It's Design,
My Dear Watson
February 7th, 2011
I’ve written in the past about the horror genre, and how to tailor your games to be more horrific. I’ve also toyed with some other DM advice in the past, including how to build memorable and effective villains (a topic I should really revisit one of these days), how to build memorable dungeons, and other, more general DM tips. Today, I want to continue that tradition by taking some time to lay out some tips on another task that, to some DMs, at least, proves onerous, or, in more extreme cases, overwhelming. What am I talking about? I’m talking about mysteries.
Everybody likes mysteries. And by everybody, I largely mean myself, as I didn’t really go out and do all that much polling. Still, mystery is a genre that has thrived for quite some time. Most libraries and book stores give it its own genre, quite separate and away from fantasy, romance (by the by, be sure to tune in next week for Romance Week!), and all sorts of other non-fiction. I can’t begin to count the number of mystery television shows there are at the moment, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot.
And there’s really no good reason not to include some mystery in the average D&D game, unless of course your party really hates the genre, which, I suppose, is possible. Still, it seems like just about every supplementary DM guidebook (and nearly every “so you want to play a game in the city?” rulebook, as well) has a section about mysteries.
Unfortunately, mysteries aren’t easy to write, especially for a novice DM. Even experienced DMs will likely have a lot of difficulty writing a good mystery. After all, even if you are able to piece together a relatively complicated plot in your mind (which is something that more experienced DMs should be fairly capable of doing), that’s not all that you need to be able to write a good mystery. The key to writing a good mystery is controlling what your players learn, and when. And while an experienced DM will, again, have more experience at setting out this style of pacing for a game, there is still one major issue when it comes to mysteries:
It’s imperative that the players don’t see through it all right away, and immediately guess who the killer (or thief, or whatever’s appropriate) is, despite all your clever plotting. This, unfortunately, can be a very difficult task for even experienced DMs, because in order to pull it off, it requires largely a different skill set than most DMs have. I’ve run a few mystery games in my time—some more successful than others—and I thought I’d take a moment to give a few tips, with special focus on deceiving your players and keeping them from guessing “whodunit” right away. For that reason, I’m going to focus specifically on the “red herring.”
For those of you who aren’t so big on mystery novels (and other media), a red herring is a false trail, fake lead, or other extraneous information whose sole purpose is to distract the reader/viewer/player from the actual culprit and the meat of the case (personally, I would argue that it serves another purpose, namely expanding what would most likely be a relatively short and simple explanation of the facts of the case into a full-length story. Though they may be somewhat “unfair” from the perspective of trying to solve the mystery, they almost always serve to make the overall story more rich and interesting). The term, according to five seconds’ research on Wikipedia, comes from a method of pickling a fish which makes it particularly noticeable, and, much to my surprise, not from some specific mystery novel where the distraction in question involved a red herring. See? This is a learning process for both of us.
Essentially, then, the red herring is a sort of literary sleight of hand. By drawing everyone’s attention onto a particular person (or, in more advanced uses of the red herring, on a particular aspect of the crime, such as by having evidence that makes it clear the crime occurred at 10:00pm, when it actually occurred two hours later, at midnight, making all of the alibis for 10:00 worthless), you distract your players from what is really important about the case. Towards the end of the mystery, of course, you need to give them some clue to unravel the red herring, but until the story has run its course and you’re ready for the PCs to get the final clue and put it all together, you want their attention focused safely on some entirely innocent factor.
This is obviously a process which requires a certain amount of finesse, and will require some practice on your part to balance between too heavy and too light a touch. It will also help to know your players, and so be able to play to their expectations. For example, a particularly genre-savvy mystery enthusiast will almost always gravitate towards suspecting the least likely person, because that’s such a popular mystery trope. Exceptionally straightforward and direct players will likely suspect the most obvious person. Generally speaking, players in my group tend to suspect the oily, sly-seeming person more than any other. Knowing who your players are predisposed to suspect can help you craft not only your actual culprit (who should, ideally, not match that profile), but also your red herring(s).
Be careful of laying it on too thickly, however. In a game like D&D, where the PCs are used to taking law and justice into their own hands, if their suspicions become too great they may simply act on them, even if they don’t have any kind of evidence or proof. Then you’re left in the difficult position of either letting the murderer slip away (in which case they will continue to believe that they were in the right), or tipping your hand. Sometimes there will be an easy solution, such as having the murderer strike again (only if there’s a good reason, mind. There’s nothing worse than a mystery murderer who has no proper motivation for his actions.), or having an NPC present them with the concrete proof that their red herring could not, in fact, have done the deed (but without showing who did), but sometimes a false positive means that the murderer slips away, and the PCs never know it (a highly unsatisfactory solution for the DM, I can assure you).
In my experience of reading/watching mysteries (something I strongly recommend for anyone who intends to run a mystery campaign. There’s no better way to learn how to write a mystery story than to read a dozen or so), my preferred method of red herring is to have one (or more) other shady activities going on at the time of the murder. I’ll admit it’s a little…convenient, but if it’s good enough for Agatha Christie, I figure my players will probably forgive me once or twice. For example, suppose we have six or seven potential suspects. One of them snuck out of their room at night to murder the victim, but another two snuck out for a forbidden lovers’ meeting (let’s say they’re married, I don’t know, I’m making it up as I go along), and so are hesitant to admit what they were doing. Another snuck out to steal jewels from the deceased (and will also be highly reluctant to admit it), and, finally, one of them was out on an entirely innocent stroll. Each of them left some sort of clue or indication of their presence, and it’s up to the players to sort out who was in the hallway for murder, and who was out for other purposes (for the record, you should always provide enough evidence to allow the PCs to find out exactly what all these other activities were, so that they have a complete story at the end—if they were paying attention).
Being a good liar will also help here. It’s a common mistake of DMs to tip their hand when their NPCs lie. The best mysteries occur when each potential suspect seems as honest as the next, so that the PCs can’t tell who’s lying, and have to figure everything out for themselves.
That’s it for this week’s case. Join me next week (it really is Romance Week, but I assure you it’ll be cooler than it sounds). In the meantime, be sure to use your little grey cells, and tackle each problem that comes before you with order and method.