Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lanodantheon 05-11-07, 01:37 PM	Rechan in his threads about his Inquisitive Agency Campaign asked a very valid question: Clues not a 2x4 or a railroad track How do you manage clues? How do you drop the right amount of info without 1) Giving everything away, 2) Not giving enough, leading to scratched heads, or 3) Leave enough for the PCs to follow if they don't open the Big Red Box? For instance, I once ran an adventure where a man was murdered in his home. The PCs walked into his study, found his journal (Which had some hefty clues in there), looked at the last page, then said "Better leave this behind; the cops wouldn't like it missing from the scene of the crime." I post it on a new thread because that is where it belongs and because I don't know the answer to it. I have no idea how to leave clues for people. I'm stumped. The best that I can do is the experience I got in the subject when I adapted for my screenwriting class, Jonathon Stannard's Secret Vice by Rex Stout. I am going to use this short story for no less than 2 adventures. The story follows Vera Stannard the loving wife of Jonathon Stannard, a literary critic who openly speaks out against motion pictures. When Vera catches her husband in 2 lies, she thinks Jon is seeing another woman. Vera has a detective follow Jon and the detective exposes the truth. Jon Stannard was not seeing another woman, he was going to the cinema and watching movies. You don't want to know the adventure ideas I got from this... WHen I wrote my adaptation of it, I made it a mystery the best I could replacing movies with video games. In the story, I had leave a trail of bread crumbs/ a drop in the bucket that turns into a river. Leaving clues is hard, but it's akin to foreshadowing. With PC's it's different, because the clues you leave have to be able to be found and the characters have to realize that they are important. That's where my knowledge ends. Help me and Rechan out here, will you?
Toloran 05-11-07, 02:45 PM	The thing about clues in D&D is that they either have to be blatent (which most published adventures do) or they have to be tailored to your party. Some groups can't handle riddles but can solve picture based clues easily. Others might be the opposite. Some groups can handle clues that were given earlier in the adventure while others need to get the clue shortly before it is relevant. But yes, in some cases you really DO need to hit your party with a 2x4 for them to get the clue.
Nived 05-11-07, 03:00 PM	I can't remember what book it was in, the DMGII or the ECS, or a book from another gameline. You have to avoid certain things when setting up a mystery in a game setting. The biggest is momentum, avoid a 'you have to solve it NOW' situation unless your players are well practiced and like mysteries. Have more encounters, and extra material incase they can't solve it yet. Remember your players are not Sherlock Holmes, it might make sense to you at this point, but you knew how the clues fit together to begin with, it might not be as simple as you think. Also the character, not the player, might be Sherlock Holmes. Just as a weak player can play a brawler character, a player can play a character smarter than himself. A mundane and simple clue can be expounded upon. A bootprint with a pecular heal mark. A clever player might think to try and find out more about boots that have that kind of heal pattern, but you can also just have a CHARACTER know that such a boot was popular in Cyre before the Mourning. The right number of clues is ALWAYS as many as the players need to figure out the mystery. If that means beating them with a clue-by-four so be it. Always plan more clues than you think you will need, always plan more encounters to give those clues than you think you will need. The players are investigators are they not? Let them continue to investigate until they figure it out. If they're still looking for clues they still NEED clues.
Vharuck 05-11-07, 06:14 PM	Add a new rule: before the players leave a scene, they will each make a Spot check (not Search, they should have been doing that while at the scene). This check is to allow the characters to notice clues they had missed and realize that they might be important (more intuitive, which again is why it's a Spot check). However, the DCs for the checks should be reasonably high, so that the players don't immediately leave an area to make their simple checks every time you say, "You enter the room." Make sure that actually searching the room IC is a much more practical strategy. Also, always call for this check, even if they found everything. This way they can't metagame.
