Neverending "Yes ... And" Feedback Loops in Mysteries

[DEFCON 1]

To me doing that ruins the experience, since they essentially didn't discover anything, instead they made it up and are being manipulated into thinking they discovered it. It's basically the quantum ogre, only you've forced the player's idea into reality instead of your own.

They don't know that. Only you do as the DM. So their experience is the same either way-- they thought of an idea and the idea worked.

So given the choice, I'd rather have happy players that actually get what they are looking for and continue to move their actions forward to continue their story, rather than them circling the same drain for 3 hours with their thumbs up their butts unable to go anywhere. But your mileage may vary.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They don't know that. Only you do as the DM. So their experience is the same either way-- they thought of an idea and the idea worked.

So given the choice, I'd rather have happy players that actually get what they are looking for and continue to move their actions forward to continue their story, rather than them circling the same drain for 3 hours with their thumbs up their butts unable to go anywhere. But your mileage may vary.

Fair enough for you, but to me that is just lying to your players in order to pander to their ideas and renders those ideas meaningless, because they didn't exist in the setting until the players unknowingly changed reality. I don't like that under any circumstances, but particularly in an investigation I feel it completely negates the point of doing it at all.

 

[Umbran]

If players are latching onto unrelated flavor... then don't give out unrelated flavor. Give them the answers they seek when they go asking around for it. Push the story forward.

"Yes... and that's not relevant at the moment."

 

[payn]

One thing I dont recommend is letting the players spin their wheels forever. I had a GM who prided himself on letting the players explore open worlds and gave them total agency. However, he had a specific route and resolution in mind. Even though, the players would waste hours chasing red herrings they would eventually find the one path forward. It was worse than being railroaded, which it essentially was in the end anyways.

 

[overgeeked]

Welcome to the sprawl, aka mission creep.

This is one of the many reasons why you don't take rules like "yes, and..." out of their original context and apply them in a different context. The "yes, and..." rule from improv has a very specific and limited use. It's there to help establish a scene, to collaboratively build the scene together, up until you find the game of the scene, then you stop using "yes, and..." to build. Unless you want the game to endlessly sprawl, stop using "yes, and..."

Look into the already mentioned three-clue rule. It works great for mysteries.

I've found simply writing down the specific clue the PCs are meant to find (on a 3x5 card) in a given scene and literally handing them the clue works great. Be sure to write down what the clue is, i.e. what they've actually found, and not what the clue means...that's up to the PCs/players to decide. This is one of three clues they can find in a scene. Tell them that. "There are three clues in this scene." Hand them the card of each clue as they find it. When they get the last clue tell them that. "This is the third and final clue of the scene."

This functions like both a progress clock and an easy way to look back over the clues they've found to remind themselves of what they've done, what clues they have (because they're literally in their hands), and a way to keep them on track.

This is also why you should never include anything like a red herring in an RPG mystery. The players are their own red herrings. They will latch onto anything and spin it into the most wild and outlandish theories. If you let them they will suddenly create a globe-spanning conspiracy out of a simple smash-and-grab at the local bodega.

The other option is to scrap what you had and build an entirely new campaign based on the PCs'/players' wild theories. That can be a lot of fun.

If you need more combat, use the old pulp trick of sending a goon in with a gun...or any other era/genre appropriate weapon.

 

[Retreater]

This is also why you should never include anything like a red herring in an RPG mystery. The players are their own red herrings. They will latch onto anything and spin it into the most wild and outlandish theories. If you let them they will suddenly create a globe-spanning conspiracy out of a simple smash-and-grab at the local bodega.

I'm not including deliberate red herrings. I am answering questions they give, but they're not relevant.
For example, the artifact was stolen from the museum - and they know who took it.
Them: "What is the history of the artifact? Where was it found before going to the museum? Can you tell us about the long-dead empire that the artifact belonged to? Can we get this high level NPC to help us - wait, they're 'too busy' to do the quest for us ... they must be in on it? Let's start investigating that NPC and her church."
Me: "Or you know that the villain has contacts in a neighborhood in the city. You think there are agents of his cult there. You could try to go there and find him before he skips town. They found his crashed carriage in the neighborhood and saw him walk into that building right there. That's probably a good place to look."
Them: "We should go to the library and see if we can find out what this artifact does."
Me: "Uh ... okay. If you want to spend the day doing that while he boards the next lightning rail out of town."

