!

[@BanditsKeep]

Thank You!

[@SusCalvin]

Mysteries in old Cthulhu adventures are often open. The investigator troop shows up on the outskirts of a situation. Either responding to it or stumbling into some nonsense. In a lot of adventures they're not in the thick of a situation, they're approaching it from the edge. After that, they have a choice with what to do with their time and resources. Time is often the important resource here. Want to dig through clippings? Two skill checks per day, each one finds a new thing. Want to watch that weird house with binoculars? Decide how many investigators do that in shifts, and I tell you what they see. One of you want to do a spell? Then we look up how weird and complex it is. Some take a day. The mystery is at its core locations, archives and people. The troop trots off to talk with a chap if they so like or decide that a location is of interest. Sometimes things of interest come to them. The Chaosium writers describe what they find in room to room, what each fool they chat with does. The conclusion does not arrive against you in acts, you got to get in there and pry it out by poking under the bed. Time is a meaningful resource because slowly things escalate. They often give you a lot of time, few old Cthulhu adventures are rushed from one incident to another. The PCs have several days to do their best to prepare. The mythos can throw roadblocks at them, NPCs can act on their own volition or new events and arrivals can pop up.

[@SusCalvin]

Some interesting Chaosium/Pagan adventures have a time table. The archetypical one in a Cthuhu adventure is that on day 8, any surviving cultists, if they still have Ye Booke of Evil, will gather on the reef and summon a spongy weird thing. Some of the Delta Green adventures and others have a few more moving parts. People are not sitting still and waiting for the PCs, they're out doing their own thing and following their more or less haphazard plots. If x happens, the Kartechia hit squad will get desperate and dare to attack the feds. If the PCs do y around the news crew, an intern will be sitting in the motel lobby watching when they leave. Or of they wait long enough, the Karotechia goons will show up before them and snatch a witness. If the hitman is dead or arrested during the final act, their sorcerer boss will try the job themselves using mythos abilities. Many of the old Chaosium adventures have a more generous time allowance than the players think. They expect investigators to take a day or several to sort things out and track things down. An investigator can easily spend a day, roll a single skill and maybe find something useful. Or keep searching, taking more time. A telegram for advice can take a day or more.

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool, I have little experience with Delta Green, but have definitely played in some CoC adventures as you described

[@SusCalvin]

@@BanditsKeep Delta Green from Pagan changed the resources PCs can use. You are all feds, you have police powers and guns. If you see a cultists doing something you can cuff them and haul them off. In the old adventures, it's standard to be part of a real investigation and act overtly. You can use the mighty federal spell Summon SWAT. Most of all you have much more direct access to archives and people. You can show up, identify yourselves as feds and interview people. Exactly what resources you have depends on adventure and writer. In some it's four bored junior FBI agents and as much wiretapping kit as you want, in others they give you a hundred feds. I think the latest Call edition embraced player organisations, you are part of the same detective agency or veteran's unit or university course. It's a much smaller scale, but at least you're not rootless fellows who bump into eachother on the Orient Express.

[@grumpyoldslan]

Fully agree with you on avoiding Sherlock Holmes as a model for an adventure -- great stories don't always make great adventures. As for failing to solve the mystery, if your players are the kind to be frustrated by failure and it's part of a campaign, it could be a fun payoff if, a few years later (in game time), when they confront the BBEG for the first time, he turns out to be the suspect who actually did the murder.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure!

[@Xplora213]

I literally just decided to do that while listening to the video. Awesome idea. It WILL BE good.

[@AndyReichert0]

thanks for the video! an example would be great! I've always wanted a who-done-it with a classic who-done-it thrill of multiple suspects who all had a real means/motive/opportunity AND enough clues to deduce who is guilty/innocent AND some head scratching needed to solve it rather than just being a boring railroad with big flashing light-up arrows to follow.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure

[@ishmiel21]

I'd totally like to see you build a mystery. It's always cool getting new adventure ideas. I also agree that magic doesn't need to be a deterrent to running a mystery. Good stuff dude

[@BanditsKeep]

Awesome

[@SusCalvin]

In a magical setting, the antagonists will also use magic or know the limits of magic. Do you need to cast a spell on the skull of the dead to Speak With Dead? Then look, the head is missing! Maybe the WizCops can find the head in a barrel and fish out some answers. The bad guys know lead blocks a lot of magical detection, so they try to use a lead-lined suitcase. You need to stop them and search the suitcase, and who knows how many legit burghers have such devices. A PC doing Detect Magic will notice five such contraptions within reach on a normal city street.

[@CheeseN1P42]

I allways wanna watch streams or episodes where we build an adventure!

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool

[@gommechops]

On the point about the GM telling the players at the end where they were on or off track etc, (love this by the way) you could almost see it as a chief of police/town watch captain debriefing the adventurers some time later and after these things come to light. You could certainly justify it that way, even if you as the GM are telling them things no one else would have seen them doing (you were so close to the cult cellar etc), it is feasible if it is pitched as them piecing things together after. just in case GM's need it to feel completely believable the PCs find this debrief stuff out. Looking forward to you building that mystery!! ( yeah I know I'm always moaning about do more adventures but they're so good! ). Anyway great stuff.

[@BanditsKeep]

Yes!

[@commonviewer2488]

I'll keep that in mind. 3 paths for the same clue.

[@BanditsKeep]

It works well

[@spellboy]

BOOM LET'S GO DANIEL

[@BanditsKeep]

🙌🏻🙌🏻

[@epee11c]

I think in a D&D-like game, mysteries work best as B plots. Most people don't know the genre well, the skills and abilities really aren't usually set up to make Investigation fun, and then failing to solve the mystery has consequences, but also isn't the end of the world.

