Saturday I have my next EotE session - my players will be involved in a Clue sort of Whodunnit where a contact they were supposed to meet is found dead and everyone is a suspect!

We just did a fun session from the FoD book that involved researching a series of artifacts for clues about the whereabouts of the mission. It was very well received and I would like to incorporate similar ideas in this session.

Do you have any tips or tricks from previous whodunnits you have run?

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/80170/CTA11Murder-on-Arcturus-Station

Never played it but my co-GM said it reads fun.

Thank you! ^__^

I once ran a sci fi game form another franchise that had the group separate on a planet for some much needed R&R, and they all described to me what they were doing, and then the next thing they knew, they were standing in a med bay on a ship that wasn't theirs with a dead body in between them and no idea of what had happened in the hours in between their last memories and now. Man at their feet was a popular and well liked politician, and three of the four players knew and liked him (the fourth player was a planet on the Rim. It became a who-dun-it as they explored the remains of the derelict ship they were on, as I dropped clues here and there that pointed to one of them being a traitor. Normally, my usual groups don't handle in-fighting well, and just start to massacre eachother, but the starts aligned for this session, and they really roleplayed it out very well.

You might check out the GUMSHOE system for some good tips on investigative games.

I think the biggest takeaway from that system is that you should never make critical information hinge on a successful skill check. No matter how easy the check or how skilled the players are, there is always a chance for failure. You don't want the entire adventure to derail because someone failed a skill check.

Instead, the characters should always be able to learn required information. Skill checks might get them that information faster, help sift out misinformation, and/or provide additional information that lets them put the clues together faster than they might have otherwise.

I disagree with the above post. It's OK for the players to fail. Sometimes the story is actually better because of failure.

I disagree with the above post. It's OK for the players to fail. Sometimes the story is actually better because of failure.

So long as failing doesn’t mean that the story stops and there is no way forward, then I agree — some of our best moments have come from times when we had the odds way in our favour and we assumed that we couldn’t possibly fail, and then we did. And the awesome stuff was what happened after that failure.

However, if it’s a pivotal point in the story, and everything hinges on it, then I agree with bonenaga that it should not be possible for the PCs to fail. Instead, in that context, failure should mean something else, like it takes longer than expected, or something else happens, but doesn’t just completely shut the story down.

Please give me an example of where a story stops and there is no way forward. As I see it, no matter what happens, the story is still moving even if it's not in the expected direction. I think that having failure not actually result in failure is a cheat to the players.

Please give me an example of where a story stops and there is no way forward.

It all depends on how you — the game master — builds the story.

As I see it, no matter what happens, the story is still moving even if it's not in the expected direction. I think that having failure not actually result in failure is a cheat to the players.

Again, it all depends on how you build the story.

I think what bonenaga is saying here is that you have to be careful in how you build the story so that you don’t create a situation where failure would present this sort of problem.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

They're not very good at spending Advantages......

If there's another way for the players to find their way through the story, then it doesn't apply. But if the entire adventure hinges on them finding one critical piece of information, such as identifying that the dart which is their only clue comes from Kamino, don't assume that they will successfully identify the dart or even bother to analyze it at all. You either ensure that they get that information or provide multiple paths to that destination.

It really applies to any sort of obstacle or skill check. Nor is it unique to EotE.

It's not cheating the players to ensure that they get the one piece of information that you absolutely want them to have. This is a narrative game with a lot of ways to represent failure other than "you get nothing".

And I'm fine with the story sometimes moving in an unexpected direction but that's not the same as completely halting or derailing an adventure. If you spend a lot of time on an intricate and epic adventure, then nothing comes of it because you allowed it to hinge on a single point of failure, then you may have cheated both yourself and your players.

I have found this to be very helpful in approaching mysteries and such:

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

I disagree with the above post. It's OK for the players to fail. Sometimes the story is actually better because of failure.

Please give me an example of where a story stops and there is no way forward. As I see it, no matter what happens, the story is still moving even if it's not in the expected direction. I think that having failure not actually result in failure is a cheat to the players.

Important to make allowances for the mechanics of the system and the fact that clues that would normally be obvious to an individual with the appropriate skills in the actual location may not be to a Player playing a PC with those skills sitting at the dining room table. If you wan to close the door to advancement of the plot because of a poor die roll I guess thats okay but I'm not sure how fun that is. The idea behind a minimum level of success even on a failure for clues isn't a cheat but a compromise that allows for the above.

It doesn't mean you have to give everything away just enough to move forward. The PCs may still ultimately fail but they should fail because of choices they make not a bad roll that poorly represents problem.

If you accept that they can fail because of bad rolls in combat, so why not because of rolls outside of combat, be they social or investigative?

If you accept that they can fail because of bad rolls in combat, so why not because of rolls outside of combat, be they social or investigative?

I've got a cold so I'm not in prime explaining mode but if you read the essay I linked to above the first paragraph pretty much lays out the problem and why it's a good idea to make allowances for adventures that require the finding and understanding of clues to proceed. It's not that we shouldn't accept failure it's that because of the limitations of RPGs success in these types of scenarios is harder to achieve. A little help by making a couple of key clues available regardless of a Failed roll is a good thing. This isn't the same thing as giving the whole thing away just a minimum amount of information required to keep the Players from loosing the thread.

In this system, you don't need to pick whodunnit before the adventure begins. Let Advantage and Threat be your guide. Maybe Threat means a guy the players suspected actually had an alibi, or maybe Advantage means there's an additional clue tying someone to the crime.