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When we talk about mystery scenarios, we obviously spend a lot of time looking at clues. Broadly speaking, a clue is something that an investigator can use to reach a conclusion:

• The murders always happen on the night of a full moon; therefore a werewolf is responsible.
• The accounting records reveal that John Fairbanks has been making payments to the corporate saboteurs.
• The trail of footprints leads to Old Man’s Cave.

And so forth.

A hint, on the other hand, is similar to a clue, but DOESN’T point to a conclusion. They’re less specific than that. They’re suggestive of something more general or, perhaps, ephemeral. Another way to think about is that a clue provides an answer, but a hint suggests a question.

This doesn’t, however, mean that a hint is necessarily subtle. Stuff like

• A bloody handprint smeared across the wall;
• A portrait with the eyes gouged out; or
• The front door of Alicia’s house being ajar when you arrive

can all be very obvious and in-your-face, even if it’s not entirely clear what’s going on.

Other hints, though, might be so subtle that the players might not even realize they were significant until later, like:

• Broken pieces of glass on the floor of a dungeon corridor.
• “Silver snakes” being mentioned off-handedly or metaphorically in several different lore books.
• A slightly greasy residue on a door handle.

Hints are not just random set dressing, though. They are, in fact, hinting at something. (It’s right in the name.) It’s just that they are so fractured, partial, distorted, or incomplete in their nature that their true meaning cannot be fully perceived. The difference between photograph and a dim shape glimpsed murkily through a thick fog.

USING HINTS

Hints can be used to achieve a number of different effects.

They can set mood or tone for a scenario. Basic examples include simple signals that “something weird is going on here” or “something terrible happened here.”

They can also serve as a warning of danger. This can be highly situational, but whether it’s a bloody knife or a broken vase of flowers lying on the kitchen floor, PCs who take the hint might realize it’s time to draw their guns, call the cops, or activate their shielding charm.

Similarly, a hint can be a signal to investigate. A sort of, “Hey! Look over here!” Whatever the PCs find upon taking a closer look, of course, may have nothing to do with the original hint.

Tip: A hint suggesting the presence of a trap can be a fun combination of danger warning and investigation signal.

Hints can also more broadly serve as a form of foreshadowing. Why did all the toy soldiers have their legs ripped off? While initially being just a creepy-yet-enigmatic detail, the truth will become apparent when the PCs meet the legless zombie boy who’s been locked up in the attic.

Something to be aware of when using hints is that there’s not always a sharp distinction between a clue and a hint. Players can also be devilishly insightful, so don’t be surprised when they perform a bit of intuitive judo and somehow glean great truths from the most inscrutable details.

This is, of course, just fine: The goal of a mystery, after all, is for the investigators to acquire knowledge, and the players will likely be incredibly stoked to have solved such a fiendishly difficult riddle.

But it can be a useful reminder that, if there’s something the PCs absolutely must NOT know (for whatever reason), then even hinting at it may be dangerous. You might get some mileage from figuring out how to hint at the thing that hints at the truth. That ought to slow them down… for a few scenes, at least.

Go to Part 1

Let’s do some quick review.

The Three Clue Rule maintains that for any conclusion you want the PCs to make, you should include at least three clues.

Furthermore, we can classify clues as being either leads (which point to places where you can continue your investigation by collecting more clues) and evidence (which point to other revelations; e.g., the identity of the killer or the method for creating red mercury). This distinction is valuable because one is how you navigate the scenario, while the other is usually the goal (or goals) of the scenario.

(Plus, only leads need to obey the Inverted Three Clue Rule. See Node-Based Scenario Design.)

Now that we’re all up to speed, brace yourself because we’re about to go even deeper:

Leads can also be divided into two types: existential leads and access leads.

Existential leads literally indicate that the target node exists and/or that the PCs would find the target to be of interest (e.g., because they might find clues or treasure there).

Access leads, on the other hand, tell the PCs how they can go to the target node.

