Mystery investigation social interaction and gaming systems

[IanArgent]

I've been reading a couple of threads on the subject (here is the respawned hopefully non-edition-wars one) which asks (among other things) what system would be best for:
"1) An Investigative, Non-combat game (Murder mysteries, CSI, X-Files, etc.)"

My answer would be, "it doesn't matter." In this type of game (and I spent most of a decade running a Shadowrun game with a strong bent towards this) the rules are simply in the way. The conflict (not necessarily antagonistic, GM vs players) is entirely in the mental space between the GM and the players. This style of game (in my experience and opinion) boils down to the GM providing what happens, and the players respond with what their characters do (at which point the GM has to figure out how to resolve) or the other way round (the players provide what their characters do and the GM responds). The mechanics of a game system tell the GM and players how they can do things, but the important part of this game style isn't how it's done, but what is done. IE - the important part isn't the mechanics of looking for a clue, but that the players are looking for clues, the GM is placing clues, and how the players interpret that clue. Rolling perception is the mechanic, but saying "I look around", "you find a piece of cloth in the corner; it looks like is could have been torn off a cloak", and the player saying "OK - lets keep an eye out for someone with a ragged cloak" are all the important parts of that "encounter". That can be done in any game system, and everything after finding the scrap of cloth itself is non-mechanical.

This kind of game is the hardest (again IMO) to separate the player from the character - if the player is incapable of reasoning and deductive and inductive logic, the character will not be. Watson would never be able to run Holmes as a character without significant assistance from the GM. And vice versa is almost as hard, a little slip of a smart player playing a dumb character can have unexpected consequences.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Pendragon would be well suited for this style of play as far as mechanics are concerned. The system has no measurement for any mental stats at all. Your character can be as smart as you are or you can ham up playing dumb. The kind of action involved in an investigation scenario isn't what the system was designed for but neither is D&D and it can work just fine.

 

[IanArgent]

I guess... But given that this style doesn't require mechanical support, I'd use the system that gives me the best mechanics for whatever I decide to do as secondary/background.

 

[Wik]

In general, investigation-based games tend to be rules-light. d20 Cthulu, for example, burnt out much of the 3e rules that were not necessary (such as AoOs), and kept the rest. Apparently, base CoC is pretty rules-light.

And Esoterrorists is about as rules-light as they come, or so I've heard.

I agree regarding clues, to an extent. I think, if you're going to run an investigation-based game, you have to give rules to allow for character differentation. In many games, this means skills, though in the Eberron CSI game I mentioned in that other thread, this could also mean specific spell sets (the Necromancer, the Diviner, the Charmer, etc).

The reasoning for this is simple - if you make an almost rules-less game, you are essentially allowing only the most verbal or more puzzle-minded players to really participate in the game. The rest of the group is simply looking under a table while the Sherlock Holmes guy is making the lion's share of the deductions.

That's the problem with mysteries in a game - the mystery genre is rarely suited towards a group (CSI notwithstanding). So, if you're running a mystery campaign, you better make sure each PC offers something to the investigation.

Imagine a 5 person group. In CSI: Eberron, the group could be:

* A Skill monkey based around gather information, search, and the like. A "private eye"
* A diviner spellcasting wizard. Uses all those nice divination spells.
* A sorcerer focused on utility spells for an investigator - speak with dead, for example. Great for niche support. Also has some good combat spells.
* A bard, with all that bards bring to the table.
* A fighter (with the thug variant). This guy has some useful skills (Intimidate, for example), but his main use is in the inevitable combats that will prop up.

You can see that each character has a role in the party. The rogue can use skills to follow leads, while the two big spellcasters can act as specialists, refining answers. The bard can use his bardic knowledge to serve as a general wellspring of knowledge. The thug might be at a disadvantage in this game, unless the GM throws a few fights at the group, in which case the thug will shine.

Now, imagine that same group, in an investigation-rich campaign, using BECMI rules:

* A fighter
* a wizard
* a cleric
* a thief
* an elf.

