fantastic micro clue!!!! really cool! I'm taking that next time I run this. In my adventure, there are 4 cages in the animal wrangler's tent but only 3 monkeys.
@@pointyhatstudios What if.... I was the fourth monkey all along? What if the real monkeys were the friends we made along the way? OH GODS! ALL THE FRIENDS! THEY'RE ACTUALLY MONKEYS! GAAAAHHHH! DIE!!! (and that's the motive behind the murder that begins campaign 2's mystery)
The last time I set up a murder mystery in a campaign, one of the players confronted the killer alone and was killed... This is why communication in the group is super important.
You see, Murder Mysteries in DnD are a lot alike a doughnut hole in the doughnut's hole. But we must look a little closer. And when we do, we see that the doughnut hole has a hole in its center - it is not a doughnut hole at all but a smaller doughnut with its own hole, and our doughnut is not whole at all!
2 things. 1) I love how this mystery feels like an ace attorney case where the setup is so ridiculous and obviously incriminating that it immediately puts you so heavily on the backfoot to try to defend in any way. 2) The circus mystery lends itself super well to a final boss fight, the artificier himself could have all sorts of magical gizmos to fight with, and could be flanked by other performers, trapeze artists swinging at the players from above, a fire eater using spells and abilities or even just some animla companions, since its an attempt to fake his own death it also naturally sets up a good opportunity, the last stretch of the mystery is trying to find where he fled to and when the players do he comes out swinging.
Good point! divination is something i am conflicted about, because it seems to either skip entire parts of the story/adventure to get information or it's tax that the player has to use in order to progress. The GM has to be very careful and calculating to make sure the diviner gets something out of divining, without trivializing the pursuit of knowledge.
The murder took place in a location of a paranoid high wizard that cast Mordenkinen's Magnificient Mansion over and over until it became permanent. Divination spells don't work inside those walls. Crazy old coot! Or even worse, you could use Nystuls Magic Aura to give a false lead.
At low levels, characters won't have access to all the big Divination spells. At high levels, NPCs have ways to shut down divination. You've got to watch out for the in-between, when PCs can spam Detect Thoughts on every single NPC or just use Commune to ask God who did it, but you're still dealing with murders small-scale enough that it would be weird for all the gardeners to have a Ring of Mind Shielding.
Simple solusions: If one-shot: max lvl 4. Ban detect thoughts, the players will understand. If drop in adventure: know your group. If they have access to magics that can trivialise some aspects. Use a mix between false clues and nystuls magic aura.
We used The Real Housewives of Barovia in our curse of Strahd campaign. Figuring out who helped Ireena’s killer into Strahd’s castle to kill her before she turned vampire while also gossiping with all the consorts (one of which betrayed strahd and let Ireena’s killer in) was super fun. 110% would recommend it.
Great video, I agree with your advice! Having enough clues for the players is vital. I would also give two additional advice: - Visualize how the whole events developed in detail. It is really easy to corner yourself accidentally if you try to improvise too much. I’d say that mysteries are the kind of game that more prep require for the DM. - It is really fun to combine the mystery with a ticking clock in order to keep the tension! If the characters take too long, maybe an accomplice escapes, or a suspect that knew too much is killed, or the bad cop that hate the party will arrive and take control of the investigation. These bad events are also a great opportunity to incorporate additional clues to the game. If they took really really too long, the culprit may escape too, but always leaving behind enough clues to transform the mystery into a pursuit!
Also, a protip: if you're gonna throw in a red herring to pad the runtime, don't make them too relatable by having them skip out on a party they said they were "too tired" to go to. I did that. The party wanted to know more about him. They prioritized clearing his name, pinpointed the storyarc's big bad because they thought BBEG was slowly poisoning the red herring (BBEG did a different crime), then the fighter romanced the red herring and now they're dating. I'm glad things worked out, but that was not my intention 😂 You want an effective red herring, don't make my mistake.
honestly that seems cool how a minor npc just meant as a red herring was received so well by the party that they basically made them into a more important character.
Generally don't add red herrings because it's really difficult to convince your players that it's a false lead rather than a Machiavellian villan always 2 steps ahead thus creating the perfect alibi. Instead let your players create red herrings by trying to investigate
One of my player's characters married an NPC that I threw in to give them information. That particular player had to be away from the game for a while, so we just said they were on their honeymoon. It worked out perfectly.
Pair this video with the 3 Clue Rule from the Alexandrian and you can run pretty much any heist/mystery/investigation scenario you can think up or modify. Amazing advice.
I mean yes and no. I had my group for example play as a bunch of criminals and they stumbled across something old after their where trying to get away from a robbery and then had to figure out how to not die and get away in the end of it.
The only downside of Call of Cthulhu is that everyone at the table goes in knowing they're playing Call of Cthulhu. With D&D or another system, you can never be sure what degree of the supernatural played a part in the mystery. Though, as downsides go (and all options have downsides), suppose that's not too bad.
Reading Sherlock helped me to understand mysteries. I got into Sherlock, because one of my players wanted to play a investigator. I basically ended up running the campaign with him being a PI and the other players being his muscle or criminal contacts
Literally just ran a murder mystery last week. It was a changeling who could only transform into others who they stole the faces of. They transformed into the doctor who they also murdered. As the "doctor", they gave a wrong time of death for the other victim. They hung out with the party immediately after they committed the murder, when they told everyone the murder had taken place. The party would be their own alibi and they would be the party's alibi as well.
Honestly, this is literally my favourite dnd channel. All videos are incredibly well structured, visualised and delivered! And it has such a unique style, flavour, so much work and passion put in. Just incredible!
So thanks to your other video about Liches (which was amazing too btw) I got the idea to run a murder mystery in the city my players are in, in which, William Shakespeare is trying to complete a Lich ceremony (since he was known as the immortal bard). I wanted to have my players go to a play written by Shakespeare, (Romeo and Juliet) but the NPC’S playing Romeo and Juliet are going to be killed as a part of the ritual required to make Shakespeare a Lich. Then the players will kill Shakespeare at the end. Long story short, this video is perfect timing, since I’m planning on my players attending the play tonight! Seriously, your videos are the best. Thanks for such great (and original) work! :)
Reminds me of that time I ran a Samurai murder mystery dinner party in our western campaign (spoiler alert: it was the one who had made a deal with a vampire demon)
@@unknownspeaker4815 Because of you I felt the need to research whether samurai lords had butlers in ancient Japan. Turns out they did and I totally missed an opportunity to have a sassy Japanese alfred in this guy's castle!!!
I love this, and thank you for sharing your guide for mysteries! I’m working on one for Grim Hollow surrounding a village where kids are going missing and the parents are finding wooden “dolls” in the beds a couple days later. Anyone who has read the Grim Hollow book will know the two types of crestures I’m using for this mystery.
This video feels so catered to me, basically every campaign I run either is a mystery or has a mystery element because I love them, especially murder mysteries!
I'd recommend checking out the adventure "Murder at the Crossroads" in the Kobold Press book 'Midgard Sagas'. It's a murder mystery where the answers are set up by the Player's actions. It's designed to be run as a convention game so about 4 hours. I've run twice it and it's been a big hit both times.
I was looking to see this comment, their system for having multiple potential culprits and it getting narrowed down by the player's choices (instead of being predetermined by the GM) is something I want to implement in future mysteries.