Cloud Divider 05-11-07, 06:20 PM	I think running a "proper" mystery is a bit tricky, and ultimately, I think it's pretty difficult to do properly without a certain degree of railroading... I've had a lot of luck running a mystery game by working backwards (ie The Final Clue is reached by finding Clue A, which is found after talking to Person B, etc), but ALSO ensuring that there is a healthy amount of redundancy involved (ie the PCs can get to The Final Clue by A->B->C, or D->B->E). I tend to vary the clues in significance and ease of interpretation. The obvious clues are either there to ensure the PCs have a reason to go from B to C, or are obviously important, but don't get their full meaning until combined with some other clue (that may be rather more esoteric). Basically, there's two kinds of clues: 1) the ones I use for pacing (ie this clue leads the PCs to the next one), and 2) supplemental clues... The latter get used as a way to manage the pacing. And really, when I spoke of "railroading," the specific interpretation was: "The PCs will eventually solve the crime. The GM's job is to make sure that they neither get there too quickly, nor too slowly, via a route that is both interesting and entertaining." Furthermore I tend to measure time according to the Speed of Plot... If the murderer is planning on leaving town, he's delayed for various reasons, until the PCs can finally catch up with and confront him. So yeah, on some level, there's a railroad hidden very carefully behind the scenes. But it's very subtle. And always, always, always plan to drop at least 2-3 (or better, 4-5) clues for every one that you "need". The players can't read your mind, so not only are they unlikely to find every clue you plant, they're not always going to reach the exact same conclusion you wanted them to reach...
Rechan 05-11-07, 11:28 PM	4 points. 1) The thing about clues in D&D is that they either have to be blatent (which most published adventures do) or they have to be tailored to your party. This is true for the characters' resources as well as the players. For instance, a PC in my game has access to a library of information on assassin/spy techniques, catalogs of poison compositions/effects, etc. It's part of his background. So integrating poisons and things like this, that the character can run to his bat cave and look up, makes the player feel like he really contributed, since the clue tied the character to the mystery. 2) Also the character, not the player, might be Sherlock Holmes. Just as a weak player can play a brawler character, a player can play a character smarter than himself. A mundane and simple clue can be expounded upon. A bootprint with a pecular heal mark. A clever player might think to try and find out more about boots that have that kind of heal pattern, but you can also just have a CHARACTER know that such a boot was popular in Cyre before the Mourning. That's why characters have skills. "You see a boot print. Roll knowledge (Local)" or "knowledge (something or other)" or even "An int-check". You might even want to roll behind your screen, so that whenever you describe something the character finds and request a follow-up skill check, it doesn't send up a flare that says CLUE. Unless you're at the desperate stage where that's necessary. 3) Some times, PCs can find the clue... and just do not put it together. They have the McGuffin, they just don't see the pink elephant in the room. How to handle this, I Don't Know, because this time it's not that they have a lack of information, just a lack of putting the puzzle together. 4) In addition to clues, red herrings are also possible. Some clues can lead characters off on a merry chase that, while will lead to a dead end, are still enjoyable and may have reprecussions. I once ran a game where someone was murdered for x, but an NPC pointed out, "Well, she's involved in drug deals." The PCs said "Hmm, maybe the killer was a partner in crime, or someone looking in to cut in on her turf, or an angry vigilante whose loved one was harmed by the drugs." And they chased the red herring for an entire session, and got nothing, but the PCs received contacts out of the trip, and had an enjoyable session RPing a sting operation as a prostitute (only to be propositioned by the wrong guy!). Just don't exhaust the red herring, as it will likely leave PCs chomping at the bits, distrustful of you, and second guessing themselves.
DBlizzard 05-11-07, 11:44 PM	Robin Laws (who has done several WotC books, as well as designed a number of RPGs) created a mechanic called GUMSHOE dealing with RPG investigations (focusing on the fact that missing clues in an RPG mystery because of a poor roll can end the adventure). He wrote a few articles on RPG investigations that are on point. (The game this mechanic appears in, Esoterrorists gets some mention, but dealing with mysteries in RPGs is the topic of this series). http://www.dyingearth.com/pagexxfebruary2007.htm http://www.dyingearth.com/pagexxmarch2007.htm http://www.dyingearth.com/pagexxapril2007.htm A few quotes: The problem this genre choice presents us with, then, is that certain players, seeing the theory and not the practice of roleplaying, are overly fearful of a linear or so-called "bread crumb" plot structure, which they equate with egregious railroading. I'd argue, first of all, that these fears are misplaced, and arise from a fundamental misperception. The trail of clues, or bread crumb plot, is not the story, and does not constitute a pre-scripted experience. What the PCs choose to do, and how they interact with each other as they solve the mystery, is the story. As mentioned in The Esoterrorist rules, we saw this at work during playtest, as all of the groups had very different experiences of the sample scenario, as each GM and player combo riffed in their own unique ways off the situations it suggested. In other words, one of your tasks as GM of an investigative game is to make the adventure feel like it presents a multiplicity of choice and a complex structure-which is not the same as ensuring that it actually possesses those qualities. Do this by salting your scenario with disruptive events unrelated to the collection of clues. The Esoterrorists ensures that PCs get the clues they need to interpret the mystery, but offers no similar guarantee that they won't be dismembered by ichor-dripping beasties from the Outer Dark. Disruptive events can include action sequences, including fights, chases, evasions, and infiltrations. These can be instigated by the players, or by antagonists reacting to their investigation. In a more low-key but possibly more memorable mode, disruptive events can also include scenes of drama or character development that evoke an emotional response in players. Maybe they confront a moral dilemma, having to sacrifice one good to attain another, before moving on to the next investigative scene. GMs enjoy an advantage over mystery writers. They often don't need to create red herrings, because the players create them for them. Players love to speculate, frequently generating wildly off-base explanations to connect what little information they have available to them. Sometimes this slows the action down, and you'll have to remember to rein them in and suggest that they collect more facts before attempting to reconstruct events.
