Gumshoe seems like it blows

[Blade]

I remember reading about a game where players accumulated "evidence points" as they investigated and then could spend them to turn an hypothesis into a fact, as long as it didn't contradict any other fact or anything that happened.

That's a strange way to go about it, but at least it avoids the "guess what the GM was thinking" pitfall and allows the players to summon everyone into the parlor to walk them through what happened without miserably failing.

[fbmf]

The thing about these mysteries is that their protagonists are, from an objective standpoint, terrible investigators who get along on plot fiat.

I've never heard Sherlock Holmes described that way. There are some stories where Holmes is factualy incorrect because the science is outdated (i.e.-Conan Doyle didn't/couldn't know what we know now), but I wouldn't call that "plot fiat". If you mean "the crime was committed in such a way that only someone with Holmes' (admittedly highly improbable) skillset could solve it...well...yes. That's why Lestrade called him in. This is sometimes framed as "Holmes will only take the case if it requires his skillset" but whatever. This is different than "Holmes dumbasses his way into every solution".

Anyhow, can you expound upon what you mean by "Poirot, Marple, and Holmes suck as investigators and require 'plot fiat' to solve a case." (DISCLAIMER: I've never read a Christie novel, so Marple and Poirot may well work like that.)

[Whatever]

I don't think that's fair. I would say that if you don't have empty leads to pursue it doesn't feel like a mystery is being solved at all.

Let's say you had a simple "match the symbols" mystery minigame. Each suspect has an open symbol and like two hidden symbols, and you start with a free symbol and the rest you have to find by researching. In this mystery minigame, you'll end up prioritizing the investigation of suspects that have a symbol matching one of the ones you've found.

But of course most of the suspects are red herrings. That's fine. Red Herrings are only a problem if there isn't a firm way to rule them out and get back on track.

-Username17

Fair point.

If "red herrings" includes your list of suspects then yes, obviously that's a thing you want in your mystery adventure. But when a DM sees that they're supposed to include red herrings in their mystery, a non-zero number of them will include deliberately deceptive clues to trick the players. And that's a failure state for your mystery.

In your example, having a clue that implicates multiple people is great, because that group necessarily includes the actual villain. But if you somehow got a clue that pointed *only* to innocent people, and had to figure out that the clue itself was no good, that would be awful. And in many people's minds, that's what a red herring is and should be.

There should always be innocent suspects. But there should never be bad clues.

Consider a simple mystery. The duke is dead, players must figure out whodunit. There are three major clues:

1) powerful magic was used. This puts a few people on your suspect list, including the Gnome Illusionist who works for the Duke

2) the killer had a key to the Duke's conservatory. Again, several suspects, including Mr. Gnome. But most of them won't fit clue #1, and vice-versa.

3) the killer stole the Duke's entire treasury. Several people have recently come into money, including the gnome, who just paid back some substantial gambling debts.

Whatever order players get those clues in, they will have a suspect list that includes some innocent people, who they can eliminate by finding more clues. But imagine you had this clue also:

4) a mysterious elf with a bloody dagger was seen running out of the Duke's residence the night of the crime.

If players are supposed to figure out that there is no such elf and that they should therefore investigate the illusionist, your story is going to fail. Especially if you present this in the deliberately deceptive manner associated with red herrings in mysteries. It just doesn't work for the DM to take an adversarial role in a cooperative storytelling game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Aren't red herrings likely to develop organically, as players miss the important clues and focus on some worldbuilding or padding?

Not all red herrings are equal. Some red herrings are in fact clever foreshadowing.