The Gumshoe system suggests to write 3 clues in increasing difficulty. 1 automatic, 1 that's available with a good roll, and 1 that's available if the characters are asking the right questions. You can throw in red herrings as well, but for every red herring you should offer at least 2 clues that contradict the red herring. Also, don't be afraid to let players succeed if they throw something at you that you haven't anticipated. You don't need the resulting clue to be the reveal of the entire plot, but let's say that your Druid, who never takes the Speak with Animals spell, for some reason took the Speak with Animals spell this time, don't panic, just let the animals agree to help for a piece of cheese and when the players give them the cheese they point the adventurers to a clue. Maybe they have seen a figure in the area whose description resembles that of one of the suspects, or for the case we have in this video... they say that the dead man smells of monkey. And as always: Don't be afraid to steal your players ideas! Sure, not all of them are pure gold, but if you like something, that's now true.
the BBC Sh*rlock music at the beginning jumpscared me so bad, but then Bia's absolute strength of will and power to not use a single clip from it... her power
this multiple clues system reminds me of the best DM advice i rely on for starting an adventure. always have 3 or more hooks for an adventure plotline prepared. if the party are too focused on getting drunk at the tavern to check the job board, no worries, one of the victims of the plot is at the bar drinking their sorrows away loudly. they dismiss the sad drunk as not their problem? fine they are questioned by the town guards under suspicion of being the perpetrators of the plot, and when they leave they are told not to leave town as they are suspects. 3 different hooks leading to three very different entry points to the adventure. just like having multiple clues for the mystery.
This guide works equally well for story writing. Keep the perspective of the characters and the audience in mind and you can have a compelling mystery.
I am in fact starting a DnD campaign were everyone is a detektive and the are trying to solve mysteris in Waterdeep. This video came at the perfect time and helped me a lot. Thank u for ur work :)
The only bad mystery is the overcomplicated mystery with very little lead Like seriously how the hell did someone steal Grandma Samantha's cookie while the cookie is heavily secured and theres no sign of break in
I'm writing an art theft mystery so this video is very helpful. One tip about Know Your Players: watch out for clerics. They can swap out spells daily, so you gotta prepare for the whole arsenal. Speak with Dead? The body is gone (or at least the head). Zone of Truth? Not just the culprit, but other people avoid answers too (e.g. because they were up to something else during the crime, such as having an affair) etc.
I think it would be cool to make the clues be plot hooks to different forms of adventuring. Each clue leads to a dungeon, or a trap/ puzzle or a combat encounter or a clever noncombat encounter (like a riddle to the death or poisoner's dilemma or a game of cards where the stakes are.... Murder!) And the players collect the clues by solving the individual adventures each one leading them closer to the answer to the mystery question. Then when they think they understand everything, we reveal a big twist! This leads to the climax encounter and the resolution of the mystery followed by just desserts!!! Mmmmm...... Dessert.
Edit: also if you don't want anyone using detect magic and read thoughts etc to cheat the clues then cover your tracks! Wipe away the evidence, erase everyone's memories, or alter their perceptions or kill any witnesses except those that you want to lead the players to. But, hey; if they find a way to guess it? Be flexible. It could still be fine.
Speak with dead is the main spell that ruins a murder mystery in Dnd. BUT it can only be used on a corpse once every 10 days so if you can work in a way for the villain to have already cast it on the corpse the spell will fail and they won't be able to solve it so easily.
i have a pretty strict mantra of, "the internet is where i get things for free". call me old school. BUT boy oh boy am i compelled to give you money so you keep doing this. i watch a LOT of youtube informational formats and you truly hit the mark here. fun, entertaining, informative, actionable items, dos, donts, laughs, personality. and what a voice. I assume a patreon exists. lemme go look for that now. thank you.
Another trick i want to mention is: dont be afraid to warp reality arround your players. i often get my players in a mystery to theorize about the whole thing and they can come up with pretty good ideas hovering around som minor detail i made up on the fly for atmosphere.... so i change the mystery. when its cool, and possible and not contradicting other things that already played out i frequently take the ideas of my players, give them another twist and use them for the rest of the mystery.
I was actually blown out by the approach a little indie RPG called "The Between" (by Jason Cordova, about solving paranormal mysteries in victorian London). In that game, there is no predetermined answer to the mystery. The players simply go on getting and acquiring clues until they decide to take action (time is always pressing in the setting, as there will be multiple threats and mysteries at the same time). Then they have to come up with an answer for a question about the nature of the problem and/or how to deal with it. They link as many clues as they can in a plausible way that they come up with to determine that answer, and then make a roll against X difficulty. The more central te question, the higher the difficulty and the more clues they have to link, and if they pass the roll, that is indeed what happened, and can act accordingly. It is not necessarily easily translatable to DnD or other RPGs, but it is a super interesting approach, where the collective storytelling absolutely shines. It also makes it so the DM has to prepare less. Quite interesting.
There's also the red herring. I find the false clue dropped either early, and easily ruled out, or late, tossed out by the guilty in desperation. Instant plot twist.
Some very important tricks I have picked up from writing and running tons of call of cuthulu. 1: the helper NPC is an incredible resource, especially if your players are new to mysteries, you can even have them kidnapped and killed right before the finale to rack up the tension(in CoC I will often have them go mad right before the end, running out of the ghost house screaming) 2: if you are including red herrings, though you probably shouldn’t, treat them like a side quest. Make sure they can be quickly resolved and by the end there should be no question the clue was a red herring. consider also having them be a ‘fake’ read herring, where the unrelated clue leads the player to a real clue. For example, the strongwoman at the circus had a big crush on the artificer for years, but she is not involved in the case. However if the players confront her they might learn that the artificer was in a fowl mood for a long time now, but the day he died he was incredibly chipper. 3: make ‘floating clues’. Do you have that one scene in your mystery session you really want the players to see? Instead of coming up with multiple clues you can make one clue that could fit in multiple places, this is kinda just a good idea in general, make some clues designed in a way so they are easy to move around and don’t be afraid to do so if your players are starting to get stuck. 4: design your mystery session like a dungeon. So this one is a little more obtuce, and 100% stolen from seth skorkowsky, one of the best ttrpg content creators on the platform not focused on DnD. When you design the scenes of your mystery think of it the way you would design a dungeon. Start at the entrance, your opening scene, where the players learn about the mystery and are tasked with solving it, then the ‘dungeon’ spreads out into multiple paths leading to different rooms. Those rooms are your ‘scenes’. Investigating the victims home, thats a scene. Running into two suspects arguing, that’s a scene. Each scene has clues pointing to new scenes, not just who dunnit. For example in the artificers wagon there is a clue pointing to his secret lab inside the monkey inclosure(or maybe, if they didn’t find that clue, they can learn about the lab from the annoyed animal tamer, who’s monkeys keeps finding stuff from the lab.) treat your session like a trick dungeon, where the rooms and hallways can move and change based on your need as a GM, but by the end all roads lead to the final scene, where the culprit is confronted and the mystery is solved. 5: Make your mystery solvable without learning everything, but make sure it’s possible to learn everything. Your players should always be able to learn everything, even if the culprits tragic backstory is only available in old, dusty tomes they will have to translate after the session, or delivered in a: “and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids and your dog!” Type speech. But if you require them to know everything to reach the final scene you risk hitting a roadblock towards the end of the session.
I have one tip as well! When running a mystery players will be guessing and sometimes they guess correctly the first time. Don't fret! I have come to enjoy those moments when my players guess right, but they will no matter what start looking down other avenues and confuse themselves very quickly and forget that initial correct guess. Keep your poker face, and when the reveal comes they will get a huge kick out of actually having guessed right! Let them have that victory. I had a monster mystery were a guy was killed by a troll. The answer was that it was a local girl who was cursed by someone to transfrom into the troll. The players made a guess that she was the troll, semi as a joke, but quickly checked other possibilities. They were so ecstatic when I revealed they had been right all along, and it is still something they talk about 3 years later. TL;DR: If your party guesses the answer for your mystery imediatly, keep your poker face, keep playing, and enjoy the story.
reminds me of how i build adventures for Dark Heresy. Basically thought of what the baddy wanted to do, how they did it, who they roped in to help, and then made everyone involved make at least one mistake.