Now, in one way, you're right. Everyone in this group will get to participate. There are no perception checks, so the fighter can find a clue just as easily as the elf. It's all in the questions, right? Except, certain classes offer more benefits to the player than others, assuming the campaign (and not just the adventure) is investigation-heavy. A wizard or elf (especially the elf, with their perception powers) will be a great boon, as they have powers that can really improve upon non-combat encounters - Charm Person can be a life saver when you're interviewing withnesses. And a cleric's augury can definitely save you some time (not to mention Speak with dead). While a fighter may have some benefits, it has NO benefits over those previously-mentioned classes that relate to the game's primary focus (investigation) So, if you have a group that enters into BECMI with an investigation campaign in mind, your group will probably look like this:

* An Elf
* a Wizard
* A Cleric
* An elf.
* Another frigging elf.

And your choice of system has enforced that. This, by the way, was what started the edition wars fight in the earlier thread. I happened to point out that one edition ran mysteries better than another one for the reason I posted above, and some others took offence - by citing the points you did.

The thing is, you are right - the mystery genre is more about Player/GM interaction than any rules mechanic. But, when you run an RPG, the main thing about the game is the Characters (after all, Creating a Character is usually chapter one!). Running an RPG where all characters are mechanically identical is pretty boring. ANd if you run a game in an edition or system where only a small subset of roles encourage investigation, you can bet those roles will be focused upon (at the worst, you can have five players all running characters with the same class and "feat/skill" selection).

ANyways, that's my two cents on the topic.

 

[howandwhy99]

Since almost all RPGs are just big, rule-based, "guess what I'm thinking" games, and in the same nature of 20 Questions, almost any RPG will work.

In order to determine your preferred system, I think knowing what you want from it is the first priority. My guess is you want to emulate detective shows on TV or whodunnit novels. I'd say the first order of business then is knowing your Players. How good at being detectives are they? Do they have some background in the business? Ever done any real Crime Scene Investigation? Or maybe they are just mystery book buffs and know many of the in and outs of how mysteries are solved.

I can say, mystery investigation doesn't work in RPGs like it does in books. It works like it does in real life. Failure has to be an option or the DM just ends up telling them the answers and there's little to no mystery solving at all.

In my understanding of mystery solving, people choose or are assigned to figure out something. They search around to find the truth of what happened or where item is or some scrap of knowledge. And then they take the pieces of information they glean from their searching and continuously try and puzzle out the unknown bits of the mystery.

That's the basics in my mind anyway. Like I said at first, know what it is to you and yours before picking any system.

For my own description of a mystery, I would design a one-shot adventure with three aspects (we are talking one-shot here, right?):

1. A very clear and accurate description of the thing that is the mystery itself.

For example, someone stole the Hope Diamond. Know who, how, where, when, and why. Know the answers to all these basic questions first. When completed, this will be the solution to the mystery.

2. A simulated environment created effected by the mystery's construction. This will include all the causal clues and flush out most of the rest of the adventure.

3. The timeline of events from the beginning of the mystery's history to its' end, the point of equilibrium. This happens completing step two, but it doesn't have to end with the adventure's starting time so long nothing in step two substantively changes in the interim. The starting time's configuration needs to be the same as the endpoint of equilibrium.

For example, if the diamond was stolen 30 years ago, detail the events that took place from beginning to end with all the evidence of such action in places they reside now. Like in the show "Cold Case", the evidence (objects, people, knowledge, places) may be undisturbed for 30 years, but it only matters what is available to the mystery solvers in the present.

For added fun you might want to have certain evidence/clues get destroyed in the intervening time between the mystery and the investigation. This makes things more difficult. Harder clues are possible too, like the absence of evidence. A dead body without classes seems normal and may not be remarked upon by eye witness identifiers, but knowing the deceased needed glasses to see is a clue by omission. Where are they and why aren't they on the body?

Lastly, in the solving of the mystery you will want to include the actions of NPCs during the adventure. If they are in action already (say, the diamond was just stolen), then have the rest of the timeline as potential for what may happen for the rest of the adventure.

