How can I create better clues and leads for investigation quests?

How can I create better clues and leads for investigation quests?

I am quite a fan of investigations in RPGs. As a player, they are one of my favorite activities, and they excite me to a great degree. I tend to solve them with great efficiency and rapidity. I have been informed by GMs that I am remarkably skilled at puzzle-solving, even by those GMs who ran difficult premade adventures with minimal changes (in other words, "fair and square," with no cases of declaring the players retroactively correct).

My logs tell me that I have GMed 200+ sessions since December of 2014. My various players have regularly informed me that my method of running mysteries is awful and recondite, and that I should run more player-friendly mysteries. I agree with them wholeheartedly.

This has been a issue for a long while. I constantly try to create better mysteries and investigations, but nothing seems to work. The vast majority of the investigatory quests I run are a flop, and I have to be the one to solve them for the players, usually thinly-disguised as a "fail forward."

The "three/four clue rule" hardly works for me because the clues wind up too abstruse. Trying to figure out a new lead or a solution from one of the clues is nearly impossible for the players. I think on a very different wavelength from most players, and it is nearly impossible for me to think from the perspective of my players (or anyone else). Thus, it is extremely difficult to gauge if something I consider an easy clue will be easy for the players.

I do not want to simply take the "PCs are retroactively right" method of investigations either, because it sits right with neither the players nor me. I would prefer to run mysteries "fair and square."

Is there some obvious method to creating good clues and leads that I am missing? One that preferably does not rely too much on seeing from the players' perspective, because I am very poor at such.

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thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule
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Can you provide examples from your experience, highlighting things that have been an issue?

Other than that:
> Try building a lattice of nodes that comprise the components of the scenario. Don't be stingy with the opening avenues of the investigation. Straight up give them 3-4 right off the bat, spelling them out explicitly, and have them form a lattice with one another to future points. Chokepoints between nodes should be few and far between unless they're vital. They shouldn't have to hit all of the nodes to make it through.
> People make mistakes, some of my early mysteries involved NPCs who acted far too cleverly to make the scenario satisfying. Don't be afraid to have them behave/have behaved without thinking things through.
> Put a clock on things. If they don't hit the solution or make enough progress quickly enough the situation gets worse, but reveals more of itself. Alternatively as they get closer the same thing happens. Vary this a bit from scenario to scenario as appropriate.
> Make shit up if you need too. This falls less into the 'PCs are retroactively right' column and more into 'wow, I didn't think they would do that' territory. Before you start, look at the paths your clues provide and so you can sandwich an alternative path into the player's intended actions with the same result on the fly. This helps to avoid the game getting bogged down.

tl;dr

1: There should be few dead ends in the investigation. At any point in time, the evidence should suggest new clues AND people/factions to accuse of being responsible for whatever the investigation is about. That means the players will always have something new to search for or interrogate, unless they're completely off the mark.

2: Evidence should generally point to two or three different conclusions. The players should correlate what information they have from evidence, and it should overall point strongly to the culprit. You've got murder weapon that was accessible to guy A, girl B and girl C, the guard saw a female go in with a ninja outfit, and the people who wanted the murdered guy dead had dealings with this ninja clan who girl C and guy D were part of. Of course, the murderer is girl C.

3: If the players can't work out how to use a piece of evidence (e.g. their in game skills are not high enough), suggest to them seeking out specialists - clay trod into the carpet of a burgled mansion could be brought to a merchant who could say "yeah, this clay's either from the north region of barbarians, but it's also found in the training grounds of this ninja clan."

3: NPCs can give out bad accusations due to their biases, but if they do so, the people accused should be able to give more information. Only accuse people who the players can get to easily so they don't do a side trip all the way to the northern wastes. "I bet you it was Faction X. They are allied with Faction Y and I hate their guts." -Faction X can provide information on Faction Y, who was the group that hired the ninja to do the murder.

4: If all else fails, have another incident occur - another murder by a ninja girl! Or the murdered guy's place is robbed by ninjas. That starts a new linked investigation - it might be by a different person or the same person, but the players will have something else to look into, and ask more people about the evidence.

