I previously posted the broad notes on a mystery campaign I'm running and am now writing more detailed information about how to keep the mystery going. This post is a chronicle of the first session and how I kept the players moving towards the end goal. As I noted last time, I am keeping some of the long-term goals of the campaign secret so that my players don't find out about what's coming. Let's get into it.
Our three characters are Beor, Ais, and Montana. To begin, I placed each of them in town and tried to drive the three of them into one scene. Beor wanted to buy incense and other spiritual needs, so he headed to a shop called Sigil's, where a half-elf named Sigil Tanner sells various wares including spiritual needs. Meanwhile, Ais walked toward the center of town, where she was accosted by a stranger, who accused her of destroying an entire gnomish compound. This was a case of mistaken identity. This came about as a result of a natural 1 roll on an encounter table, which indicated a case of mistaken identity; I used the encounter to characterize the way that Ais, a tiefling, runs into prejudice even in her hometown. At the same time, Montana asked an old friend, Lazgar Mazoga, about possible private eye jobs--Mazoga mentioned a murder at a dwarven restaurant called Underhar Cuisine. To rope all of the players into one unit, I placed Underhar Cuisine right next to Sigil's and had Ais' encounter happen in the thoroughfare in front of the restaurant. Here, with all three players in the same place, a guard (Portia Rockhammer, who believes in the methods of the guards but acknowledges that there are too many crimes for the guards to address) accosted the three as outsiders. She insisted that they help investigate the murder of the young woman who was found in the alleyway next to Underhar Cuisine. As mentioned before, Portia cast a spell on the party, forcing them to stay within 50 feet of one another or fall immediately unconscious. Now the party is joined in location and purpose, and the mystery can begin.
I'm sure that some DMs wouldn't like this method of sticking the party together. I did it anyway for a few reasons. (1) The murder mystery format assumes that the party is invested in solving the murder. But I knew from my conversations with my players that each character is highly individualistic. Just dropping a crime on them would result in no momentum going forward. Especially for characters like Beor, the tragedies of city life are sad, but not the kind of thing that would inspire him to stay in a city surrounded by people he doesn't feel compelled to help. (2) These players are incredibly driven to role-play, but having run games for them before, I knew that cooperation was not the strongest of skills. Forcing them to work together prevents lengthy solo experiences, focusing instead on the mystery. (This doesn't mean I don't allow them to have individual goals, but it does mean that I want to incentivize them to work together.) And (3) I have included a mechanism by which each player must keep a secret from the rest of the party. Keeping the players in close quarters means that they will have to work harder to keep their secrets safe.
So with the players joined and focused on solving the murder, it was time to investigate. Montana, a private eye in his own right, began by asking me if there were any plants in the alleyway where the victim was found. Forgetting that Montana could speak with plants, I answered that there was a large dandelion in the alleyway. Montana questioned this dandelion, who I named Derek, and Derek revealed that a figure with a black cloak and a purple turban had stabbed the young woman repeatedly and fled the alleyway. (I realized in session two that my description of the murderer matched Professor Quirrell from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This was unintentional. But D&D is about running with things, so the main suspect just happens to look like that.) The party also investigated the rooves nearby the alleyway, finding a monogrammed coinpurse with the initials "AB" stitched on it. (I meant this coinpurse to be evidence that the cat burglar who was one of the main witnesses had been there and likely seen the murder, but the party took it as evidence that AB had been at the crime scene themselves. This is one way that a mystery campaign can go off the rails: make all of your clues orient the party in the right directions or you'll accidentally send them into a red herring, and red herrings break mystery campaigns. In session three, we were still dealing with the party suspecting whoever AB is, so be careful.
When the players searched the murder victim's body, they found a steel plate in her pocket which explained that her name was Hildy Analeth and that she was mute; the steel plate was intended to be a communicator that she could not communicate via speech to anyone. The plate also had Hildy's home address, which the party went to. There, they found her whole family in mourning, just informed of Hildy's death by a night guard named Darla Oakfort who claimed to have known Hildy well. Hildy's father, Davil, explained to the party that Hildy was a gentle, kind person and that she worked for a family in the Above. (The campaign setting is a city called Yamseth; in Yamseth, chaos storms strike randomly, forcing arbitrary magical effects on anyone they strike. The rich in Yamseth build towers that rise above the chaos storms--the towers are called "the Above"--but the poor in the Below are victims to the storms.) Hildy served the Turnbuckle family without issue for years. Seeing the misery and destitution of the family, Beor donated a few gold to the Analeths via Darla, who said the party might find something out at the tavern The Unicorn's Advice, where Hildy often got free food for her family.