[*] Just because a lead is a bust doesn't mean that it can't advance the plot. A bad lead could introduce you to contacts who could help. Or give more information about the backstory of the investigation. It also could just be a dead end, rather than a suboptimal use of time. Batman should be able to get his investigation back on track easier if he pursues The Penguin as a lead than the Mad Hatter as a lead.
[*] The consequences of pursuing red herrings shouldn't be equal. Batman falsely suspecting Superman of killing Commissioner Gordon with a laser should have gravely different consequences from suspecting that Lex Luthor killing Gordon with a laser. Even if both of them are innocent of the crime, the penalty of accusing Lex of murder should hurt Batman's investigation more than accusing Superman of murder.
[*] Sometimes, especially in action-adventure fiction, the red herring is more important than the investigation. Batman may just want to find out who killed Commissioner Gordon, but if he finds out while interrogating the Scarecrow that he's teaming up with R'as Al Ghul to poison the city, that should take priority. Or at least create a situation where Batman is forced to make a choice whether he should put his investigation on hold to stop The Scarecrow.

If the players can only pursue an unintentional red herring because those are the only red herrings that exist in your game, it removes the possibility of having a prepared response. Which is not a good thing. A red herring isn't a failure in storytelling just because it doesn't advance the investigation.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But if you somehow got a clue that pointed *only* to innocent people, and had to figure out that the clue itself was no good, that would be awful. And in many people's minds, that's what a red herring is and should be.

1) Excluding bad clues is just as important to the feel of a mystery as pursuing good clues. If every clue advances the plot, it becomes boring and anticlimatic. The question becomes 'how much faster does this lead help us solve the mystery', which is pretty railroady.

2) If in a TTRPG you can only advance your investigation by pursuing leads, witnesses, and clues your GM gives you then either you have a shitty mystery or you're a shitty investigator. This isn't a fucking Batman-themed Visual Novel where if Lois Lane is a red herring suspect and the game designers didn't plan for her to be any further relevant in the investigation, that's that. Batman could convince Lois to help him find new clues. Batman could have Lois help him out in some other capacity like having her get the press on his side. Batman could even accidentally piss Lois Lane off and now she's another obstacle he has to deal with.

[Username17]

In your example, having a clue that implicates multiple people is great, because that group necessarily includes the actual villain. But if you somehow got a clue that pointed *only* to innocent people, and had to figure out that the clue itself was no good, that would be awful. And in many people's minds, that's what a red herring is and should be.

I don't agree with you. Every suspect is a suspect for a reason, but only one actually killed the duke and thus all of the other potential motivations are red herrings by definition. If the duke was killed for the inheritance, then the affair and the political slight and the territorial dispute are all red herrings. The same is true for questions of opportunity. Every suspect will have their own schedule and every hole in their schedule except the one the murderer actually used is a red herring as well.

There should be, and must be clues that point only to innocents because every fact about every suspect is a clue and if none of them pointed to that person they wouldn't be a suspect in the first place.

The goal then is to establish rules for your red herring clues. That is, make it actually clear both that some clues are irrelevant and also clear how many clues are irrelevant. So in the symbol matching exercise example: you might have five symbols and the killer is one that has at least three hits. In that circumstance, you will have symbols that don't correspond to the killer and you have suspects with matched symbols that aren't the killer, and there can be overlap! Green Square could be a positive predictor and all the suspects with Green Square could be innocent because there are other suspects with more other positive clue matches.

The point is that 'The killer has at least 4 out of 6 matches from the major clues' is not unfair, while 'The killer has a number of matches from the major clues but I'm not saying how many' is totally unfair. The players need to investigate suspects, but they also need to know when and how they can cross suspects off the list or the game never moves forward.

-Username17

[brized]

The Call of Cthulhu campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep includes deliberate red herring locations. These often led to encounters with 1-2 PC fatalities. My players hated those.

They also red herring'd themselves in paranoia over whether NPCs were actual cultists, people knowingly hired by cultists, or people unknowingly working with cultists. This too led to PC fatalities, but the players liked those.

[deaddmwalking]

The thing about these mysteries is that their protagonists are, from an objective standpoint, terrible investigators who get along on plot fiat.