[@BanditsKeep]

Good point

[@Xplora213]

I think the final reveal must be the real pay off but it doesn’t have to be the PCs do it. Daniel, your point about the GM spilling the beans is quite amazing because I think that’s an admission that we wanted to solve the mystery but we would prefer to know than not know. I had a player’s Royal fiancé turned to stone and despite the clues, they didn’t get it. But… I think the bad guy will reveal all in the final confrontation of the campaign…. He’s a bad guy, they know he’s bad after this and he’ll be a legitimate target of rage after. Great video. And yes, make the murder mystery adventure.

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice!

[@SapphireRidge900]

Limiting location and suspects is a great idea. Key factor I'll have to keep in mind going forwards!

[@BanditsKeep]

Excellent

[@CountryBwoy]

Thank You! You have the best info for this guy right here!!!! You've put me onto great sites/blogs too! Ive shared them with my nerd friends!

[@BanditsKeep]

Awesome

[@pickpocketpressrpgvideos6655]

Your last piece advice is the best! We've had some adventures end like that, especially in games like Shadowrun. Awesome suggestions.

[@BanditsKeep]

Good to hear!

[@Slit518]

Yes, Daniel, please do build a mystery adventure. That could be quite fun. What if the players think they solved the mystery, and you as the DM let them go with that ending, if, and only if the game is serialized and the story will continue later in some way or fashion into the campaign. That way, later on, they can find out they were wrong and perhaps there is a "big reveal" that points toward what really happened?

[@BanditsKeep]

That could be super fun

[@johnscotto5045]

Daniel, thank you for this very interesting and useful discussion. I agree with most of your main points, and your (not) controversial Final point. I do think that it matters whether this is incorporated into a larger campaign, or whether it is more or less, played as a standalone one off. As a one off, I would completely dBrief everything at the end so the players know what went on. As an integrated part of a campaign I would simply let the consequences of success or failure play out however they fit into your world.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure, thanks

[@michaelwest4325]

And I think for a home spun session tailor the clues to different player strengths so everyone has opportunity to solve a piece of the mystery. Rule of 3, do not be so clever in hiding the clues they can't be found or resolved to unveil more of the picture needed. Unlike a novel, the players actually must solve it rather be the author's pawn versus the reader, in every good mystery the clues are always laid out. And failing isn't so bsd if you have a fair crack at solving it!

[@BanditsKeep]

Indeed!

[@BanjoSick]

I wonder if you feel the pressure of putting up the best thumbnails around. You can’t have an endless resource of these?

[@BanditsKeep]

Very much so 😂 - seriously though, I love looking at art so it’s a joy to find a thumbnail I think works with my topic.

[@Drudenfusz]

Depends on what bird you ask, magpies or ravens seem to be capable to remember people. However I doubt that any court would accept the eyewitness of a bird. And I think that is how I run mysteries, it is not too difficult to find how who done it, the challenge is more then in how to deal with the knowledge. The social dilemma there are simply more interesting to me than clues gathering. Maybe that is because the TV show Columbo shaped my taste for that genre, and having run for many years L5R, where evidence simple is a non-issue. The film A Few Good Men is also great, in which it can only be solved through the social interaction, not by knowing what happened, and of course it is not as easy as simply outright saying what happened, since the investigator has also their reputation depending on how they treat suspects of higher social standing. Funny thing, even though I love to run my games very transparent, I would never explain anything after the game. Especially not in a horror setting like Cthulhu. That way I have some of my friends still discuss certain adventures of mine in which they never got the full picture, and that ambiguity of know knowing seems to made those adventures memorable in a way that I doubt it would have been if I told them what happened.

[@BanditsKeep]

True, social interaction can be a big part of the fun of mystery

[@malaizze]

Ok but counter to your “sentient sword” example: have you considered a sentient sword that is _also_ an unreliable narrator? A sword doesn’t know who the killer is. It doesn’t get eyes. It just felt itself get picked up. What if the party discovers the sentient murder weapon and the only clue they can glean is that it keeps yelling about “ROUGH HANDS!! HORRID AND COURSE HANDS!” (Bonus points if it’s revealed to be a delicate-handed person wearing work gloves)

[@BanditsKeep]

If that’s how swords work normally in your world, that would be very cool!

[@simonblanjean6538]

Also, how about evidence? Maybe the players found the culprit quickly, but have no way to incriminate them? And now the culprit is actively trying to destroy all the clues/evidence? Last time I played Call of Cthulhu, we got lost on an ice station with weird noises coming out of the pipes. We just blew the place up, problem solved.

[@BanditsKeep]

Good point, and 😂 classic

[@SusCalvin]

That's often the conclusion of a Delta Green adventure. DG does not try to understand or negotiate or wrangle, they contain and destroy things. 1/3 of old DG adventures involve a good old federal raid. To get there you still do a lot of normal police investigation. The mythos is a lot better hidden in DG, all the dunces who thought they could set up shop with an "Esoteric Order" plaque up front and swagger down the street in robes are gone. And you normally start on the outskirts, like how many X-files episodes start with the two agents working out of a motel.

[@sw33n3yto00]

Don't play mysteries with kids!!! Their little brains absorb every detail and will solve it in three rounds!!!

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice!

[@Xplora213]

I didn’t find this but if the kid doesn’t see themselves as a detective they might not have the mental agility to figure out the path. My group is super smart but not very creative 😂