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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8171567">Certainly the players can take things to a lab for analysis if that is a resource available to them. It is also worth considering how modern law enforcement gathers evidence if the players are in the FBI or something. If that is the case you can also have evidence gathering teams, and the situation might be more about the players directing where those teams go. Another thing modern games introduce is phone communication. A good example of this in an investigation like show is 24 (which made cell phones central just as they were starting to become ubiquitous). That changed so much in terms of how the characters got information in the field (to the point that there is a parody of 24 set in the 90s where Jack Bauer has to use the pay phone to communicate with Chloe). These are the kinds of alternative paths to a solution I think the GM has to be open to. The way I look at a mystery adventure is I don't worry about the players moving through a bunch of preset place or steps I wanted them to. I come up with a background event that happened, think about where all the clues would plausibly be, apply principles like the the three clue rule (not 100% but I check in on whether clues are abundant enough), then I let the players investigate and see what happens. I also usually have some kind of terrible outcome if they don't solve it by a certain point so things stay interesting. Sometimes I mix this process up, but basically this is it. So usually i have a map of the places and characters where the clues are (or I have a bunch of entries for each of these things). But again, that is more like a base or starting point. If someone was shot in the street, and I have two witnesses who are in custody who are the noted clue bearers for the attackers identity or description, but my players decide instead to go to every single house and see who saw something (and I think to myself, yeah, I guess somebody would have seen something----I live on a street with houses and look out the window when something sounding like gunfire makes a noise), I think it is reasonable and fair to say they can get the information from this path rather than going to the suspects in custody. I find something like this happens several times when I run mysteries.</blockquote>

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