Words on a Screen

Introduction

Last month, we talked about how to run investigatory scenes. This month, we'll follow that up with a discussion of constructing the mystery-based scenario that makes those scenes necessary.

Speaking of necessary, let's get one bit of tedium out of the way by defining what is meant by a mystery-based scenario: a scenario where the primary challenge for the PCs is in finding or developing clues and putting those clues together in a logical fashion (where logic here is bounded by narrative, genre, and setting considerations) to answer some question.

As a general matter, mystery-based scenarios and plotlines take a great deal more preparation than adventure, exploration, and other types. There are also particular challenges with running a mystery game in PbP that make constructing a good one tougher than it would be around a live table.

There are lots of ways to address those challenges and construct good mystery adventures; here are a few.

Prepare to Improvise

Three fundamental parts of the mystery adventure are the (1) clues, (2) the deduction, and (3) the answer to the mystery. The GM's primary responsibility is in constructing (1) and (3). ((2), as we'll see, is where the players come in but the GM should be prepared to help.)

Start by figuring out the answer to the mystery. Ideally, the answer is fixed in its core but flexible in its details.

The core of the answer will create the bounds on what the clues can and should be. Staying flexible with the details of the answer allows for the creation and modification of clues as the adventure proceeds.

Running the scenario will then be an iterative process of the PCs acting to find or develop clues and the GM making modifications to the clues and the details of the answer to account for players actions.

What do we mean by having a fixed core and flexible details? Here's an illustrative example: maybe your players are investigating what is basically a locked-room mystery on a starship. There's been some sabotage and an attempted murder and the PCs need to figure out the culprit. The fixed core of the answer is who that culprit is (e.g., the First Mate), an outline of what they did (e.g., sabotaged some EVA equipment), and their essential motivation for doing it (e.g., they were passed over for promotion).

This gives us a pretty good variety of potential clues, some of which you should seed in the adventure before it begins (e.g., the sabotaged equipment, conversations with other crew members, ship camera footage, etc., etc.). But it's also loose enough to leave open other types of clues that may come up through PC actions (e.g., did the First Mate leave the tools that they used for the sabotage in their cabin? Maybe. Make a Search check.)

But wait, some of you are saying, shouldn't the details of the answer be fixed and the clues correspondingly be certain? Isn't the point of the mystery scenario for the players to find a predetermined course of events?

No. You're not writing a novel; you're playing a game. A game where, because of the PbP nature of things, player actions are at a premium because of how much real world time they take. The answer and clues must be flexible enough to account for players chasing leads that you didn't anticipate, misinterpreting clues, and in general being unpredictable. Fixing things too firmly means that the characters are going to waste time. That's bad.

No Wasting Time

In most mystery stories (think of your typical episode of Law & Order) there are at least one and sometimes three red herrings and false leads.

Don't do this in your PbP mystery. The game's momentum won't tolerate it. It takes so long for any player to have their character accomplish something that a red herring or false lead is just going to lead to player boredom and frustration.

This isn't to say that you should spoon-feed your characters the right clues and keep them on rails toward the answer. It just means that your guiding principle as the GM is to keep the players and characters working toward the right answer and not intentionally sending them in the wrong direction. You don't have to have a railroad, but you do need some bumpers on the bowling lanes.

Getting the Horses to Drink

Sometimes, the clues that you think are blindingly obvious are anything but. This is your fault, not the players. From the point of view of knowing the answer, all clues are obvious.

So, if the players are not succeeding in deducing the answer from the clues (or figuring out where to look for more clues based on leads), just tell them what the clues mean. This is a corollary to the No Wasting Time rule. Don't let the players chew endlessly on clues that they don't and can't understand. That will kill the game.

Knowing how long to let your players talk about clues before stepping in is more an art than a science. Too soon and the players are going to feel disempowered; too late and the damage is done. There's no hard-and-fast rule here, but err on the side of too early.

The reason that this is particularly important and difficult in PbP is, as we've discussed before, the limited communication bandwidth between GMs and players. At a table, you can see and hear when the players are frustrated, bored, or just aren't grokking the clues. In a PbP game, it can be hard to tell the difference between a slow but definite process of deduction and momentum-killing wheel spinning. Therefore, intervene early and often.