I've never heard Sherlock Holmes described that way. T

I love Sherlock Holmes mysteries but unlike traditional mysteries (which I don't care for at all), you, as the reader, are not privy to all of the information that Holmes has. I recall one story where there was a significant bloody finger print (thumb print) on the wall. When Holmes is explaining his reasoning he says something like, 'And what you DID NOT SEE' and he goes on to deduce the answer. I think in the same story he notices some signs created by the local homeless. While Watson might have remarked on the presence of something; he certainly didn't include any significance.

Sherlock Holmes effectively has access to information that the reader does not because Watson does not communicate to it. Since the stories are intended to be stories as told by an eyewitness rather than an omniscient narrator, I think it works for the stories, but a lot of mystery readers don't think it is fair.

[Grek]

The point is that 'The killer has at least 4 out of 6 matches from the major clues' is not unfair, while 'The killer has a number of matches from the major clues but I'm not saying how many' is totally unfair. The players need to investigate suspects, but they also need to know when and how they can cross suspects off the list or the game never moves forward.

Whatever the requirements to identify the killer, they have to be enough to uniquely identify the killer. If the players ever end up in a situation where there are two equally guilty looking suspects, but the mechanics say that they can't narrow it down further, your mystery system sucks and I don't want to play it. Similarly, if the players draw the final available clue and there aren't enough matches to convict any of the suspects, your mystery system sucks and I don't want to play it.

Unfortunately, this puts some serious constraints on the system if you want to include fake clues, as you are insisting on doing. Suppose that the players draw five clues*; the killer will always match three* or more of them, and that the killer will always have more matching clues than any other suspect. This implies that.

1. No character can share more than two colours with any other character. (If we allow 123AB and 123XY, then a draw of 123AX sees both tied at four matches; 12ABC vs 12XYZ avoids this by forcing one to have more matches than the other.) This means that the number of colours required goes up with the inverse of the triangular number of suspects. That is, having one suspect requires five colours; having three suspects requires seven colours; having six requires nine colours; and having twenty (or twenty-one) requires seventeen colours. Actually, considering the question further, you can't have any number of shared colours between any number of characters. If you have ABCD1 and WXYZ1, a draw of ABXY1 is still a draw. So actually, you need 5 colours per suspect, and no colour is allowed to implicate more than one suspect. This is true for any case where the number of clues drawn is not greater than the number of clues per suspect.

2. A suspect for every combination of colours must be present. (Otherwise, you can draw a hand that doesn't count to three matches on any existing suspect.) This means that having five colours requires one suspect; having seven colours requires 21 suspects; having nine requires 126 suspects and having seventeen colours means 12376 suspects.

3. Because of #1 and #2, you can have at most one suspect and between five and seven '''clues''' in your clue deck, five of which must match the suspect's colours. Needless to say, if this is your mystery system, it sucks and I don't want to play it.

Getting rid of the fake clues gets rid of the combinatorials and gets rid of this problem entirely. You can still have red herrings, if you insist that they're necessary, but they mathematically can't work like you're suggesting they do if you want to have a good game. One possibly possible answer (which I haven't confirmed would work, but which I haven't confirmed won't work) is to have each suspect have 3 colours and to draw five - the suspect who has all three of their colours drawn is the culprit.

*If you have an even number of clues, you can always draw a tie. So I'm changing four out of six to three out of five. And yes, I checked, going with five out of seven makes things worse instead of better.

[fbmf]

The thing about these mysteries is that their protagonists are, from an objective standpoint, terrible investigators who get along on plot fiat.

I've never heard Sherlock Holmes described that way. T

I love Sherlock Holmes mysteries but unlike traditional mysteries (which I don't care for at all), you, as the reader, are not privy to all of the information that Holmes has. I recall one story where there was a significant bloody finger print (thumb print) on the wall. When Holmes is explaining his reasoning he says something like, 'And what you DID NOT SEE' and he goes on to deduce the answer. I think in the same story he notices some signs created by the local homeless. While Watson might have remarked on the presence of something; he certainly didn't include any significance.