 

[IanArgent]

The reasoning for this is simple - if you make an almost rules-less game, you are essentially allowing only the most verbal or more puzzle-minded players to really participate in the game. The rest of the group is simply looking under a table while the Sherlock Holmes guy is making the lion's share of the deductions.

That's the problem with mysteries in a game - the mystery genre is rarely suited towards a group (CSI notwithstanding). So, if you're running a mystery campaign, you better make sure each PC offers something to the investigation.

Imagine a 5 person group. In CSI: Eberron, the group could be:

* A Skill monkey based around gather information, search, and the like. A "private eye"
* A diviner spellcasting wizard. Uses all those nice divination spells.
* A sorcerer focused on utility spells for an investigator - speak with dead, for example. Great for niche support. Also has some good combat spells.
* A bard, with all that bards bring to the table.
* A fighter (with the thug variant). This guy has some useful skills (Intimidate, for example), but his main use is in the inevitable combats that will prop up.

You can see that each character has a role in the party. The rogue can use skills to follow leads, while the two big spellcasters can act as specialists, refining answers. The bard can use his bardic knowledge to serve as a general wellspring of knowledge. The thug might be at a disadvantage in this game, unless the GM throws a few fights at the group, in which case the thug will shine.

Now, imagine that same group, in an investigation-rich campaign, using BECMI rules:

* A fighter
* a wizard
* a cleric
* a thief
* an elf.

Now, in one way, you're right. Everyone in this group will get to participate. There are no perception checks, so the fighter can find a clue just as easily as the elf. It's all in the questions, right? Except, certain classes offer more benefits to the player than others, assuming the campaign (and not just the adventure) is investigation-heavy. A wizard or elf (especially the elf, with their perception powers) will be a great boon, as they have powers that can really improve upon non-combat encounters - Charm Person can be a life saver when you're interviewing withnesses. And a cleric's augury can definitely save you some time (not to mention Speak with dead). While a fighter may have some benefits, it has NO benefits over those previously-mentioned classes that relate to the game's primary focus (investigation) So, if you have a group that enters into BECMI with an investigation campaign in mind, your group will probably look like this:

* An Elf
* a Wizard
* A Cleric
* An elf.
* Another frigging elf.

And your choice of system has enforced that. This, by the way, was what started the edition wars fight in the earlier thread. I happened to point out that one edition ran mysteries better than another one for the reason I posted above, and some others took offence - by citing the points you did.

The thing is, you are right - the mystery genre is more about Player/GM interaction than any rules mechanic. But, when you run an RPG, the main thing about the game is the Characters (after all, Creating a Character is usually chapter one!). Running an RPG where all characters are mechanically identical is pretty boring. ANd if you run a game in an edition or system where only a small subset of roles encourage investigation, you can bet those roles will be focused upon (at the worst, you can have five players all running characters with the same class and "feat/skill" selection).

ANyways, that's my two cents on the topic.

Mechanical niche protection is not required for this beyond making it prohibitive for every character to become good at everything, a job that 4E does at least as well as Shadowrun, IME. In fact, 4E has better niche protection in some ways than SR does, given that in SR your reach a point where it is much easier mechanically to become broader rather than deeper in the skills department.

Choice of system in a primarily mystery/investigative campaign should depend on the setting in which you want to embed. This is why Eberron looks so good for it when contemplating D&D; the Eberron setting has certain design choices made to made it an attractive setting for an investigative campaign. But that's the setting, not the rules. I would much prefer to run an investigative campaign under 4E Eberron, even before the 4E source book comes out, because 4E *does* allow all classes to participate in all facets of the investigation. There's not much point in playing a fighter in a 3E investigative campaign because, no matter what, the fighter will be mechanically prevented from picking up the necessary in-game skills to generate the clues. That applies whether I'm running the game in the Realms, Eberron (though Eberron at least has some feats to let me evade the mechanical restrictions), or a homebrew. And a barbarian is worse. The *only* place these characters are effective is in combat; and that may only crop up once a session. Whereas the rest of the characters carry their load in the investigation, and can still be effective in combat.

