Blog book club #11: Three Clue Rule

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Welcome to this week’s blog club. This week we are looking at “Three Clue Rule” from 2008 by Justin Alexander (The Alexandrian).

Next week we’ll discuss The Death of the Wandering Monster, also from 2008 and also by Justin Alexander. You can see a list of previous blog club posts here.

This is interesting on a list of OSR blog posts; I think of linear investigative plots as being part of “trad” design. On the other hand, the original Call of Cthulu is definitely “old school” - were these problems present back then? Were there many mystery modules in early D&D as well?

Looking down the keystone readings list we are following I don’t see any other posts about mysteries / investigative adventures. It doesn’t feel like this has been followed up much in the OSR community?

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My main takeaway from this post is to provide more information to players than you think they need. Whether it’s redundant clues to a mystery, pointers to hidden treasure, or the revelation of a monster’s weakness.

In my early days DMing I definitely had bad experiences where I came up with a clever clue or riddle or whatever, assuming the players would figure it out. They have frequently either not been able to do that, miss the “totally obvious” clues I planted, or interpret whatever I provided wildly off the mark.

I’ve read this before, but I haven’t found myself using the Three Clue Rule explicitly. I also don’t generally run mysteries or investigations in my OSR games. For Call of Cthulhu, I most often run material I’ve adapted from published scenarios or campaigns rather than creating my own mysteries, but to some degree I implement the intent of the Three Clue Rule. If players do something smart or reasonable that should provide a clue even if I didn’t plan for it, I’ll either adapt a relevant clue on the spot, create a new one, or point them to the “real” clue. When doing this it helps to have the clues you planned compiled together in your head or in a list.

As far as the OSR not really following up on this, I think it dovetails nicely with Chris McDowall’s ICI Doctrine:

In RPGs, questions are gameplay.

I guess this is the hill I want to die on. I’ve written about it in relation to traps before, but it’s applicable to the rest of the game too. clears throat

Players cannot make a proper choice unless they have enough information!

Knowledge and Perception Rolls are the worst offenders of not understanding the importance of Information. When I see them in use I just wonder what could be lost by just giving the players the information?

I want players to imagine the situation their characters are in and think of a clever solution. Asking for more information should be rewarded! If they ask smart questions I give them great answers.

Whatever you’re planning, think in advance about how you’re going to present it to the players, and how you’re going to give them enough information to make a proper choice.

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I’ll definitely ask the players what they’re looking for when they check something so I can improvise clues if they’re reasonable. “I’m going to check the flower bed outside the study window.” “OK, what are you looking for?” “Well, we know that Dr. Wilhoit was alive at 7 when the butler brought him his sherry, and that he was dead at 5 when the houseboy came in to build a fire. It rained last night, so if the killer came in through the window they would have left footprints in the mud.” “Oh, okay. Yes, in fact, you do find footprints in the mud, though they’re kind of indistinct.” “As if they’d been rained on a lot after they were made?” “That’s one explanation, sure.”
But having at least three prepared clues for every conclusion I want them to draw is important, and not just for murder mysteries — in a megadungeon I leave clues to traps, clues to secret doors, clues to faction relationships…

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This one is interesting, I too associate it with “trad” design far more than OSR adventures. Though it is useful if you think of pre-published adventures for the OSR that have come out since the article was originally published. For example, the advice can help with navigation Witchburner which is a social investigation adventure.

I’ve read this article a couple of times and have used it at my tables and the adventures I have written for the OSR. Generally the idea holds true, especially when writing adventures where you are trying to help tell the story and give tools to the GM as much as you are conveying information to players. And burying a clue to a secret in a dungeon in a couple of places can be helpful if you want to up the chances that the characters will find it.

And while I would never say that giving players multiple chances to find key information is a bad thing I also have loosed up on the idea in my own games. So what if the players misinterpret a clue and wind up going in a wildly different direction with it? Depending on how comfortable with emergent gameplay you are, that can be a plus. Running a published adventure, maybe not so much.

