Handling complicated research in rpgs

I'm here to look for some ideas about how to better make researching something an interesting and involved process for a party to go through. Maybe flesh out some of the ideas I had myself. Maybe end up with a small homebrew about research.

This could be used with an academically inclined party, say in a Mage games, or just used in any other type of game that has a specific information that could be deciphered and found in books.

This is to mimic either a search of a true name of someone (in settings where this matter), recovering a piece of hidden knowledge, gaining access to knowledge about the MacGuffin, or finding out something that everyone else is trying to keep secret. This should be a way for a party to work to get the kinds of forbidden knowledge that gets all of them into trouble.

Why? Because if a single player is involved in a research, and keeps rolling his extended roll on Research/Academics/Lore every day/hour/year while other events unfold, the other players aren't as invested, and the reward comes off either cheep or too delayed.

This gets especially bad if the research requires the player to spend most of the day locked in the library, while other players have their adventure. Having them assist barely helps.


As for good, existing cases, I can only think of an example from Ars Magica are rules for a Magical Breakthrough, which define what activities count towards making a breakthrough, and a single or multiple Magi can engage in them, with each successful discovery (not guaranteed with each activity), counts for discovery points.

The main difference from other alternatives is that the activities performed are in of themselves useful activities, giving players new spells or enchanted items related to their goal. This could be adapted for research, but requires an important practical component.

So now that I've put into words what I need and what exists, I'm gonna continue on with half-formed speculation and ideas in the next post.

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d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/intrigue/#Research
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Our main goal would be to involve the whole party in the research process.

Having everyone have a relevant Research skill is an option, but it could be handled better than having all players do the same thing, and rolling the same dice. It could work as a corner case solution.

Now, let's imagine a storytelling system game group with a combat focused character, a social character, and the researcher. By changing little, we could have the researcher finding about some piece of missing information with his first roll. Then, we could have the social character talk to the NPC's of interest, perhaps chosen from the researcher's data, and inquire of information, or it's whereabouts. On top of this, the combat character could have scenes where he has to struggle to gain the piece of information the party needs.
That's rudimentary it, except we should expand and improve the choices, perhaps even make it even more diverse in the ways the information could be gathered.

I'm thinking of outlining a short idea, perhaps a sort of a dial/graph that players have before them after a few starting rolls, and can work together to fill it and get at good end result. It could serve as an adventure hook, in and of itself. Perhaps mirroring the conspiracy theory maps that are popular in the media?

Why not use Pathfinder's research rules?

d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/intrigue/#Research

Reading over them now.
At first glance, the mechanics look solid, but they include long research times for a single character and not a party, while other characters can only perform 'asist-another'

They look promising and parts are useful, but it ties down research to a particular library.

Myself, I'd prefer the Library to act as a bonus and a tool in one of the steps, and make researching into a process with many parts.

First, I'm aiming to establish various different possible tasks, generalizing a bit, but trying to include options. The array and difference in these should be tailored to the party you have, for best performance.

I'm making half of this up as I go along:

1. [Book] research task - this is the default task, involving various skill checks with finding and reading information from a library or a database. This type of task should (but not necessarily be) the start of most research processes, and after the first roll/attempt, the gm should provide the "conspiracy" map for figuring it all out. I suppose, for a boring version of the research process, all tasks could be this one, simply rolling away for each increment of time, gaining successes for a certain goal, gaining small rewards along the way.

2. Manufacture task - this the the type of task where players need to manufacture something to progress further. A special machine for description, a magical tool to read a magical book, a device to get readings from the aura of the library. Anything that must be made, usually by a person with a craft or equivalent skill. This could be sub-contracted, turning it into a social/physical quest to find the specialist who would do the job.

3. Interview task - Some piece of information that is not written down. This could be a piece of the overall puzzle that has been passed down in a particular family as their secret, or it could be simply a task to find an additional source for study. This is the task tailored for the social player, but could potentially be beaten out of someone.
>Cont

Be sure to throw in miniquests (out of reagent, someone else is using a facility)...

Amazing how much of a researcher's ttime has to go towards dealing with bullshit IRL.

4. Confrontation task - anything ranging from a scroll that a dragon is guarding, to a private library with guards. A challenge with a physical component. Usually direct, but could be turned into a sneak operation, or maybe the guardians could be persuaded to hand it over? The point is that the players should know of an enemy/adversary who has a piece they need, but shouldn't be willing to hand it back to them.

5. Espionage task - this is where the party or it's member has to sneak into somewhere, to peek and copy information that would otherwise be forbidden to them. This could turn out to be a confrontation task, but the difference is at the planing phase.

6. Tedious task - I wrote this in for now as a placeholder for tasks which soak up time, and ones that most players could perform. A certain amount of tedium is to be expected, be it translating, transcribing or trying out certain combinations to get results. The performance of these tasks should probably be luck based, but these tasks could be done by a player who isn't currently working on another type of task.