>Try building a lattice of nodes that comprise the components of the scenario. Don't be stingy with the opening avenues of the investigation. Straight up give them 3-4 right off the bat, spelling them out explicitly, and have them form a lattice with one another to future points. Chokepoints between nodes should be few and far between unless they're vital. They shouldn't have to hit all of the nodes to make it through.
Could you please explain what you mean by this? I am quite intrigued by this concept, but I am afraid I do not understand what you mean by this.


>People make mistakes, some of my early mysteries involved NPCs who acted far too cleverly to make the scenario satisfying. Don't be afraid to have them behave/have behaved without thinking things through.
I will confess that this is one of my foibles. Consciously or otherwise, I keep telling myself, "Why would any remotely competent villain leave three or four obviously identifiable clues, each of which can be used to single-handedly drive forward the case?" It bothers me a considerable degree that villains more or less need to be incompetent and sloppy in order for the PCs to be given a fair chance at solving the investigation. How can this be circumvented?

>Put a clock on things. If they don't hit the solution or make enough progress quickly enough the situation gets worse, but reveals more of itself. Alternatively as they get closer the same thing happens. Vary this a bit from scenario to scenario as appropriate.
I doubt this would help when the issue is the PCs being unable to solve mysteries effectively. Punishing them for being unable to do so would only aggravate the issue.

This sounds like your players are just bad at solving mysteries.

This has been a persistent issue across numerous players, some of which had GMed games with heavy investigation for me previously.

One time I ran a murder mystery which the PCs didn't actually get to the bottom of, it ended up with a trial by combat killing the only person likely to tell them the truth.

And that was fine. They had fun roleplaying, with some fun encounters along the way, and their investigations cast some doubts upon an ally of theirs.

So what do you want your mysteries and investigations for? "To solve the mystery" isn't usually the goal, its a means to an end. Advancing the plot, fun, whatever. That end can be achieved without everything being neatly tied up after a dramatic conclusion in the accusation parlour.

Well, I'm not that user, but I used the word nodes too, not sure if it's in the same sense. basically, don't have the progression of the investigation set in stone. Have vital parts that can be rearranged to fit whatever the PC's are doing. This doesn't mean make them always right, but if they start completely barking up the wrong tree, maybe rearrange it in such a way that instead f having to go from A to B, they go from A to A1/2 to B. Not sure if this makes sense.

> Make shit up if you need too. This falls less into the 'PCs are retroactively right' column and more into 'wow, I didn't think they would do that' territory. Before you start, look at the paths your clues provide and so you can sandwich an alternative path into the player's intended actions with the same result on the fly. This helps to avoid the game getting bogged down.
How is it "making things up" if I have to do this before I start? Could you please expound on this?

>1: There should be few dead ends in the investigation.
Simple enough.

>2: Evidence should generally point to two or three different conclusions.
Do you mean all the evidence should collectively point to two or three different conclusions, or that each piece of evidence should have two or three pieces?

>3: If the players can't work out how to use a piece of evidence (e.g. their in game skills are not high enough), suggest to them seeking out specialists
What often winds up happening is that I have to have such "specialists" be the ones to effectively solve the mystery for the characters.

>3: NPCs can give out bad accusations due to their biases, but if they do so, the people accused should be able to give more information.
A creative and useful piece of advice.

>4: If all else fails, have another incident occur
In other words, if the players are having trouble, I should make things easier by having a new incident occur, thereby creating a new batch of evidence. It raises the stakes while also giving the characters much more leads. This is a good recommendation.

>"To solve the mystery" isn't usually the goal
I do consider it a goal, because if the players are simply unable to solve a mystery no matter how hard they try, they are painted as incompetent and they are unable to make progress towards righting a wrong.

You are explaining this obtusely, and I cannot see how this would not just be having the players retroactively be correct.

Heavens you surely and sorely have the 'tism!

I did explain it kind of shit, what I was trying to say was the same as what said on point 4, that some things the players tried to do that follow a false lead can sometimes lead to another, legitimate clue, but I did it badly.

Pretty sure on 2 he meant that each piece pointed to 2-3 conclusions a piece. So when you had all the clues they'd end up pointing to one/two people and exclude all the others.

Given a brief and self-contained investigation with four clues, would that not mean a grand total of eight to twelve possible conclusions with those four clues?

Would this not inundate the players with information?

12 if you look at each on their own without the others, but if you put them together, that's what leads to the actual conclusion(s).

