Few mechanisms are as good at building engagement as a solid mystery. There’s something about wanting to get to the bottom of things which tugs at our lizard brain, urging us forward. The best mysteries keep us coming back by methodically revealing bits and pieces of themselves; letting us put the clues together as we try to discern the truth before it’s revealed to us. By contrast, bad mysteries flub this part; they can be either too subtle and obtuse, making them frustrating; or not subtle enough, which allows us to see the reveal coming from a mile away. They can also just not make any sense; building up evidence for one outcome, only to produce something totally unexpected without having provided the plotting or foreshadowing needed to make that payoff worthwhile. Who cares if the butler did it, when the story didn’t include the butler until the ultimate reveal? When done well, a mystery can become the highlight of a game. When done poorly, it can be something no one remembers, or worse, it can derail that game.

While the points above apply to mysteries in any media, they are particularly important for any game master trying to create and run a compelling mystery game. Books, TV shows and movies all have a finite amount of time with which to introduce, expand upon, and ultimately wrap up a plot. As a result, their pacing can be exact. More importantly, the audience for traditional media is a passive one; they have no impact on the plot, and therefore the creators of a mystery don’t have to worry about any emergent changes to their story.

Roleplaying games, on the other hand, often have no limits in terms of time, and the “audience” isn’t an audience at all, but a group of collaborators with an imperative to affect the plot. This means that GMs have to work with a different set of goals in mind when trying to craft and execute a mystery. In my time running games, I’ve tried a few different approaches, and some have been far more successful than others.

GM as Mystery Novelist

When a GM first starts running mystery games, they often do what I did; they look to other media for inspiration and guidance on how to do so. Getting inspiration from other media is important for our entire hobby, but you have to be careful not to follow the method and craft of other media too closely. As I said above, we’re working towards different goals. GMs don’t have the luxury of a linear path from hook to reveal, and this is usually the first (and largest) mistake I see GMs make when they want to create a mystery; they set up the plot with a hook, then place clues along what they assume to be a logical path; culminating in a reveal which assumes the clues have all been found, and correctly interpreted, along the way.

I can’t stress this enough: no prep survives first contact with the players. This is why I’ve given up on doing too much prep at all.

Most of my initial mystery games fell flat, because no matter how obvious I thought a clue was, the players would either think it wasn’t important, or miss it all together. Often times this was because I hadn’t signaled to them properly; players can’t read our minds, after all; but just as often it was because the party would just not go to that room in the haunted house which was clearly so important (or so I thought); or even worse, because they would fail the roll to find the clue in question. I’ll get to rolling for clues in a bit, but suffice it to say, none of these outcomes is ideal.

When the players miss a clue (or three), you’ve got a real problem — if your mystery relies on them finding these important clues, you’re stuck either trying to get the clues where they need to be (which can appear forced); coming up with new clues (which might not make sense); or having a reveal that no one sees coming because it wasn’t foreshadowed. In any of these cases, your grand mystery is probably going to end more with a whimper than a bang.

This is why I try not to take an “author’s” approach when I run mystery games; I just can’t be sure the players are going to go where I think they will.

Make It Rain (Clues)

One way to combat the problem of players potentially missing a clue is to plot out where your game is going to go, and place important clues throughout it. For example, if you know the players are going to be visiting three locations in your game, you can place an important (and somewhat redundant) clue in each spot. They don’t have to be the same clue, but they might point to the same follow-up person or location. This gives the players three opportunities to advance the plot. Then, the next set of places would have two or three opportunities to find clues, and so on.

This seems great, right? You know where your players are likely to end up, and you’ve got all kinds of clues waiting to be found. I’ve got a problem with this approach, though— it’s just too much work. While we’ve solved the problem of having to railroad a group to make the mystery work, we’ve added the problem of doing a lot of prep. As I’ve said, I don’t have the time or energy for that. Instead, these days I prefer to just go where the players go, and come up with clues as needed.

Choose Their Own Adventure

So that’s my big reveal for this part of the post; rather than try to come up with some kind of grand plan for my mystery, I just sketch out the big stuff, and then go along with the players. They started in a haunted house, and decided the clue they found pointed them to the local blacksmith? Sounds good to me. Sure, maybe that clue was meant to send them to the general store, where the clerk is busy cleaning blood off of his hatchet, but we can get to him from the blacksmith. Oh, the blacksmith sent them scurrying off to the chapel? No problem — the clerk, riddled with guilt over his crime, is there now to confess his sins. No big plan, no arduous prep. You can go where the players want to go, and every clue they find ends up being meaningful, because it pushes them forward.

Now, this sort of play does have some challenges; the biggest one is you, the GM, have to weave a coherent narrative which leads towards your outcome. If you aren’t adept at thinking on your feet, this can be tough. I started out pretty terrible at it, but after some practice, I got better. These days I do pretty well at it, and I find that both I, and my players, have a lot more fun in the process.

Crafting Mysteries and Revealing Clues

So now that you know my preferred method for running mysteries, I want to take some time to talk about creating and revealing them. Put simply, I find that mystery games work best when the mystery is something straightforward, and the players are always allowed to move towards solving it.

What do I mean by “straightforward?” Well, I don’t mean the outcome should be obvious, nor do I mean the clues can’t be subtle. What I’m talking about when I say “straightforward” is a mystery game shouldn’t be too deep, at least at any particular level. Again, games aren’t books or films; there’s no finite time limit, and no guarantee they’ll go where you think they will. As a result, a mystery which is too complex can fall apart as the players forget the clues they’ve found previously. “Wait, the person pulling the strings is the cab driver? I don’t get it. Oh, we found that clue five sessions ago? I had totally forgotten about that” — queue sad trombone.

Instead, I encourage you to either keep your mysteries short, or to build mysteries on top of each other. If the players are unravelling a grand conspiracy, keeping the reveals coming at a steady pace. This allows the players to both feel like they are accomplishing something, and gives them memorable moments to keep the plot fresh in their minds. “Of course it was the cab driver! We saw his cab peel away from the burning building last week!”

A great tool for this is something like the “Conspyramid” from Night’s Black Agents, or the Faction Pyramid from Christopher Sniezak. Even if you aren’t building a true faction or conspiracy, you can use this approach to layer your plots on top of one another, so that each solved mystery leads into the next level, ultimately building to the grand reveal.

Always Be Revealing

As for making sure the players are moving towards solving your mystery; that’s easy — Never put important clues behind arbitrary gates, like a roll. Nothing kills a mystery faster than not being able to solve it because of some game mechanic. When I first began to use mysteries in my games, this was probably my worst offense; I’d make the players roll to find out something important, and if they failed the roll… then what? Nothing. I would be at a loss as to how to get them where they needed to go, and the whole thing would fall apart.

Instead, you should take the approach from games like GUMSHOE and the recently kickstarted Cthulhu Dark; players always find the important clues or information. Any rolling around investigating a mystery determines how much additional information they get, or what complications and dangers they encounter along the way. This way, the plot is always moving forward, and is never stopped by something as random as a botched roll.