My group are going to be on a ten day boat journey soon and I wanted to spice it up with an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit. I've picked up some good advice here: www.campaignmastery.com/blog/the-butler-did-it/ but the thing still feels like they will make a couple of skill rolls and then get given the answer.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks they can share on writing and/or running a MM please?
Thanks Lyxen, those are all really good points. I'll take a few pointers from there for sure!
The group are law-abiding (in the main) and travelling between population centres so I am confident they will detain their suspect - I can handle the fallout if they exceed the mandate granted by the captain.
They are Lvl7, so yes I am running out of time to do a quest like this. They have no bard and the spellcasters have focussed on healing and damage, so I'm hoping this will open their eyes to the full range of powers available without punishing them (they are first timers).
Thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it.
With investigations/mysteries you really need to reverse engineer what is going on. You need to have the story and accomplishes and suspects already figured out beforehand. Which is really counter intuitive if you;re used to improvising the rest of the game on the spot. Once you reverse engineer you can start to fill in all aspects.
For the investigation aspect I usually create multiple locations. Each location has various degrees of clues. 1 clue is given upon arriving the scene. These are the things that are very obvious such as a table with 3 chairs and another one further away on its side. Possible smells, 4 bed rolls with some bags etc. 2 some moderately hidden clues. You can play these out by roleplay. let the players describe what their characters do. upon closer inspection there are skidmarks. So that chair on the side was moved by force. upon closer inspection they see the beds have been used recently. there isn't dust here while there is in other areas of the space. in the bags there are some dark colored clothes 3 more hidden clues. you can roleplay these out as well. unless they're really obscure to locate. if the player looks over the clothes they can find smidges of blood on the color of when someone's throat was slit. and inside the clothes they can find an emblem. indicating these clothes belonged to the House of the Lord. Now you could make this emblem really obscure and thus requiring the first role in the sequence. 4. have a single false clue. Something that tells the story of the original owner of the house or something that indicates the environment. or leads to a false suspect, because that suspect once visited the real criminal.
Do this for a few areas and let the players figure it out themselves. Rolls aren't really needed for most of the investigation.
I think the false clue(s) is important, because it means your players can succeed on a specific investigation or survival roll or something like that and still not get any closer to the answer. It lets them know that not they can't just roll their way to the solution... they need to actually figure it out IRL.
I would suggest having a big twist to the mystery, giving one of the PC's the role of murderer, preferably a rogue or maybe a ranger, and have a private call on a different platform and mute up when the characters go to bed, unmute on the other platform and the PC murderer can choose which NPC to kill. Make sure it is someone who can keep a secret!
Thanks again for all the help, I ran the session this week and the group loved it! They missed some big clues and obsessed over some red herrings (it's amazing what telling a group they find the initials DK carved into something will make them come up with), but got the killer with some good legwork and pieced together the means, motive and opportunity.
It will be a while before I do another mystery; the prep is large for the amount of playing time and they work better as a rare break I think. However, if you are thinking of giving it a go then I highly recommend it!
My group are going to be on a ten day boat journey soon and I wanted to spice it up with an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit. I've picked up some good advice here: www.campaignmastery.com/blog/the-butler-did-it/ but the thing still feels like they will make a couple of skill rolls and then get given the answer.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks they can share on writing and/or running a MM please?
Thanks Lyxen, those are all really good points. I'll take a few pointers from there for sure!
The group are law-abiding (in the main) and travelling between population centres so I am confident they will detain their suspect - I can handle the fallout if they exceed the mandate granted by the captain.
They are Lvl7, so yes I am running out of time to do a quest like this. They have no bard and the spellcasters have focussed on healing and damage, so I'm hoping this will open their eyes to the full range of powers available without punishing them (they are first timers).
Thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it.
With investigations/mysteries you really need to reverse engineer what is going on. You need to have the story and accomplishes and suspects already figured out beforehand. Which is really counter intuitive if you;re used to improvising the rest of the game on the spot. Once you reverse engineer you can start to fill in all aspects.
For the investigation aspect I usually create multiple locations. Each location has various degrees of clues.
1 clue is given upon arriving the scene. These are the things that are very obvious such as a table with 3 chairs and another one further away on its side. Possible smells, 4 bed rolls with some bags etc.
2 some moderately hidden clues. You can play these out by roleplay. let the players describe what their characters do. upon closer inspection there are skidmarks. So that chair on the side was moved by force. upon closer inspection they see the beds have been used recently. there isn't dust here while there is in other areas of the space. in the bags there are some dark colored clothes
3 more hidden clues. you can roleplay these out as well. unless they're really obscure to locate. if the player looks over the clothes they can find smidges of blood on the color of when someone's throat was slit. and inside the clothes they can find an emblem. indicating these clothes belonged to the House of the Lord. Now you could make this emblem really obscure and thus requiring the first role in the sequence.
4. have a single false clue. Something that tells the story of the original owner of the house or something that indicates the environment. or leads to a false suspect, because that suspect once visited the real criminal.
Do this for a few areas and let the players figure it out themselves. Rolls aren't really needed for most of the investigation.
I think the false clue(s) is important, because it means your players can succeed on a specific investigation or survival roll or something like that and still not get any closer to the answer. It lets them know that not they can't just roll their way to the solution... they need to actually figure it out IRL.
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I would suggest having a big twist to the mystery, giving one of the PC's the role of murderer, preferably a rogue or maybe a ranger, and have a private call on a different platform and mute up when the characters go to bed, unmute on the other platform and the PC murderer can choose which NPC to kill. Make sure it is someone who can keep a secret!
Thanks again for all the help, I ran the session this week and the group loved it! They missed some big clues and obsessed over some red herrings (it's amazing what telling a group they find the initials DK carved into something will make them come up with), but got the killer with some good legwork and pieced together the means, motive and opportunity.
It will be a while before I do another mystery; the prep is large for the amount of playing time and they work better as a rare break I think. However, if you are thinking of giving it a go then I highly recommend it!
Teach me to reply before reading full thread ;)