The rule of threes, yes, Excellent. The instinct as the dm is to make it "tricky" but really the task is to design the accessibility. It's almost impossible to over do a web of leads that starts giving up crumbs, out of order, but almost immediately, before the players even think "It's started". Running mysteries has also changed the way I handle perception/investigation type rolls, a pass/fail binary can really gum the works in an unsatisfying way so I graduate the intel, even a "fail" can lead to the accidental uncovering of part of the mystery. Best if its a part the player is not currently engaged with, looking for the weapon? fail and discover a clue to why, for ex. Great work Pointy! I think this genre is a great challenge for DMs and Players and helps everyone really develop their story telling chops.
When you were saying "this complex mystery could never be solved" all the long-term GMS were thinking "it would absolutely be solved...every time...the problem would be getting it to not be solved too quickly". Also, great point on being very familiar with your PCs capabilities. I labored hard on writing a mystery once, but I started it after one player had a new character that I had not had time before the session to go over. The new character walked into the "the place where it happened" and one-shotted the scenario on the spot!
I still cannot believe the right you release these videos that especially at the quality level. Do you have such a niche humor that is exactly the thing I’ll laugh at. Ideas/concepts that I find actually compelling and unique. And I feel like I’m talking to a really funny friend
I discovered your channel about a week ago, and I have watched every single video. I am new to dnd and your video's are just making me more excited to play the game.
Most of the first part of this year, my players spent investigating the disappearance of a young Lord who had inherited a Manor house and estate 30 some miles outside the city. There were a bunch of farmers, and crofters and an inn, plenty of old buildings, and the Manor House had been taken over by some serious dark power, so it took the players weeks to dare investigate. I'm lucky that my group is of a vintage that has played a lot of different games over the decades, and I'd mentioned at the start of the campaign that one section would be fairly Cthulhu esque in aproach. and they picked up on the tone straight away. I managed to build in a few combat encounters throughout proceedings to keep the fighters occupied, but I had spent a hellishly long time writing clues and prepping handouts and din;t want it to descend into a "Kill things and search them for clues" adventure. There were at least two entire sessions where no one even rolled any dice. It took just over three months (1 x 4-5 hr session per week) of them searching and investigating, and going back to the city to search the vaults of the council records and general chasing down of leads and a few red herrings. I'm pretty sure they could have easily done it in half the time, but every time they made a connection, they wanted to verify it, just to make sure. They quickly realised that the young Lord may have got himself into some very deep shit, and didn't want to follow him into it without knowing exactly what the might be dealing with. I was really worried about three or four weeks into it, that they must be getting bored, and contacted a few of them outside of the game to ask if I needed to try and speed it up, and was told that they'd been discussing it between themselves and were absolutely loving it and were perfectly happy to take as long as was needed. They ultimately solved it, sadly the Lord was in fact dead... but due to the Law of Common Ascendence, because their were no living heris, they were entitled to claim the Manor and Estate sibject to the tennants approval. They now have land and titles, and would fight any dragon, demon or army who threatened their people. One little bit of advice I would offer to anyone running a mystery... There will be points in the adventure where they get stuck and veer in the wrong direction, and short of you saying "This is totally the wrong way guys..." will take up time and ultimately prove fruitless. This is the point where Mysteries can start to be problematic. So, even if they are not close to finding a NEW clue, just rewarding their endeavours by making something up on the spot that merely CORROBORATES something they already know is unlikely to damage the plot in any way, and they will feel like they earned it, and that their silly decision to go check the completely unrelated bakery down the road for clues, because someone misheard something... was still a good idea, and despite them not actually moving forward, they won;t at least feel like they took a step back.
Just wanted to say I just found your channel and I am so blown away by it! Your art is amazing and you've inspired me with your creativity countless times. I actually just ran the gentle hag for a 2 year campaign and I can't say thank you enough for all your work!
The timing of this video is so amazing for me! I’m about to start running my first campaign and I want a mystery and I’ve been worried that my players won’t be able to solve it so these tips are amazing and can really help me flesh it out more!
My DM pulled out a little murder mystery module they bought for a session, and it mutated into an underground cult where we are now traveling in our campaign to collect monster hunter supplies in order to take out each of the six "murder suspects" who were the cult leaders that murdered someone who tried to connect the dots and out the secret cult. (Cults were not in the module AT ALL) XD
Yes, starting with the ending actually makes perfect sense. Then the mystery has a neat conclusion and end point, and will suffer from the endless mystery boxes of tv shows. Also, I hadn't thought of using more or less clues as a lever of difficulty. Nice.
This video could not have come at a better moment for me! =') I am preparing to run a one shot, DMing for the very first time, for 1st time players and I decided immediately this was going to be the genre! THANK YOU SIR!!! ='3
The Alexandrian has an article on this calling it the “three clue rule for running mysteries“. Your video is very entertaining, so value added! Cheers and Enjoy the Game!
He most certainly read it, but since he did want to come across as original, claimed he was just giving off his own experience-based advice. Unnecessary, The Alexandrian's blog is, as most blogs, free to access and share. Even a midway nod - "I've read something similar at The Alexandrian" - would have sufficed.
I once ran a murder mystery using one of those grid based logic puzzles as a backbone. Each suspect was associated with only 1 murder weapon and 1 motive, and clues worked like "either suspect a or b was seen with the dagger". finding the clues and solving the logic puzzle was super fun for my players
I have been running a campaign that has mystery investigations as the primary source for "adventures." This couldn't have come at a better time. Love all your videos!
8:39 the other way around works too, especially for oneshots. If you have a few friends who love mysteries and you want to run a game for them, there's no harm in asking them. You might be better off with a different system if half the group would have to learn a system anyway since they've never played before etc. But he's right, don't force a game if you know your players won't be interested. If you need a break, say you need a break and suggest meeting for non-RPG stuff this week instead.
Additional clue tip! The lazy dungeon masters guide loves using clues to tie players to the world. They recommend you write some or all clues INDEPENDENT from how they are found. This can help with the problem of players “””not finding clues””” dnd is improv, you’re allowed to be flexible, you don’t always have to resort to your failsafes if there are still clues on the table. The lazy dm guide uses clues outside of mysteries but adapting it for this video an example might be we don’t write the players finding the plans or letters in a certain location, we instead just have a note that those clues exist. Now the players can stumble upon them wherever they choose to look that makes sense, breaking into his chamber at night ? Chasing after a wizard that sold him the plans ? Finding out who received the letters and interrogating them, bribing a circus worker. I do think sometimes we have great set piece moments thought out, and maybe sooome of them are truly essential, but players can think of ten solutions and places to look where you thought of one, dnd is half improv and this is a great crossing of planning and improv! Try planning the clues NOT how they ARE FOUND.
Ive been dabbling with the idea of a party showing up to a town doing what they need, and when they try and leave, every way out of town leads back into town. They now have to discover the source and break the curse of the town.
I did this as side quests that if they pulled on that thread it offered more information to give them more detail than can lead to more plot reveals. Matter of fact the rumor mill in that city had a lot of false leads that allowed them to find out other things that led to other things. It allowed them to learn more about the citizens of the town and also let me relax and let them develop the story for me based on their own assumptions and stealing their conspiracies.
I only ever ran one mystery, but it went pretty well. The guard captain of Neverwinter had stolen a big haul of gold from the treasury. One of the town guards approached the players and explained that he needed outside help since he didn't know which othee guards he could trust. He wanted the players to find the captain and the gold, hopefully before an innocent man hangs in two more days. I predetermined three clues, but not where or how they would be found. Then during the session, I gave them to the players based on how they searched. The rogue found personal notes in the captain's home, the wizard (who was a really good tracker) followed some tracks through an old tunnel that used to be a sally port in the ruined castle, and the fighter used his own criminal contacts to find the debt collectors heading out to meet the captain. I originally thought the group might try to track the captain through the forest, but the group captured a crime lord, who was owed gambling debts by the captain, and beat the rendevouz point out of him. Since the group has tipped off the gang (by pounding the crap out of the leader) that they were getting the gold back, I improvised one last complication. When they made it back to town, the gang had some hostages to ransom for the gold. The players decided to pay the ransom and hope bringing back the captain would be enough, but it wasn't. I had decided in advance that the cheif magistrate cared more about saving face than real justice, and he was royally pissed about the loss of all that gold. The players were publicly thanked and the captain hanged alongside a perfectly innocent tax collector. But they did save the captain's wife and two kids from a bunch of thugs. Short version: Big pile of gold stolen. Find the theif and the gold before an innocent man hangs. I like that basic formula, might try it again someday.