It’s not unusual for there to be little or no difference between these two types of leads because access to a node is often trivial: If the PCs know the Morning Star Nightclub is significant to their investigation, they can trivially use Google Maps to figure out where it is.

On the other hand, consider a runic inscription in some ancient ruins that says, “The Lost City of Shandrala is possessed of many treasures!” That’s an existential lead. It might get the PCs interested in Shandrala, but if they don’t know where it is, there’s nothing they can do about it. A map indicating the location of one of the Jade Portals that leads to the Lost City, on the other hand? That’s an access clue, allowing the PCs to go to Shandrala.

TROUBLESHOOTING

The distinction here might seem exceedingly esoteric, but it has practical applications.

First, it can be essential when troubleshooting a scenario. For example, you might look at your revelation list and say, “I’ve got three clues pointing to the Lost City of Shandrala! I’m good to go!” But if some or, worse yet, all of those clues are existential leads, then you haven’t actually fulfilled the Three Clue Rule.

This problem can even be hard to spot when it’s actively happening at the game table: If you think your players have all the clues they need, but they’re nonetheless spinning their wheels, it can be worthwhile to make sure that there aren’t roadblocks by a lack of access to the nodes they want to investigate.

The reverse can also be true: The PCs may have multiple leads giving them access to a node, but if they don’t have a reason to go there it may not matter! In my experience, this problem is much rarer because the dramatic nature of the game itself strongly implies that if something is mentioned, then it’s significant (e.g., I’m not giving you a random map with a location circled on it for no reason; therefore the location is inherently worth checking out). But particularly in a sandbox campaign, players not understanding the significance or value of a node may isolate material that you erroneously think is robustly linked to the rest of the world.

You can think of existential leads as pointing to existential revelations, and, naturally, access leads as pointing to access revelations.

In practical terms, as described in The Secret Life of Nodes, it’s not unusual for my node list to directly double as a revelation list. Most of the time this works just fine because, as we’ve noted, your existential and access leads for a node are usually one and the same thing. But when they’re not, obviously, your revelation list can become a trap, artificially conflating revelations that are actually separate from each other.

The solution, of course, is to separate your existential revelations into a separate revelation list and supply the proper clues for both lists. (In this sense, the existential revelations act much more like evidentiary revelations, insofar as they are conclusions you want the players to make, but which do not allow the PCs to navigate through the scenario.)

PAYOFF

The distinction between existential and access revelations can also be used to your advantage when designing scenarios by creating payoff.

Take the Lost City of Shandrala, for example. If the first time the players hear about it is when they find a map indicating its location with a hand-scrawled note reading, “Home of the Jade Masters!” that works: The clue combines both the existential and access leads, and it’s quite likely that the players will check out the Lost City at some point.

But consider what happens if you instead spend several adventures dropping existential — and only existential! — leads to the Lost City of Shandrala. Now you’re building a sense of enigma: Each clue builds the rep of the Lost City a little more, and possibly gives the PCs more and more reasons for finding it.

This built-up anticipation then pays off when you finally start delivering the access clues that will let the PCs plan their expedition to Shandrala.

To generalize: Separate and foreshadow your existential leads in order to build anticipation and turn the ultimate revelation of access into a reward.

(Check out Getting the Players to Care for more along these lines.)

Another technique here is that you can sometimes nest your existential and access revelations:

• You need to talk to the Immortal Sorcerer. (Existential)
• To talk to the spirit of the Immortal Sorcerer, you need the jade amulet. (Access)
• The jade amulet is hidden in the Lost City of Shandrala. (Existential)
• The Lost City of Shandrala can be accessed through the Jade Portals. (Existential)
• A Jade Portal is located at such-and-such a place. (Access)

You can see how this thread of the campaign builds over time. In fact, you could also imagine separate existential revelations about the Lost City of Shandrala that are built up over time, so that when the PCs also learn that the jade amulet they need is located there it will just pump up their desire to reach Shandrala even more.

