The Clue Trail - Dead, Dead, Deadski (GUMSHOE All)

Beetlejuice

Once upon a time I discussed the Clue Trail and recommended, among other things:

Rule of Four. There are Four ways in: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, General. What you need is one clue for each of the ways in, so one Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General. 

Why do it this way? Well, apart from the usual benefits that come with the Rule of Four, you get one extra: split four ways among the four Ability lists, someone in the group will have at least one of those Abilities with points to spend. That means no matter how Scooby Doo it gets one of your dream team will find their way to the mystery. 

I went further and pointed out that this works best when dealing with the unexpected. You didn't think the characters would go to Berlin, say, this week, but here they are, scarfing up the curried bratwurst. What to do when they go looking for trouble?

Now, let's say that this wasn't an accident. Let's say this was planned. Let's say that Berlin was always on the menu and that you had time to design something more in-depth.

Does that change anything?

Not really - but it does allow you to play with the spine.  

The spine, for those of you shaky on the concept, is that part of the scenario structure which holds everything together. It's the bit that connects the dots. The clues characters find along the way are the nerve endings, the capillaries, that wrap around that skeletal structure and put some meat on its bones. Some of these clues lead to valuable information that draws the characters further down the spine. Some are dead ends. Some go unhelpful places. But, in the end, they all lead to the End. The question is, which End?

Let's talk about unhelpful places and dead ends.

Now, in RPGs generally and in GUMSHOE in particular, there should be no such thing as a completely dead end. By which I mean, there should be no such thing as a dead end with nothing fun to do, or nothing interesting to be had. A dead end does not lead any further into the plot. That does not mean it's a complete waste of everybody's time. 

In that sense a dead end is very similar to capture scenes, which I've written about before. The same principle applies: as Director it is your job to make sure the characters have something to do if they find themselves in a dead end scene.

A dead end, strictly speaking, is a position with no hope of progress; a blind alley. Your players thought this clue led somewhere, but it doesn’t. Or that this network contact, this McGuffin, this whatever-it-may-be would have a result, but it doesn’t.

Or – and this is the one to keep an eye on – they ignore a clue that could have led somewhere and, because they did that, now it leads nowhere.

Let’s say for the sake of this example that their network contact Anton was working on [X] and said ‘I’ll have more information for you tomorrow.’ The agents then wander off and commit their usual misdeeds, only remembering about a month later (in game time) that their dear old pal Anton was supposed to be working on [X]. Whatever happened about that? Well, nothing happened. Maybe Anton’s information is out of date. Maybe Anton’s dead. Maybe he’s a vampire now because he got too close to the Conspiracy.

In all those cases what could have been a promising spine trail now is not, because there’s nothing more to be gained by going down that path.

However, just because it’s a blind alley doesn’t mean there’s nothing whatsoever to be gained by going down there. It won’t advance the plot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with the notion.

Here’s some ways you can do that.

• Antagonist Reaction. There are bad things down that blind alley and they want to twist your head right off its delicate little neck. This can be a useful moment to kick off a fight scene, a chase scene, or some version of the Thrilling moment.
• The Nature of the Beast. You don’t get any useful plot clues but you do find out a little bit more about the nature of the things you’re chasing. Maybe they twist time and there’s some evidence of that down the blind alley, or maybe they have necromantic powers and you discover some of their revivified victims. Oh look! Zombies!
• The Nature of the Plot. Just because that laboratory burned down, taking all of its research experiments with it, doesn’t mean you can’t gain something by sifting through the ashes. Or maybe you notice that there’s things missing from the debris that ought to be there. If that safe was empty when the building burnt down, that tells you the records are still out there somewhere, even if you can’t find them at this location anymore.
• The Nature of the Game, aka Rome. There may be nothing down that blind alley, but if it’s an evocative nothing, if it chills the blood and quickens the pulse, then it’s not a complete waste of everyone’s time. This is the moment most likely to cause a Stability check. It’s also the most likely to contain squick. Or, as Stephen King famously said, “if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”
• The Location of the Plot. This is probably the most useful blind alley, though it may be useful by default. Let’s say that the players had three choices as to where to go next. They went for option A, and it turned out to be a dud. That means the plot’s got to be in B or C, and now they’ve wasted valuable time on A they have less time to deal with whatever’s in store at B or C.

This last option is also the option most likely to frustrate the players so it should be used sparingly. However, there’s juice to be had from building up tension. If the players know it’s a race against time and they realize they’ve wasted some of that precious time following up a bad lead, then their natural reaction is going to be increased motivation spiced with panic.

