D&D 5E Designing Investigative Adventures

aco175 · Nov 22, 2017

How much of a 4-hour slot is dedicated to playing and work back from there. I would think by the time people are seated and gone through introductions you used 15 minutes and wrap up takes 15 minutes, or the final encounter goes long into the wrap-up time. Now there is only 3.5 hours which is 4 combats if a couple are easy/average and a couple hard/deadly. I think that non-combat encounters are shorter that combat ones, but not always true and may need prodding forward.

Opening scene 15 minutes to lay out quest and meet NPCs
Easy encounter and clue investigation
choice to which clue to follow up on. Either may lead to another fight or one may lead to non-fight.
Another clue leading to puzzle or trap. Maybe fight with trap.
Final area with solving mystery and clues used in some meaningful way
BBEG fight
Wrap up and player discussion.

Not sure if this is too much for 4 hours.

Grumbleputty · Nov 22, 2017

an honest question- if you're fighting a 4 hour time slot, how much time for false leads do you allow for before the mystery basically becomes unsolvable? Do you allow for one red herring, or two, or three?

hbarsquared · Nov 22, 2017

Something I've wanted to try, but haven't tried myself, is to use one of those logic puzzles as a structure. You know, "Adam's toy isn't red. Brittany's toy is bigger than Cathy's." A minimum number of "clues" allows you to fill out the whole grid and determine every variable.

Oofta · Nov 23, 2017

hbarsquared said:
Something I've wanted to try, but haven't tried myself, is to use one of those logic puzzles as a structure. You know, "Adam's toy isn't red. Brittany's toy is bigger than Cathy's." A minimum number of "clues" allows you to fill out the whole grid and determine every variable.

The problem with such puzzles is that they challenge the players not the PCs. Some people enjoy that, some people don't. In a home game I know my players and can design things accordingly, much more difficult for a public game.

When I've done things like that I gave riddles - the first was hard and if the players didn't figure it out they could have their PCs make the appropriate check or take some other action. They then got a clue to solving the riddle.

The problem is, if you have to solve a puzzle to advance, what value does the puzzle add other than the fun of solving the puzzle itself (which may not be fun for everyone).

Back to the OP, there should be possible negatives to not solving the mystery such as taking longer to get to your goal so you only have a partial success in the end and so on. In other words, you find the Barron von Evilguy was the real culprit but because you took too long to figure it out, he was able to slay Lady Holyangel before you arrive. Yes you got the bad guy but now who will run the orphanage?

Ibn Khaldun · Nov 23, 2017

I think that if I were going to run a mystery type adventure I’d structure it much more like a film noir, Maltese Falcon let’s say, than an Agatha Christie Hercules Poirot type. So much less, if at all, about clues, and much more about navigating a rogues gallery cast of characters who all try to push and pull the players towards their own angles all arranged around a shared goal.

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MerricB · Dec 7, 2017

Grumbleputty said:
an honest question- if you're fighting a 4 hour time slot, how much time for false leads do you allow for before the mystery basically becomes unsolvable? Do you allow for one red herring, or two, or three?

Not that many! I've realised that I designed the main false lead as a "fall forward" affair which gives you a clue leading to the true solution.

I'm going to be very interested to see how it works "in the wild" once it gets released. (Playtesting was encouraging).

Cheers!

Piratecat · Dec 7, 2017

MerricB said:
It is, although I've found the GUMSHOE system (in particular, Trail of Cthulhu) pretty impenetrable when I try to read it. I found it terrible at explaining HOW to use it.

Merric, you may have read one of the earlier versions of the rules. Nowadays in TimeWatch, Night's Black Agents, and the like, the rules are really straightforward and much easier to wrap your arms around.