I am not entirely sure what you mean here. How do twelve conclusions lead to only one or two conclusion?

You see broken glass, you know that something glass was broken, but it could be anything glass.
You see a receipt for a glass vase, you know that there is a vase somewhere in existence.
You see the lack of a vase, you know there is no vase, but this could be because he never owned a vase.
These are three things with each a conclusion/statement, but when you look at all of them, you can conclude that there was a glass vase that broke.
Each of them separate could mean any number of things, but when you have all of them, it can be clear what happened. Of course my example was super straight forward, but (I think) it gets the point across.

>I have GMed 200+ sessions since December of 2014
meaning 2 sessions every 3 days, what the fuck?

>I will confess that this is one of my foibles. Consciously or otherwise, I keep telling myself, "Why would any remotely competent villain leave three or four obviously identifiable clues, each of which can be used to single-handedly drive forward the case?" It bothers me a considerable degree that villains more or less need to be incompetent and sloppy in order for the PCs to be given a fair chance at solving the investigation. How can this be circumvented?

Well, it can't really be circumvented. It's the case in real life. Investigation can take months, lots of time when you have no clues the crime is just unsolved and sometimes innocent end up in jail.
Sherlock Holmes is a hero of fiction

Play a GUMSHOE game like The Esoterrorists or Night's Black Agents.

Each piece of evidence does not necessarily have two or three conclusions that can be drawn from them in this example.

I GM very often.

This does not help create the mysteries in the first place.

>Do you mean all the evidence should collectively point to two or three different conclusions, or that each piece of evidence should have two or three pieces?
The latter; have each piece of evidence suggest a few conclusions. The conclusion that is correct should be the thing with the most evidence for it.

You will end up with a bunch of conclusions, yes, but one should have the majority of the evidence pointing towards the answer.

I should probably rephrase it. Each piece of evidence should narrow down the possible conclusions the players can draw.

If you look at the singular piece of evidence:
"The guard saw a female assassin" that's half the population. It helps, but isn't going to nail anyone.
"The assassination used ninja techniques." That's got you to "female ninja".
"The murdered person was targeted by his business rivals, who have connections with clan X". Now you're looking for a female ninja from clan X.


>What often winds up happening is that I have to have such "specialists" be the ones to effectively solve the mystery for the characters.

Specialists don't need to be involved in the case itself; thus don't have a big stake in fingering others. They're mostly there if the party lacks, say, a wizard, and needs a magical dagger or something identified. Don't have them going to jump to conclusions, just have them provide what a piece of evidence means without tying it in with the rest of everything else.

>I will confess that this is one of my foibles. Consciously or otherwise, I keep telling myself "remotely competent villain"

1: They were in a hurry and didn't have time
2: They lacked resources
3: They don't fear being found out
4: They tried to cover themselves up too much, and they used too much force in the coverup - they're implicated in the destruction of evidence.

In addition to what has been said:

It's fine to fail the investigation- just make a new incident and make sure that the old clues that they've collected will be useful. have the culprit make the same mistake again, if they can't figure out that a clue that shows up twice is a clue your players are beyond help.

Introduce an NPC early on that you can use to hint them in the right direction. A police constable, a private eye, an old friend who they know is smart and trustworthy, even a new NPC they interviewed who remembered something else or swear they saw something that must be relevant.

Kinda sucks to fail a whole quest.

>I think on a very different wavelength
Touhoufag?

Okay, we're going in circles a bit here. I have a friend with your same knack for zipping straight to through most mysteries. Here's what we can do, walk us through one of the mysteries your players failed to solve. We can help go over where you went wrong, and what could be done in the future to improve it. For someone who thinks like you in all likelihood do, seeing the tips we are trying to impart applied might be more helpful in understanding them.

