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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8689970" data-attributes="member: 86653">The already mentioned three-clue rule and node-based design are what I consider the gold standard for this kind of thing.For me, it's better to have this stuff defined upfront rather than defined through play. The former can be changed, altered, bits moved, etc...while the latter has a very real risk of feeling like keep away or an anti-quantum ogre. No matter where you go or what you do, you won't find the McGuffin until the referee wants you to.In most murder mysteries you're not going to lock vital information behind a roll. Not if you want the murder mystery to actually work at least. Things like failing forward, success at cost, and simply handing players clues in a murder mystery are standard practice. It's up to the players to interpret those clues. Generally the less dice involved the better. Again, the three-clue rule and node-based design are incredible for this. The Alexandrian talks about prepping dozens of clues and scattering them across your nodes. And when the players inevitably go outside your prepped nodes, you can move one or more of your clues to that new node and help guide the players back to the main nodes. You see something similar in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master with clues. The idea is to prep the clues you might want to drop in the game, but do not decide where those clues are. You drop the clues where the players actually go. But in the original context, Return is using clues for hooks and world-building rather than mystery solving. So some adjustments might be necessary.There's also X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, a book by Tracy Hickman. In it he also talks about node-based design, but he introduces what he calls hard and soft bumpers. Instead of the moveable clues of the Alexandrian, Hickman suggests increasingly hard bumpers to steer the players back into the "story." Say a simple obstacle, a harder obstacle, a nearly impossible obstacle, and finally an impossible obstacle. As much as I like most of the book, it's hard not to read this as railroading and illusion of choice.</blockquote>

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