OK, let's head back to Berlin.

In that example there were the following Clues:

• Academic – History. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus the idea that the NSA left behind some interesting artefacts, buried in the rubble. 
• Interpersonal – Tradecraft. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some old NSA files, slipped to the agent by a friendly at the local CIA station.
• Technical – Urban Survival. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some maps and design schematics from back in the day, giving the agent a free Architecture bonus should they want it.
• General – Sense Trouble. One point gets the agent a general recent history of Teufelsberg plus some spooky extras (unexplained deaths, criminal activity, ghost activity, whatever suits best). 

Now, for whatever reason, Teufelsberg is a dead end. Doesn't matter why; it just is. In that case you still have to slip something in there for the players to chew on. It might be an Antagonist Reaction, a clue to the Nature of the Beast, Plot, or Game, or it might be the Location of the Plot. 

For this particular location I favor an Antagonist Reaction. There are enemies at that location, and they will do the characters harm, or try to. 

Now, the players spend their one point of History, Tradecraft or whatever it may be. That means they get to Teufelsberg. 

What if they spend two points? That usually gets them extra bennies, right? What kind of extra benny can be had in a dead end situation?

Answer: advance warning that it is a dead end, or advance warning of what's waiting for them up there. In this case, the creatures lurking up that dead end give themselves away somehow. Maybe the characters notice peculiar shadows or get a warning of supernatural activity. It's quiet. Too quiet. That kind of thing. 

This gives them the opportunity to avoid the antagonist reaction or play into it. Point being, it gives them a choice. 

It gives them something interesting to do, even if this is a dead end.

That's it for this week! Enjoy!

The Clue Trail (GUMSHOE All)

GUMSHOE is a player-facing RPG that uses a clue-gathering system as its main mechanic. Find a core clue, and you uncover part of the mystery. Find a non-core clue, perhaps by spending points, and not only do you uncover part of the mystery you also gain some other advantage. The exact nature of this advantage will depend on the situation and the needs of both the player and Game Master. The player may want a specific advantage; the Game Master may find it prudent to slip the player an advantage that they don’t yet know they need. 

All of which begs the question: how many clues make a clue trail? 

As a very broad-brush approach I recommend the Rule of Four, spread across the various disciplines each system uses.  

Naturally you’re going to want to adapt this depending on the needs of your narrative and the situation you find yourself dealing with. However, GUMSHOE, unlike crunch-heavy systems, relies on an improvisational style. If this were Dungeons and Dragons you’d be doing a lot of advance planning, literally populating every room in the dungeon and giving a call-out box for descriptions. A system like, say, Night’s Black Agents is a little more fluid. The agents may decide to go to Paris to talk to the mysterious socialite, or to Berlin to track down the drug smuggling network, or to Rome to confront the crypto-terrorists. It’s not quite the same thing. No ten by ten, orc, chest, initiative, death saves, new PCs please, is what I’m getting at.  

As a reminder, the Rule of Four works like this: 

Whenever designing OPFOR - or for that matter anything else, whether it's the town the adventurers start in, the organization they work for, or the theatre which they notice as a potential adventure location, design four highlight points and no more than four. 

The average player's attention span is short, and yours is not any better. You could go deep in the weeds and design twenty different things about the OPFOR, but who apart from you will ever know it? Even you won't, not really; in the heat of play you'll forget half your notes and curse yourself later when you realize you could have used the Thing, dammit, the THING, and never did. 

As luck would have it in GUMSHOE there are generally four different sets of Abilities, representing four different ways into the problem: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, and General. General is a little different from the others in that it represents those moments when you do a whatsis and might suck at doing the whatsis, so you roll dice. However, General can also be used for clue-gathering, and when that happens it works in much the same way as other Abilities. Spend 1 point, get a reward. Spend 2 points, either get 2 rewards or 1 really good reward. 

How do you layer the clue trail to make it seem as if the agents are following an actual line of breadcrumbs to Granny’s gingerbread house? 

Rule of Four. There are Four ways in: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, General. What you need is one clue for each of the ways in, so one Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General. 

Why do it this way? Well, apart from the usual benefits that come with the Rule of Four, you get one extra: split four ways among the four Ability lists, someone in the group will have at least one of those Abilities with points to spend. That means no matter how Scooby Doo it gets one of your dream team will find their way to the mystery. 

