Posts Tagged by clues
| April 20, 2012 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
I love to GM mysteries and conspiracies. I have been running them for years, ever since I picked up the first edition of Conspiracy X in 1996. Players do not always enjoy these types of adventures, often finding them frustrating and confusing. The most common reason for this is because they lose track of the clues, and thus cannot reach the necessary conclusions to solve the mystery or uncover the conspiracy. Over the years I have tried a few things to help with this. Today…
| February 17, 2012 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
Connecting the dots. Mysteries are always about connecting the dots. In novels and books, the author is in complete control of the pacing of the clues (read: information) and how they are presented to the reader. In an RPG, disseminating information to the players can be a bit more haphazard which can often foil the unveiling of a mystery in a graceful manner. I started to think about how I could control the flow of information to make the mystery more enjoyable. A few weeks…
| July 30, 2010 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
As a GM, wandering monsters and other random encounters can be difficult to utilize without being a burden on the game. The best illustration of this point I’ve so far seen is in Rich Burlew’s excellent comic, Order of the Stick. But is it true that the wandering monster is nothing but a boring waste of time? Where did they come from in the first place, why did they seemingly disappear from modern games, and are there valid uses for them? In the early days…
| May 11, 2010 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
You have spent weeks crafting an incredible web of intrigue. It is a like an onion, with layer after layer of clues and red herrings. You have guided your players into this web and watched them pickup clues, trying to put the pieces together to discover what amazing twist lies in the center of the web. Then at the moment where they are on the verge of the big discovery, they come to a grinding halt. How they come to the halt is a topic…
| November 19, 2009 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Do your adventures read like a published module? Do they have the precise mix of clues, red herrings, and challenges to keep the players interested enough to work hard for the final reveal? When you’re writing your adventures, do you agonize over maintaining the perfect balance between challenge and reward? Then you’re doing it wrong. Wait, what? Bear with me for a bit here. Let’s simplify the situation by looking at mysteries, and the placement of clues when planning an adventure. Some folks say that…
