Mysteries and Clue-Dropping, Techniques? Options

[Dashifen]

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So, I have this big plot for my players that they've been working through for a few weeks. I have two groups, and right now one is working for one side of the plotline and the other group is working for the opposite side. Lots of fun. However, things are beginning to get interesting. One group's headed to Athabaska for a little bit of polar archeology (whee) while the other group gets to start working for the Draco Foundation.

What I'm working on right now is the Draco Foundation stuff. Here's the basics: they're going to contact the team because of an earlier extraction that the team performed with flying colors. That extraction, however, had a willing target. Well, actually it had an unconscious target so he was willing by default. Any road, I digress.

The Draco Foundation will be after a woman by the name of Gabrielle Rhyn. Ms. Rhyn, unbeknownst to her, is a drake. 'Course, the DF isn't going to tell the players that -- it might scare them away and what fun would that be. The players will be shown her picture and asked to track her down and convince her to come see the Draco Foundation. If she resists, they're to capture her and deliver her to the DF. The DF knows she's in Denver (where the game is set) but not what sector or exactly where.

I imagine that the decker could probably do an information search to find some leads about where she's been in Denver. Then I imagine that the team could start to follow her trail about town. Eventually, they'll find her living in a low-level apartment in the CAS sector of the city.
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One thing I've always had trouble doing this part of the run. I can do action, I can do adventure, and I can do horror, but the mystery and clue-dropping stuff is not my strong point. So, how do you all usually run such a scenario in your games? Any hints or tips you can throw my way? I'm trying to give my players some change in the normal routine before I toss the drakes, shedim, and 12000 old magical artifacts buried under the Athabaskan permafrost at them :grinbig:

[Dashifen]

Oh, and the players won't know who they're working for, either, so I think once they find her, she's going to insist that they try to figure that out, too. All this mystery stuff is making me nervous for this weekend but I'd really like to try and pull it off right if I could.

Edit: Spelling

This post has been edited by Dashifen: Oct 26 2004, 03:02 AM

[Herald of Verjig...]

First, be ready to handle the tracking as a series of negotiation or interrogation rolls. This is in case the PCs don't like handling it slow.

Second, if she's legal, a good decker can track down uses of her SIN. That would give away the whole thing immediately, so I will assume she isn't.

Ok, realisticly, they need to find people who know what's going on in their surroundings, and start asking them. Many of these should turn up either nothing or "she's been seen a few times in the south (north, west, whatever) side of my turf." Once they get a lead, it should head to other locations, spiraling toward a very local area where they just have to do a comprehensive search themselves. (nice landlords don't rat you out to every group of suspicios characters who ask about you)

A map will help. Remember the difficulties of crossing regional lines. Pick out a regular schedule that she usually follows and do give them the option of just scouting a place that she regularly visits to find her. If she's the type who would not have any sort of regular pattern, then all they can do is follow hints about how often she's been by a place weekly and try to narrow it down.

[Fortune]

Don't underestimate the fun that can be had from one or two red herrings or false leads. ;)

[fish]

asking again... what are drakes? and what are shedim?

edit: spelling

[Ol' Scratch]

To put it ridiculously simple and grossly understated, drakes are were-dragons and shedim are vindivictive ghosts that can possess and animate the dead.

[Crusher Bob]

Mysteries can be pretty hard to run, when the party seems to have missed all the clues, or is following up something completly unrelated...

The main thing to keep in mind to to never carefully script a mystery, there is not 'only clues' X, Y, and Z to be found about the mystery. If the characters look really hard in some place, let them find something. If they spend all their time following up a red herring, change what really happened 'behind the scenes' to match what they have been chasing.

An in game mystery is nothing like a 'real' mystery where its usually the borin and tedious hours long work of dusting for finger prints, talking to absolutely everybody ivolved, etc that breaks the case... Also IRL investigators can have a very long time to look into something, hell they can sleep on it. In game, you don't have any such advantage.

So when running mystery in game, you are really budgeting time, not clues. If the players have run through al of the 'preprepared' clues in 30 min flat, try to throw in some more stuff. If they are on clue 3 out of twelve with only an hour of game time left, you'd better cut most of those clues out.

So before the game, come up with a list of potential clues/complications and then edit 'what really happened' on the fly, so that the mystery is being solved just as you are running out of game time. This, of course, takes some practice, but done just right can convince your players the you are the highgod of GMing.