Fighting the Mystery Machine
Posted 9th December 2008 at 04:18 PM by Janx
A recent thread got me thinking about mystery adventures.
The original thread is here: URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246484-i-hate-mysteries.html"]http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246484-i-hate-mysteries.html[/url]
I see an interesting anomaly in game play with mysteries.
Consider a murder scene the PCs are investigating. There's a muddy footprint. It matches the butler's shoe. It's a short mystery. However, the PC's don't know about the muddy foot print until they make a perception check. The DC is low. They fail. What do you do now?
Compare that to a combat encounter. The party faces a goblin gaurding a door. the party rolls badly and misses all attacks. The goblin attacks back. Then the party attacks again. If things go well, eventually the party will kill the goblin. If they don't the party can always run away, heal up, and try again later.
The difference is that in a "combat" adventure, it's pretty obvious what needs to be done. And if the party fails, they have chances to try again, including trying the exact same thing.
Whereas, a poorly designed mystery adventure has all the clues tied up in skill checks in order to unlock and advance the game. On the face, all these skill checks look like a great idea, finally a use for non-combat skills.
The real problem is that these skill checks are wired up as one-chance barriers, where it usually doesn't make sense to allow another try (because failing changes the situation in a way that prevents retries).
The solution is two-fold:
Firstly, try to accept plausible reasons for multiple attempts. The party can return to the scene of the crime (to check for missed clues again). They can run that analysis on that sample again. In both examples, the price is time. If the BBEG is a serial killer, the effect is, more time = more victims. You don't have to crank out a murder victim per retry, but you can throw one in, if they've taken a number of days, just to raise the stakes.
Secondly, make sure there are multiple clues/solutions. Just as "setting it on fire" is an often effective combat strategy, there are many valid ways to identify the killer. Make sure the killer has left multiple clues (perhaps different ones at each scene). You can also make it such that each crime scene has an easier clue. Thus, at a price of more victims, the murder gets easier to solve. This is fairly realistic, as murderers tend to get sloppier/bolder as they go.
I've got more thoughts on the topic of murder mysteries, but they'll have to wait until another day.
The original thread is here: URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246484-i-hate-mysteries.html"]http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246484-i-hate-mysteries.html[/url]
I see an interesting anomaly in game play with mysteries.
Consider a murder scene the PCs are investigating. There's a muddy footprint. It matches the butler's shoe. It's a short mystery. However, the PC's don't know about the muddy foot print until they make a perception check. The DC is low. They fail. What do you do now?
Compare that to a combat encounter. The party faces a goblin gaurding a door. the party rolls badly and misses all attacks. The goblin attacks back. Then the party attacks again. If things go well, eventually the party will kill the goblin. If they don't the party can always run away, heal up, and try again later.
The difference is that in a "combat" adventure, it's pretty obvious what needs to be done. And if the party fails, they have chances to try again, including trying the exact same thing.
Whereas, a poorly designed mystery adventure has all the clues tied up in skill checks in order to unlock and advance the game. On the face, all these skill checks look like a great idea, finally a use for non-combat skills.
The real problem is that these skill checks are wired up as one-chance barriers, where it usually doesn't make sense to allow another try (because failing changes the situation in a way that prevents retries).
The solution is two-fold:
Firstly, try to accept plausible reasons for multiple attempts. The party can return to the scene of the crime (to check for missed clues again). They can run that analysis on that sample again. In both examples, the price is time. If the BBEG is a serial killer, the effect is, more time = more victims. You don't have to crank out a murder victim per retry, but you can throw one in, if they've taken a number of days, just to raise the stakes.
Secondly, make sure there are multiple clues/solutions. Just as "setting it on fire" is an often effective combat strategy, there are many valid ways to identify the killer. Make sure the killer has left multiple clues (perhaps different ones at each scene). You can also make it such that each crime scene has an easier clue. Thus, at a price of more victims, the murder gets easier to solve. This is fairly realistic, as murderers tend to get sloppier/bolder as they go.
I've got more thoughts on the topic of murder mysteries, but they'll have to wait until another day.
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Comments
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I believe it was originally said at the Alexandrian that if you leave three clues out,the PCs will:
* Completely miss one clue.
* Find another clue and decide it's not important.
* Locate a third clue and grossly misinterpret it.
* Head down the right path due to a fourth clue you didn't expect them to find.
It's more true than I care to admit.
Posted 11th December 2008 at 07:15 PM by RukiTanuki
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