Anatomy of a Mystery

To have a successful Mystery for your players to solve I recommend starting with this basic outline to get you started. All of this together will give you a solid foundation to stand on when the investigators eventually come up with some wild idea that you’ll need to roll with.

The Mystery

This is the question that the players and you are playing to find an answer to. This may be trying to discover why a farm has been losing so many sheep lately. What’s that noise blaring at midnight every night, driving customers away from the hotel? A mysterious murder has happened that even the police are afraid to investigate. Start with your question and build it out from there.

Inciting Incident

Something has to kick start the mystery and get the PCs involved. Think about one of your favorite murder mystery shows and how they start.

You can think of this as the cold open of a TV show. This is where the maid cleaning the pent house discovers the dead body. Or where the jogger stops to tie their shoe and well…discovers the dead body. Feel free to describe this scene to your players, even if the PCs are not there to witness it.

The Monster

A good monster makes for a memorable game. And the best kind of monster can potentially be unmasked to discover who is really behind it all. When designing the monster for your mystery, think of how it relates to the location that the players will be investigating. A ghost of the long deceased groundskeeper. A bog monster who pulls travelers into the dark waters around the old resort. Your monsters need to terrify the party and to be able to harangue them at a moment’s notice. Popping up seemingly out of nowhere.

Big note here! It is not your job to know how the monster gets around the location or who may be behind it. You are playing to find out that information just as much as the players are. Let the clues they gather and NPCs they talk to reveal that information. Remember, it is up to the players to piece it all together and make the final roll to solve the mystery.

Jump Scares

Have a list of potential Jump Scares to toss at your players. These do not necessarily have to be related to the monster but are good atmospheric moments to toss their way whenever they roll a GM Intrusion but the stakes aren’t too high yet. These could be things like disturbing a wild animal’s burrow and it jumping out at them to run away. A door slamming shut and mysteriously locking. Seeing a face looking back at them when they try to look into a window.

Suspects

Here is where you can have a load of fun coming up with your cast of characters for the players to talk with and build their suspect pool. Your beginning question, inciting incident, and locations are going to be huge inspirations for this section. At minimum you should have three people for the players to talk to. The more there are, the longer the session will take, but a bigger web of mystery you can build.

Remember, an NPC is more than just a personality. They are also a culmination of their relationships to the other NPCs. Build little scandals and minor mysteries within this group. These will give the PCs something to latch onto when putting their puzzle together on who or what is causing the problems.

Locations

You’ll want a few places for the PCs to have fun exploring. Use your list of suspects and main mystery to help build out what locations you may need. Think of fun little Jump Scares you can put in each one. Each location needs to be memorable and have lots of atmosphere to build tension. Consider how they can be a character unto themselves. If they go to the library, are the shelves so tall they loom over the PCs like ancient statues of knowledge? In the hotel they’re staying at, do the faucets drip to the beat of “Take On Me?”

Clues

Instead of attaching specific clues to a Suspect or Location, you’re better served by having a list of clues you can easily drop into any situation that is appropriate. This solves the issue of attaching what could be an important clue to a specific place or person that the players could potentially miss. With his method this players have the ability to uncover the affair between the principal and the janitor through either a conversation or a secret love letter haphazardly thrown away in a trash bin. Which then later they may discover that the hand writing was faked through either finding another note written by the principal in which the writing doesn’t match or discovering the paper from the note matches that of the lunch lady’s scratch pad!