Next: Hints

Go to Part 1

Since writing the Three Clue Rule, I’ve spent just over a decade preaching the methods you can use to design robust mystery scenarios for RPGs that can be reliably solved by your players.

Now, let me toss all that out the door and talk about the mysteries that your players don’t solve. And that, in fact, you’re okay with them not solving!

These generally come in a couple different forms.

First, there are unsolvable mysteries. These are mysteries that you don’t WANT the players to solve. There can be any number of reasons for this, but a fairly typical one is that you don’t want them to solve the mystery yet. (For example, because you don’t want to reveal the true identity of the Grismeister until near the end of the campaign.)

Unsolvable mysteries are easy to implement: You just don’t include the clues necessary to solve them.

The other type of mystery we’re talking about is structurally nonessential. These are mysteries that the PCs can, in fact, solve. They’re revelations that the players are completely capable of figuring out.

But it’s possible that they won’t.

And that’s OK.

In fact, it can greatly enhance your campaign.

It’s OK because structurally nonessential revelations are, by definition, not required for the players to successfully complete the scenario: Knowing that the Emerald Pharaoh loved Sentaka La and arranged for her to buried alive after his death so that they could be reunited in the afterlife is a cool bit of lore, but it’s not necessary in order to complete The Doom of the Viridescent Pyramid.

Note: A corollary here is that structurally nonessential mysteries don’t need to obey the Three Clue Rule (although they certainly can and I’d certainly default to that if possible).

But if it’s a cool bit of lore, why wouldn’t we want to force the players to learn it?

When we, as game masters, create something cool for our campaigns, there’s a natural yearning for the players to learn it or experience it. That’s a good impulse, but it’s also a yearning that, in my opinion, we have to learn how to resist. If we force these discoveries, then we systemically drain the sense of accomplishment from our games. Knowledge is a form of reward, and for rewards to be meaningful they must be earned.

THE POWER OF ENIGMA

More importantly, the lack of knowledge can often be just as cool as the knowledge itself.

An unsolved mystery creates enigma. It creates a sense of inscrutable depths; of a murky and mysterious reality that cannot be fully comprehended. And that’s going to make your campaign world come alive. It’s going to draw the players in and keep them engaged. It will frustrate them, but it will also tantalize and motivate them.

Creating enigma with strategically placed unsolvable mysteries can be effective, but I actually find that having these enigmas emerge organically from structurally nonessential mysteries is usually even more effective:

• What’s the true story of how the Twelve Vampires came to rule Jerusalem?
• How did the Spear of Destiny end up in that vault in Argentina?
• What exactly was Ingen doing on Isla Nublar in Jurassic Park III?
• Who left these cryptic messages painted on the walls of the Facility?

The technique here is simple: Fill your scenarios with a plethora of these nonessential mysteries. (You can even create a separate section of your revelation list for them if you find it useful, although it’s not strictly necessary since you have no need to track them.) At that point, it becomes actuarial game: When including a bunch of these in a dungeon, for example, it becomes statistically quite likely that the PCs won’t solve all of them.

The ones they don’t solve? Those are your enigmas.

In my experience, the fact that these mysteries are, in fact, soluble only makes the enigma more effective. I think that, on at least some level, the players recognize that these mysteries that could be solved, and that invests the enigma with a fundamental reality. It’s not just the GM choosing to thwart you. The reality of that solution — and the fact that you, as the GM, know the solution — also has a meaningful impact on how you design and develop your campaign world.

(Which is not to say that there isn’t a place for the truly inexplicable and fanciful in your campaign worlds. Check out 101 Curious Items, for example. But it’s a different technique, and I find the effect distinct.)

ADDING MYSTERY

In the end, that’s really all there is to it, though: Spice your scenarios with cool, fragile mysteries that will reward the clever and the inquisitive, while forever shutting their secrets away from the bumbling or unobservant. When the PCs solve them, share in their excitement. When the PCs fail to solve them, school yourself to sit back and let the mystery taunt them.