It might even give the spotlight to someone who usually doesn’t get a spotlight moment. The Bang-and-Burner, happy little pyromaniac that she is, might finally have a moment to use her Flattery skills. Or whoever use their whatever – point being someone is going to get the spotlight moment, and it might not be the usual spotlight-hogger. 

Let’s put this into practice.  

Let’s say the players went to Berlin and you want them to find their way to Teufelsberg. You weren’t expecting them to be in Berlin this week, but what the heck, they’re there, and that’s what matters. Now the agents are looking for adventure in all the unexpected places. You already have Teufelsberg prepped (or at least semi-prepped) as an adventure location. The question is, what clues will lead to Teufelsberg?    

Rule of Four: no more than four clues, of which one must be Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General, and no matter what each one has to lead to Teufelsberg. What’s more, because the agents might spend 2 points in their pool, you have to have at least some idea of what might happen if they spend that extra point.  

Academic – History. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus the idea that the NSA left behind some interesting artefacts, buried in the rubble. Two points gets that plus some background information on Operation TOADSTOOL, the dumping-ground for potentially dangerous Nazi artefacts back in the before times. Maybe there's a specific Nazi artefact you want to drop hints about - now's the moment.

Interpersonal – Tradecraft. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some old NSA files, slipped to the agent by a friendly at the local CIA station. Two points gets all that plus a free Contact, an ex-Stasi agent from the Cold War days who’s now more of a free-thinking hippie type who likes to graffiti tag Teufelsberg. 

Technical – Urban Survival. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some maps and design schematics from back in the day, giving the agent a free Architecture bonus should they want it. Two points gets all that plus a guaranteed location at Teufelsberg where they will find more stuff – if they’re brave enough to go get it. 

General – Sense Trouble. One point gets the agent a general recent history of Teufelsberg plus some spooky extras (unexplained deaths, criminal activity, ghost activity, whatever suits best). Two points gets the agent all that plus one very specific clue about the type of OPFOR they will find at Teufelsberg. 

See the process? The first clue is always a general history of the encounter location, which in this case is Teufelsberg. It could have been anything really, but the larger point is this: one point gets the agent enough information to go from point A to point B, with just enough extra juice (old NSA files, hints of ghost activity) to make spending a point become an exciting option for the player.  The only slight difference is General, which gives recent history as opposed to ancient history. General tests tend to be more active in-the-moment tests, so it makes sense that a General ability used as a clue-gatherer gets up-to-date intel. 

Without the extra juice the clue becomes a core clue, or a zero-point clue. It costs nothing and gets no extra benefit.

Two points gets all the value of the first point spend, plus something special on top. A free Contact, a guaranteed reward, valuable information about the OPFOR, what-have-you. Point being, that extra spend gives the agents something of definite benefit. It might be anything but whatever it is, it’s something the player will definitely want and therefore definitely want to pay extra for. Kinda like Kickstarter, but without that pesky shipping delay. 

By keeping to a standard you can allow yourself several options. It didn’t have to be Academic – History. It might have been Academic – Research, or Occult Studies. But if you know what you need the agent to find in the first instance then it doesn’t matter which way they choose to go in. What matters is what they find when they get there.  

So if they foozle you by going in a path you hadn’t anticipated, you can still make it look good. Plaster on your blandest Cheshire Cat smile and say, ‘Vampirology? Well, as it happens you do discover …’ 

Clue planted.  

Enjoy! 

Treasure Maps (Bookhounds of London)

I've been re-reading Dorothy Sayers, particularly her short stories where she occasionally gets experimental and decided that her detective Lord Peter Wimsey will, this episode, look for buried treasure rather than unburied corpses. Usually the beak-nosed sleuth is asked to do so by some reluctant socialist (Uncle Meleager's Will) or similar hanger-on who wants the loot to do good with; sometimes Lord Peter stumbles onto it while rooting about in an antiquarian book store (The Dragon's Head), though even in those instances there's some helpless do-gooder in the background waiting to turn the loot into a cure for cancer. Heaven forfend people get the money so they can spend it and have fun. However it happens, soon Lord Peter is off solving crossword puzzles or doing something similarly useful in search of a fortune in ... whatever it may be.

Sayers isn't alone in this. M.R. James often had his protagonist out looking for buried treasure of one kind or another (Abbot Thomas) and E.G. Swain had his priestly Mr. Batchel out looking for Stoneground loot about one episode in three, more or less, often to be thwarted by his ghosts. 