taski 05-12-07, 02:52 AM	I've got my own personal system for dealing with clues as a DM. It's less of a trail of clues as it is a bunch of puzzle pieces thrown about everywhere. You don't need every piece to figure out what happened, and you don't need to get them in any particular order, but all of them help in some way. It's worked out pretty well for my tiny group. Mind you, we're both well versed in the mystery genre, and actually enjoy solving puzzles. Here's how I go about it: Step 1: Figure out who did what, where, when, how, and why. It will be a dry collection of facts, but it forms the basis for inspiration for clues. A young noble killed her father while the man was sleeping in his bed, around midnight, with a knife, because her father threatened to disown her if she married the boy she loves. She also drugged her mother to prevent her from noticing anything unusual. Step 2: Figure out what could be left behind, based on all the information in Step 1. The body of the noble man, in his pajamas, with a single-edged stab wound in his chest, and blood all over the bed. Muddy boot prints lead down to a stream, and back up to the backdoor, where a pair of woman's boots were left. A missing kitchen knife. A long, blond hair by the bedroom door. Step 3: Figure out who knows what. The mother says she heard nothing and slept soundly, but screamed when she discovered her husband's demise. The halfling maid heard a strange yelp in one of the upstairs bedrooms, some time in the middle of the night, and a loud scream in the morning. The house cook says he thinks he heard someone sneaking around the kitchen. A goblin vagabond squatting on the noble's land saw a woman drop something shiny in the stream last night; he retrieved a kitchen knife from the stream. Step 4: Complicate things. The mother was having an affair, which the father had recently learned about. He was often rude to the staff, and he was particularly so to the cook last evening. The cook is known to drink heavily every night. The long blond hair from the bedroom matches both the daughter's and the maid's. The maid claims she was with the drunken cook, who verifies this, through his hangover. The daughter claims she was asleep in her room, alone. Step 5: Cinchers. Now that we have a huge mess, we should sprinkle in a few clues that clearly point the true culprit out from the false suspects. The young noble is tall and thin, whereas her mother is medium height and fat, and the maid is a halfling. The boot tracks in the backyard are far apart, indicating a long stride, but not particularly deep or shallow. The goblin vagabond is certain the woman who threw the knife into the stream was a "big person," not "normal sized" like himself. The boy the young noble wants to marry seems nervous, and if pressed or tricked, he will say that she said on the day of the murder, "My father will never get in our way again." The young noble herself cries, but she's faking sadness. The mother is squeamish around blood, and her lover was, and still is, in another country. When it comes time for the PCs to take a whack at it, it will be up to their own initiative to collect clues at different places and interview people they think are relevant, in whatever order they want. I feel this makes the mystery more "real," an actual puzzle that won't get solved without some critical thinking on the player's part. Thank heavens that's what the guy I DM actually wants! Erm, that said, it's really not for everyone. I've heard that a lot of people don't even try solving mystery novels before everything's revealed at the end. Strange, but true. You might not want to pull this solve-it-yourself style on those guys. Happy sleuthing! :detect:
Mort_Q 05-15-07, 04:06 PM	I know that my pet peeve, as a player, is that DMs make me use my INT instead of my character's. That is to say, the game has very clear rules on what to do in a fight, how the PC's STR and DEX are used, but when it comes to a puzzle, it's not the PC's WIS or INT that are used, but rather the PLAYER's. So what if I'm an idiot and I don't get it... my character has an 18 INT... s/he isn't an idiot... let me roll INT check and give me something to work with.