#10: Aha, A Clue!
#10: Aha, A Clue!
click it for the links, there are lots of them
Welcome to Issue #10! I don’t know what we can deduce from that except that there’s probably going to be an Issue #11 …
I. A Work-in-Progress Theory of Clue Design
Back in Issue #3, I talked about how I wanted a mystery game where the players solved the mystery rather than told the story of how their characters solved a mystery. I want an RPG that is like video games like Her Story or Return of the Obra Dinn. Games where is one right answer and the players must find it.
I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot since then and I think I have made some progress. So let’s talk about clues. Because I think that while writing one mystery-as-puzzle is possible, if you want to write three or five or fifteen, you need a framework - a framework for constructing mysteries and for constructing clues.
Broadly, I think there are two ways to classify clues that are useful if you’re interested in designing them. The first, and most basic, way is by their form. Is the clue a physical object, a sensory input, a message in words? In the end, all clues are information. But the form that the information takes is an important part of thinking about them. There is a difference between finding a bloody knife and a cryptic messaged scrawled in blood. To a forensic investigator, the bloody knife can be converted into information. To the average player, it’s something they have to take to a forensic investigator. Which isn’t the same thing at all.
Which brings me to the more interesting way of thinking about clues - by what action they prompt.
In an article published literally today, Justin Alexander actually talks about this:
In my more recent work, I’ve started talking about clues & leads, where leads point you to places where you can continue investigating (i.e., new nodes) and clues point to other types of revelations (often the solution to the mystery; e.g., Bob’s the killer).
A lot of mystery RPGs don’t have clues, they just have leads. If you look at Justin Alexander’s original series on Node Based Game Design or Gumshoe modules, all clues are breadcrumbs that you follow from one node to another. You go to Node A, find Clue A, which leads you to Node B and Clue B, and so on, till the story is over. These are clues that prompt “movement” from the characters. A clue tells them that they should go elsewhere and do something else.
What does a clue that isn’t a lead look like? Well, for one thing, it necessitates a completely different kind of story structure. Instead of a story where you start at Node A and then follow the clues till you arrive at Node Z, the story looks a bit more like, well, a jigsaw puzzle.
For example, say the mystery begins with a murder and a list of suspects. A clue is a piece of information that tells you something about the killer in a way that eliminates certain suspects. And when you have only one suspect left, you’ve solved the mystery. The important thing to note here is that you can absolutely construct this kind of puzzle beforehand. This is a replicable framework for a mystery.
Here are the steps:
There is a murder in an enclosed space. Example: a house in the middle of nowhere. Classic!
This gives you a limited number of suspects, each of them fully fleshed out individuals. Example: Ransom, a spoiled rich kid with a temper and great taste in sweaters, played by Chris Evans.
For each suspect, you must have one clue that proves that they could not be the killer. Example: A footprint of a boot in blood eliminates everyone wearing heels.
Then, you unleash your players onto the scene.
The big difference between this and node-based mysteries is there is no trail to follow. Just facts to be gleaned and deductions to be made.
You know what’s really interesting? I found a thread from the Forge forums dated 2004 that explores this exact problem. I don’t think there is a more useful source of information on this subject despite more the decade and a half that has passed.
More on this as I figure it out.
II. Video of the Week
There’s an all Indigenous / Native D&D 5e stream premiering on Oct 12th and I think it will be a thing of power and beauty. I found out about this from a moving interview between Brennan Lee Mulligan and Kelly Lynne D’Angelo, the DM of this new stream.
I know this is the opposite of an indie RPG but I’m making an exception this time.
(Psst. If you want an indie RPG watch, check out Actual Play’s ongoing game of political machinations and courtly skullduggery in Rebel Crown.)
(It’s been ten issues since the first discussion thread so here’s another one. Feel free to drop in and chat about what you want to see in this newsletter, link me to interesting things, or just about anything else.)
III. Links From The Week
On Tor.com, Linda H Codega looks at popular fantasy books and what indie RPGs could help you play your own version. Very, very cool article and so great to see all these wonderful games on a site like Tor!
Black Armada Games has a comprehensive section on safety and other communication tools on their website. They’ve broken it up into tools before play, during play, and after play.
CBR.com is a big comic book news site and they recently seem to have hired somebody to write about tabletop RPGs?! Here’s a recent one on PbtA games.
Spencer Campbell has a post-mortem of his kickstarter for Slayers, his monster hunting RPG. Useful for anyone looking for some hard (and sobering) numbers.
Gnomestew has a review of the new Cortex Prime book.
DramaDice has a review of Monsterhearts 2e.
From an interview about Brinkwood: Blood of Tyrants: I thought there was a lot of unmined space, especially in the parallels between vampires and capital. And then Peter Thiel started literally drinking the blood of the young and I thought, “Well, this is going to be a little on the nose, isn’t it?”
The San Jenaro Co-Op generously released a huge community art pack for people to use in their own designs. Read the license!
“If you remove suspense around narrative elements in the design, then the suspense shifts instead to how the PCs feel about the events.” - From ‘Railroading is Good Actually” by Evan Torner in Knucklebone Magazine #1.
IV. Small Ads
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As usual, this newsletter was written by me, @chaibypost. You can find my itch store here where I recently published Blades in the Spire, a fan conversion of the 10 classes from the Spire RPG into the Blades in the Dark system. It’s free! Though I would appreciate a tip if you can spare it.
Thanks for subscribing, folks. <3.
Take care out there.
Here's a little chunk about investigations that I wrote 3 years ago (according the date on the Google doc, at least). The clue hierarchy idea in particular might fit in with what you're developing. The basic idea is that the players get the core information they need, but good die rolls can make solving the mystery easier/faster by filling in gaps between player and character ability, perception, and world knowledge. The specific mechanics are from some previous version of the system I've been in tinkering with for several years, so I don't even know the exact context for them, but they fit the basic "a good roll is good" paradigm. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1chwyhetKuKz5sLDquxRQ5h7SkEqWjgmc-gsLPEaGZ3w/edit?usp=sharing