I wrote a blogpost looking at an easy way to run mysteries in a TTRPG.
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The easy way for me is to follow the fish tank structure. It takes me about 45 minutes to create a scenario that takes about 1-2 sessions to play out.
Create catalytic events → create factions → create relations between them
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This was an interesting read Rickard, thanks for sharing!
Mysteries have always been hard for me for a few reasons. The biggest one is “what if the characters find out the solution in the first five minutes?” or “what happens if they never find it out?”
I feel like defining an adventure as a “mystery” is presupposing how it’s going to play out. It works for fiction where the author controls the pacing but not as much for RPGs where the characters are run by players who aren’t in on the story until the end.
The concept I’ve coined “secrets and clues” means you have a bunch of pieces of information without a definition of where you find them or from whom. You can use these to lay out the pieces of a mystery regardless of how the characters find them.
I talk more about this in this article:
Always an interesting topic!
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I do think that Jesse Burneko solves part of this by saying that you should set up a situation where failing to solve the mystery doesn’t mean everything ends.
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Yeah, this. It’s often better to have a bunch of clues to give to the players as a reward for whenever they are active. Finding the clues shouldn’t be the hard part - connecting them are, and the players will always make connections … but the thing is: they can be wrong. This is how red herrings are created, not through the mystery creator adding them, but from how the players interpret the clues.
As I wrote in the fish tank article, I always aim to give out at least a clue (as a reward) for every scene, but sometimes I dump a lot of information in their laps. Too much information is hiding the answer too. “Cluttered interface”
As a side note, “adventure hooks” and “clues” are the same thing. They give the players something to reach for, something to get them going. And clues don’t have to come in “This is something apparent”, but in fragments. “Cats have seven lives.”, “Ghosts are afraid of cats”. Why?
I want to say that there is no “failing/succeeding” with mysteries (at least, when I play them in the fish tank form) - there are only ways forward. Perhaps drawing the wrong conclusions will create consequences not even the mystery maker couldn’t foresee. During some sessions, I felt that the scenario played itself. I merely reacted to players’ actions through the prep I made.
This is even more apparent when you play intrigues - it follows the same structure as a mystery, but because the factions have agendas, they will generate consequences whenever they collide with the players’ actions. Mysteries are more of a stale situation. Something has happened. Why, and what will happen if the characters wouldn’t be involved? The answer to the latter question is the core reaction (consequence) of the scenario.
I’m always somewhat hesitant to share my opions on this subject because it has never happened to me that my players got stuck and did not know where to go next.
I should say that there’s no random chance to miss information in my games. It’s purely a matter of deciding what to spend your time on and what you think is relevant.
I’ve written about pacing horror one-shots, specifically to achieve a satisfying tension curve. What’s interesting is that I’ve also found that it should be “an ongoing situation” where at some point the characters are forced into action - irrespective of how much information they have gathered.
That’s something all of the approaches mentioned in this thread seem to have in common.
The Action Mysteries blog post you’ve linked in your article mentions very valuable advice about clues being practical information that will help the players defeat the monster or villain. Delta Green made a more general distinction between clues that help you understand what is going on, clues that help you avoid danger and clues that help you defeat the monster. I think this makes for great scenarios.
A note about the three clue rule: it clearly assumes that players must roll for clues and that there’s a chance that they fail to find even key information. If you follow the tipps mentioned in this thread, I don’t think you really need the three clue rule and would be better off using your time and space for other things. In my experience, preparing one clue per conclusion that the players have to make is usually enough.
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Always the question, mysteries in tabletop RPGs!
I like your point about tightening the areas. A singular building or tight set of buildings is just easier ratchet in on “who could’ve seen something, what is the sightline and escape route scenario,” etc. Whereas random city election 2,111 has a functionally unlimited number of answers to those questions they won’t be able to take in unless you roleplay in ArmA or similar.
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