With these six types to begin with, you can arrange the tasks in layers, and revealing each layer after a previous layer is complete (alternativelly, reveal the whole map from the get go). There could be branching layers, giving the party options.
I'll try to cook up an example after I get lunch

Consider a sample party of three people with different skillsets, perhaps with some overlap. We woul'd be trying to make such a map that each layer has three tasks, one for each player. It need not be three tasks every time, but aiming a task a player, you keep the progress clear and understandable and give everyone a task along the way.
In this example that I cooked up during lunch, I added perhaps too much tedium tasks, but they need not be tediously described. After all, they represent overcoming simple setbacks that need to be solved (at least partially) to make progress.

Now, moving on with the example.
Say, a three player party stumbles upon a hint on some MacGuffin and want to get it. You, as the GM, provide them with an opportunity.

At the start, there are three tasks - two tedious and one book research. This could be doing legwork for finding the places of research, finding the relevant books (in many large libraries, finding a book could take a while, but it doesn't need that much of a knowledge in research - unless the books are very well catalogued - just looking up the places where it should be and bringing it. While two party members organize the place and do the heavy lifting, the third party member lays a foundation. Whatever the rolls (or system for that matter), do not give out results before all three tasks are succeed.

Then, there's a choice. One way is negotiate access to a particular place, construct a device for testing (the testing itself could be one of the a manual tasks on the next step), and the part where they have to gather ingredients for the device.
Another way is to spend twice as much time researching, and this time, two people have separate research topics they are looking into it. If only one party member has direct research skill, it will take twice as long, but should be an option.

After the second choice, the players find out about a hideout with additional information they need. There's a need for two operations - one to extract it secretly, and another to actually confront the oposition to get their information by an old fashioned method of violence. The tedium task in this case depends on the second choice. It's either collecting readings with a device, or going through some old statistical tomes which have the very same readings and have been found on the task before, and picking what is needed, by a set of established guidelines in the second step.

Fourth step requires another stealthy mission, some other research on the information gathered in the third step, and the manifacture of say, compass that should point to MacGuffin, but needs some special enchantment to work.

Fifth step has tedium in gathering even more data, using the compass manifactured in fourth step, and the researcher to make sense of all the data. Once that is done, the MacGuffin is finally within party's reach.

Each of the tasks could and should be expanded, beyond a simple roll of dice and skill check.

What do you think?

Will read in a minute, but I like the first post so far. And it's got me brainstorming too. Something similar to roguelikes.

>sample images

Shitter.

Eh?

Here's a better quality version

And this. Better?

Another thought to the topic, would be bonuses. The libraries players have acces to, the data thry have gathered, I imagine such tools to accumulate during the course of the prolonged campaign.

Search for new tools could be sidequests or even full on research maps themselves, each tool brought into the fold giving easier successes on rolls.

But that's somewhat a given, whatever the system used for actual research.

Seems pretty nice to me, you're making the whole research process a quest in and of itself, and that's way more interesting than just rolling and adding skill bonuses.
I would handle the whole process like a Call of Cthulhu investigation myself, and have the players piece all the information together. It's a lot of work for the GM, but it's fun. One thing to absolutely keep in mind is to *not* make vital clues require a skill check to be found. If they're vital, the players NEED to be able to acquire it no matter what.

>This is to mimic either a search of a true name of someone (in settings where this matter), recovering a piece of hidden knowledge, gaining access to knowledge about the MacGuffin, or finding out something that everyone else is trying to keep secret. This should be a way for a party to work to get the kinds of forbidden knowledge that gets all of them into trouble.

You just listed good examples of quests or story arcs.

One player uses time to conduct research it is a player quirk or, if the player is good, character development masking preparation for later level abilities.

Party works together to research it is to drive plot

It's sometimes nearly impossible to put your secret knowledge to piece together. If the setting is more complex, or the answer is unusual, the only viable option is use code or reveal parts of the main reveal, but that can look unrealistic.

As for vital information, I'd say have the rolls measure the speed in which they fomb through the information and not if they get it at all. Since you already decided they need to get it, you can have them spend more time on failure.


As a bonus idea, after a failed task, simply add two more tasks that need to he done, and the reasearch would live a like a hydra, expanding with each failure.

My cause was to find a way to make Research into a hook and adventure in and of itself. To distance myself from a single roll, and to have a way for the party to feel like they are moving closer to an answer.


I've played too many games with weird artifacts, where the GM doesn't want the party to learn how to use it, and hypes up the cryptic nature of such an artifact. Often, you get pieces of information, but these are given when the GM decides the party is ready, without any feeling of agency from the part of players.

I would like to go in an opposite direction. >Yes, the item X is weird and unknown, but here is the tasks you need to do to unlock more knowledge about it.
>When you solve these, I will show you the whole map to the answer, and until then, your artifact shall remain a mystery.

Any other ideas for scenario hooks with reasearch in em?

A creature that keeps reviving each tine after it's been killed, could serve both as a countdown and a reason for panicked research. For bonus points, make it be stronger each time it returns and have different levels of research map take in different places, making a campaign out of it.

I don’t like your idea at all.

What would you change?