Investigation/Mystery Adventures

[Jack7]

I run a lot of investigation and murder mystery adventures and wanted to see how other GMs approach this adventure type. It is definitely a little tricky to get right. There are tons of pitfalls and there is a lot of bad advice out there on how to properly run investigations/mysteries.

One thing that works for me is throwing the whole idea that the PCs must solve the mystery out the window. Instead I make sure the adventure stays interesting whether they solve it or not. I've encoutered some advice that suggests PCs should always get the clues or effectively be assured victory, and that is fine for some people, but it never worked for me. I find my players appreciate solving a mystery more if the possibility of not solving it is real.

That said, they should be given a fair opportunity to get to the bottom of things. Handing them clues doesn't work, but neither does Mother May I. I like to make sure there are multiple leads, and multiple ways the mystery can be solves (I also like to be open-minded during play and give the players clues if they come up with an angle I didn't forsee, but makes sense).

The most important thing, IMO, is to make sure you understand the events surrounding the mystery or investigation. For example, if you have a basic murder mystery, you need a concrete timelie of events, people, etc. All the details of the murder itself (and its backstory) need to be fully constructed before you can move onto the cover up and to fleshing out investigation locations, etc. This is something that just comes with practice. Players have a habit of asking very specific questions (ones that don't often come up in mystery novels), so you just learn what kind of info will be needed over time.

I have also decided mysteries and investigations, even though they are largely location based in many cases, are fundamentally about the characters. The need characters who are memorable, make sense, and are consistent. Most of the fun comes from interacting with suspects, allies and witnesses.

Generally speaking BG, I think you have made an excellent assessment of case work, and use some excellent techniques in how you handle such situations. Especially the ones I highlighted/made bold above.

I'm a former PI myself (and man just tonight I was thinking about how much I miss it) and usually I run a game case the same as a real case.

Lots of surveillance of probable suspects, undercover work, informants, interviews and interrogations (when possible), reconstructions, etc.

And beleive me you won't solve every case, and sometimes you might not solve it til much later. I recently helped resolve a ten year old homicide cold case (I had first worked it right from the murder) about a year and a half ago, quite by accident, by having an unrelated conversation with one of the principles.

The feeling you get from something like that is indescribable. I had never really given up on it, but then again I had resolved that I would never resolve it. Unresolved cases, especially particularly violent felonies, stick with you. Resolving them when you think you might never, well, it's indescribable.

In the end all crimes are about people, offenders and victims. Come to know the Victim and you often come to know the Offender, even in stranger murders. Though often you don't know what you really know until you realize what you're looking at after a perp gets busted on a separate or unrelated charge and a tie in shakes loose. Then you realize that if you had just understood the victim better, you could have likely collared the real perp early on.

But in any case sounds like you have a good grasp of the concepts and how to work them.

 

[Guest 85555]

Thanks Jack. And thanks for sharing about your PI history. This is a little off topic, but may interest you. I once interviewed an old boxer who was a military policeman shortly after WWII. He started a private security/investigation company and told me a ton of interesting stories (but most were from the 50s and 60s). His speciality was protecting A-list hollywood types and he even ended up stopping a stalker of a famous actress from the time (have her name somewhere around here) and marrying her. Definitely sounded like interesting work.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Not quite relevant, but I HATE investigation/mystery adventures. Knowing which players enjoy that type of game is very important. It took me some time, but now I just say no to joining those games.

 

[Guest 85555]

Not quite relevant, but I HATE investigation/mystery adventures. Knowing which players enjoy that type of game is very important. It took me some time, but now I just say no to joining those games.

I'd say that is very relevant to a thread on Mystery/Investigations.

This is definitely a good observation. Mystery/Investigations are a bit like puzzle adventures, military campaigns, etc. Some people love them, and some people hate them. You don't want to run a group through something it hates.

For me, I had a similar revelation with dungeon crawls and combat heavy campaigns. I realized I get very, very bored when combat takes more than a few minutes. And I also don't have fun working my way through a dungeon. Knowing what you like and what you don't as a player is important because otherwise you'll just subject yourself to games that hold no interest for you.