I've adopted so much of your content into my campaign. My party will be getting into this soon. I just wanted to say thank you, always look forward to your videos.
Oh I'll add a twist to that. Third party takes the fall and admits to the murder because they agreed to do so to send money to their family. Only now the clues aren't exactly adding up and it's up to the party to figure out why.
Another thing I like to use when I do mysteries is, if the players have gotten close, but can't seem to pin down the exact mystery, another ploy I use is... have the culprit crack a little. If you have multiple conspirators, maybe just one starts going to loose their cool and the others have to now deal with THEM. Maybe they try to scare off the players or muck up the investigation with some hired goons or such. Or just a covert spell based attempt on their life! Drop a gargoyle on some one, it's fantastic!
I ran a murder mystery in combination with a "Where does this disease come from?" Mystery a week ago and the final culprit was a ragged down noble werebear in a cure town of only Woodelves and Halfelves. One of the players jokingly said like 2 hours into the session "Oh it might be a werebear" little did she know. It was fun though, I designed the entire city and went not to give every question a clue (even though every question had clues but it wasn't my method) but I went and made at least two possible clues for every crime scene there was (there were three crime scenes and some clues were more cryptic or harder to find than others). The best thing was that the werebear (they thought he was just a wizard) was their first suspect but they started to make almost everyone a suspect: the high druid of Rillifane Rallathil, the young smith whose father was infected by the disease and whose girlfriend got killed by the werebear, one of the murdered people etc. Your Videos are always really great, keep up this amazing work.
You know, the world be a lot better place if, when something doesn't go to plan, the first thing they ask is 'What could I have done better to make this work', rather than go 'Well everyone else just screwed up.' Bravo for preemptively calling it out!
Your.videos have quickly become one of my “must watch” list each release. Thanks so much for the huge amount of work and research you put into each video!
This is super helpful and I will absolutely be using it the next time I run a game! I've seen too many comments online about how a "good" mystery is one that's too complicated or too vague for the players to solve bc that means you "outsmarted" them. o_o Love seeing a mystery guide where the purpose of the mystery is to be solved!
I made a mystery where people along a road were going missing and the culprit was an elderly couple on a log cabin that turned out to be an elder oblex living under a giant mimic that looked like a house.
I saw a murder mystery one shot with a really fun twist. One of the players was the killer who played out the murder in the session 0. Then he told the other players and they all worked together to cover for him
I DID IT :DDDD Made a murder mystery with your guide and a bunch of tips from others and bouncing back my ideas on my detective novel loving mom, but mostly your guide, and my players LOVED it. Some even massaged me the next day about how much fun it was Q.Q Me and my players love you, my hat.
This is actually really good timing, I was just coming up on a mystery in one of the campaigns I'm running. I was struggling to think of how to actually write it exactly, and this feels like its gonna be really helpful for that!! (For those curious, the mystery involves a very showy magician thief, who has stolen a group's plans to assassinate the king.)
You've got my curiosity, and my players literally have a circus set up (its run by a pink dragon, the kind that horde jokes), so I'm practically obligated to put your monkey murder mystery to the test (and more broadly, your guide going forward).
To emphasize what I feel like is your best point: A mystery can completely fall apart or go unsolved if your PLAYERS aren't good at or very into mysteries. I feel like this goes hand-in-hand with solving puzzles. Annnnnnnd... that's why I let the players/pcs write most of my mysteries/puzzles FOR me. I'll come up with where/why the puzzle is needed, and for the mystery I'll come up with what is being solved and a list of people who could have done it. But for puzzles, the solution, and for mysteries the method is unknowingly going to be developed by my players. Too often I've had a solution or a method planned out... and then the players just go in a COMPLETELY different direction, and there is NO WAY to get them back to where I intended them to be. So I'll start looking for my own clues to what my players think this puzzle is, or who/what/how done it... and then I'll start building the "answer" in the direction that they're going. And when I feel they've rationalized a solution/answer enough and put in enough effort? I'm like "Yep! You guys were totally right!" They end up feeling good, never get frustrated or bored, and I have to do SO little of the work its ridiculous. Sometimes they'll even give me better ideas for endings than I had before: "We better be careful, if they're actually a Changeling and catch on that we suspect them... they can kill again and make it seem like WE did it!"
Ahh you're a life saver, my group found a wererat lass who was turned by an overpossesive lover, and now they want to bring him to justice, and I had no idea how to run a mystery until now. Okay I have three hours to come up with clues n stuff, here goes!
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Well mister video watcher, I'll get out of your hair now 😊
...
Just... one more thing that's been bugging me 🕵♂
I know it’s cliche to say but, first.
Thanks for the excellent video you wonderful monocloptic friend!
Surely it'd be off your hair, since you're a hat, if there's a hat in your hair something might have gone wrong...
I feel wierdly familiar with this mystery hmmmmmm
My players also solved this mystery, I will say my players loved it thanks for the behind the scenes on how it was made
Just imagine making a mural with 4 monkeys but when the players visit the show there's only 3 monkeys
fantastic micro clue!!!! really cool! I'm taking that next time I run this. In my adventure, there are 4 cages in the animal wrangler's tent but only 3 monkeys.
Sekiro?
Ah, yes. Sekiro.
Edit: ah shit it was the other way around
Ah yes, the often forgotten "do no evil" ape
@@pointyhatstudios What if.... I was the fourth monkey all along?
What if the real monkeys were the friends we made along the way? OH GODS! ALL THE FRIENDS! THEY'RE ACTUALLY MONKEYS! GAAAAHHHH! DIE!!!
(and that's the motive behind the murder that begins campaign 2's mystery)
The last time I set up a murder mystery in a campaign, one of the players confronted the killer alone and was killed... This is why communication in the group is super important.
Thats awesome, id love the resulting drama
lmfao
This is where DM flagging danger would have helped.
@@SophiaAphrodite They already knew of the risks and thought they could handle it themselves, but thank you for your constructive criticism. :)
@@SophiaAphroditeDMs can only ask, "Are you certain you want to do that?" so many times.
You see, Murder Mysteries in DnD are a lot alike a doughnut hole in the doughnut's hole. But we must look a little closer. And when we do, we see that the doughnut hole has a hole in its center - it is not a doughnut hole at all but a smaller doughnut with its own hole, and our doughnut is not whole at all!
...I think comprehending this is how one summons Cthulhu.
@@brucemaximus3797 Who knew the Mountains of Madness were made from doughnut holes within donut wholes within dunot hwoles.
@@brucemaximus3797 It just means there's a mystery within the mystery.
It's pretty simple tbh, the analogy just makes it idiosyncratic
Great, now I’m confused AND hungry
2 things.
1) I love how this mystery feels like an ace attorney case where the setup is so ridiculous and obviously incriminating that it immediately puts you so heavily on the backfoot to try to defend in any way.
2) The circus mystery lends itself super well to a final boss fight, the artificier himself could have all sorts of magical gizmos to fight with, and could be flanked by other performers, trapeze artists swinging at the players from above, a fire eater using spells and abilities or even just some animla companions, since its an attempt to fake his own death it also naturally sets up a good opportunity, the last stretch of the mystery is trying to find where he fled to and when the players do he comes out swinging.
If you run a mystery in a D&D setting, there's a bunch of setting-breaking Divination spells you should be aware of.
