How to make a good Investigation Adventure?

[Baumi]

I'm a long time RPG-player but I have not much experience as a GM, so I try some Adventures with different styles to see what fit me as GM and what the Players like most.

But I have a hard time to imagine how you can plan an Investigation Adventure where you have to find the clues (not just follow the Line of Monsters to their Lair ) to find out out why the things are happening (more and more people fall into coma) and where the big bad Enemys are.

So can anyone tell me how you prepare such Adventures?

Thx!
Baumi

 

[MonkeyBoy]

Start at the begining.

Decide exactly Who is doing What, How they are doing it and Why.

You need good solid answers to all of those before you can begin to get a plot together, unless its "the monsters live in the hole in the ground because thats where they live".

Once you have this you can put together the plan that Who is going to be following. The How and Why will give you how the What falls into a plan.

Take absolutely NO account of the PCs at this point. Plan "in character" as the Who, planning to succeed, but maybe putting in a few contingencies. (and playing a mean pinball )

Once you have this you'll have a sort of timeline, in a very rough form, for what will happen without PC interraction.

Now shoe-horn in one (or, better, more) hooks. These are real plot hooks, not "the PCs hear about the hole in the ground full of monsters in the tavern" type plot hooks. They are the wrinkles in the Who's execution of the plan which give A; a shoe-in for the PCs to get going (i.e. they contribute a clue or lead) and B; provide the motivation for the PCs to care, by whatever means.

If you give yourself a nice spread of these hooks, you can re-use the ones that aren't needed as hooks for upping the ante, or to nudge the PCs along (each gives a lead or clue, you see, and also increases motivation...)

Right, the best trick, IMO, at this point is to plan a session where A; other stuff continues, or distracts and B; you feed in your hooks.

At the end of this session you should either know that all your hooks sucked (the players didn't care or didn't attach great significance to them) in which case you make more, better, hooks. This just makes the fore-shadowing seem all the more cunning once the plot is revealed, so no problem there.

Or you have your players hooked, and also have some idea of how they look likely to approach the problem. In the space between this session and the next you flesh out a little of where the intrigue is going (more hooks, but these are triggered by the players' investigations, not sprung on them), and put more detail into the areas that look like the players are going to probe into.

Be blunt; at the end of the sessions ask the players what they think is happening, and what they reckon they'll want to do next. Then invent bits to fit.

Remember throughout that your players don't know what you've prepped, so you are free to alter and revise on the fly..

2 cheesy tricks:

Making the players feel clever after they've worked hard is simple; just wait a while and then decide that one of the ideas they have kicked around becomes the truth (i.e. scrap your plan and go with theirs). Feeling like you solved the mystery by great intuition is fun

Surprising the players with a twist is equally simple; between the penultimate and ultimate sessions of the mystery, totally change the end plot. (keep things consistent) Make the useful contact have been leading them astray, add in a new revelation which makes this clear, then reveal the plot suddenly. If you make this decision late, you _cannot_ give away the game too early, works a treat!

You do need to put in fleshing out and revision effort in between every pair of sessions. If you think about it, there are few campaign threads which rely more heavily on player interraction and player direction than a mystery; they have to investigate, and for that to feel real to the players their methods of investigation have to be seen to affect the development of the investigation. You cannot have that if you've decided everything weeks in advance, you'll end up with the "single secret door" problem. You will also need to be capable of adding extra clues should yours prove beyond the players, or changing details of the plot if things look too easy. This does give you the option to tweak the difficulty to get that golden "we worked hard, but succeeded on our own merits" feeling for your players.

The "one secret door" problem is one where the whole dungeon resolves to "find and get through this door to finish" - if you don't find the door, the dungeon is impossible (many 1st ed. dungeons have this problem; presumably someone once throught tat was a good idea )

For a mystery the problem of the solution resolving to "find or understand this SINGLE clue" is entirely analogous. If you plan it all ahead you WILL produce a linear plot, with a single crux.