You can, of course, make a special effort to add this kind of content, but I generally take a more opportunistic approach.  I don’t think of this as something “extra” that I’m adding. Instead, I just kind of keep my eyes open while designing the scenario

• Here’s a wall studded with gemstones that glow softly when you touch them. Hmm… What if pressing them in a specific order had some particular effect? What could that be?
• This was a laboratory used by Soviet scientists engaged in post-Chernobyl genetic experimentation. Can the PCs figure out exactly what project they were working on here? And what WAS that project, exactly?
• This Ithaqua cult was founded in 1879. Hmm… Who were the cult founders? How did they first begin worshiping Ithaqua?

In the full context of a scenario, these aren’t just a bunch of random bits or unrelated puzzles. They’re all part of the scenario, which inherently means that they’re also related to each other. Thus, as the PCs solve some of them and fail to solve others, what they’re left with is an evolving puzzle with some of the pieces missing. Trying to make that puzzle come together and glean some meaning from it despite the missing pieces becomes a challenge and reward in itself.

This also means that, as you work on this stuff, you’re refining, developing, and polishing the deeper and more meaningful structure of the scenario itself.

On a similar note, this can also help you avoid one of my personal pet peeves in scenario design: The incredibly awesome background story that the PCs have no way of ever learning about.

This has been a personal bugaboo of mine ever since I read the Ravenloft adventure Touch of Death in middle school: This module featured what, at least at the time, I thought was an incredibly cool struggle between the ancient mummy Semmet and the Dread Lord Ankhtepot. I no longer recall most of the details of the module, but what I distinctly remember is the moment when I realized that there was no way for the PCs to actually learn any of the cool lore and background.

In practical terms, look at the background you’ve developed for your scenario: If there are big chunks of it which are not expressed in a way which will allow the players to organically learn about it, figure out how the elements of the background can be made manifest in the form of nonessential mysteries. Not only is this obviously more interesting for the players, but actually pulling that back story into the game will give the scenario true depth and interest.

If you put in the work, you win twice over. And then your players win, too.

Everybody wins.

Next: The Two Types of Leads

This article has been revised from Running the Campaign: Unsolved Mysteries.

Go to Part 1

The noir detective, stymied in his investigation, returns to the scene of the crime. He paces slowly, lost in his thoughts. He must have missed something here. Some vital clue. But what could it be?

The PCs have been eating at Norma’s Diner every day since they came to the sleepy town of Everglade, gathering there every evening to compare their notes and brainstorm what their next steps should be. But then they discover evidence that corpses are being shipped from the county hospital to the basement of the diner. What exactly has Norma been cooking up this whole time?

This dynamic is a staple of the mystery genre. Another common variant is when a spy publicly approaches a target during daylight hours, socializes with the bad guys (or their staff) for a bit, and then comes back later after everybody has gone home to conduct a more thorough investigation. (James Bond does this in almost every film, for example.)

Structurally, at the game table, we’re talking about a situation where the PCs go to a node — a person, place, organization, event, etc. — and fail to find all (or possibly any) of the clues. Then, later, they return and discover what they missed.

This might occur for purely practical reasons: The PCs’ investigation has stalled out and they need more info, so they have no choice but to double back and try to figure out what they missed.

But it can also be played for dramatic effect: What seemed innocent is revealed to be sinister. The twist villain reveals themselves. The irony of discovering that you were standing on top of Captain Adachi’s treasure the whole time.

If you’re using node-based scenario design in concert with the Three Clue Rule, this will often occur organically: The PCs don’t realize that a clue means they need to look UNDER the apartment building, so they stake it out for a bit, come up empty, and decide to pursue other leads. Then, later, they find a new clue, realize their mistake, and rush back to the apartment building for some clandestine excavation.