Good point! divination is something i am conflicted about, because it seems to either skip entire parts of the story/adventure to get information or it's tax that the player has to use in order to progress. The GM has to be very careful and calculating to make sure the diviner gets something out of divining, without trivializing the pursuit of knowledge.
The murder took place in a location of a paranoid high wizard that cast Mordenkinen's Magnificient Mansion over and over until it became permanent. Divination spells don't work inside those walls.
Crazy old coot!
Or even worse, you could use Nystuls Magic Aura to give a false lead.
At low levels, characters won't have access to all the big Divination spells.
At high levels, NPCs have ways to shut down divination.
You've got to watch out for the in-between, when PCs can spam Detect Thoughts on every single NPC or just use Commune to ask God who did it, but you're still dealing with murders small-scale enough that it would be weird for all the gardeners to have a Ring of Mind Shielding.
@Ninjat126 you can run a murder mystery in a pocket dimension. Pocket dimensions can be hidden from the gods.
Simple solusions:
If one-shot: max lvl 4. Ban detect thoughts, the players will understand.
If drop in adventure: know your group. If they have access to magics that can trivialise some aspects. Use a mix between false clues and nystuls magic aura.
How are you putting them out so quickly? Really the quality is just so good. Truly my favorite RUclips channel!!!
We used The Real Housewives of Barovia in our curse of Strahd campaign. Figuring out who helped Ireena’s killer into Strahd’s castle to kill her before she turned vampire while also gossiping with all the consorts (one of which betrayed strahd and let Ireena’s killer in) was super fun. 110% would recommend it.
That sounds so fun and potentially hilarious 😄
The real reason mysteries are hard to wright in D&D is because the players often end up being the perpetrators.
I just imagined Scotland Yard showing up to arrest Arthur and his knights of the round, and yes, this is indeed accurate!!
Great video, I agree with your advice! Having enough clues for the players is vital. I would also give two additional advice:
- Visualize how the whole events developed in detail. It is really easy to corner yourself accidentally if you try to improvise too much. I’d say that mysteries are the kind of game that more prep require for the DM.
- It is really fun to combine the mystery with a ticking clock in order to keep the tension! If the characters take too long, maybe an accomplice escapes, or a suspect that knew too much is killed, or the bad cop that hate the party will arrive and take control of the investigation. These bad events are also a great opportunity to incorporate additional clues to the game. If they took really really too long, the culprit may escape too, but always leaving behind enough clues to transform the mystery into a pursuit!
Also, a protip: if you're gonna throw in a red herring to pad the runtime, don't make them too relatable by having them skip out on a party they said they were "too tired" to go to. I did that. The party wanted to know more about him. They prioritized clearing his name, pinpointed the storyarc's big bad because they thought BBEG was slowly poisoning the red herring (BBEG did a different crime), then the fighter romanced the red herring and now they're dating. I'm glad things worked out, but that was not my intention 😂 You want an effective red herring, don't make my mistake.
honestly that seems cool how a minor npc just meant as a red herring was received so well by the party that they basically made them into a more important character.
Generally don't add red herrings because it's really difficult to convince your players that it's a false lead rather than a Machiavellian villan always 2 steps ahead thus creating the perfect alibi. Instead let your players create red herrings by trying to investigate
One of my player's characters married an NPC that I threw in to give them information. That particular player had to be away from the game for a while, so we just said they were on their honeymoon. It worked out perfectly.
Pair this video with the 3 Clue Rule from the Alexandrian and you can run pretty much any heist/mystery/investigation scenario you can think up or modify. Amazing advice.
Beat me to it
I scrolled down looking for an Alexandrian reference. 👍🏻
Pointy Hat: "Play your party where everyone is a private detective, I would play that." Me: "Isn't that just Call of Kthullu?"
Yeah but you keep your sanity after solving a crime in this one 😂
ive been intending to just play a murder mystery in call of cthullu
I mean yes and no. I had my group for example play as a bunch of criminals and they stumbled across something old after their where trying to get away from a robbery and then had to figure out how to not die and get away in the end of it.
@@hauz287 ik it's a joke but most of the modules I read grant SAN recovery for certain goals met in the case of campaign-play
The only downside of Call of Cthulhu is that everyone at the table goes in knowing they're playing Call of Cthulhu. With D&D or another system, you can never be sure what degree of the supernatural played a part in the mystery. Though, as downsides go (and all options have downsides), suppose that's not too bad.
Gotta say I love the amount of clips from Clue in here, criminally underrated mystery movie that really does feel like a d&d group's humor at times.
Reading Sherlock helped me to understand mysteries. I got into Sherlock, because one of my players wanted to play a investigator. I basically ended up running the campaign with him being a PI and the other players being his muscle or criminal contacts
Literally just ran a murder mystery last week. It was a changeling who could only transform into others who they stole the faces of. They transformed into the doctor who they also murdered. As the "doctor", they gave a wrong time of death for the other victim. They hung out with the party immediately after they committed the murder, when they told everyone the murder had taken place. The party would be their own alibi and they would be the party's alibi as well.
Oh that sounds infuriating. How did it go?
I would love to know how this went?
Pointy's players: "But what about the orangutan?" 🤔
Pointy Hat: "WE! DO NOT! TALK ABOUT! THE ORANGUTAN!" 😱
Is this a The Murders in the Rue Morgue reference😂
if you run a mystery and your players don't get it even though " it's so obvious" it's only obvious because you already know the answer
Honestly, this is literally my favourite dnd channel. All videos are incredibly well structured, visualised and delivered! And it has such a unique style, flavour, so much work and passion put in. Just incredible!
So thanks to your other video about Liches (which was amazing too btw) I got the idea to run a murder mystery in the city my players are in, in which, William Shakespeare is trying to complete a Lich ceremony (since he was known as the immortal bard). I wanted to have my players go to a play written by Shakespeare, (Romeo and Juliet) but the NPC’S playing Romeo and Juliet are going to be killed as a part of the ritual required to make Shakespeare a Lich. Then the players will kill Shakespeare at the end.
Long story short, this video is perfect timing, since I’m planning on my players attending the play tonight! Seriously, your videos are the best. Thanks for such great (and original) work! :)
That's awesome. How did it go?
Reminds me of that time I ran a Samurai murder mystery dinner party in our western campaign (spoiler alert: it was the one who had made a deal with a vampire demon)
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Oh, that just makes too much sense.
Wait, it wasn't the butler?
@@unknownspeaker4815 Because of you I felt the need to research whether samurai lords had butlers in ancient Japan. Turns out they did and I totally missed an opportunity to have a sassy Japanese alfred in this guy's castle!!!
@@ryanhenderson225 lol! Now that you know, next time you do something similar you can have that sassy Alfred
I love this, and thank you for sharing your guide for mysteries! I’m working on one for Grim Hollow surrounding a village where kids are going missing and the parents are finding wooden “dolls” in the beds a couple days later. Anyone who has read the Grim Hollow book will know the two types of crestures I’m using for this mystery.
The heavy lean into knives out and glass onion was great 😂
My week: *utterly horrible*
Pointy Hat: *post a new video*
Me: :DDDD
Thank you! I rememeber i left a comment requesting this video! Just shows how much you care about your community! ❤
This effing guy has the best ad reads in the business. Do not skip, do not collect $200.
This video feels so catered to me, basically every campaign I run either is a mystery or has a mystery element because I love them, especially murder mysteries!
I'd recommend checking out the adventure "Murder at the Crossroads" in the Kobold Press book 'Midgard Sagas'. It's a murder mystery where the answers are set up by the Player's actions. It's designed to be run as a convention game so about 4 hours. I've run twice it and it's been a big hit both times.
I was looking to see this comment, their system for having multiple potential culprits and it getting narrowed down by the player's choices (instead of being predetermined by the GM) is something I want to implement in future mysteries.
The Gumshoe system suggests to write 3 clues in increasing difficulty. 1 automatic, 1 that's available with a good roll, and 1 that's available if the characters are asking the right questions.