 

[Janx]

I think this will depend on your players. Some players want a mystery because it is a fun puzzle to solve (and if success is a forgone conclusion it defeats the purpose for them); others want to experience the feel of a murder mystery but aren't as concerned about actually piecing the details together and solving the puzzle.

In my experience you play to the group. My default is to make failure a possibility, to include red herrings, and set it up so the players actually have to piece everything together like detectives. However I also realize some players want something else, so if I alter my approach as needed.

I think borrowing from Wycen's point can still be useful, even with allowing for failure.

For instance, following a valid clue should lead somewhere. Going off the trail should be revealed sooner, rather than later (a form of Cut to the Chase). Some NPC should reveal its a dead end.

Red herrings should be used sparingly. They are supposed to be a change of pace, to trick the player AFTER they've mastered the basic case. You don't need red herrings in the beginning because the format is tricky enough. Additionally, real red herrings are placed by the killer, so they are clues in themselves.

the idea then, if the PCs are following a valid clue, it leads to the next clue or killer. If they are going the wrong way, a means should exist to reveal that, so the players can stop pursuing that lead.

Failure happens when they stop working the case or arrest the wrong person.


On to the point of the mystery being about characters. Observe some murder mystery shows and you'll see a pattern in the writing. This pattern can be used to build the framework for the case and NPCs. For instance, on Castle, I notice the following:

in a basic case, they identify 3 suspects and the murderer is one of them.
In a twisty case, they identify 3 suspects, but the murderer is really a "friend" of the victim, thus didn't look like a suspect. One of the suspects will have a commonality to the real murderer, which once discovered (and still ruling out the suspect) will draw attention back to the murderer.

Thus, to follow this pattern, you need 5 NPCs. 1 victim, 1 killer, and 3 guilty looking suspects (has a trait tied to a clue, but also an alibi). The idea is, the clues make you check out the obvious suspect. Which is a dead end. But each suspect should give you more info about the victim, which can lead you to the real killer.

 

[Jack7]

Thanks Jack. And thanks for sharing about your PI history. This is a little off topic, but may interest you. I once interviewed an old boxer who was a military policeman shortly after WWII. He started a private security/investigation company and told me a ton of interesting stories (but most were from the 50s and 60s). His speciality was protecting A-list hollywood types and he even ended up stopping a stalker of a famous actress from the time (have her name somewhere around here) and marrying her. Definitely sounded like interesting work.

It is interesting to me BG. I always like stories like that.

I've got a buddy in military INTEL who, when he retires, wants us to start a Security firm together, aimed mostly at corporate and financial security and corporate counter-espionage. (I've worked a couple of cases involving corporate espionage which I liked a lot). I'd handle the investigative work, and he'd handle most of the actual security assessment profiles, etc. I don't have the time for that right now, though I have been working on the skeletal framework for such a firm. Right now though I've got way too much to do with my company and my independent consulting work, and my fiction writing career.

As for me I've got no interest in bodyguard work and personal security per se, though I have worked a couple of investigative background assessesments and cases for high profile individuals, and it was interesting work. It's amazing, more often than not, what you will find in a person's background.

As for being an old boxer, I box too, but mainly for practice nowadays at my age, but your contact kinda reminds me of the fictional character Spenser, by Robert Parker, and I often like reading his cases.

In any event I like people who have led lives of real life adventure. I actually far prefer that to fictional adventure characters.