OP stop eating thesauruses and shitting them back up online

welcome to the wonderful world of the neet

clues depend on players and to some lesser degree the DM
>players
i played CoC and just used accounting as a dump stat and speed sorted all the paperwork in an office also don't to dumb shit if your trying to be clever like having the murder stay in the same town he committed the murder or personally killing some one he knows. this is considered the harder core audience. clues include monetary discrepancies in log books and a high class individual in a low end establishment or any other thing that stands out to be out of the ordinary but not jumps out as murderer.

for the lower end players who just want a hack and slash perhaps the players come across some guys who are trying to clean up after a murder and that starts a fight.
>DM
give your players multiple entrance points but don't let them go too deep. don't let the monetary discrepancies lead directly to the murderer, the assassin wont tell who his employer is and probably died to the PCs. if the thief robs some blind beggar he picks a note from the coin sack.

don't just give 1 guy they need to talk to because some one in the party is going to kill him. 1 book that will get burned when they find the next guys house, bar the doors and burn it down. don't give a single guy everything to do.

you said that you played misery games and all the mystery games i played have flawed mechanics in that you can only advance through limier progression as well as some long shots of logic and doubtful evidence left behind. i would suggest studying criminology if you really want to wright good mystery games. you might not like it but your PCs might find a way to solve the puzzle better than you can. simple reconnoitre can tell them more than you want so just be prepared. maybe even mix things up a bit. don't try to wright the script but make a list of who knows what and how they might screw up

this makes no sense in any investigation unless the guy is getting framed

in actual investigations just ask around and any discrepancies or anyone without an alibi are the ones who most likely did it. even if they have something to hide they don't want to get there head chopped off for murder and will cooperate.

not a detective but OBJECTION

>"The guard saw a female assassin" that's half the population. It helps, but isn't going to nail anyone.

good
step 1

>"The assassination used ninja techniques." That's got you to "female ninja".

sure why not
step 1.1

>"The murdered person was targeted by his business rivals, who have connections with clan X"

jump in logic
step ???

>Now you're looking for a female ninja from clan X.

step profit

Nobody has posted the "rule of three" yet? Three clues at the scene (roll to find), three people to question, and three red herrings.

> thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Read this shit OP. It's exactly the answer to your problem.

yes i agree. perhaps the individual has been blustered by your failed attempt and got too cocky or scared you might find him he might send assassins after you

not failed just not yet finished and now you have new leads

it's also boring to succeed at everything, and it's not much of a challenge if there is no chance of failure
that's why its important to have a time limit, so if the party messes up or gets on the wrong track they don't flounder forever and get bored, some other party solves the problem, or some disaster occurs
in the case of a murder mystery, the captain of the guard could solve the mystery and the party gets no reward, or the killer could 'win' by going out murder-suicide with a PC family member dead

PCs murder the wrong guy and are trying to cover it up

It's mentioned in the OP.

>GM sucks at running mysteries
>players fail
Not cool.

But how do you make each of the clues good?

BUmp

Stop making your villains mary sues, you aspergers shit

Competent criminals are not Mary Sues.

How is it even possible for mere text to convey such unfiltered autism?

You are truly a vile specimen, OP.

>"Why would any remotely competent villain leave three or four obviously identifiable clues, each of which can be used to single-handedly drive forward the case?"
Come up with clues that they can't cover up no matter what they do.

Examples?

Depending on the time period, the place of the crime, the method of the crime, and even the villain himself, there's a ton of factors to consider, and many things that can go wrong. If the villain is notably strong and bulky and couldn't manage to finish off their victim with one hit, they might have broken some shit in the resulting fight, whether it's bones or furniture that they couldn't simply take with them. If poison was used, then it must have been someone who the victim trusted to some extent. That's just going by the cause of death. The cause of death itself can be used as a clue, and it's usually difficult to conceal it successfully.

While getting away, the villain could have been seen by someone or left behind tire tracks or something to that extent, depending on their method of getaway, and that witness can then be used to narrow the culprit down to "someone who owns a car". If the murder was committed in a place that isn't easy to access, and a keycard had to be used or something like that, the fact of the culprit entering should be somewhere in the logs, and there's not much that they can do about it other than try to work around it, which in and of itself can serve as a clue to work with.

The villain may have manipulated the scene to remove any clues that point at him and accidentally messed something up somewhere on the scene itself. Like, if he wanted to wash away the blood for one reason or another (like if his own blood got on the crimescene somewhere but he didn't know which blood is his), and ended up throwing away an item of importance to the victim (and someone who isn't the culprit knows how important that item is to the victim), and then gets caught on a lie regarding that item later.

I know all of those are really vague, but I can't give you any specific examples. That's practically impossible without knowing everything about the crime.