You can throw in red herrings as well, but for every red herring you should offer at least 2 clues that contradict the red herring.
Also, don't be afraid to let players succeed if they throw something at you that you haven't anticipated. You don't need the resulting clue to be the reveal of the entire plot, but let's say that your Druid, who never takes the Speak with Animals spell, for some reason took the Speak with Animals spell this time, don't panic, just let the animals agree to help for a piece of cheese and when the players give them the cheese they point the adventurers to a clue. Maybe they have seen a figure in the area whose description resembles that of one of the suspects, or for the case we have in this video... they say that the dead man smells of monkey.
And as always: Don't be afraid to steal your players ideas! Sure, not all of them are pure gold, but if you like something, that's now true.
the BBC Sh*rlock music at the beginning jumpscared me so bad, but then Bia's absolute strength of will and power to not use a single clip from it... her power
we decided we would not use BBC Sh*rlock on purpose
this multiple clues system reminds me of the best DM advice i rely on for starting an adventure.
always have 3 or more hooks for an adventure plotline prepared. if the party are too focused on getting drunk at the tavern to check the job board, no worries, one of the victims of the plot is at the bar drinking their sorrows away loudly. they dismiss the sad drunk as not their problem? fine they are questioned by the town guards under suspicion of being the perpetrators of the plot, and when they leave they are told not to leave town as they are suspects.
3 different hooks leading to three very different entry points to the adventure. just like having multiple clues for the mystery.
I don’t know how you edit so many clips in one video. Amazing as always!
Best Fridays are when Pointy posts
This guide works equally well for story writing.
Keep the perspective of the characters and the audience in mind and you can have a compelling mystery.
I am in fact starting a DnD campaign were everyone is a detektive and the are trying to solve mysteris in Waterdeep. This video came at the perfect time and helped me a lot. Thank u for ur work :)
The only bad mystery is the overcomplicated mystery with very little lead
Like seriously how the hell did someone steal Grandma Samantha's cookie while the cookie is heavily secured and theres no sign of break in
Easy, she ate it herself as a very convoluted attempt at tax fraud. When in doubt, assume it's some form of being cheap.
Elementary, my dear Reno. The cookie was a mimic the entire time.
The cookie jar is a mimic itself
Grandma has dementia
This pointy hat is a hero. Thank you pointy. I’m glad I found you and subscribed!!
I'm literally procrastinating on writing a mistery one shot at the moment, thanks!
I'm writing an art theft mystery so this video is very helpful.
One tip about Know Your Players: watch out for clerics. They can swap out spells daily, so you gotta prepare for the whole arsenal. Speak with Dead? The body is gone (or at least the head). Zone of Truth? Not just the culprit, but other people avoid answers too (e.g. because they were up to something else during the crime, such as having an affair) etc.
I’ve been waiting for this since you mentioned it in last video!!
Unparalleled advice, lovely to see it done so well!
Your humor is fantastic while keeping the actual information serious. I love that aspect of your videos.
I think it would be cool to make the clues be plot hooks to different forms of adventuring. Each clue leads to a dungeon, or a trap/ puzzle or a combat encounter or a clever noncombat encounter (like a riddle to the death or poisoner's dilemma or a game of cards where the stakes are.... Murder!) And the players collect the clues by solving the individual adventures each one leading them closer to the answer to the mystery question. Then when they think they understand everything, we reveal a big twist! This leads to the climax encounter and the resolution of the mystery followed by just desserts!!! Mmmmm...... Dessert.
Edit: also if you don't want anyone using detect magic and read thoughts etc to cheat the clues then cover your tracks! Wipe away the evidence, erase everyone's memories, or alter their perceptions or kill any witnesses except those that you want to lead the players to. But, hey; if they find a way to guess it? Be flexible. It could still be fine.
Speak with dead is the main spell that ruins a murder mystery in Dnd. BUT it can only be used on a corpse once every 10 days so if you can work in a way for the villain to have already cast it on the corpse the spell will fail and they won't be able to solve it so easily.
i have a pretty strict mantra of, "the internet is where i get things for free". call me old school.
BUT boy oh boy am i compelled to give you money so you keep doing this. i watch a LOT of youtube informational formats and you truly hit the mark here. fun, entertaining, informative, actionable items, dos, donts, laughs, personality. and what a voice. I assume a patreon exists. lemme go look for that now. thank you.
Another trick i want to mention is: dont be afraid to warp reality arround your players. i often get my players in a mystery to theorize about the whole thing and they can come up with pretty good ideas hovering around som minor detail i made up on the fly for atmosphere.... so i change the mystery. when its cool, and possible and not contradicting other things that already played out i frequently take the ideas of my players, give them another twist and use them for the rest of the mystery.
I was actually blown out by the approach a little indie RPG called "The Between" (by Jason Cordova, about solving paranormal mysteries in victorian London).
In that game, there is no predetermined answer to the mystery. The players simply go on getting and acquiring clues until they decide to take action (time is always pressing in the setting, as there will be multiple threats and mysteries at the same time). Then they have to come up with an answer for a question about the nature of the problem and/or how to deal with it. They link as many clues as they can in a plausible way that they come up with to determine that answer, and then make a roll against X difficulty. The more central te question, the higher the difficulty and the more clues they have to link, and if they pass the roll, that is indeed what happened, and can act accordingly.
It is not necessarily easily translatable to DnD or other RPGs, but it is a super interesting approach, where the collective storytelling absolutely shines. It also makes it so the DM has to prepare less. Quite interesting.
There's also the red herring. I find the false clue dropped either early, and easily ruled out, or late, tossed out by the guilty in desperation. Instant plot twist.
Some very important tricks I have picked up from writing and running tons of call of cuthulu.
1: the helper NPC is an incredible resource, especially if your players are new to mysteries, you can even have them kidnapped and killed right before the finale to rack up the tension(in CoC I will often have them go mad right before the end, running out of the ghost house screaming)
2: if you are including red herrings, though you probably shouldn’t, treat them like a side quest. Make sure they can be quickly resolved and by the end there should be no question the clue was a red herring. consider also having them be a ‘fake’ read herring, where the unrelated clue leads the player to a real clue. For example, the strongwoman at the circus had a big crush on the artificer for years, but she is not involved in the case. However if the players confront her they might learn that the artificer was in a fowl mood for a long time now, but the day he died he was incredibly chipper.
3: make ‘floating clues’. Do you have that one scene in your mystery session you really want the players to see? Instead of coming up with multiple clues you can make one clue that could fit in multiple places, this is kinda just a good idea in general, make some clues designed in a way so they are easy to move around and don’t be afraid to do so if your players are starting to get stuck.
4: design your mystery session like a dungeon. So this one is a little more obtuce, and 100% stolen from seth skorkowsky, one of the best ttrpg content creators on the platform not focused on DnD. When you design the scenes of your mystery think of it the way you would design a dungeon. Start at the entrance, your opening scene, where the players learn about the mystery and are tasked with solving it, then the ‘dungeon’ spreads out into multiple paths leading to different rooms. Those rooms are your ‘scenes’. Investigating the victims home, thats a scene. Running into two suspects arguing, that’s a scene. Each scene has clues pointing to new scenes, not just who dunnit. For example in the artificers wagon there is a clue pointing to his secret lab inside the monkey inclosure(or maybe, if they didn’t find that clue, they can learn about the lab from the annoyed animal tamer, who’s monkeys keeps finding stuff from the lab.) treat your session like a trick dungeon, where the rooms and hallways can move and change based on your need as a GM, but by the end all roads lead to the final scene, where the culprit is confronted and the mystery is solved.
5: Make your mystery solvable without learning everything, but make sure it’s possible to learn everything. Your players should always be able to learn everything, even if the culprits tragic backstory is only available in old, dusty tomes they will have to translate after the session, or delivered in a: “and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids and your dog!” Type speech. But if you require them to know everything to reach the final scene you risk hitting a roadblock towards the end of the session.
