Posts Tagged by mystery
| October 5, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by Gnome Stew reader Rickard Elimää, and it details a fantastic technique for GMs: the “fish tank” model for creating a mystery adventure. Thanks, Rickard! Why is a mystery like a fish tank? Imagine a fish tank with some piranhas in it. The tank and the water are the environment of the latent mystery waiting to be disturbed. The fish represent the people and their relationships with each other. Now imagine the GM throws the PCs into the tank, sits back…
| 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…
| November 21, 2011 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
It’s no secret that I love investigative adventures (heck, you only have to go this far back to know that!). I like playing them, I like running them, and I like writing them. That said there’s a lot of prep that has to go into building a mystery adventure and I thought I might share some of the tips I’ve come up with over the years. This is the first installment of a series of articles on writing mystery adventures. Know what’s on the character…
| November 7, 2011 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
I have an affinity for mystery/investigation adventures. I love setting up a crime scene and having the PCs uncover clues and follow leads until they reach the final confrontation with the perpetrator. Mystery adventures require careful planning. All of the clues need to fit (or be dismissed as red herrings) and the players need to be able to weave them together effectively. A mystery that is too convoluted can frustrate the players or make them apathetic, while a mystery that is too quickly solved offers…