Sayers is possibly a little unique in that Lord Peter regularly finds important clues in antiquarian books, or libraries. In The Bone of Contention, which features not one but two ghosts, the all-important will of Dead Rich Man is found in an edition of The Nuremberg Chronicle kept in the dead man's library, sadly neglected. It's because the book is stained with damp, but the will is not, that Lord Peter smells a rat. In The Dragon's Head, Lord Peter and his nephew Gherkins find clues to the location of pirate treasure in Munster's Cosmographica Universalis.  

M.R. James also hid wills or other important clues to cash in antiquarian volumes (Tractate Middoth) but tended to be less obscure; a biblical quote or two, certainly, but actual treasure maps, no. 

Consider: most people go looking for Mythos texts because they contain knowledge . Things Man Was Not Meant To Know (Or Spell. Or Smell, For That Matter). Which is all well and good, but what happens when someone who couldn't care less about occult knowledge happens to pick a Mythos text in which to hide the clues to the loot?  What if that book is a treasure map?

Sayers had one advantage over the rest of us. Her audience was keen to solve mysteries, which is why she could devote chunks of her narrative to, say, solving an actual crossword puzzle. I suspect if you, the Keeper, were to present the players with an actual crossword puzzle to solve before they could advance the narrative, there'd be a revolt. It might be perfectly in keeping to present the characters with a Latin Squares puzzle to solve - first invented in 1783, apparently - but you'd be unwise to present one unless you'd like the game to come to a crashing halt. 

Dungeons and Dragons is particularly fond of presenting players with abstruse trap-puzzles to solve lest the player-characters be perforated by pitchforks. Some DMs seem to find great pleasure in designing peculiar puzzle palaces. I often wonder how happy their players are to find these encounters.

No, while the average player likes putting together clues to advance plot nobody wants some kind of quasi-Resident-Evil hunt for the Rooster Key before they can go through the Rooster Door to find the Oyster which contains the Pearl which when combined with the Ruby and the Emerald will ... and so on. Besides, while the character might be an analytical genius capable of solving sixteen impossible challenges before breakfast there's no guarantee the player is. 

Hence the Clue system in Gumshoe, both Core and Optional.

Figuring out the puzzle is hard enough for a group of armchair detectives, without someone withholding half the pieces from them. GUMSHOE, therefore, makes the finding of clues all but automatic, as long as you get to the right place in the story and have the right ability. That’s when the fun part begins, when the players try to put the components of the puzzle together. 

Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is:

1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered,

2.Have the right ability to discover the clue, and

3.Tell the Keeper that you’re using it. [Trail, p.51]

To expand on this, I'm going to rely on point 1., Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered, and suggest to you that the Core Clue scene can be layered with other scenes to create a treasure map.

Example: in Sayers' Dragon's Head Lord Peter, through the innocent purchase of an antiquarian book by his nephew Gherkins, discovers that the book contains information that will lead to loot. However, he cannot understand it. He knows the information's there, but doesn't know what it is. 

To completely understand what's going on, Lord Peter has to do two things. First, he has to learn more about the book's previous owner. He can do this anywhere; he doesn't need to be in a particular location or scene. Second, he has to go to the place where the loot is hidden and use the book in a particular way. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm trying to avoid story spoilers as much as possible; hopefully this doesn't make my point obscure. 

In short, he has the Clue and knows it is a Clue, but needs more information before he can completely appreciate the Clue. It is a layered Clue. It has multiple meanings leading to a final result, and that final result can only be obtained by going to a scene where relevant information can be gathered.

In game, Keepers sometimes express this layered Clue in terms of Pool Points. Reading this text, for instance, gives the player 2 pool points in Uncovering The Treasure. However, in order to use those pool points the character has to get to the scene where those pool points become relevant.

A Keeper in this situation is free to rule that spending one of those points allows the investigator to work out where (ie. in what scene) the Clue can be used. It saves time, is a viable use of the pool, and allows the investigator spotlight time. 

It's what I like to think of as a By Jove! moment. The Great Detective, thanks to an info revelation, suddenly knows who did it or what really happened. Often it's the Detective's Watson saying something apparently trivial that sparks this intuitive leap, but it can as easily be the Detective poring over some text or other looking for inconsistences. 

In this case By Jove! basically means the character works out, from the information in front of them, where they have to go next. It does not necessarily tell the character how to get there, or what's in the way. There may be sinister cultists waiting in ambush, or lethal traps at the story location. There may be logistic reasons why the characters can't just easily transition from one place to another; perhaps the place they need to get to is in the middle of a civil war, for example. All it does is tell them where, not how, or whether there will be problems along the way.