I think this is actually one of the best channels ive ever found, imformative, helpfull but still funny and light hearted at the same time.
I have one tip as well! When running a mystery players will be guessing and sometimes they guess correctly the first time. Don't fret! I have come to enjoy those moments when my players guess right, but they will no matter what start looking down other avenues and confuse themselves very quickly and forget that initial correct guess. Keep your poker face, and when the reveal comes they will get a huge kick out of actually having guessed right! Let them have that victory.
I had a monster mystery were a guy was killed by a troll. The answer was that it was a local girl who was cursed by someone to transfrom into the troll. The players made a guess that she was the troll, semi as a joke, but quickly checked other possibilities. They were so ecstatic when I revealed they had been right all along, and it is still something they talk about 3 years later.
TL;DR: If your party guesses the answer for your mystery imediatly, keep your poker face, keep playing, and enjoy the story.
reminds me of how i build adventures for Dark Heresy. Basically thought of what the baddy wanted to do, how they did it, who they roped in to help, and then made everyone involved make at least one mistake.
The rule of threes, yes, Excellent. The instinct as the dm is to make it "tricky" but really the task is to design the accessibility. It's almost impossible to over do a web of leads that starts giving up crumbs, out of order, but almost immediately, before the players even think "It's started". Running mysteries has also changed the way I handle perception/investigation type rolls, a pass/fail binary can really gum the works in an unsatisfying way so I graduate the intel, even a "fail" can lead to the accidental uncovering of part of the mystery. Best if its a part the player is not currently engaged with, looking for the weapon? fail and discover a clue to why, for ex. Great work Pointy! I think this genre is a great challenge for DMs and Players and helps everyone really develop their story telling chops.
When you were saying "this complex mystery could never be solved" all the long-term GMS were thinking "it would absolutely be solved...every time...the problem would be getting it to not be solved too quickly". Also, great point on being very familiar with your PCs capabilities. I labored hard on writing a mystery once, but I started it after one player had a new character that I had not had time before the session to go over. The new character walked into the "the place where it happened" and one-shotted the scenario on the spot!
I still cannot believe the right you release these videos that especially at the quality level. Do you have such a niche humor that is exactly the thing I’ll laugh at. Ideas/concepts that I find actually compelling and unique. And I feel like I’m talking to a really funny friend
I created a mystery around Apollo's stolen guitar pick, I'm definitely going to use your structure. Love the channel.
I discovered your channel about a week ago, and I have watched every single video. I am new to dnd and your video's are just making me more excited to play the game.
Most of the first part of this year, my players spent investigating the disappearance of a young Lord who had inherited a Manor house and estate 30 some miles outside the city. There were a bunch of farmers, and crofters and an inn, plenty of old buildings, and the Manor House had been taken over by some serious dark power, so it took the players weeks to dare investigate.
I'm lucky that my group is of a vintage that has played a lot of different games over the decades, and I'd mentioned at the start of the campaign that one section would be fairly Cthulhu esque in aproach. and they picked up on the tone straight away.
I managed to build in a few combat encounters throughout proceedings to keep the fighters occupied, but I had spent a hellishly long time writing clues and prepping handouts and din;t want it to descend into a "Kill things and search them for clues" adventure.
There were at least two entire sessions where no one even rolled any dice.
It took just over three months (1 x 4-5 hr session per week) of them searching and investigating, and going back to the city to search the vaults of the council records and general chasing down of leads and a few red herrings.
I'm pretty sure they could have easily done it in half the time, but every time they made a connection, they wanted to verify it, just to make sure. They quickly realised that the young Lord may have got himself into some very deep shit, and didn't want to follow him into it without knowing exactly what the might be dealing with.
I was really worried about three or four weeks into it, that they must be getting bored, and contacted a few of them outside of the game to ask if I needed to try and speed it up, and was told that they'd been discussing it between themselves and were absolutely loving it and were perfectly happy to take as long as was needed.
They ultimately solved it, sadly the Lord was in fact dead... but due to the Law of Common Ascendence, because their were no living heris, they were entitled to claim the Manor and Estate sibject to the tennants approval. They now have land and titles, and would fight any dragon, demon or army who threatened their people.
One little bit of advice I would offer to anyone running a mystery... There will be points in the adventure where they get stuck and veer in the wrong direction, and short of you saying "This is totally the wrong way guys..." will take up time and ultimately prove fruitless.
This is the point where Mysteries can start to be problematic.
So, even if they are not close to finding a NEW clue, just rewarding their endeavours by making something up on the spot that merely CORROBORATES something they already know is unlikely to damage the plot in any way, and they will feel like they earned it, and that their silly decision to go check the completely unrelated bakery down the road for clues, because someone misheard something... was still a good idea, and despite them not actually moving forward, they won;t at least feel like they took a step back.
Just wanted to say I just found your channel and I am so blown away by it! Your art is amazing and you've inspired me with your creativity countless times. I actually just ran the gentle hag for a 2 year campaign and I can't say thank you enough for all your work!
The timing of this video is so amazing for me! I’m about to start running my first campaign and I want a mystery and I’ve been worried that my players won’t be able to solve it so these tips are amazing and can really help me flesh it out more!
My DM pulled out a little murder mystery module they bought for a session, and it mutated into an underground cult where we are now traveling in our campaign to collect monster hunter supplies in order to take out each of the six "murder suspects" who were the cult leaders that murdered someone who tried to connect the dots and out the secret cult. (Cults were not in the module AT ALL) XD
Yes, starting with the ending actually makes perfect sense. Then the mystery has a neat conclusion and end point, and will suffer from the endless mystery boxes of tv shows.
Also, I hadn't thought of using more or less clues as a lever of difficulty. Nice.
This video dropped hours before I scheduled to run a murder mystery adventure. I stopped everything to watch it! Thanks for the great content
This video could not have come at a better moment for me! =') I am preparing to run a one shot, DMing for the very first time, for 1st time players and I decided immediately this was going to be the genre! THANK YOU SIR!!! ='3
Same here
I believe The Alexandrian wrote an article titled the three clue rule that is pretty much the same concept, gr8 minds think alike it seems :)
The Alexandrian has an article on this calling it the “three clue rule for running mysteries“. Your video is very entertaining, so value added! Cheers and Enjoy the Game!
He most certainly read it, but since he did want to come across as original, claimed he was just giving off his own experience-based advice. Unnecessary, The Alexandrian's blog is, as most blogs, free to access and share. Even a midway nod - "I've read something similar at The Alexandrian" - would have sufficed.
I once ran a murder mystery using one of those grid based logic puzzles as a backbone. Each suspect was associated with only 1 murder weapon and 1 motive, and clues worked like "either suspect a or b was seen with the dagger". finding the clues and solving the logic puzzle was super fun for my players
Your sponsors segway are too good to skip, congratulations on the great work! Really enjoy your content!
This is by far the best dnd content channel on youtube, big fan
I love your humour and style, Antonio! You're great and an amazing co tent creator. You are very appreciated 😊
I have been running a campaign that has mystery investigations as the primary source for "adventures." This couldn't have come at a better time. Love all your videos!
8:39 the other way around works too, especially for oneshots. If you have a few friends who love mysteries and you want to run a game for them, there's no harm in asking them. You might be better off with a different system if half the group would have to learn a system anyway since they've never played before etc.
But he's right, don't force a game if you know your players won't be interested. If you need a break, say you need a break and suggest meeting for non-RPG stuff this week instead.