I ran SR in an investigative mode for a party of up to 12 people. In a system with no niche protection and every reason to overlap skillsets, the characters ended up all being noticeably different, and the players all had fun, with each contributing to the team's success. Perhaps because of this experience, I don't care for niche protection in mechanics.

When I construct an investigative adventure, I either start with what the PCs find and let their investigation lead to whodunnit (surprisingly fun, and while I can see it's not for every GM, making the players do the prep for me on the fly made my life a lot easier); or I start with whodunnit and what they did, and walk the cat back from there.

I've done a locked-room mystery in Earthdawn, "was it aliens or supernatural" in Shadowrun, and political intrigue in Eberron 3E. The only reason I haven't run anything of this kind in 4E is because I'm only halfway through running KotS; but in the game I'm playing in the DM is running classic Mystara and having no issues at all with the investigative/political stuff we've done (and had some fairly major issues regarding certain spells when we were under 3E prior). My favorite system for this is SR, and my favorite setting Eberron. But I wouldn't hesitate to run any of this under 4E, even as a side quest from a normal-assumptions campaign, because I can reasonably expect everyone to be able to participate (from a mechanical standpoint) without building their characters to the purpose.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that since system doesn't matter for a primarily investigative campaign, I prefer 4E to 3.X because it allows me to run the occasional investigative session without sidelining certain characters for the session. That, in many ways, is more important to me than it being a good system for running a primarily investigative campaign (though I think that would work better as well).

 

[Kwalish Kid]

The system does matter, mostly because most systems allow players to utterly fail at finding clues.

The GUMSHOE system (Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, Trail of Cthulhu, Mutant City Blues) is specifically designed to make it so that players never fail at finding clues.

 

[Wik]

snip

First, Shadowrun is a great example of what I was getting at. While it isn't class-based, but is instead a skill-based game, it does require players to choose their role in a game. In effect, if you announce to the group "we're playing an investigative game", you'll have a variety of shadowrunning types to choose from.

Personally, I don't think 4e allows this, yet. I do think 4e has a better system "Under the hood", as it were, and that many aspects (such as trained/untrained skills, or the new feat system) would work well in an investigative game. However, there just isn't enough mechanical variation among the character roles.

There are only a few skills that would really be useful to characters in a 4e investigation game - Perception, Diplomacy, Bluff, Nature, Heal, Streetwise, Stealth, maybe Thievery, maybe Arcane, and maybe History. That's ten skills, which may seem like alot... except that, in a group of even four characters, with four skills each, there will be quite a bit of overlap (each character could conceivably have half of the "good" skills).

Factor in that the only real non-combat abilities available to the characters are rituals (and a small smattering of utility powers), and I personally see a problem. If rituals were broken down in some way (martial rituals, arcane rituals, divine rituals), there'd be less of a problem. But as it is, an investigative game would encourage the spending of a feat on ritual casting - and, in practical play, once one PC found a ritual, every PC in the group would learn it. Meaning, in 4e vs. 3e, the 4e characters are much more likely of all being capable of doing the exact same things.

This may not be a problem for you, but I find it doesn't work out in my own games. I want a group of specialists, not a group of generalists - and 4e does not encourage that style of play.

That being said, this is not a 3e vs. 4e debate, and I recognize that. I'm just sayign that, personally, I don't think 4e facilitates mystery adventures very well. I don't think most editions of D&D do it particularly well, with 3e Eberron being the only really "good" mystery setting (and I don't think 4e eberron would be a better choice, as of yet).

Were I to choose a setting to run an mystery campaign in, I could lean towards Shadowrun (if it were dumbed-down). Earthdawn is a possibility (there is a variation in non-combat skills available to each character, and background skills are so wide as to be practically limitless). Savage Worlds, with work, could do it (though it suffers the same skill fault as 4e, the perks could be expanded to allow for considerable character variation). I wouldn't use the d6 system, even though I love it, because it really encourages broad characters (unless you use the point-buy special abilities, which I'm not a huge fan of).

