Investigating mysteries in D&D 5E?

[cailano]

12 hours ago, Actana said:

That feels like a most uncharitable characterization of people who like having rules built for purpose.

I read it more as a critique of gaming systems (or perhaps play styles) rather than people. No need to make it personal.

[Vladim]

Systems matter, but the OG did ask specifically for suggestions for 5E. I don't personally think it's the optimal system for mysteries, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing else to say.

System matters, yes, but other things matter too. Opinions will of course diverge over exactly how much system matters, but in the end it's down to what people prefer to play, with all the advantages and disadvantages any particular system will come with.

[Snicker]

Many thanks to everyone who's taken the time to contribute to the discussion!

For additional context, I'm asking specifically about 5E because 1) I'm confident running it, 2) I'm even more confident I can find players for it, and 3) there is just so much material to use. Not only do mystery adventures already exist for 5E, but there are endless other 5E adventures I could add mysteries to. Also, D&D just has a lot of lore I can draw on ("Hmm, the body says the murderer was a drow, but also that they lit a lantern before attacking in the dark. What's going on here?").

Not to mention, I just like the 5E system. If I can add mysteries in it, that's adding chocolate to my peanut butter.

Unfortunately, while the internet has a lot written about how to run mysteries in 5E, there's little after-the-fact reporting on what it was like to run or play those mysteries. I appreciate everyone that's provided some accounts in this thread, but even here, most of the replies have been confined to theory.

Well, I guess I'll just have to do it myself! I may start a thread workshopping the idea of running a mystery-heavy 5E game. Of course, I wouldn't mind the opportunity to play in one, either, to experience it from both sides.

[BobtheWizard]

You can run mysteries in 5e just fine. The game is geared towards combat, but there are a lot of ways to incorporate combat into a mystery. The key is to make sure that the people the party encounters don't know all the details, and I think it helps to have competing factions who all have some measure of good and bad in them. The BBEG and the solution to the mystery should be things the party learns about but don't directly encounter.

I ran Embers of the Last War, an old AL mystery set in Sharn in Eberron, and it was a lot of fun. Merrix d'Cannith is doing something bad, but it takes almost the whole campaign for the party to figure out what and where. No one they encounter knows exactly what's going on, but they each have some clues and motivation to either hinder or help the group.

Detect thoughts, suggestion and speak with dead were all useful spells, but never gave away the big secret.

Edited October 18, 2023 by BobtheWizard (see edit history)

[yxanthymir]

The best advice I could make is to use Gumshoe principles in your game, if not in total, at least, partially. They are great to make the game progress.

In Gumshoe, the clues are freely given to the players, the challenge is what to make of them. So there were 5 to 10 clues per scene, not all of them relevant.

[Actana]

1 minute ago, yxanthymir said:

The best advice I could make is to use Gumshoe principles in your game, if not in total, at least, partially. They are great to make the game progress.

In Gumshoe, the clues are freely given to the players, the challenge is what to make of them. So there were 5 to 10 clues per scene, not all of them relevant.

This is the real takeaway of the thread, to be honest. Even if you aren't going to be using a specific system, you can still easily adopt principles from them. Each game you even read about makes you better at running the games you do play.

GUMSHOE, I believe, also has an SRD, so it's free to learn the basics of it.

[cailano]

42 minutes ago, Snicker said:

Many thanks to everyone who's taken the time to contribute to the discussion!

For additional context, I'm asking specifically about 5E because 1) I'm confident running it, 2) I'm even more confident I can find players for it, and 3) there is just so much material to use. Not only do mystery adventures already exist for 5E, but there are endless other 5E adventures I could add mysteries to. Also, D&D just has a lot of lore I can draw on ("Hmm, the body says the murderer was a drow, but also that they lit a lantern before attacking in the dark. What's going on here?").

Not to mention, I just like the 5E system. If I can add mysteries in it, that's adding chocolate to my peanut butter.

Unfortunately, while the internet has a lot written about how to run mysteries in 5E, there's little after-the-fact reporting on what it was like to run or play those mysteries. I appreciate everyone that's provided some accounts in this thread, but even here, most of the replies have been confined to theory.

Well, I guess I'll just have to do it myself! I may start a thread workshopping the idea of running a mystery-heavy 5E game. Of course, I wouldn't mind the opportunity to play in one, either, to experience it from both sides.

I could give a full session-by-session recap of that Pathfinder game I ran, but it was six sessions so even in summary form, it would be kind of long.

I think the main takeaways were to keep the action scenes coming, make sure the investigation doesn't bog the game down, and create a variety of locales and encounter types.

I didn't run into any problems with the investigation itself. The players found the clues (I didn't require skill rolls for them) talked amongst themselves to put them into context, and always figured out where to go next. For my part, I stayed open to their ideas, which made the adventure non-linear. Especially since they didn't always find the murder scenes in the order the murders occurred in.

Another key is to know your NPCs and how they fit into the game. That's a big deal. It's not like a dungeon crawl where you can just improvise NPCs as necessary. Before the game starts you need to know:

1. The crime or mystery you're investigating
2. Who is behind it
3. Who else is involved

The rest should be easier to make up on the fly if necessary.

Rather than going into the game with a series of events that would occur, I used a bullet-point list of possible scenes that I thought the PCs might end up in. Then I had some details on individual scenes on another page. Those scenes often included triggered events like ambushes or chase scenes. The PCs could act to change those triggered events of course, but that had mixed results.