 

[RenleyRenfield]

This is a problem I've had over the past 30 years I've been GMing, especially when I'm running a homebrew adventure that has mystery elements.

The party goes to interview someone or research a topic. You don't want to just say "no - they refuse to talk to you" or "no - you can't find any information," so you put a little bit of flavor in there, something seemingly unrelated. And then it ends up in an endless loop of tangled conspiracy theories, no one able to focus on the original mission, feeling they can't trust anyone because everyone has some dark secret.

We are two sessions in what was supposed to be a simple heist adventure, and it's ballooned into a continent-spanning conspiracy between two rival nations and two rival cults - so four major factions. The characters are still 1st level.

What do you do in this situation? Just tell them "no, stop looking for clues and do the obvious thing that you need to do."

(To further complicate the situation, I have two players who want mostly to roleplay and investigate - perfectly happy with no fights at all. I have two other players bored out of their minds and disengaging about the convoluted plot.)

I'm gonna be sticky icky here... but this is 100% the GM's fault, and signs of a GM who likely doesn't have a mystery, so they are just avoiding giving actual clues and don't have real answers.

Let me explain...

"Yes...And" implies the GM is giving something valuable to the And part.

If the Mystery is really a man in a mask going around with techno-kits to make electrics go haywire as if possessed by ghosts to tenants move out and he buys up the lot...

Player says "I look for a clue in the haunted house and see why the lights flicker oddly"
Bad Yes And from GM = "The lights seem to be on the same timer and system as the rest of the house." = this literally did nothing for the player.... So now the player has to think of random stuff until they can fit that pointless 'clue' into whatever conspiracy they can think of.

A clue must always =

• Tell the character where to go get a clue next, or...
• Tell the character which suspect is exonerated, or...
• Tell the character a truth about what the goals of the mystery is, or...
• Tell the character a weakness on how to defeat the mystery, or...
• Tell the character what the mystery is going to try next.

So to do better, we need to alter the clue we gave above to be something like...
Good Yes And from GM = "The lights are on the same remote circuit the rest of the electronics are in the house, all of it can be controlled remotely. And the camera was the first item to turn on and record out front when this haunting happened." = now we now a clue 'something about remote electronics' and we know where to check next 'the door camera'. This does not reveal the whole mystery, but it keeps things moving along.

They go to the door camera, they get the footage of a van drive up, stop, house goes nuts, then drive off. They get a license plate or name off the van, and know where to check next...

See? the Mystery is trundling along, clue after clue. At any time the players can go elsewhere, try other things, and that's fine. It's ok to point clues at the same next spot (or a few spots in case you have several actors in the mystery). Eventually they get to the place the van parks, they break in and see all the remote control equipment and they find records of locations where value is high and all being bought out by same agency... and so on... even in my simple example, the mystery would take the players 10 stage to resolve = but it would always resolve.

because all of the "Yes, you find a clue And...." keeps giving them things that resolve the mystery, tells them where to go, and give them the info to know "who, what, why, and how do I defeat"

 

[SJB]

Raymond Chandler: “When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. This could get to be pretty silly but somehow it didn’t seem to matter.”

= too much checking for traps, listening at doors and they get wandering monsters.

 

[SJB]

Double post removed.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm not including deliberate red herrings.

Okay, but...

I am answering questions they give, but they're not relevant.

That's more commonly known as a red herring.

Anything and everything you give the players in a mystery that is not a neon-glowing, seizure-inducing flashing sign pointed directly at the actual mystery is a red herring.

This is the problem with the referee having the mystery solved in front of them and handing out vague clues to the players and hoping they'll connect the dots in the exact right way. It's quite literally putting them in an open-world sandbox and getting frustrated when they don't follow the carefully prepared and linear story.

You have to pick one or the other.

Either they're in an open-world sandbox with infinite options, which all but guarantees they'll walk right on by your mystery...or they're in a linear mystery plot that will keep pointing them right back to the mystery you have prepped.

I've run Call of Cthulhu for decades. It's a really common problem with mysteries. It's also why running published scenarios is so common.

Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough: go read the Alexandrian's three-clue rule and node-based design. These are absolutely required reading for trying to run mysteries.