Additional clue tip! The lazy dungeon masters guide loves using clues to tie players to the world. They recommend you write some or all clues INDEPENDENT from how they are found. This can help with the problem of players “””not finding clues””” dnd is improv, you’re allowed to be flexible, you don’t always have to resort to your failsafes if there are still clues on the table. The lazy dm guide uses clues outside of mysteries but adapting it for this video an example might be we don’t write the players finding the plans or letters in a certain location, we instead just have a note that those clues exist. Now the players can stumble upon them wherever they choose to look that makes sense, breaking into his chamber at night ? Chasing after a wizard that sold him the plans ? Finding out who received the letters and interrogating them, bribing a circus worker. I do think sometimes we have great set piece moments thought out, and maybe sooome of them are truly essential, but players can think of ten solutions and places to look where you thought of one, dnd is half improv and this is a great crossing of planning and improv! Try planning the clues NOT how they ARE FOUND.
Just found your channel. Super cool. The amount of cuts you weave into your vids must be lotsa work; it’s much appreciated.
Did anyone actually clap when he said so? I did.
Ive been dabbling with the idea of a party showing up to a town doing what they need, and when they try and leave, every way out of town leads back into town. They now have to discover the source and break the curse of the town.
I did this as side quests that if they pulled on that thread it offered more information to give them more detail than can lead to more plot reveals. Matter of fact the rumor mill in that city had a lot of false leads that allowed them to find out other things that led to other things. It allowed them to learn more about the citizens of the town and also let me relax and let them develop the story for me based on their own assumptions and stealing their conspiracies.
I only ever ran one mystery, but it went pretty well. The guard captain of Neverwinter had stolen a big haul of gold from the treasury. One of the town guards approached the players and explained that he needed outside help since he didn't know which othee guards he could trust. He wanted the players to find the captain and the gold, hopefully before an innocent man hangs in two more days.
I predetermined three clues, but not where or how they would be found. Then during the session, I gave them to the players based on how they searched. The rogue found personal notes in the captain's home, the wizard (who was a really good tracker) followed some tracks through an old tunnel that used to be a sally port in the ruined castle, and the fighter used his own criminal contacts to find the debt collectors heading out to meet the captain. I originally thought the group might try to track the captain through the forest, but the group captured a crime lord, who was owed gambling debts by the captain, and beat the rendevouz point out of him.
Since the group has tipped off the gang (by pounding the crap out of the leader) that they were getting the gold back, I improvised one last complication. When they made it back to town, the gang had some hostages to ransom for the gold. The players decided to pay the ransom and hope bringing back the captain would be enough, but it wasn't. I had decided in advance that the cheif magistrate cared more about saving face than real justice, and he was royally pissed about the loss of all that gold. The players were publicly thanked and the captain hanged alongside a perfectly innocent tax collector. But they did save the captain's wife and two kids from a bunch of thugs.
Short version: Big pile of gold stolen. Find the theif and the gold before an innocent man hangs. I like that basic formula, might try it again someday.
I've adopted so much of your content into my campaign. My party will be getting into this soon. I just wanted to say thank you, always look forward to your videos.
Love your videos!!! Such amazing content all for free! I've been implementing your ideas and tips into my campaigns and they have been a blast!
Oh I'll add a twist to that. Third party takes the fall and admits to the murder because they agreed to do so to send money to their family. Only now the clues aren't exactly adding up and it's up to the party to figure out why.
"start from the end" is my number 1 advice for friends who tell me they struggle with writing mysteries. Start from the end! the rest is clue placing.
Another thing I like to use when I do mysteries is, if the players have gotten close, but can't seem to pin down the exact mystery, another ploy I use is... have the culprit crack a little.
If you have multiple conspirators, maybe just one starts going to loose their cool and the others have to now deal with THEM.
Maybe they try to scare off the players or muck up the investigation with some hired goons or such.
Or just a covert spell based attempt on their life! Drop a gargoyle on some one, it's fantastic!
Antonio, you never dissapoint. I started writing a 'missing person' political intrigue plot for DnD a month ago, and now this?? Twas fate, my good sir
I actually really needed some ideas for something to do in the big city with my players, and this gave me the perfect answer! Thanks, Mr. Pointy Hat
I ran a murder mystery in combination with a "Where does this disease come from?" Mystery a week ago and the final culprit was a ragged down noble werebear in a cure town of only Woodelves and Halfelves. One of the players jokingly said like 2 hours into the session "Oh it might be a werebear" little did she know. It was fun though, I designed the entire city and went not to give every question a clue (even though every question had clues but it wasn't my method) but I went and made at least two possible clues for every crime scene there was (there were three crime scenes and some clues were more cryptic or harder to find than others). The best thing was that the werebear (they thought he was just a wizard) was their first suspect but they started to make almost everyone a suspect: the high druid of Rillifane Rallathil, the young smith whose father was infected by the disease and whose girlfriend got killed by the werebear, one of the murdered people etc. Your Videos are always really great, keep up this amazing work.
The timing of this is actually comedic, I just finished running my shitty mystery campaign, if only this came out 3 months ago.
You know, the world be a lot better place if, when something doesn't go to plan, the first thing they ask is 'What could I have done better to make this work', rather than go 'Well everyone else just screwed up.' Bravo for preemptively calling it out!
Your.videos have quickly become one of my “must watch” list each release. Thanks so much for the huge amount of work and research you put into each video!
This is super helpful and I will absolutely be using it the next time I run a game!
I've seen too many comments online about how a "good" mystery is one that's too complicated or too vague for the players to solve bc that means you "outsmarted" them. o_o Love seeing a mystery guide where the purpose of the mystery is to be solved!
I made a mystery where people along a road were going missing and the culprit was an elderly couple on a log cabin that turned out to be an elder oblex living under a giant mimic that looked like a house.
I saw a murder mystery one shot with a really fun twist. One of the players was the killer who played out the murder in the session 0. Then he told the other players and they all worked together to cover for him
I DID IT :DDDD Made a murder mystery with your guide and a bunch of tips from others and bouncing back my ideas on my detective novel loving mom, but mostly your guide, and my players LOVED it. Some even massaged me the next day about how much fun it was Q.Q
Me and my players love you, my hat.
Incredible. You are a freaking dnd treasure my dude.
This is actually really good timing, I was just coming up on a mystery in one of the campaigns I'm running. I was struggling to think of how to actually write it exactly, and this feels like its gonna be really helpful for that!!
(For those curious, the mystery involves a very showy magician thief, who has stolen a group's plans to assassinate the king.)
You've got my curiosity, and my players literally have a circus set up (its run by a pink dragon, the kind that horde jokes), so I'm practically obligated to put your monkey murder mystery to the test (and more broadly, your guide going forward).
To emphasize what I feel like is your best point: A mystery can completely fall apart or go unsolved if your PLAYERS aren't good at or very into mysteries. I feel like this goes hand-in-hand with solving puzzles. Annnnnnnd... that's why I let the players/pcs write most of my mysteries/puzzles FOR me. I'll come up with where/why the puzzle is needed, and for the mystery I'll come up with what is being solved and a list of people who could have done it. But for puzzles, the solution, and for mysteries the method is unknowingly going to be developed by my players. Too often I've had a solution or a method planned out... and then the players just go in a COMPLETELY different direction, and there is NO WAY to get them back to where I intended them to be. So I'll start looking for my own clues to what my players think this puzzle is, or who/what/how done it... and then I'll start building the "answer" in the direction that they're going. And when I feel they've rationalized a solution/answer enough and put in enough effort? I'm like "Yep! You guys were totally right!"
They end up feeling good, never get frustrated or bored, and I have to do SO little of the work its ridiculous. Sometimes they'll even give me better ideas for endings than I had before: "We better be careful, if they're actually a Changeling and catch on that we suspect them... they can kill again and make it seem like WE did it!"
omg, I´m literally running a murder mystery tomorrow. Time to go over my notes and check them with your method! Thank you so much!
Ahh you're a life saver, my group found a wererat lass who was turned by an overpossesive lover, and now they want to bring him to justice, and I had no idea how to run a mystery until now. Okay I have three hours to come up with clues n stuff, here goes!
I am currently writting a Murder Mystery for DnD in Ravnica ! Many thanks Pointy !!
Antonio calling us ALL out for pausing videos, making notes, over and over >_>