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Your last three sessions have felt like a mini-campaign, bursting with mystery and possibilities.
Now that weâve captured the baron, how did he get all those goblins into the basement? Did we miss some hidden door to the underdark? Or was the smuggler we got that magic scroll from involved?
The baron was a mage, this whole time? We didnât find a single spell-book.
A wand that teleports goblins into basements?
âŚwouldnât they eat him?
âŚso what did the goblins think was happening whenâŚactually nevermind.
~~~~~~~~
This unsatisfying ending could retroactively turn fun evenings into non-fun evenings, and the problems extend far beyond small âwhodunnit?â scenarios. Any time a world - even a fantastic world - drops another âbecause magicâ, it feels like shit sliding down the story, from its current conclusion, back across the start. It stops heroes finding interesting solutions. It stops villains plotting how to evade crimes. It replaces all thought and planning with the kind of magic that only Harry Potter fans enjoy.
But even if the problem isnât just a problem for murder-mystery nights with dragons, murder-mysteries make the problem quickly transparent.
In the words of Ronald Knox:
[The story] must have as its main interest the unravelling of a mystery; a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end.
Fantasy RPGs have problems which we solve with more strategy than âunravellingâ, but there must be some questions. Who is this mysterious wizard who claims to be Keraptis? What happens when I read this scroll? Why are the goblins wearing shoes?
Knox wrote these ten commandments for writing murder mystery novels, but they may have something interesting to say about writing RPG modules, mutatis mutandis.
1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective himself must not commit the crime.
8. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
9. The âsidekickâ of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
RPG stories do not tend to reveal NPCsâ thoughts, and if they did, it would involve a spell. However, I can see that the âcriminalâ, of any story should be innocuous enough that nobody would attempt to read their mind with a spell. A barman who serves the troupe their first drink, or the dwarf they bought leather armour from both make excellent characters to loop back to, when creating instigators for an adventure.
This, of course, will need some wide interpretationâŚfrom Tolkien.
Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies it can hardly be applied, unless super is taken merely as a superlative prefix. For it is man who is, in contrast to fairies, supernatural; whereas they are natural, far more natural than he. Such is their doom.
Magic isnât supernatural in a magical world. Even if a demonic creature stepped from the shadows, revealing herself to be the one who had given the goblins shoes, this would not need to violate the fabric of a fantasy world; the players could still look behind them, and remember a litany of echoes of demonic power.
Steady on, old chap!
âŚbut then again, the fact that rolling for âhidden doorsâ is a standard task, with standard rules, may not speak well of fantasy RPGs in general.
Personally, I like hidden doors. All I ask of them is that:
1. They have a clear in-world reason to exist.
2. They have some basic plot-related reason to existâŚeven if just to justify why the goblin-infested basement still has some treasures.
3. The book should give such a clear description of the secret door that the players can ask about its hinges.
I never want to see another map that just has a â$â symbol showing a hidden door, without any mention of how itâs hidden. If anyone can satisfy that requirement with ten hidden doors, I donât see a problem.
I return to the wand of obedient goblin summoning at the start of the story. Using a ring of fire-protection, or using a new race which can breathe underwater can both serve as mysterious instigators with a pay-off, because they both reveal a known element somewhere the players didnât know it was; but they donât add an unknown element. Even a story which asks âhow do we kill all these giantsâ, must have some close-cousin to revelation.
Remember in the good old days, when you never wondered âis this guy maybe a bit racist?â. Instead, heâd just interrupt an unrelated analysis of literature to inform you that he categorically dislikes all Chinese people.
This kind of âaccidentâ, when writing, means the writer has noted that the detective must find a yellow shoe on the ground, and simply stipulated that he finds one. The parallel here would be GM-fiat.
So the next day you go outside and fine a yellow shoe in the bushes, which must have been caught there. Itâs very small.
The âwriterâ has made themselves too well known, and needs to back-the-fuck-up, and take the tiny, yellow, shoe with them. If the players had asked to look around the courtyard, or at least rolled a perception check, it would have smeared less across the plot.
And of the two, the perception check seems worse than just telling players they find a shoe the moment they look around the courtyard. The latter gives a direct response to the world, while the former makes players wonder what else they should roll.
Knox clearly wouldnât approve of evil-aligned parties, and indeed thereâs something trite about the problem-solvers we should empathise with becoming problem-causers that we should not empathise with.
After all, if the PCs start mayhem, the GM will have little choice except to send some âheroesâ after them, in anything like a standard fantasy world. And at that point, you end up with very justifiable, entirely understandable, GM PCs.
The parallel would be a wizard PC, who studied at wizard school, looking through another wizardâs books, before a venomous spell-snake jumps out of the book to bite his nose. Surely a wizard would know if wizards regularly trapped their spell books. And why did the dwarf have to make a roll to know that goblins donât normally wear shoes, if he comes from a mountain currently at war with goblins?
Each PC must reveal their every thought to their player.
The âsidekickâ in an RPG can only mean NPCs, and an NPC showing incredible insight and cunning while forming battle plans, or finding doors, or making alliances, or even easily defeating enemies seems like classic bad-taste, and potentially, a âGM PCâ. NPCs should have reasonable battle-plans, but not amazing battle-plans, so the PCs have some ability to suggest a better alternative. And having an NPC enter a fight where they will probably lose opens the way for the troupe to support them, and save the day. This advice applies well, but Iâm more interested in where it does not apply.
An insightful NPC, revealing a battle-plan, or even a large murder-mystery clue, could work well if they were introduced as the person who will do precisely that thing. If the troupe know they can enter the forest to seek the wisdom of âMad Betsyâ, in order to understand why goblins prefer yellow shoes, than that works fine. The players receive a promise, along with their characters.
Combat plans work equally well, if presented ahead of time, as if the NPC were an item the group can search for. And even combat-focussed NPCs can work well as a prize. If the troupe find a rival demon, shackled by a spell, but ready to rampage, they could plan to release it at just the right place, destroying everything around it (while the troupe duck, and cover their ears), before banishing it. Or they may find a famous warrior, mortally wounded, and plan to nurse him back to health, in order give the goblins a target while they hunt the basement for clues.
Once a powerful NPC becomes a tool, it works well.
reason to lie. The butler wouldn't have let anyone into the celler
except the baron. It must have been the baron."
It was the baronâs evil twin all along!
tanner. The tanner had practiced making shoes for dwarves, who have
similarly-sized feet. Only the tanner could have wandered around
with weapons without arousing suspicion. It must have been the
tanner."
But in fact, the shoes were a little illusion-spell. And so was the demon. And the jewels. It was just goblins with illusion spells all along!
Illusions make fun scenes, interesting ideas, and devious plans. But an unexpected illusion cannot satisfy a puzzle, whether itâs a mystery, or a bloody-battle.