How to deliver clues to the PCs?

[not_me]

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.

I've done the former -- they're working their own angle, and have been adapting to the PCs actions -- but I haven't done a good job of ensuring that the proper clues are being left along the way. Looking back, now I see I had the organization as an ecosystem, but the clues were static. Oops.

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.

Ok, cool. That's what I ruled at the moment ... now I just need to put in a good clue/etc towards the cypher itself!

[MENTION=17085]not_me[/MENTION]

Have you considered using a logic puzzle?

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.

Very interesting! I like that idea... ... for the next time, sigh, again, I really should have posted this at the start of the campaign. There's only one or two chapters left in this module before they should be at the BBEG's lair. (then it's a break before the final module...)

Thanks all for the insights! I'll probably have to tread closely to the line of 'unsatisfactory paint in the sky with big letters' to wrap this up. And I have retconned things a few times already in the game (usually the next session for just something we clearly moofed up on) so another one or two here might not hurt all that much...

let the clues roll free,

not_me

 

[Janx]

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.

Maybe another way to look at it is that the "answer" shouldn't be more than 3 clues deep.

As with Motive, Means and Opportunity (3 traits about each suspect). When you have all three, the clues lead to the answer (only one suspect actually has all 3, and they lied about one of them).

I tend to assume the PCs will succeed, unless they do something really stupid, or wreckless. Thus, if the PCs pursue a goal, I will reward their effort with another piece of the puzzle.

So when the PCs pursue 1 clue, make that clue lead to another clue (or even 3 clues). Whichever of those new 3 clues they pursue, reward them with another 3 clues. That's actually 7 clues (which might be what CJ alluded to).

In which case, when the PCs find one clue about this organization, if they follow it, they get the next set of clues.

Ultimately, it means the PCs will reach the BBEG. And they didn't necessarily "solve" the puzzle. If you want to make them work for it, then don't automatically reward generic pursuit of a clue. If they wallow, bring in new information that reveals they went the wrong way. So they can decide to try a different approach (hopefully the right one).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So when the PCs pursue 1 clue, make that clue lead to another clue (or even 3 clues). Whichever of those new 3 clues they pursue, reward them with another 3 clues. That's actually 7 clues (which might be what CJ alluded to).

No, the limit of 7, for the style Jeff was advocating, was based on the idea that the average person can't keep in their head at once more than 7 parts of a whole. So if you want to play a style where every clue is practically crucial, then your reasonable limit is 7. You will then need to back away from that limit, because of the various problems already discussed -- multiple sessions, misunderstandings between DM and players, etc.

At its most extreme, if you really wanted to run that style and wanted 7 clues--then you would probably need to put all 7 clues in one place, have them found and acted upon immediately. Perhaps there is a large chamber with a few exits from which to choose, and all 7 clues are in the chamber.

In contrast, what I was advocating was another style altogether, where clues are found over time--maybe many months of real time. I once successfully ran a mystery of this nature where the last relevant clue was found over a calender year after the first such clue, and the solution was not discovered over 18 months after the mystery was first engaged. (Obviously, this was not the only story arc going. )

Once you decide to run that style, however, all of those issues with numbers of clues and possibly confusing circumstances do not merely disappear. So you use lots of clues and make none of them crucial. In that long mystery story arc, there were somewhere around 25-30 clues. The party determined the answer with only 5-7 of those clues. (I don't remember exactly.)

They didn't even know there was a mystery to solve until they had the first couple of clues. Well, they didn't know anything about that particular mystery. They know that any given time, there are clues lying around to several mysteries, which they can pursue if it interests them. They find something odd, they file it away in their notes until it fits with something else later. Part of the fun is deciding which clues go with which mysteries.

Not that I'm a purist about this. Once they get on the hunt of a particular mystery, they start working hard to unbury more clues. They more they get, the more they know where they want to look next. At some point, they get the clue that lets them intuit the answer. They then only need a bit more information to make it all fall into place, via deduction, roleplaying, or more direct means. From their perspective, a clue or two is crucial. But they could just have easily pursued the solution in several other ways, some that don't even come out.