Let's put all this into practice. For the sake of example this is going to be a Bookhounds seed, but a Treasure Map could be used to fit many different situations and settings.

For this example I'm going to use one of the Ripley Scrolls as my Treasure Map. Alchemist George Ripley (c. 1415–1490) is alleged to be the creator of these scrolls, which are transcriptions or variations on a lost 15th century original text. Nobody knows whether this is so, but occasionally some of Ripley's poetry is found in the text so the scrolls became known as Ripley scrolls. These are examples of emblematic symbolism, less physical chemistry and more esoteric philosophy, perfect for my purposes.

Of course, it's a scroll, not a book. That doesn't have to be a problem but I'd prefer it was a book, since that muddies the waters even further by obscuring the true nature of the original text. 

I'm going to say that in this example the scroll has actually been cut up and tipped into a larger alchemical work compiled by an unknown academic at some point in the 17th century. Using the Shelfware and Foxing section of Bookhounds I shall also say that:

• At some point in the 19th century the cheap paper wrapper collection was rebound in morocco leather;
• That it is infested with alien insects (of which more later);
• That part of it is in code, a variant of Alphabetum Kaldeorum ("alphabet of the Chaldeans") 
• That it has no name or title, but is known as ex libris August Strindberg, after its most famous owner.

So here we have a text of dubious origin allegedly owned by a famous playwright and occultist, which has clearly gone through several hands since its creation in the 15th century. Always assuming it wasn't a fake to begin with.  

To add that Mythos tinge, let's go one step further and say that the Scrolls were created by someone - Ripley, or another - under the domination of the Great Race. That's why it is always infested with those strange insects; it is a point in space/time permanently linked with Pnakotus, and while not quite a functioning Gate it is just enough of a portal to allow small things through. This works both ways, so on the other side of the connection is a small pile of mouse bones, roaches, and other oddments from Earth. Nothing larger than a signet ring can pass, in either direction. 

This also means that destroying the book causes the portal to explosively decompress, allowing whoever destroyed it a close-up look at Pnakotus. Mythos shock, stability Loss +3, Sanity Loss +2, damage as pipe bomb (p 67 main text) which means everyone within 30 to 40 yards is in danger, and anyone who dies as a result is sucked into Pnakotus. In theory, if the Keeper is feeling particularly unkind, something from Pnakotus could be sucked through. Perhaps one of the Great Race, dazed and bleeding from transit, could spend a few rounds being unpleasant to everything nearby until it works out how to return to Pnakotus.

Skimming gets the reader 2 pool points Uncovering The Treasure. Poring over it gets +2 Mythos, no spells, and +1 Occult.

The Treasure is something completely unrelated to the Mythos text. It has to do with Strindberg, when he was going through his Inferno (1869 – 92) period.

Strindberg allegedly suffered temporary insanity, at least according to his contemporaries. A self-proclaimed  "socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!... I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath," he switched completely and became a mystic Catholic. He claimed an outside force, The Powers, had forced this on him, causing physical and mental suffering as part of their revenge on humankind for their wrongdoings. 

One of the results of this period was his semi-autobiographical work, Inferno. The other, allegedly, was the Golden Fleece, which Strindberg accidentally discovered during his Parisian sojourn. Experts are divided as to whether this is a philosophical construct (as hinted at in Strindberg's letters to Nietzsche) or a physical artefact which, for whatever reason, Strindberg couldn't bring himself to sell to solve his money problems.   

Those who say the Fleece is a physical object claim that Strindberg hid the location of the Fleece in ex libris Strindberg. Wild-eyed literary wackos and get-rich-quick chancers from all over the world would give anything to obtain it, though whether they could understand its literary allusions is another matter. 

So there are plenty of people who want this book who have no idea what the Mythos is, and could care less. Given the treasure's alleged location, Paris, it could be interesting to mix this with Dreamhounds and say that some of those trying to understand ex libris Strindberg are surrealists who want ex libris for its philosophical underpinnings, not the Fleece. However, surrealists are poor as dirt and couldn't afford to be in the same room as ex libris, much less purchase it, so they're quite likely to want to 'liberate' (steal) it.

OK, we have a book, a treasure, and a potential locale, Paris. What next?

Divide up the sequence into the appropriate scenes.

The Opening Scene is the acquisition of the book. Maybe in a house clearance, an auction, or however, but the Hounds get ex libris. As a result of that acquisition they get their first Core Clue: The Map. They understand that the information leads to treasure, and they may even know what the treasure is, but they don't know how to interpret it.

Optional lines of investigation include translating the Chaldean code, finding out more about Strindberg, finding out more about the source of the book (who sold it and why), finding out more about the provenance of the book (is it what it claims to be?) Meanwhile there are other things going on. The alien insects make their presence felt. Maybe someone picks up on all that Mythos knowledge and makes some bad assumptions about the nature of the problem.

Play it all out, but remember the key point: while they have the information, they are not in the right scene to make full use of it. The Hounds are in London. To make full use of the Clue, they need to be in Paris.

The easiest kind of transition is geographic. To be in the right scene, the Hounds need to change location. It's not the only way to handle the problem. The Hobbit did exactly the same thing with hidden lettering on Thorin's map, making it so the map's secrets could only be read at a particular time of year, under certain conditions. So in that situation the transition is time, not location. In a related Hobbit scene, the transition is expertise. Only one person, Elrond, could translate and understand the map. Finally, the information the map provided could only be acted on at a specific time of year, in a particular location. 

Transition in time, in geography, in expertise - all in one map.

But for our purposes in ex libris, the transition is purely geographic. The Hounds have to get to Paris. this allows the Keeper a chance for transit shenanigans Orient Express style, with mysterious strangers on the train perambulating around like little red herrings - until one of them makes a play for ex libris. Whether for its Mythos importance or its value as a map. After all, the Great Race might be very interested in this little travelling portal to their time/space dimension and yet have no interest  in the Golden Fleece. Whereas your average treasure nut has little interest in the Mythos but really wants the Fleece.

Once in Paris the Hounds can use the Core Clues to their fullest, working out precisely where the Golden Fleece is from the information in ex libris. What they do with this information is up to them. As an artifact the Golden Fleece is incredibly valuable, but surely there's a reason why Strindberg didn't try to sell it. Is there some curse? Does it have magical properties? Is there a guardian - ghouls, perhaps, or a serpent?

All that's for you and your players to determine. 

That's a Layered Clue. Obtained in one scene, but can only be properly understood in another, the two scenes being divided by geography. 

This is a relatively simple example with only two layers; it's easy to imagine a Layered Clue with multiple layers, divided not just by geography but also time, and possibly other factors as well. A Layered Clue that can only be properly understood by someone with the In The Blood drive. Or someone with 1 or more Magic pool, That only gives its secret up when the right stars shine overhead, or when the moon is full. A complicated Layered Clue could be the centerpiece of an entire campaign, depending on just how complicated the Keeper wants to make it.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Between Two Points

Linearity in scenario design is meant to be one of the bigger no-nos. I can see why. Player participation is key, and if the players don't feel that they have a role to play then any interest they may have had in the adventure quickly dies. This is a problem that affects not just tabletop but also video game design; this week's Zero Punctuation takes Medal of Honor; Warfighter to task for, among other things, carefully scripting the game so that player input is almost nil.

Scenario playtest feedback for my work often contains the complaint, "feels too linear". I particularly liked one report for a short piece due to appear in print soon, that started with the feels-too-linear statement only to say, once the players had become involved, that it didn't shake out in a linear fashion at all. In fact, the players floundered around a bit before finally working their way to the McGuffin; according to the report some of them liked the sensation of not being in control, while others said they could have used more pointers.

I'm not going to downplay linearity. It's definitely a script problem, and it gets all the worse in an environment like a video game, where the player literally cannot escape the boundaries of the plot, whether because invisible walls are blocking off all escape routes or for some other in-game reason. However I don't think it's as much of a issue as people seem to think, particularly in tabletop, and this is why:

Players are kittens.

I mean that. Anyone who's ever actually dealt with a kitten knows that they can be psychotic one minute, biting the hand that feeds it, and docile the next. Kittens wander off into any kind of disaster, wide-eyed and innocent, because they don't see any boundaries even if boundaries are there. They'll cheerfully walk off a table edge, given half a chance; but there's just as much likelihood that they'll find someplace they like the look of and put their heads down for a nap. Kittens do as they please ... and so do players.

The Keeper, knowing this, has to structure the scenario environment to withstand sudden flights of player fancy. The basic premise has to be strong, and supported by useful scenes that support the basic premise. That's the only way to prevent accidents. You wouldn't leave a kitten unattended on a table; why leave players without a safety net?

Say for the sake of discussion the scenario revolves around a murder, a good old-fashioned locked-room body-in-the-library situation. Once the body is discovered, there are certain things it is reasonable for the players, as the detective heroes of the hour, to do. They will want to inspect the body, the room, and the lock. They will want to talk to anyone who might have known the victim, or anyone else who happened to be in the house at the time. They will want to know how the victim died, and if it was something relatively unusual, like a poisoning, they're going to want to find out how easy it is to get hold of the poison and where it might have come from. Each of these issues can be a scene in itself, and each scene can contain clues that lead to the next logical scene. So if the players talk to the victim's lover, and get nothing, but talk to the maid and discover that the victim and the lover quarreled, they're going to want to go back to the lover again. None of this is brain surgery; anyone who's ever seen or read a murder mystery, ever, knows - at least in broad terms - how a murder investigation works.

Now, the Keeper could easily come close to linearity in plotting this situation out. Discovering the body leads to finding out how the murder was done, and from there to who might have done it, and from there to who did, in fact, do the deed. It seems so straightforward, when written out like that. There are variations on the theme, of course; many murder mysteries focus almost exclusively on motive, with an eye to a dramatic confession in the final chapter, while other investigations worry less about that and more about the mechanics of the crime. "That's How," Lord Peter Wimsey might say, "and now we know How, we also know Who."

However linear a scenario of this type might read on paper, it probably isn't going to be linear in practice. That's because you can't rely on the players to be perfect detectives. They're kittens, remember; they'll poke their heads where they please, and hope for the best. Some of them may not try to work out how the victim died, or content themselves with superficial seemings. Some of them may even invent wholly implausible theories and wed themselves to those theories beyond any hope of amicable divorce. The least likely NPC, having wandered into view, suddenly becomes Number One Suspect without even the smallest shred of evidence to convict them. Some will spend all their time chasing up exotic poisons without once confirming the actual cause of death. Some will convince themselves that, against all appearances, the person whose head was bashed in with a shovel actually was eaten by a lion - and this despite there being no lions in the scenario whatsoever.

The only thing a Keeper can do is write a fairly solid plot, and cover all the most reasonable bases. Anything beyond that is up to luck. Linearity in tabletop is, all too often, an illusion, and the Keeper believes in illusions at the Keeper's peril.

There is one other point to make here, and that is that even if a plot is completely on-rails, it doesn't have to be a problem. In fact, it might be the most enjoyable part of the experience. As evidence, I direct you to Telltale Games' survival horror puzzler, The Walking Dead.

If you haven't already played this, I highly recommend it, particularly if you enjoy zombie apocalypse settings. The game is based on the comic - not the TV series - of the same name. You play as Lee Everett, a man on the way to the penitentiary who manages somehow to struggle out of a car wreck into a world gone mad. Along the way he picks up a fellow survivor, an eight-year-old named Clementine, and together they do their best to pick their way through a very hostile Georgia.

It's grabbed a lot of people's attention this year, particularly for its excellent writing, but if there's one criticism that stands out above all the rest, it's aggressive railroading. You, as the player, have very little choice in what happens next. Scene follows scene like soldiers on parade, and if there is a puzzle in the way before you can get to the next scene, it usually isn't that much of an obstacle. Before you know it you're back on the train again, chugging away towards the next plot point.

Yet I, as player, don't have a problem with that; I've been enthralled by The Walking Dead since I learned I could pick it up on iPad, and just finished episode 4 this weekend. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for 5; at least two major plot points reaaaaaally need resolving, and I won't be happy until they are. I suspect most fans of the game feel the same way.

It wouldn't have nearly the same kind of impact if it wasn't masterfully written, and that's the key issue here. Even if you are marching from scene to scene without deviation, it's your interaction with the world and the characters in it that makes the experience so enjoyable. What happens next to Ken, to Carly, to Lilly or Doug, how Clementine reacts, how you react to her, whether your morals are strong - or flexible - enough to withstand what's coming next, is what makes this game a stand-out.

The straight line between two points isn't an issue, and while linearity can be an easy plot criticism I'm not sure it's entirely valid. To my mind, using "linear" as a scenario descriptor is actually a cover for something else, and that something else is "badly written." We know bad writing when we see it; flat characters, unbelievable plot points, disjointed or facile settings, are all issues that fiction has had to deal with over the years.

