Byrons_Ghost
First Post
Kesh said:
To put my own slant on things-
it's alright for clues to be discovered by dice rolls, since this is the only way that the investigative characters are going to use their abilities. What you don't want to do is have the entire progress of the adventure be reliant on a single die roll. If the characters miss a clue that they need to progress, then you should have alternate methods of getting said clue- have an NPC deliver it, put it at the next crime scene, have them attacked by the person the clue would have led to anyway, etc.
From behind the scenes, it should look like a tree of branching clues, all of which leads to the solution. The players will naturally follow one path, which then becomes the "correct" line of evidence, and the others remain unseen.
Other tips:
Obvious clues can be found by anyone; allow for subtle or hard to find clues to require skill rolls. Again, this gives the people with the appropriate skills their chance to shine. Essentially, the group goes to the scene, finds what they need, and then a skill roll allows them to get a little something extra, such as a hint to the enemy's weakness or a shortcut that will save them time.
A similar method works well for RPing out interviews and dialogue- play the scene out normally, to the logical limits of what the NPC would reveal or accept. Then use a Bluff/Diplomacy check to push things a little further than the RP normally would have allowed.
On the subject of social skills, it's likely that the players will diversify their investigative skills, so you don't want all the clues to hinge just on Spot or Search checks. Have some that require social rolls with witnesses (or suspects), some that require Knowledges to analyze, etc. Spreading the clues around is probably obvious, but in order to get maximum PC involvement you want to think about what each PC can do, and how they can add to the evidence by doing their thing.
