Hello all, been playing MotW for a while as the GM and ran into a weird question. I was directed here from someone on Reddit, and was hoping you all could possibly fill me in.
I got into a deep conversation the other day with someone over how much extra work I put into my mysteries, and we then discussed ‘if it was true to the spirit of MotW/PbtA Games”.
For a quick example, let’s say I decide to have your standard ‘serial killing monster’
At the very least, I will have a small ‘info dump’ on the monster, including what I call a ‘hard clue’ and a ‘soft clue’.
The hard clue will be an incontrovertible bit of evidence about the monster that I ‘pre plan’
The soft clue will be a short ambiguous description that I will directly pull from the players, or their interactions, or their playbooks.
So, let’s say I make a monster, and say it’s killing people to feed off them, and the gimmick of this monster is that it eats people that are drunk.
So one of my info lines will say something like:
* monster kills victims to FEED OFF THEIR LIVERS
* monster ‘hunts’ for victims at
And so on. The all-caps is a ‘hard clue’, and the bit in angle brackets is a ‘blank’ for a soft clue. So, maybe when they investigate they say “hey, this dude seems to be drunk, is there a bar nearby?” And then I can say something like “maybe, what kind of bar?” And then whatever they respond with, I can then put in the blank of the soft clue like a ‘mad lib’.
This also allows for different players and settings to kind of flesh things out. Like, if they said “dive bar” instead of “posh club” or “dance club”.
My friend feels like I’m kinda breaking the rules as the Keeper, as I shouldn’t be planning out anything past what shows up on the mystery sheet. I’m arguing that if I’m actually letting them /investigate mysteries/, I’m going to need some sort of cheat sheet to refer to, in order to keep all the various clues/‘rules of the monster’ in mind.
This also makes everything flow a lot better narratively as my cheat sheet has just enough specifics to cover any sort of weird CSI type idea the table comes up with investigating (like searching for droppings in a ‘nest’). Seriously, they really enjoy investigating.
Now, I rarely have much actual planning past that. Just a general idea on some of the areas I might need to have on hand, maybe a half-scribbled map or information on the area, and then one or two half-filled pages of NPCs I can crab from when they need one. The rest of it is standard mystery worksheet stuff.
My friend assured me I’m doing it mostly wrong, even if I’m not planning out the entire plot, as I’m already railroading the table by having specific clues/data decided upon before the game even starts.
I say that it’s pretty much impossible to have a lot of decent ‘investigation’ or ‘puzzles’ or ‘cases to solve’ unless you can honestly answer most questions the players might send my way.
So, my question to you guys is: “do you prepare ahead of time for any investigation heavy mysteries, and if so, how deep do you go?”
If you have time, my follow up questions would be “Why do you do it this way” And “Do you think your way is abiding behind the spirit of MotW/PbtA Rules/gameplay?”
Thanks in advance
Yep, you’re good as far as I’m concerned. Text says you’re free to speculate about what they might encounter. Even says you can come up with set-piece battle locations, which seems more rail-roady to me than thinking about clues to the mystery. Exploiting your prep is totally PbtA agenda, and you can prep a good deal, just situational stuff though, no pre-planned story.
Yeah, this sounds great to me.
Yep, there’s nothing wrong with leaving some things to be filled in as you go. The thing to avoid is planning exactly such-and-such a scene in which this-and-that will happen, regardless of what the hunters do.
Michael has already spoken but yeah it’s a Mystery and by default you have to have some sort of idea of what needs to happen.
I think that MotW by its design requires some structure.
It’s definitely a different beast than say apocalypse world or X other pbta game although they all use the same resolution mechanic and the moves system.
From what you describe, you’re doing well. A good judge would be to see whether there are moments where your group is banging their head against the wall; stalled for lack of direction, or trying to guess a prepared “right” answer that you’re expecting before they can unlock the next part of game play.
Any time game play stalls like that, there is something fundamentally wrong.
As you have described it, you simply have some ideas about the game that might come into play if the PCs’ decisions/actions bring the focus to the hard/soft clue you have prepared. That is perfectly fine; you’ve prepared a few responses that may help you improvise in response to the PCs’ actions, without forcing them to take specific action.
Zack Wolf Thanks. For the most part, it’s merely setting up a sort of ‘skeleton’ as to what the monster would likely do if not stopped/disturbed by the PCs. Sort of a ‘who what where why’ kinda thing, but with a few other extra questions, depending on the type of mystery. Nothing is set specifically in stone except for relatively set-in-stone hard facts which are usually pretty opaque or at least interpretable by other ideas or moves.
Like, I doubt I’d create a monster where the victim in this case is “anybody with red hair, green eyes, and named Bob”, but I might put down “red hair”, which could include anything from people to mannequins to costumes to… I don’t know, types of cows. If they pick up on ‘red hair’, that’s cool. If they don’t, I have a handful of other ‘hard clues’ they can generally suss out with a roll or just general questions.
