QQ&A: A simple way to create mysteries
Today’s quick Q&A:
“What’s a simple way to add mysteries to roleplaying games?”
A simple way, you say?
That’s easy - think of a mystery with three parts to it. For each part, offer three clues.
Done.
For example, say the party investigates the murder of the baroness’ daughter. It was a savage murder, leaving the body unrecognisable.
Here are three facts about the murder they’ll need to uncover:
1) The daughter wasn’t actually murdered. She was there when it happened, but she fled into the woods in fear.
2) The murder was of one of her servants with a similar build. She was the real target, not the daughter.
3) The murderer was a wizard, who was the servant’s illegitimate father. He needed the death of a blood relative to empower one of his spells.
Hey, you asked for a simple mystery - it honestly doesn’t get much simpler than this. If your mystery only has one element (the baroness was secretly the wizard they were hunting all along!) then it’s not a mystery unless you’re the Scooby Gang.
So the murder mystery has three elements. Now, give each three clues:
1.1) There are women’s footprints leaving the manor.
1.2) There’s a rumour that the servant murdered the daughter then fled into the woods. Since they look alike, that’s an easy case of mistaken identity.
1.3) The daughter’s magical amulet of protection is missing from its hiding place.
2.1) The servant woman is missing. None of her friends has seen her since the murder.
2.2) The murder victim had a locket on her. The baroness doesn’t recognise it, but one of the other servants does.
2.3) The body has a subtle but distinctive mark that only the servant could have.
3.1) The murderer bypassed magical alarms.
3.2) The blood splatter goes in all directions from the body. This is from the cloud of daggers spell.
3.3) The victim’s heart was removed and consumed by the spell. The body was mutilated to cover this up.
It’s quick and easy to come up with something like that, but there’s enough there for players to chew on for a while. It helps to be able to improvise, though. If someone asks an irrelevant question, you can try to make it relevant on the fly, or give an answer that doesn’t point anywhere.
One final thought: no one clue should solve the mystery. Each clue should, at most, shed light on a small part of the mystery.
The killer’s secret journal should stay out of player’s hands until they’ve heard all the clues and decided on an answer, rightly or wrongly.
Anyway, I like a simple framework that leads to awesome things. If you have time to sit down and think, you can develop a better mysteries - on the fly, though, this works well.
It’s the same with creating realistic species.
If you want to design a non-human species, it’s easy to make them too human. Why would elves, gods, sentient clouds of dark matter and AIs think like humans? The answer: they wouldn’t. But you would, so it’s easy for your thinking to creep in.
If you know the AMAM model, you can design fascinating, consistent and downright different psyches on the fly.
Like mysteries, it’s better if you can sit down and map them out. If you don’t have the luxury of time, then it doesn’t matter - you can do it in a moment or three.
How do you learn the AMAM model?
By reading Call of the Gods.
You’ll never think about your own thinking the same way again.
Bonus: everything from your orcs to your galaxy-spanning superbrains will feel fresh, exotic and reasonable. They won’t feel like humans in different skins, no will they seem random or identical.
They will, in fact, feel like real creatures.
Get it here: