I’m running a haunted escape room mystery today and I want to make investigating the room interesting in itself.

I’m running a haunted escape room mystery today and I want to make investigating the room interesting in itself.

I’m running a haunted escape room mystery today and I want to make investigating the room interesting in itself. I created this move to simulate it – what do you think about it? Will it work?

When you’re solving the room each person inside rolls +Sharp. On 10+, hold 2. On 7-9, hold 1. Then each player takes into their left hand the holds they want to spend to investigate what’s wrong about the room and in the right hand what they want to spend to actually solve the room. Everybody reveals their hands simultaneously. For each hold in left hands, ask one question from investigate the mystery or read a bad situation list. If there is at least one right hand hold per hunter, you solve the room on time, if no, you don’t and [something bad happens, spoilers deleted 😉 ]

5 thoughts on “I’m running a haunted escape room mystery today and I want to make investigating the room interesting in itself.”

  1. Personally, I am not a fan of the move. I don’t like the “extra layer” of the players manipulating physical objects.

    Something to consider is that rolls will not be secret. Everyone at the table will see how much hold every player gets. You also have not stated that players should hide the amount of hold the take into each hand.

    Lastly, for me at least, choosing to solve the room seems much more important than finding out what’s wrong with it. This does not feel like a hard choice for me.

  2. Thanks for your feedback!

    First – to be honest, I’m a great fan of “extra layers” and physical manipulation during sessions… but I don’t know if my players will be, too 🙂 So I’ll probably stick with this idea to check it out and abandon it if they don’t like it. I also believe it’s a bit more justified when such rules are used to represent solving an escape room: something that in real life takes some manual manipulation.

    Second – I probably should state that the amounts should be hidden, otherwise there’ll be no surprise indeed. Maybe in this one case the rolls should be hidden as well… or maybe it’s more fair to keep them open so that the players at least know how many holds are in play? It might be a good compromise to decide that players see the die results but once they roll, they can’t communicate. I could justify it by the players starting in separate sub-rooms and meeting to compare their findings later.

    Third – I forgot to explain that solving the room isn’t the teaser of the mystery, hunters are free to enter it anytime they please and they will probably already have a clue that the room hurt somebody before. So checking what’s wrong with it might be much more important to them…

    Generally speaking – thanks again for feedback! The matter of “extra layer” is where our tastes differ and I want to see how it works for my players but you gave me many ideas to improve how the idea can be executed.

  3. I think it’s a cool idea. Something like this might work for a maze in my mystery. I’m going to have a huge group next week (I think too many, but I’m new at this so I’m worried) and this added layering stuff might be a good way to keep the whole big group engaged. I’m not sure how to implement it, but will give it some thought. I’ll be watching here to see how your group likes it!

  4. How my group likes it will turn out in a few weeks as I had to cancel the session because I got ill and now I’m going on holiday 🙁 But I’ll let you know as soon as it’s tested. And yes, I believe such things might work well for big groups – it’s a good way to keep everybody engaged at the same time.

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