Either way it’s pretty great advice that has helped my prep my sessions for years now.

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This is a useful post - I think it’s basic lesson - “An RPG doesn’t work like a novel” is one that can’t be repeated enough.

The specifics and examples are also quite solid, and apply beyond the issue of mystery scenarios. A location based adventure, especially a large one will also depend on “revelations” and player deductions, clue finding, and secret unravelling (where are the secret doors, how to solve the puzzles etc) that usually relates to the history of the location, the relations of its inhabitants and/or its layout or physical structure. These to benefit from Alexander’s process and insights.

Clues are essential to exploration style play in that players need to have information to make informed choices and should be able to use those “clues”. If they can’t one hasn’t effectively given them anything to figure out puzzles or make those informed choices about how to explore, what paths to take and which obstacles to focus on. To do Alexander’s techniques apply - it’s something I’ve tried to put into my own design, and in my experience what seem like simple clues to the designer (who can see the adventure’s totality) are not simple for the players - so repetition and even clear statements like “The NPC seems to be lying” are about the right level of complexity. Likewise the need to avoid roadblocks in dungeon design is the same as in mysteries - choke points blocked by a puzzle (including dangerous encounters) are careful choices by the designer and are often a dangerous gamble that can lead to total failure of the adventure (not necessarily a TPK though).

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@GusL you also talked about information design in dungeons back in Blog book club 3 in this comment. I read your two linked blog posts looking at the kind of dungeons suggested by OD&D and Gygax’s fortress modules.

I wondered if you (or anyone else) had expanded this more into principles / design techniques for making sure your dungeons include interesting and gameable clues. Like, Alexander’s advice of redundancy is very solid, but it’s not the be all and end all of information design for exploration based play.

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I’ve always thought that at least three clues were needed if I wanted the players to be able to figure something out. Players have been very good at not noticing bits of information that could help them figure out puzzles. There have been many times they’ve not registered anything as a clue until speaking with an NPC who says something along the lines of “Well, you know X and Y – perhaps those have something to do with it.” If they hadn’t broached the subject with the NPC, they would have continued on oblivious to the clues. I’ve settled in on seeding five clues and then it’s up to them to realize those are clues and piece things together; conversations with NPCs will only point them into considering they’ve found clues.

And I provide clues for more than mysteries. Any sort of puzzle may have a bunch of clues to be found that help solve it. Shoot, even architectural clues can be found to suggest where secret doors are, if the players are sharp enough to notice. I think players should be rewarded in all sorts of ways for interrogating the fiction, as the kids say. If they pay attention to the setting, they’ll be able to piece together a lot of things that aren’t part of the immediate descriptions.

[Edit:] I’ve never thought it limited to trad design or trying to tell specific stories. Clues as to how something happened or how to sort a puzzle or most anything else doesn’t dictate how players will respond or what their goals are in solving a puzzle. Clues to solve a murder mystery, for example, can be used to solve it so the PCs can bribe the killer/killer’s boss/use the info to make a deal with a different faction or any other purpose, and not just to do a Scooby Doo ending and unmask the killer. Just collecting a couple-three clues could end up with PCs offering that information to an interested party for favors or compensation and they never deal with the mystery again. The presence of elements that could lead to a story is not the same as trying to tell a story.

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I mean I have a 1/2 written post on “Jaquays’ Ruins” and can conceive of one on “Arnesonian Masques” (or something - Arneson seemed more concerned about faction design then dungeon design)…

I also suspect one could find other forms of dungeon design that emphasize different aspects of play, but I haven’t really given it a huge amount of thought. In a more general sense one of the reason my own interest is in adventure rather then system design is because a play style or system’s strengths are largely shown through the adventures one uses with them. For example you can’t run an exploration focused dungeon crawl game using an adventure that consists of a linear series of combat encounters.

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