If you plan as you go, reacting to the players' choices, you will also produce a linear plot, with a single crux But that crux will be where the players are, so it won't FEEL linear to them!

 

[Kugar]

MB has great Ideas!

If you are running an invstigation, there are going to be points where your PCs run into a dead end. They will blink at you, sigh, and look at you with puppy dog eyes until someone says "I don't know what's next. Let's head to the XX". XX has to contain something to move the plot along. If you were obvious enough with your discription - XX will be where you planned on them going. Most often it will be a Tavern.

The more detialed your world and NPCs are the less this will happen. This is why investigations tend to work better in modern settings. Players are more familar with the resorces available to them - universities, libraries, police, internet, newspapers.

In a typical DnD world you need creative players to get the information and it will be frustrating when you run your first investigations. Spoon feed them at first and then pull back the help and let them learn how to get information themselves. Don't feel to bad if you have to shoehorn in some leads. Look how cheesey and linear a lot of great movie plots are at the core.

Summary: Investigations are helped by a detailed area, creative players, and experience. As long as you know the overall plot - cheating every once in a while may be needed to move the story (PS - Don't forget the fighting if that is what your group likes)

 

[willpax]

In addition...

These are all good suggestions.

Here's one more: I examine all the group's capabilities for investigation (possible contacts in the area, professional organizations, knowledge skills, libraries, diplomacy, gather info, sneaking and listening, or actually breaking in to various places).

For each possible exercise of PC skill, I think of a potential clue that could be unearthed. For some skills (such as the uber-investigation skill of gather info) I will break it down into success levels: if they make a DC 15, they learn this; at DC 20, they learn this, and so on. I try to over-clue the area (all the while being faithful to my what-happens-if-the-group-doesn't-intervene timeline) so that failure to investigate along one line doesn't make it impossible to solve the mystery.

Being explicit in this way allows you to dangle multiple carrots in front of the players, and allows them to feel they can accomplish something (always an enjoyable feeling). If possible within the mystery conception, try to make sure that even the non-optimized-for-investagtion characters can contribute something useful. There may be a sergeant of the guard who only bothers to open up to "real" people (i.e., people who are good at fighting). The bard could learn this detail through gather info, and then send the fighter to learn what the guard knows (for example).

If you think these things out somewhat beforehand, you will be better able to deal with the sudden shifts in focus and direction that this type of adventure can lead to, which in turn can give you some confidence. As you get more experienced running things this way, you'll get better at doing a lot of this on the fly, but it is often good to spell these things out beforehand when you are in training.

I hope it goes well!

 

[Neo]

Dissection is the key

First decide on what you want the ultimate goal to be,

next decide on where and how you want the PC's to begin the mystery, this sets the scene, gives you your overall location, and start point.

Then dissect you ultimate goals down into parts, making sure the clues link together, be it a tangible physical clue or a verbal spoken clue recieved from an NPc or the like. and simply work from one point towards the other, adding as many steps as you feel are necessary.

It's also usually a good plan to provide alternate clues, as only having one means to get from clue A to clue B can make the whole thing fall apart if the players can't work it out.

Also be sure you know their group, and their capabilities. try to put the clues in to suit the players, styles of play..as this makes the discovery process far more personal and relevant to the group, and the styles of play they enjoy.

Be sure to keep the mystery, don;t make the clues so obvious they give the plot away before the finale, throw in a few dead ends and false leads, a distraction ro teo that has nothing to do with the central plot.

And finally, be sure the mystery is "Relevant" or important enough to keep them motivated enough to carry out tracing the clues to the ultimate end, otherwise a group will get bored, distracted and tend to wander off plot with no desire to return. tease them with small but signifcant success at various points along the mystery, that give them a bit more of the puzzle than normal, but not enough to give the game away...tantalise them, and keep them thinking.

 

[MonkeyBoy]

Re: In addition...

If possible within the mystery conception, try to make sure that even the non-optimized-for-investagtion characters can contribute something useful.

Mmmm.

I always treat the "investigation skills" as crutches.

