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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 4678177" data-attributes="member: 3192">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.</blockquote>

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