How to deliver clues to the PCs?

[Janx]

In the case of a murder mystery, I look at that every thing ultimately leads back to the killer. Even a red herring. So when the PC follows a false clue (one planted by the bad guy) at some point, they get to the end that reveals how it was faked. Thus, you have a safety check on a red herring.

Plus, I don't believe in using red herrings (or betrayals, etc) very often. Make things straightforward the majority of the time, so the change-up has impact.

In the case of the OP, the bad guys overthrew the government. There has been no new king in X years. Seriously, how much of a secret is it that somebody's been messing with the government.

When bad guys take over power, they restrict freedoms, are hyper vigilant for dissenters, because they know people are gunning for them. Not replacing the king is such blatant move that I wonder if you've made a mistake in classifying it as a secret.

a secret society taking over power uses puppet rulers, in hopes that nobody suspects. Thus, the old king may be killed, but a "new" heir appears to take the thrown. One who takes his orders from elsewhere. Or he's replaced with a doppelganger, who also takes his orders from elsewhere. Or it's the BBEG himself, pretending to be the kindly new king.

With a no-king scenario, its obvious that somebody is blocking his replacement. Start making the government intruding on the PCs lives, and the players will go into secret rebellion mode.

 

[not_me]

Awesome, thank you everyone! I do now wish I'd asked this before I began running this part of the adventure, rather than 2/3 of the way through it. Eep. I have some catching up to do! (and I am so saving this thread to disk such that I can refer to it if there's a next time... )

I may be at a point where I will need to get overt for a while to ensure the clues/knowledge is on track for the position in the mystery.

Possible overtnesses:

- The PCs have just defeated one of the replaced Dukes (they've discovered the real one was killed and an imposter put in his place, whom they've just taken out and ended the nasty ritual going on beneath the manor). In his posessions is a book written in code -- the fake duke was cocky, and left the cypher nearby easily found. (as an aside -- something like the magic item Reading Spectacles, should it be able to decypher code? or assist?)

- In this book it lists bits of the overall plot

- In this book it lists a courier or trade route or some other way the PCs can find their way to the lair/HQ (any ideas of what exactly that would be interesting?)

- The PCs just interrupted a ritual -- studying the runes used in the ritual circles indicates what the big bads may be up to (porting part of the abyss to the prime material plane, as it turns out)

- The next part of the adventure I was going to have the PCs have to return to their home-base barony to defend against a military invasion from the neighbouring Dutchy. During or after the battle, somehow get info? Find the military commander who has unsealed orders? Have some troops defect with some info? Assasins or members of the guild are in amongst the troops, find, capture, interrogate?

- One of the PCs is from a powerful monastery in the area. They have lots of information at their fingertips. Something they can pass along to help the party? (I am concerned this will feel as though they didn't solve it, ie, being outshone)

- Any and other and more ideas more than welcomed!

Thanks again. This is my first, well, really this campaign is the first campaign I've fully DMed so this is definitively my first mystery adventure. And I so don't want to dissapoint.

(in fairness, the players have been great at putting things together so far, and it's exciting when they do! I just need to be sure I'm putting enough out there so that they don't feel like they're spinning their wheels and not getting somewhere quickly enough....)

not_me

 

[Hassassin]

If the PCs find a "clue" that wasn't supposed to mean anything, consider having it be an actual clue.

 

[eamon]

This...

When I do a mystery, I don't think the 3 clues idea goes far enough.

Basically, what I do is make solving the mystery incredibly difficult--totally unreasonable. Then I flood it with clues, some related to objects, some related to those mistakes that Janx mentioned, etc. Some clues are minor, some are bigger. Some clues are easy to find. Some are pratically impossible.

and this...

If the PCs find a "clue" that wasn't supposed to mean anything, consider having it be an actual clue.

Because it's so hard to find clues in an role-playing setting (you're not actually there, so it's much harder to see things in context), and there can be simple misinterpretations all the time, you really want to make sure there are enough clues. Even clues that are retrospective ;-) - just to compensate for the inherent difficulty in RPG's. Oh, and don't underestimate the difficulty of putting together clues from differing sessions. It's common for people to forget all kinds of stuff from last session, and if clues aren't decisive in and of themselves (and the best clues require a bit of combination, of course), then it doesn't represent something very memorable. So you may need to note down which clues they "found" to remind them at opportune moments (either explicitly, or by appropriately jogging their memory).

You know, I guess D&D games are kind of like Memento: the protagonists have the attention span of a goldfish ;-).

