Misadventures
in Mystery
December 6th, 2011
Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting Grave Plots, where we explore new plot hooks and adventure ideas each and every week. This week's theme is mysteries here at Necromancers of the Northwest, and today I'll be talking about mystery adventures. I love mysteries; I mean, what's not to love: hidden information, the slow revelation of events, and the sudden realization of the conclusion. Mysteries are something pretty much everybody likes – even people who can't stand not knowing something will have fun solving a mystery because they get to find out whatever it was they didn't know but wanted to. Mystery adventures are nearly always fun, and they lends themselves well to a wide variety of settings and styles.
I personally love to play mystery adventures more than almost any other kind of adventure. But I hate absolutely hate running mystery adventures. This might come as something of a shock; after all, throughout Grave Plots I talk a lot about mysteries, recommend them, and unless I very much misremember (which I don't), there are even some plot hooks which are in fact mystery adventures. The fact is I really don't have problem creating mystery adventures – that's pretty fun – and I certainly don't have a problem running mystery adventures so long as everyone's having a good time, so what exactly do I hate about mystery adventures?
Glad you asked. I have a number of complaints about mystery adventures, but before I launch into them, however, I would point out that just because I happen to have trouble with these things doesn't mean you will. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and it certainly isn't the fault of the mystery adventure that I don't like it.
So what do I dislike about mystery adventures? The big issues are difficulty, details, and maintaining control over the circumstances. That may seem a little general, so let me break it down for you.
Difficulty
In all likelihood, if you get tripped up when running a mystery adventure it will be due to difficulty. After all, if you created a mystery which was too easy to solve, than what you planned to be a grand mystery spanning multiple play sessions will likely end up lasting only a short time, with the dramatic conclusion reached far too soon without there being any build-up of suspense, and your players leaving the table without that sense of accomplishment and mystique that make mysteries so great. Make the mystery too hard, on the other hand, and you end up with frustrated players on the verge of mutiny because you made an adventure they can't really play. What's worse is they still won't be getting anything out of your hard work creating a great mystery.
The real problem, then, is creating an adventure which is challenging for your group, but not overwhelmingly so. This is especially tricky for the first adventure, when you won't have had time to gauge your players’ skills at solving mysteries. The worst part of this is that if you guess wrong and your adventure turns out to be either easier or more difficult then you originally wanted, then you can't just change it halfway through the adventure, at least not without completely ruining the situation by introducing consistency issues.
So how do you create a mystery adventure that fits your players’ skill level? Well, there are a few approaches. The simplest way would be to just create a sort of test adventure, which needn't necessarily be connected to your campaign, in order to gauge their talent at mystery-solving and then use the information you gather as a sort of bench mark. The problem with this is that it isn't very organic and if your test adventure ends up being way too hard or way too easy, you won't really end up with reliable data, and you may still end up suffering from difficulty-related issues in the future.
Instead, you might try to add in mystery elements in your regular adventures, subtly probing your players for information regarding what kind of circumstances they can readily deal with. This works well if you have a lot of time to sit around figuring out just what your players are going to be comfortable with, but if you don't have that time, or aren't patient enough, or are planning a one-shot, doing something like that is completely out of the question.
Finally, what you could do is just plunge the PCs straight into whatever mystery you had planned, but provide mechanical provisions for helping them to solve the mystery if it turns out to be too difficult. After all, just because Johnny's bad at solving mysteries doesn't mean his 32 Int super-sleuth isn't going to be great at it. This approach allows you to err on the side of more difficult mysteries and still give even the greenest of players a reasonable chance of solving them. The problems with the approach are then that you have to find some kind of way to deal with the PCs finding clues they missed or whatever. You could use derivatives of mental ability scores to gain hint rolls or something, or, personally, I might allow skill checks in places where the PCs could/should have uncovered clues but didn't, to get a second chance at getting that important information. This, of course, leads to the issue of leaving a mystery, one of the most roleplay-heavy adventures you can have, in the hands of die rolls, and that most fickle of mistresses: fate. As you can plainly see, determining and implementing difficulty for a mystery is hugely problematic for a smooth and enjoyable adventure.
Details
The phrase the devil is in the details never applied more than it does to running a mystery adventure. It’s always the little things that seem to trip you up and take everyone out of the moment. For instance, you might be describing the murdered corpse with gory detail, only to have your players turn into a crime scene investigatory unit and start asking all kinds of questions about the exact placement of the body, the angle of the wounds, the body temperature or whatever, and in your haste to answer perfectly reasonable questions you didn't bother to consider because the body scene was supposed to be more about the evil ritual equipment in the room or whatever, you end up saying some things that put some really weird ideas into your players’ TV-enhanced forensic-oriented minds.
You might also find yourself not putting enough little clues to lead your PCs to wherever they need to go to find the next important piece of information to advance the plot. Or that you somehow missed all the little details of the things the PCs are going to be looking at, like what the maids’ quarters might contain. The only person you have to blame for being tripped up by such trivia is yourself, and the only real solution is to really put your nose to the grindstone when you’re creating your adventure and come up with solid information for ever contingency. After a few adventures, you should know what to expect and this process should get easier, but it’s still a good idea to make sure you have all the details pinned down, just in case.
Circumstances Get Away From You
The worst part of running a mystery adventure is when the PCs show up with powers far beyond that of ordinary crime solvers, and next thing you know all your hard work was for naught. Imagine for a moment that your PCs could simply dominate whoever they wanted and force them to tell them what they know, or to serve to spies, or what have you. They can scry on prime suspects, and with invisibility and passwall they can pretty much go wherever they want unseen and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it without compromising the believability of your game. These kinds of powers can put a real damper on your game unless you find a reasonable way around them. These kinds of creative solutions exist for nearly anything your PCs might do (see yesterday's Dark Designs for some cool ideas). If you still find yourself to be having serious problems with these kinds of powers, talk to your players and ask that they not use them during the course of the adventure.
Well, that’s it for this week,s Grave Plots; I hope to see you next week. Until then, allow me to wish you all the best in your gaming endeavors.