Mystery game, part 2
Ok, so this is the session 2 writeup for my mystery game. You should probably read the session 1 writeup in order to have this make any sense.


So, uh, the big plan was to not take six hours, and it took six and a half. Sigh. So let me go over the goals for changing stuff from last session, and see how it went:

Add a few more pictures. I made up something for the footprints which might help, and added a detail or two to the cabin interior map. Maybe even more details should be added there.

Did this, and it was a good idea. Although, like somebody had worried in advance (lpsmith, I think), the non-overlapping footprint lines in the (new) clearing picture probably kept people from asking about the footprint overlap to determine dating. Or maybe they just didn't think of it.

Provide some way for people to make notes that is publically available -- maybe just some kind of webpage that people can add text to.

Did this, and it didn't really seem that helpful. People made a few notes, but I don't think they actually referred back to them very often.

Get some more people to play NPCs to help run more threads at once. I'm not actually positive this is a good idea -- it might just result in nobody noticing any clues that other people pick up, but hopefully the previous example will help with that some.

storme and huskyscotsman helped out on NPC duties, and it was great -- having them there really made it easier to run the game. The one downside of
having them help is I really have no idea who's running which character at any point during the transcript. The ones who said "guv" are all storme, though. It seemed like people missed a few clues from multiple threads, but I don't think it was the main issue.

Use multiple channels to handle multiple threads. We often do this, and I should have done it this game -- too confusing to have two or three conversations going on at once in the room. I had the idea, which I can't decide is good or not, to have the channel name be the NPC name. I guess it doesn't matter much.

I didn't make the NPC name the channel name, we just had one additional channel for talking on, but it was a good idea. At times we probably could have used one channel per player. Also, I didn't mention it last time, but it was helpful to have a #backstage channel to work things out with the NPCs.

Encourage the group to commit to things when it looks like they're spending a lot of time discussing stuff and not going anywhere.

Well, I was better about this than last time, but not great. Part of the issue here is I didn't want to commit them to anything or force them into anything, so I'd try to be hands-off, but then that looks like I'm saying the thing isn't important. I guess I should have just said "ok, we'll now interview each person, let me know if you want to do something different" and stuff. This doesn't help at the end when they're got all the facts and are trying to put them together into theories, though.

Encourage people to not theorize immediately but just collect facts, and then after they have a bunch, encourage them to make some theories and test them. Be explicit about this.

I was also a little better about this, but this definitely needs a lot more work. We still had most of the early part of the game being somewhat aimless clue-collecting, and then at the end it was in the "trying to firm up the theory" stage without having gone through a real "ok, let's make and test theories" stage.

The other thing I noticed is that when people made theories, they tended to be about motive rather than means and opportunity. And the thing is, motive is usually the least interesting part of the mystery, and the hardest to build a case around (although it's important to making the case in the end). I should have been clearer at the beginning and throughout that people should focus on means and opportunity and let motive come up incidentally. This is probably why I kept expecting people to focus on alibis and they never really did.

Be flexible about the Case whenever possible -- change minor details if it makes them in accordance with people's theories.

This didn't actually come up much. I'm not sure if that's because people weren't really theorizing about means/opportunity or what.

Try and give clues a little earlier and more frequently.

Well, I sort of did this, and it didn't exactly help. They did catch on to the snowshoes fairly early on, which was nice, but, well, even though I mentioned snowfall and so on a lot, people didn't do anything with it. I think the deal here, which is probably part of what the forge thread was getting at, is you can only give so many clues before people have to start making theories. Otherwise they miss clues because they don't have any structure to fit them into.

Additionally, I think this session pointed out a few more things.

Don't put in too many red herrings

This should be obvious, but in retrospect the motive stuff is too confusing. In particular, both groups got a little hung up on Mr Reed's crush on Lady Mallory (and whether this suggested alternate parentage for Edmund Mallory), which was interesting and useful for making him another suspect, but really, it was confusing enough without him. Ditto for the physical clues -- I should have just had the fishhook-and-line on the floor below the window, and forget disguising it among bullets and wood chips and stuff.

Encourage people to be thorough

Just like in IF, if people try something a couple times and it gets no results, they'll give up. But if they're on the right trail, that's sucky. I guess the solution here is the same as in IF -- if they're trying to examine people's handkerchiefs, then point them to the guy with no handkerchief if they don't randomly seize on him. And if they're interviewing people, insist they at least interview all the major players before letting them go off on a tangent.

Anyway, like before, it seems like people had fun, but it's going to take a bunch more practice before I feel like I'm doing a good job of GMing this kind of game.

Also, I've gone ahead and added a solution page to write out the solution plainly.


And the transcript of The Missing Folder, Boots, Handkerchief, and Motive is here.

[heatham] Li_Fong says, "I wonder how many more fake sneezes will find me a MURDERER"