In this sense, it’s kind of like red herrings: You don’t need to prep this dynamic; it will just emerge during play. It’s just a natural consequence of missing or misinterpreting clues, and we know the PCs will do that (which is why we’re using the Three Clue Rule in the first place).

But you can also prep some variants of this dynamic deliberately.

For an easy example, the PCs may visit a location for reasons that aren’t investigatory — their friend invites them; they have a seemingly unrelated appointment; etc. — and then later clues point them back to the earlier location with investigation on their minds.

More complex versions may have one set of clues which point the PCs to a node and then another set of clues that they’ll likely encounter later in the scenario that will point them to a completely different aspect of the node. For example, they find clues suggesting that they need to talk to Miles Duverney, who lives in the penthouse of Central Park Tower. They question him there and then continue their investigation… only later discovering the clues that reveal a secret satanic temple was built beneath the building.

In either case, you need to be mentally prepared for a clever or insightful party to make an intuitive leap that uncovers the “hidden” aspect of the node they first time they explore it. (“Wait a minute… Why did Duverney help design Central Park Tower? I’m going to go check out the architectural plans on file with the Department of Buildings.”)

JUST ONE MORE THING…

This is a dynamic that the GUMSHOE system, used in RPGs like Trail of Cthulhu and Esoterrorists, actually struggles with because the PCs in that system are supposed to automatically find every clue in every scene. As a result, it can’t emerge organically and instead has to be arbitrarily forced by the GM.

GUMSHOE recognizes it has a problem, however, and attempts to rectify it through another structure which can be conceptually useful in a wide variety of investigation games: leveraged clues.

A very common form of the “revisit a node and learn new information” dynamic is questioning suspects: It’s bog standard for a detective to talk to a suspect (or witness) early in their investigation and then question them again later and gain new information.

But in GUMSHOE, this doesn’t work because you’re supposed to get all the information an NPC has when you talk to them! Rather than having all of the social dynamics of a mystery story flatten out, therefore, GUMSHOE patches over the issue with the leveraged clue: In order to get certain clues from an NPC, you first need to obtain a different clue — the prerequisite or leverage clue — and then invoke it while talking to the NPC.

Columbo, for example, is basically this conceit injected with steroids and then turned into a procedural formula where every episode is just him repeatedly re-engaging with the same NPC node, but with new leveraged clues each time.

And, as Columbo demonstrates, this concept can be quite useful for organizing dynamic NPC interactions that evolve over the course of a scenario.

FAILING SCENARIOS

In some cases, however, the PCs revisiting nodes they’ve already investigated can be a sign that the scenario has gone awry: They’ve missed enough clues that they don’t know what to do next, and so they’re being forced to retrace their steps and try to dig up clues

Most of the time, though, this is still just fine: The players have already identified the problem and are taking action that will likely solve it. (Unless, of course, they’re still missing all the clues for the same reason they missed them the first time through — e.g., they just aren’t thinking to check the cult members’ computers and that’s where all the information they need is.)

What’s more problematic is when the players have become stuck and aren’t going back to find the clues they missed.

When this happens, one technique described in Three Clue Rule for getting the scenario back on track is to use a proactive node to give the PCs a new clue. This might be a clue directly pointing them to a revelation they need, but it could also be a clue pointing them back to a node where they’ve been but missed a clue at.

Note that it’s not enough to just point them back at the node. (This can be too easily dismissed with, “Well, we’ve already been there and didn’t find anything.”) Instead, the new clue must specifically indicate how they’re supposed to investigate the node in order to find the clue they missed (e.g., “the note in his pocket is written on Linustech stationary and appears to be the user name and password for System 42” or they get a phone call from an informant who tells them to “follow the money”).

WHILE YOU WERE GONE

Another variant of this technique is when the PCs return to a former node and discover that it has changed in the interim: The apartment has been ransacked. The NPC has been murdered. The laundromat has burned down.

This can create all-new clues for the PCs to find, or make the clues they previously missed more obvious.