Personally, I think d20 Call of Cthulu is a great system for mysteries. While it may suffer one of the faults I mentioned earlier (the only way to differentiate characters is in Skills, and there isn't such a huge number of skills available that a character couldn't just take 'em all), in actuality, the game is sort of a mix of mystery and horror that a character that just specializes in the mystery side of things is going to be useless when he has to batter down a door to escape the elder crawling squid thingies.

I think if you wanted to run a 4e mystery, that this would be the approach to emulate - make mystery only half the equation. The other half in 4e should probably be combat (but it doesn't necessarily have to be). that way, PCs have to split their priorities, and it becomes much harder to just dominate in one field.

 

[lin_fusan]

My favorite mystery-solving game is Mage: The (Either edition).

In one Mage: The Awakening game, we were trying to discover the location of a book, who wrote it, who hid it, and why.

While we never got to the end of that advenuture, it was interesting in the HOW we figured out the answers.

One person used Mind to interrogate/read minds of suspects or witnesses.

Another used Prime and Forces to follow energy trails.

I used Fate and Time to see into the past to see how placed the book and what traps he used.

While there was no question that we would figure out the answers, the most fun I had was which ability and what manner would it take to get that answer.

 

[IanArgent]

First, Shadowrun is a great example of what I was getting at. While it isn't class-based, but is instead a skill-based game, it does require players to choose their role in a game. In effect, if you announce to the group "we're playing an investigative game", you'll have a variety of shadowrunning types to choose from.

Personally, I don't think 4e allows this, yet. I do think 4e has a better system "Under the hood", as it were, and that many aspects (such as trained/untrained skills, or the new feat system) would work well in an investigative game. However, there just isn't enough mechanical variation among the character roles.

There are only a few skills that would really be useful to characters in a 4e investigation game - Perception, Diplomacy, Bluff, Nature, Heal, Streetwise, Stealth, maybe Thievery, maybe Arcane, and maybe History. That's ten skills, which may seem like alot... except that, in a group of even four characters, with four skills each, there will be quite a bit of overlap (each character could conceivably have half of the "good" skills).

Factor in that the only real non-combat abilities available to the characters are rituals (and a small smattering of utility powers), and I personally see a problem. If rituals were broken down in some way (martial rituals, arcane rituals, divine rituals), there'd be less of a problem. But as it is, an investigative game would encourage the spending of a feat on ritual casting - and, in practical play, once one PC found a ritual, every PC in the group would learn it. Meaning, in 4e vs. 3e, the 4e characters are much more likely of all being capable of doing the exact same things.

This may not be a problem for you, but I find it doesn't work out in my own games. I want a group of specialists, not a group of generalists - and 4e does not encourage that style of play.

Then we have orthogonal design space for investigative games. I believe that mechanical niche protection is not required in an investigative game (and have empirical evidence that with the players I have run games for to prove it in my case). You don't. So for me system doesn't matter, but for you it does. Which rather goes to show why there are multiple systems for sale out there

I will point out that the SR4 skill list isn't a whole lot more expansive than the 4E skill list, and that large swaths of them are less important for an investigative campaign, just as the 4E skill list shrinks. And a s a skill-based system, it's much easier for characters to cherry-pick the skills they think are important.

I think if you wanted to run a 4e mystery, that this would be the approach to emulate - make mystery only half the equation. The other half in 4e should probably be combat (but it doesn't necessarily have to be). that way, PCs have to split their priorities, and it becomes much harder to just dominate in one field.

This is how I've run investigations in the past, but not so that it forces characters to prioritize and specialize. I would rather have well-rounded characters so I can throw different "adventures" at them and expect them to succeed as a group at them all. For this, I find that 4E's emphasis on forcing characters to be not incompetent in the basics of adventuring (the skill system assumes that even the non-specialists will pick up enough to get by) and limited mechanical choices to be an advantage. Shadowrun doesn't have this safety net, but I always had enough system veterans in the group that when new players were making characters they could give advice on how to avoid the pitfalls of character generation (and I've always had a lax policy on rewriting characters to suit even after play start).