Mysteries in Your Campaign

Checking out the crime scene (Sherlock, BBC)

Audiences love a good whodunnit. When it comes to your campaign, the occasional mystery can be mentally stimulating and a great opportunity for a uniquely structured game session. But managing the complexities of such a challenge and giving the players a fair chance to souse out the truth can be difficult. With this in mind, here are my top tips for running a successful caper in your own campaign!

Develop a timeline of events before you do anything else.

Throughout the game, your players will follow up on many leads in their search for the truth. Not all of these leads will bring them to the solution. In fact it is a well-known DM's adage that your players will latch onto the most inconsequential of things within a setting and believe them to be important. This means that it is best to have a big picture of everything that is going on behind the scenes so you can more clearly present the players with the sequence of events and provide them with many leads to follow. Plan out ahead of time which leads are false so that you can clearly direct the players to the correct one.

The start of this step is simple. First write down each important character that is involved in the mystery. Then decide where they were and what they were doing when the main event of your mystery occurred. Decide whether their alibi is true or false, and what part they took in the events that unfolded.

Finally, give them each a motivation of some sort. This is basically the 'probable cause' that will make them a suspect.  

It might be easiest to write this down as a table of some sort. Line up their name, alibi, and description of their role and motive. I first saw this explained in an article from Dragon Magazine by Wizards of the Coast (Issue #426), and this technique has helped me in putting together my own intrigues.

Include more clues than you think you need.

This is a specific subsection of the larger rule that it's better to over-prepare than under-prepare. This especially applies to mysteries where it is easy for players and DMs to become confused or run short on ideas. Additionally, if you plan on having the players roll to notice certain clues, make sure that they aren't excessively difficult. Remember to include clues that can't be missed with a failed dice roll. You don't want a series of bad rolls to ruin any chance of solving the puzzle.

Now you should put together a list of clues and things for your players to investigate.

Be sure to have a wide variety of clues. Keep in mind what the player characters are good at, and what skills they will be putting to use during the investigation. Talking to witnesses and suspects, gathering evidence from the scene of a crime, or conducting forensic research are all possible moves that clever players might make. With these possibilites in mind, put together a bunch of clues and remember that each of them should produce some kind of useful conclusion. You probably won't need all of them, so be sure to have multiple clues that might lead to the same or similar conclusions. Include clues that rule out possible suspects, or guide the players to a location where they might find even more clues.

Rounding up the usual suspects. (Shadowrun)

Keep the clues obvious and clear.

You're going to want to avoid any ambiguity if you want your players to have the best possible chance of solving the mystery. After all, the goal of a mystery based encounter is to give the party a fun and stimulating challenge, not to stop them in their tracks or leave them stumped and defeated. As I stated previously in this entry: 

When it comes to planting clues, the simpler and more numerous the better. This isn't to say that your audience is ignorant, but once the group is around the table shouting out ideas and following their own trains of thought, you will find it will take much longer than if you had presented the same puzzle to a single player. Also, mysteries are hard to design in such a way that the solution is clear yet challenging for the players. 

Avoid subtle, circumstantial evidence. Don't be afraid to make the clues obvious. Clarity is important to keep things on track. If you're worried about a mystery being too easy, you can have NPCs require a more substantial amount of evidence to convict a culprit, or some other in-universe explanation for why the players shouldn't go straight towards accusing their suspect. If all else fails, warn players that they are missing key information if they are about to jump to a conclusion too early.

Improvise clues through actions the players take.

Finally, be flexible and patient with your players. If they choose to investigate through an avenue you had not considered, try to adapt to their choices. You might even consider adding additional clues you had not originally planned for. Don't be close-minded enough to only allow one way to approach a problem. Consider the basic facts you have already established about the mystery, and how they could be discovered through whatever methods your players are most interested in. 

Work your existing clues in by means you might not have considered at first. For instance, instead of detecting a particular scent of perfume at the scene of the crime, perhaps your players will glean this information through interrogation of a witness. Be fair, be reasonable, and be accommodating to the play style of your group.

If all else fails, don't fret. Start into the action!

If your players are still stumped and getting frustrated, don't panic. Whether it is due to excessive difficulty or lack of experience, it needn't get to the point that the players are having a bad time. Shift the focus away from the combat. If necessary, resolve the caper with a big action piece. You can present a consequence for failure to solve the mystery, but don't make the party feel bad about it. Like any plans gone awry, they can be reworked to the overall benefit of the campaign. As always, keeping everybody entertained is the core of your game.

Happy ventures!