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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 418626" data-attributes="member: 7177">Build an interesting villain with clear (at least from your point of view) motivations and resources. When you can imagine him well enough to know how he would act in new situations without having to think about it for too long, your work is done.Ideally, the whole investigation shouldn't be a simple gathering of clues. Clues work well in mystery novels when the author already knows who did it and how his protagonist will ferret out the guilty party.Your typical group of PCs, on the other hand, will ignore the most blatant clues, while creating the most complex conspiracy theories. I say you can build on that.Ideally, the whole affair should be a game of wits between the PCs and the villain. If the PCs get to close to the truth, the villain will do his best to throw them off the track, or maybe even discredit him. In the end, this will only make the PCs hate him more, which will make the final confrontation more memorable. On the other hand, if the PCs just stumble around without getting anywhere, the villain might become overconfident and make mistakes - maybe kill one person too many.Ideally, the PCs should get enough pieces of the puzzle in the end to make some kind of sense of the whole affair, even if they don't understand everything. If they manage to catch the villain, they will have their satisfaction. On the other hand, if the villain escapes, they should be able to realize with hindsight that this was their own fault for being negligent and not pursuing the right paths and not asking the right questions. In this case, you have a recurring villain the PCs can hunt until the ends of the Earth...In any case, keep the basic adventure structure flexible to adjust it to the PCs' actions...</blockquote>

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