By the way I offer the following as a way to enhance your fictional case work/in-game mysteries, assuming you aren't already employing these methods:

1. Give plenty of opportunities for surveillance.
2. Give plenty of opportunities for Manhunting and Tracking, from area to area and into "bad areas" in pursuit of suspects. This can be very dangerous in and of itself, and is great work. Plus, strangers go into an area where another language is spoken, and it's obvious you're snooping, and someone there might wanna do ya just for the hell of it. So you could enflame the wrong people "just because." That gets real interesting real quick.
3. Give plenty of opportunities for undercover work. To me undercover work is by far both the most dangerous, and the most productive (and my favorite) form of investigative work.
4. You might encourage the development of entire Undercover personas, and cover stories on the part of your player characters. I never go anywhere personally without a good cover story, and fake business cards, no matter what I'm doing. And certainly I'd never walk into an investigation without cover IDs, cards, stories, backgrounds, etc.
5. You might want to allow, depending on the character types again, Breaking and Entering to gain information.
6. Rather than Red Herrings per se, interviews and interrogations will be filled with disinformation and misinformation. It's almost never clues (although you can draw faulty conclusions about what a clue actually means, it never really lies) that lead you astray, it's what victims and perps and witnesses say, or don't say.
7. You might want to give opportunities for Vadding and infiltration. Again this can be done as part of undercover work, or as a separate exercise.
8. If a perp or those involved in a crime "make" your characters, or your characters make no attempt to disguise or conceal their part in the case then you might want to set up ambushes and situations in which they have to engage in escape and evasion. This has happened to me on more than one occasion and is both thrilling (in a weird way), but also very disturbing. And can be damned irritating and very dangerous. In a game it could become a min-adventure within the larger adventure.
9. You might want to encourage your players, if they do this kind of thing often enough, to develop their own sets of specialized equipment for just such occasions.

For instance, I have my own specialized parks, packs, and equipment bags (actually I learned this as a kid from playing D&D and wargames ironically enough, and then took up the practice in real life when I became a teen. I now carry my:

Normal Daypack - which includes my normal going out equipment plus fake credentials plus binoculars, a camera, some basic tools, a fake wallet and credit cards, etc (in the unlikely case I get mugged).

My CERT Disaster bag - I became CERT qualified through my CAP Squadron and it contains my disaster and some of my rescue gear and utility tools.

My SAR (Search and Rescue) pack

My various Investigative packs, kits, and gear

My Infiltration and Paramilitary Pack and gear

My Rudding and Hiking Pack and gear

My Vadding and Urban Exploration Pack and gear

My Weapons and (NLW and LTL) Non-lethal weapons bags

My Disguise kit

My Medical Park and Medic gear and field surgery kits


Your characters probably won't require this kind of specialization. (I have packs devoted to different things because I usually know exactly what equipment is required for which function and this keeps me from hauling around one big huge pack of unnecessary equipment, but rather individual packs are streamlined and are "tool-specialized" and gear ready for any particular function. Plus you can easily and quickly retrieve the right equipment if you have the right pack.)

Nevertheless they might want to have an investigative pack, a disguise kit, a basic first aid/medics kit, and maybe an exploration/infiltration kit.

Don't know of that helped ya any or not, but good luck with your games. Anyways, I gotta cut out. See ya.

 

[Wycen]

There is a mystery to solve, but what the investigation may reveal is potentially at least as compelling. It's in no way necessary for me to 'fool' he players into thinking they're solving the disppearance.

I was keeping my post short because I'm lazy, but I do see how you can want to play an honest to goodness mystery. Unfortunately, when I think about it, it seems I remember all the puzzles and things that just ate up our time and didn't work out. Like the mirror-candle puzzle room in part 4 of the Savage Tide. My thoughts emphasize the frustration of missed clues, puzzles that stop the game, and such.

This reminds me of the old James Bond RPG game by Victory Games. They usually had handouts includes clues. I remember reading them and loving it, even though I already knew the story from the novel or movie. Not sure I ever got to use any of those clues...

 

[Janx]

That's kind of what I got from the writing on Castle. They talk to the NPCs, check their alibis and of course some are lying to cover something else up.

It might also be handy to shift what people mean by clues to evidence. Simply facts about the case and crime scene that the suspect have commonality with.

Victim was shot with a .38 and the wife owns a .38
tire tracks near the body track back to Bob
argument over money with Shady Sam last week

this sets each one up to be a suspect that you would then interview. Each one has something to hide, but not necesarily that they did it. hence more disinformation, etc that Jack is talking about.