But those issues are the problem, not the linearity - or otherwise - of the plot. A straight-line plot with excellent writing can work brilliantly; a badly written sandbox will often fail and, where it does succeed, anything good it manages to pull off is a matter of luck, not design.  

I'm Batman

I bought Arkham City when it came out, and played it to death. I didn't go as far as Perfect Knight; that seemed far too fiddly, but I did want to get all the Riddler challenges done and that I managed. Grinding his smug face in the dirt was very satisfying! Plus, unlike the previous game Arkham Asylum, there was a good reason to get the Riddler, since he kidnapped several innocent civilians and threatens to kill them unless you solve his puzzles. Along the way you, as Batman, have to figure out several hundred riddles, beat individual challenge rooms, and finally confront the green weasel in his lair. It's one of several potential side missions in which you track down leads to solve the mystery before it's too late, and while some of those (like Zsasz) are more acrobatic, the Riddler missions are about 50/50 brain power to gadget use.

I spent a chunk of Sunday playing it again, since an Xbox blowout reset the game. All the Riddler challenges reappeared, giving me a second chance to knock them down again. Tracking down those clues was a big part of the fun for me the first time around, and it's been just as enjoyable the second time running.

However it made me think about clues in detective-style settings. The classic of course is Holmes' inductive reasoning, as follows:

My eyes tell me that on the inside of [Watson's] left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.

Which is fine as far as it goes, but it relies on two assumptions. First, that the parallel cuts can only have been caused by a boot-scraper. That's something the modern reader has to take on faith, since few people now living really know what a Victorian era boot-scraper is or why it would cause parallel cuts as opposed to any other kind. However if there is any other way that parallel cuts of that type could have been caused, the boot-scraper theory is in danger of falling flat, which may mean the vile weather theory is flawed. Second, it assumes that a Doctor's boots can only have been scraped by his servant. That's likely, of course, but it's also possible they were scraped by the Doctor, his wife, or a third party - particularly since as a Doctor he's likely to be visiting other people's houses, and dealing with other people's servants. As it happens Holmes is right on the money, but it could easily have gone the other way.

Which is the big problem with fictional detectives. Agatha Christie alludes to this more than once, using her character Ariadne Oliver as a mouthpiece. Oliver is a detective story novelist, and frequently grouses at how stupid she was to make her main character a Finn when she knew almost nothing about them, but she also has a lot to say about the perils of clue creation. A novelist can make a blowpipe one foot long even though it really ought to be four and a half foot. A novelist can tell lies to help the plot along, by insisting that a clue is a clue when in fact it means nothing, or the opposite of its apparent meaning. Dorothy Sayers does much the same thing with her character Harriet Vane, particularly in Have His Carcase. In that novel Harriet is supposed to be working out a plot for her own mystery novel when she stumbles across an actual murder, and Harriet spends a lot of her writing time grumbling about getting the timetable right for the trains in her novel, for fear that any mistake will be picked up on by nitpicking readers.

The bigger problem is this: the reader expects a Clue to be a Clue, to have a definite meaning in and of itself. There can be no shades of grey. It's all part of a larger puzzle, and if the pieces are put together in the correct order then the puzzle can be solved. It's a genre convention that's wide open to parody since it assumes a kind of story structure that's almost impossible to envisage in real life. Real life is messy. Trains don't run on time. Blowpipes can be novelty sized. Mysteries can't be puzzled out through inductive reasoning alone, though inductive reasoning may certainly help.

In the Death Investigator's Handbook, it's all about procedure. Evaluating the crime scene isn't even the first point on the checklist; it's under section C, where A is about establishing the perimeter and B is about contacting the necessary responders. Examining the body doesn't happen until way, way down the checklist, where in a novel it would be the very first thing the detective looks at. I'm not even sure the word Clue is ever used in that book; I can't be certain since there isn't an index in my 1993 edition. It's all Evidence, and one piece of evidence in itself means nothing. It's the totality that means everything.

'What were the victim's activities, how was the victim selected as a target, and what was done to the victim are three areas of consideration. The significance of the scene, how it was selected and the evidence it has provided are other courses whch need to be developed . . .'

It's nice to pretend to be Batman for a while, but Batman is fiction, and the puzzles he faces aren't tied to reality in any meaningful way. That's not why they're there. They exist to provide an intellectual challenge in an artificial world. All Clues are like that. They provide a challenge, but they oughtn't to be taken too seriously.

After all, they're only make-believe.