By that I mean this; your average person can walk, right? But sometimes, they will be in a position where a crutch will help them (twisted ankle, whatever). Assume your average person can "investigate", but that on occaision they will get benefit from their "crutches":

Make all / plenty of your info findable without ANY rolls; if Hengist knows X, make sure that any PC who treats Hengist "right", and asks can find out the info. ("right" can vary from buying a drink, making friends with through to threats) Be open to the player simply saying "Right, Hengist - gimme the facts, or its teeth-smashing time!" (and you not saying "make an intimidate roll") Its also a case of making the appropriate method of interaction pay off; Its no use deciding that Hengist must be intimidated and then setting the DC at 35! (you just made that secret door un-findable, kind of like a 1st edition party with no elf in most of those modules...) If Hengist should be intimidated, make him timid - both easy to intimidate, and also giving a clue as to how to get around him

Fall back on the rules if the players either want to ("I intimidate Hengist, trying to get him to spill the beans" is a good indicator) or if they suit the method better ("I go Gather Information tonight") or if you want to speed the game.

Relying on them to determine access to the info leads you straight back to "one secret door". (as in "Sorry, you didn't scare Hengist, so the information stays put; now the princess dies.")

I find that these kinds of adventures really work well in 2 ways;

In fantasy I tend to use this kind of stuff to make sure that the setting gets explored - say to introduce a setting, or to move to a more settled game. You can introduce a lot of your setting ideas via Hengist telling them to go see X...
Of course, I'm a firm believer in the concept that the best campaigns are only ever planned 1 session in advance. Personally I plan enough things for each session to fill 3 sessions, then see which happen and wing it as the session progresses. Before next session i've then got a clearer picture of what bits of the left-overs make sense to do next time, where there are gaps and what modifications need to be made to the old plans.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Investigatory adventures are among my favorite types. The first advice I would give is that there are really two types of investigatory adventures; figure out which type of investigatory adventure you want to run.

The first type is "investigation as framework." In this mode of game, the investigation is pretty straightforward: you go to a place, interact with the encounter, get the hook for the next encounter, and then go there. The encounters can have different forms: decode a message, interrogate a witness, fight the guards to get into an area where a clue is. But the game is actually linear (or at most location matrix) driven. This can be a satisfying framework, but isn't really an investigation: it just feels like one. Nothing is ever terribly difficult to figure out, it's just a fun plot device.

The second type (which I prefer) is a true mystery. In a true mystery, the PCs are actually trying to figure things out. The first key is to make the mystery good. This is all about context: why did people do what they did. Motive is everything. To get a sense of what makes a good mystery, read lots of them (especially the style where the reader is trying to figure out the mystery at the same time as the sleuth is). You can also watch good TV mysteries; I recommend _Law & Order_. The second key is put multiple clues, more than you think you need in, and always give multiple leads. You always want the players thinking, "well, we could go talk to the spice merchants at the bizarre, or we could check out that lead with the dock workers, and I'd still like to search the victim's rooms more carefully for clues." Always have multiple leads for them to follow...it prevents things from stagnating, and allows you to seed each track with clues, so they can gather enough clues even after they inevitably miss some.

I strongly disagree with the "I'll figure it out as I go along" approach for a true mystery (although it works fine for an investigation-style not-true-mystery game). It cheapens the victory. Also, ultimately you want the players to look at the whole pattern that they've figured out and have the realization of how it makes sense, and how it fits into broader patterns in the gameworld. If you're just adopting their theory, or winging it, you can't get the same level of satisfaction. As I said before, by the end they should thoroughly understand the context and be completely confident in the answer they've worked out.

Hope this helps, and good luck! Investigations are one of the most satisfying styles of games to play in, and to run!

Cerebral Paladin

 

[Baumi]

THANKS!!

 

[Darklone]

Hehehehehehehehehehe

Another plot thread successfully answered without being moved to plots

 

[Baumi]

This is no discussion about a plot, its just about how you would Gamemaster this style of adventure.

Anyway....

Have FUN!
Graf Flanf