 

[NewJeffCT]

I usually deliver clues via post owl...

just kidding, of course, but while my players are all pretty smart individuals, I subscribe to the KISS method of delivering clues - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

If you try to get too fancy or complex, you risk the players losing interest in solving the puzzles to just get to the clues, or having them spend too much time at the gaming table debating what exactly each clue means and what to do after that. If they spend so much time on that, they can lose focus on the story and the campaign.

Which brings me to a corollary to that - don't have too many clues. The rule of three above is a good idea, but more than three clues at a time is just too much. If they can't figure it out within three clues, it's too complex and needs to be revised. Tracking down a bunch of clues, interpreting each of them and then deciding where to go next works great in a mystery novel, but does not always play out well at the gaming table.

And, if they don't figure it out after three clues, I'll usually introduce some sort of NPC informant or some other way for them to get the information more directly. I would rather not have them spend an entire session arguing about which clues mean what.

 

[NewJeffCT]

- One of the PCs is from a powerful monastery in the area. They have lots of information at their fingertips. Something they can pass along to help the party? (I am concerned this will feel as though they didn't solve it, ie, being outshone)

I would use this as a last resort place of information (i.e., the NPC informant I mentioned in my post above) However, I would just use the NPC monk to help them make sense of the clues. The PCs would be the one doing the dirty work of stopping the ritual and defeating the bad guys there.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Which brings me to a corollary to that - don't have too many clues. The rule of three above is a good idea, but more than three clues at a time is just too much. If they can't figure it out within three clues, it's too complex and needs to be revised. Tracking down a bunch of clues, interpreting each of them and then deciding where to go next works great in a mystery novel, but does not always play out well at the gaming table.

And, if they don't figure it out after three clues, I'll usually introduce some sort of NPC informant or some other way for them to get the information more directly. I would rather not have them spend an entire session arguing about which clues mean what.

Note that you are discussing from a totally different set of assumption than some of us were advocating. What you say is fine if you want the patina of a mystery, but it is not a major focus of the adventure. This is especially true if the players don't much like mystery solving. Finally, it assumes that the players will need all or most of the clues (however many there are), if they are to solve the mystery. If that is true, then your absolute maximum is seven clues, and you'll need to provide some of them in the same place. And you'll need to be very concious of "unity of time and place" in the context of the adventure, so that the clues are all gathered at roughly the same time. Limiting yourself to three is not a bad rule of thumb, in that environment.

But if you want an actual mystery, as a major focus, possibly over more than one adventure, you have to accept that clues will be found over time. Players will forget/misinterpret. They will miss some (or you'll have to ham-handedly give them the missed ones, which has its own problems). And this is all magnified if your players like mysteries. So in that environment, you accept those as the parameters and work with it. One of the most important things you can do is immediately drop any conceit that every clue matters--or even that any particular clue conclusively matters. Making the mystery hard but the clues plentiful firmly breaks this conceit.

Because games don't work like mystery novels.

 

[invokethehojo]

These are the kinds of campaigns I run, and what I have learned is this: do not worry about the clues, instead, get a feel for the situation. Define this group of assassins, their basic locations, their motivations, a little of their hierarchy, and most importantly their feel. Treat them like their own little ecosystem. Now when the players arrive the ecosystem will adapt, and as long as you have a good feel for it, it will adapt organically, not in predetermined ways. As your players encounter these assassins the clues will write themselves.

This is my process, might not work for everyone.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

NotMe, for your aside.. no, Reading Spectacles should not reveal the cipher. IMHO, breaking a cipher can be as rewarding to a player as beating a BBEG.

That being said, with ciphers you have to ride the line between doing just skill checks {boring!} and confusing the player with something out of their reach {also boring}

If you can leak out hints on how to solve the cipher and engage the players at their level of skill and motivation, breaking the cipher turns into a great minigame.



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[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=17085]not_me[/MENTION]

Have you considered using a logic puzzle?

For example, the PCs want to find the BBEG's lair and their leads indicate 3-5 features/clues about the lair. They get these clues automatically (though you might encourage a player to take notes if they don't already). However, there are other possible sites for which *some* of these clues are true. Only the actual lair has all of them apply. Of course, you'll want to drop hints about potential lairs and draw on locations already familiar to your players.

Imagine it is a grid, with clues along the Y axis and possible lair sites along the X access. Say the first clue is a trade route the guild uses leading through a frost giant jarl's territory. Go across your table at place an 'x' under each potential lair to which that clue applies. It doesn't apply to at least one - that's the rule. This allows the PCs to apply process of elimination with each clue they learn.

I've run several mysteries this way, and as long as your players are interested and it's no more than a 50% beer n pretzels game, this technique works great.