Personally, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time prepping this type of thing ahead of time unless there’s a separate set of clues specifically indicating that the PCs should revisit a location. (Or if there’s some other structural reason for them to do so.) But if a mystery scenario has derailed, the players are feeling lost, and they double back to a location they’ve already been, improvising such changes in order to get them back on track is a solid option.

Next: Enigma

Thanks to the members of the Alexandrian Discord, particularly bobamk and Alberek, for suggesting and inspiring this article.

The core structure of a mystery is not the absence of knowledge (as one might first assume), it is the acquisition of knowledge: It’s the detective finding the murder weapon. It’s the sleuth following the werewolf’s footprints. It’s the kid on the bike spotting the guys in Hawaiian shirts loading packages into an unmarked van.

So if that’s the case, why is the failure to find a clue so vital for a rich and engaging mystery scenario?

This can actually be a controversial statement, so let’s back up for a moment. If you go poking around the RPG meme-sphere, you’ll find all kinds of advice telling you that allowing the PCs to fail to find a clue in a mystery scenario is a sin somewhere on par with murdering a nun.

Much, but not all, of this advice is the result of running fragile scenarios in which Clue A leads to Clue B leads to Clue C in a breadcrumb trail that completely collapses the moment a single clue is missed. This isn’t good either, of course, and techniques like the Three Clue Rule can be used to build more robust scenarios where missing a clue doesn’t become apocalyptic.

Far more important than simply being able to miss a clue, however, is for the investigators to go looking for a clue and not find it because it doesn’t exist.

You can think of this a little bit like the scientific method: As the PCs investigate a mystery, they will form hypotheses and will then test those hypotheses to see if they’re true. (“If it’s a werewolf, then the attacks will only have happened during the full moon.” or “If the murderer came in through the window, then they would have left tracks in the mud outside.”) Null results are an essential part of that problem-solving process because it allows the PCs to discard false conclusions and refine their hypotheses (which can, of course, be tested through further investigation).

You can experience analogous problem-solving when working on a crossword puzzle, for example. Your read a clue, reach a conclusion about what the word might be, and then test it against the grid. If it doesn’t work, then you have to think about other possible solutions; or combine the clue with other information (e.g., letters crossing the answer) to figure out the answer. Sometimes you’ll think you have the right answer, but then later discover (due to crossing clues) that you were wrong.

You may have encountered techniques like these:

• Improvising a clue so that the PCs find a clue, no matter what method of investigation they used.
• Altering the solution of the mystery to match whatever theory the players come up with.
• Auto-finding all clues (so that the players can have complete surety that they didn’t miss anything).

These all remove texture from a mystery scenario by damaging or completely removing the feedback between creating and testing hypotheses: It can be a pleasant pastime to fill in a crossword grid with words you choose at random, but it’s not actually the same thing as solving a crossword puzzle.

It should be noted that these techniques can be quite popular, however, so I have no doubt that many hackles have been raised reading this.

So, to be clear, these are not intrinsically bad techniques, per se. In fact, they are often successful in redressing the problem they’re designed to solve, and it’s far better to have, for example, a shallow scenario than a broken one. It’s also quite possible for these techniques to be moderated or modified to good effect. For example, Brindlewood Bay is a storytelling game designed entirely around the players inventing the solution to the murder, succeeding because (a) it explicitly replaces the joy of solving mysteries with the thrill of creating them and (b) it mechanically enforces null results in the form of failed theories, forcing the players to create anew. Similarly, permissive clue-finding is a form of improvising clues, but with the important proviso that you’re doing so in a way consistent with the solution.

To return to the point: You don’t need to choose between shallow mysteries and broken ones. There are methods for creating robust mysteries that will preserve and even enrich the depth of the scenario.

Next: Returning to the Scene of the Crime

RUNNING MYSTERIES
The Null Result
Returning to the Scene of the Crime
Enigma
The Two Types of Leads
Hints