The party headed to The Unicorn's Advice and questioned bartender Baldwin Weams. Weams claimed to know nothing of the murder but professed affection for Hildy. (Below, I've posted my original notes for this session, and you'll notice that Baldwin Weams is listed as one witness who saw the murder. But our session had been relatively short at this point, and I intended to make this first clue last one session. So I shifted Weams' role in the session. Rather than have him give the confirmation of Derek the dandelion's account, I decided to use Baldwin to direct the party to a more compelling witness. The notes also detail that the cat burglar who saw everything could be witnessed breaking into/out of a house and questioned, but I adapted that. Now, the cat burglar was in the bar, and Weams told the party that if anyone was likely to have seen something, it would be her. So Weams directed the party to the cat burglar, whose testimony would be its own puzzle.) Weams suggested that the party speak with the cat burglar, and Ais, herself an outsider more than Beor or Montana, delicately probed the cat burglar for information.
After having run the cat burglar encounter, I strongly recommend making access to clues dependent on how well your players can talk people into sharing them. Ais was cautious and polite, but the cat burglar nevertheless was reticent to share everything right away. Over ten or so minutes, Ais eventually convinced her to attest to having seen the turbanned figure slash the throat of Hildy in the small hours of the morning, then stab her multiple times, leave her in the alley, and then flee over the rooftops. The cat burglar mentioned that she had been so surprised by the scene that she had dropped a coinpurse she had stolen (the mysterious AB coinpurse, which Weams had guessed belonged to Above citizen Aaron Brown, one of the richest men in town). Gradually and with resistance, the cat burglar added details of what she had seen and eventually asked for the AB coinpurse back as a reward for her cooperation. Satisfied that they had two confirmed reports of the suspect's description, the party kept the coinpurse and left the tavern. Montana offered to play a live music show at The Unicorn's Advice as a favor for Weams helping them with information.
The party returned to Portia at the guard headquarters to report their findings. On the way, they encountered Dirk St. Patrick, a private eye who bragged of solving the murders in Underhar Cuisine that Montana had heard about. He soliloquized a bit like a good noir detective and left the party with the threat of investigating them. (More pressure on player secrets.) The opening scenes of the adventure had occurred in the late morning, and the time was now mid-afternoon. The guard headquarters is a large building, complete with offices, sleeping quarters, a jail, an armory, and other ancillary guard needs; inside, Portia listened patiently to their discoveries. She protested that a dandelion and a cat burglar were not ideal witnesses but accepted their report. And so ended the first session. The goal had been to unite the party, introduce them to the mystery, and get the first bit of information required to pursue that mystery. It was a success on all counts.
Below I've copied my notes on how I prepared this session. You'll see it's fairly barebones. I start with the information I want the party to find, create a few paths to finding that information, and strategically offer those paths to the party. There's a certain philosophy of gaming I have which guides me to leave these pieces of information free-floating and add them to the campaign as fits the moment rather than have a set presentation in mind--this helps with keeping the story organic and the players able to direct things themselves with only suggestions from me as the DM. If you trust yourself to do this, the rewards for your players are great. Next time, I'll provide my philosophy of gaming and how it affects standard DM tasks, followed by session two of this mystery campaign. But for now, the outline for session one:
Secret to discover: A commoner from the Below witnessed someone from the Above wearing a purple turban do something suspicious and the person from the Above killed the commoner.
Setup: The dead body of a commoner is discovered in an alleyway. The guards automatically suspect any newcomers and nearby Belows. To minimize the damage they can do, the guard calls for the chief of police, who uses magic to join the party--50 feet apart, and they all go unconscious but one randomly selected character. The chief only agrees to this on the condition that the party investigate the murder for him. Any information found in investigating must be confirmed before continuing the investigation.
Characters:
First Guard - Portia Rockhammer, 160 dwarf, fighter
Chief of Police - Horace Barnes, 54 human, rogue/sorcerer
Murdered Commoner - Hildy Analeth, 38 half-elf, commoner
Clues:
Tavern keeper (Baldwin Weams, 29 human) testifies that a purple turban-wearing figure fled the
alleyway this morning. He saw on the way to work.
Night watch (Darla Oakfort, 67 halfling) saw a purple turban-wearing figure run from the direction
of the alley with blood on their hands.
Cat burglar (Maeve Bobbin Torat Wekall, 122 gnome) was on top of building by alley and saw the
entire attack: the turban-wearing figure (Maeve is colorblind) pulled out a dagger and stabbed
Hildy to death. Maeve knew Hildy and is sad that she has passed. Maeve can be noticed about
to break into someone’s second story.
Bonus for keeping personal secret this session: +1 Investigation checks
As you can see, this is basic information without much in the way of grounding. But I promise it works, and next time, I'll explain how.
Back to the homepage (where you can find everything!)
No comments:
Post a Comment