For instance, I usually put stuff that describe the monster generally, like ‘what it is like’. Maybe nobody picks up on the victim having red hair, but maybe the wounds have a ‘thick ectoplasm-like gel’ around them. Or they take note that the victims have a ‘musky, funky, bear-like odor’ about them.
I find if I have 5 or so hard clues, and then an equal amount or better of soft clues, my tables get really interested and ‘into’ the whole investigation aspect. Hell, half the time my monster names are something really ambiguous like ‘the sideways chomper’ because half the time using a known monster name gives people impressions as to what exactly is going on.
Thanks tons for your reply.
Steve Hickey Thanks much!
Michael Sands Thanks much! According to your name, im just gonna assume that you’re “that Michael Sands” And thank you profusely for the fun game.
Lil Johnny Halfbreed yep, that’s the straight word from the author 🙂
Marty B. Thanks for the info. I technically was introduced to PbtA via AW, but wasn’t a real fan due to some of the moves/setting/etc.
The friend I was having the conversation is definitely a ‘only AW or DW’ player, so this was a bit outside of their domain, so to speak, so I wasn’t quite sure if this was a ‘your game is crappy’ kind of comment or ‘youre Not gming correctly’ kind of comment.
I basically have this cheat sheet that’s about 2 minutes away from being nicely formatted into a copy able sheet or two, which means that I can eventually start taking this to cons and running public pickup games or similar.
Just didn’t want to go through this ‘effort’ only to find out it is pretty antithetical to what MotW was expected to be, you know?
Andrew Fish nah, I’m a gamer that has been playing for a long while, and I always hated those ‘investigations’ that require all kinds of specific questions or silly rolls or outside-knowledge. They rarely come off as interesting, and usually end up frustrating for the players, while the GM goes ‘haha I am so clever’
When it comes to clues, I usually come up with 3+ that fit the location/senses/moves/etc, and provide relatively simple directions or nudges toward pretty much any angle that makes sense.
It comes down to around 10-12 actual clues, which sounds like tons, but really just reign in the ‘wild mass guessing’ and gives the players something to focus on or work toward.
So like, I have a short list of ‘mysteries’ that then let me know exactly what kind of hard/soft clues I should have available for the team.
So, if I’m doing a ‘serial killer’ type monster, then that means I need specific victims, clues about the crime scenes, the killing method/reasons/etc
If I’m doing a ‘investigate the haunting’, I need to answer an almost entirely different set of questions, like ‘what can put this soul to rest’ or what have you.
Either way, by having the questions filled out with hard and soft clues, I find the players naturally figuring their way into and out of solutions/traps/etc, or all kinds of weirdly fun things I didn’t think of.
Like… canvassing. You know, where the cops go door to door and ask folks if they saw anything. If I have clues about the victims, I now have all kinds of ways to convey that to the players, and in different ways, depending on how they ask. They don’t immediately search the body of the victim? I can still pass that along as an NPC (eg: “Sally was such a nice person, that great big smile under that frizzy mop of red hair…” when ‘red hair’ is a hard clue)
The only time I see my table stuttering is if a) they’re scared/worried or b) they’re trying to figure out who has the best idea on what to do next.
After years of CoC, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, and god knows what else, MotW gives me a lot of freedom to run some really fun games full of ‘oh, this would be cool’ instead of ‘stay on script please’.
“…railroading the table by having specific clues/data decided upon before the game even starts.”
For what it’s worth, your friend doesn’t seem to be aware of what railroading actually means. Railroading is when the GM is planning ahead of time what is going to happen during gameplay, that is, the “story” (e.g. in Act 1 the players go here and do this, then in Act 2 the players meet that guy etc and this happens, and then in Act 3 etc). Basically, railroading is what you see in published scenarios for most trad games.
What you are doing, and correctly so, is to setup the background information and conditions prior to play. That is, the background NPCs, their motivations, locations, and what happened before play starts. In other words, the starting situation. When play actually starts, the interactions between the PCs and NPCs will take the game somewhere in an unscripted, unplanned way. Therefore, no railroading.
As for how much prep you need to do, that’s up to you. Some people prep more, some less. Prep =/= railroading. And this applies equally well to AW too, although the more prep you do, the less relevant is the “first session” and the creative input in AW at the beginning. Still, it works just fine.
You’re doing good.
Pedro Pereira Thanks! This isn’t my first game, nor my first GM experience, but it is my first foray into PbtA games.
It just seemed pretty confusing to me because I didn’t see how I could be expected to come up with ‘thrilling’ or ‘deep’ investigations if I limited myself to only the single Mystery page ‘as written’. I looked at it more like a suggestion/reminder to make sure all the basics are covered, rather than a static, set-in-stone approach.
Lil Johnny Halfbreed that’s exactly right – the mystery sheet is designed to hold your notes as you prepare, not to restrict you from making up any other details.