Sherlock Holmes effectively has access to information that the reader does not because Watson does not communicate to it. Since the stories are intended to be stories as told by an eyewitness rather than an omniscient narrator, I think it works for the stories, but a lot of mystery readers don't think it is fair.

Agreed, but your point "Watson (the POV character for most of the stories) isn't as good a detective as Holmes" =/= Hyzmarca's assertion that "Holmes sucks as a detective but always seems to dumbass his way into a solution".

Game On,
fbmf

[Kaelik]

I think his point is that Holmes books don't count because they violate some of the essential elements of the genre, even though they also kind of invented the genre.

I don't know the answer, because I don't read mystery books.

[shinimasu]

I think there are two distinct types of clues and I think that distinction is important for the purposes of a collaborative game.

Information: Gossip, hearsay, history. The things you find written down or bribe a maid for. This is where you find things like 'Motive' or who's feuding with who, who might be unreliable etc.

Evidence: Tangible objects that implicate one or more people. A dropped handkerchief, a bottle of poison, a bloody knife, suspicious scuff marks on a windowsill.

Evidence is the thing that's most likely to be misinterpreted by the players since no NPC is there to helpfully explain the context of what's been found.

A good mystery minigame should be about matching evidence to information. The problems start when the information is false, and the players have no means IC of discerning the truth outside of dice.

I can see in that respect why Gumshoe tried to go a more resource management route with this. Spending Clue Points chasing a false lead feels like a more fair failure state than "you didn't roll high enough to tell someone gave you a bogus tip"

I think a better version might be "press points"

"Lady Beatrice says that handkerchief belongs to Lady Magnolia, and points out the monogrammed initials on the corner."

"Lady Magnolia tells you her handkerchief was stolen yesterday afternoon and she has not seen it since 1pm on the day of the murder."

"Lord Barathorn says he saw a woman coming out of the duke's study the evening before the murder"

So now the player spends a point from a pool on which NPC to Press for more details, ideally making this decision based on the Evidence they've been able to accumulate. Maybe there's a system for replenishing press points by getting a good guess or rolling well on the bits of the game that involve dice, but once you're out the mystery moves forward whether you've made progress or not.

[souran]

I've never heard Sherlock Holmes described that way. There are some stories where Holmes is factualy incorrect because the science is outdated (i.e.-Conan Doyle didn't/couldn't know what we know now), but I wouldn't call that "plot fiat". If you mean "the crime was committed in such a way that only someone with Holmes' (admittedly highly improbable) skillset could solve it...well...yes. That's why Lestrade called him in. This is sometimes framed as "Holmes will only take the case if it requires his skillset" but whatever. This is different than "Holmes dumbasses his way into every solution".

Anyhow, can you expound upon what you mean by "Poirot, Marple, and Holmes suck as investigators and require 'plot fiat' to solve a case." (DISCLAIMER: I've never read a Christie novel, so Marple and Poirot may well work like that.)

Fbmf sounds like he has read a bit of Holmes. The OP is generalizing in a way that is unfair the the authors.

The vast majority of Sherlock Holmes stories are not ones where the reader could solve the mystery from the clues that are discussed in the text. Holmes has to explain the mystery and how he came the conclusion in the denouement. For instance, the first Holmes story "A study in Scarlet" would require that you know about fictional events related to the mormon settlement of Utah (the scribbling on the wall seems like it was a coded reference to jack the ripper but it appears that study was published the year before the first murder). Basically Doyle's stuff often had a "ripped from the headlines" feel to contemporary readers.

Agatha Christie has indicated that she wrote a lot of things in almost a direct response/challenge to the way Doyle structured mystery novels. All Agatha Christie novels can (according to the author) be solved by the reader from the clues that are presented in the text. Her detectives are, in many ways, a lens through which the reader is delivered the clues. Certainly, her detectives lay everything out in the final part of the book but instead of it being the detective telling you new information about those involved he tells you how to interpret the information you have previously been told about.

The Hardboiled/Gumshoe type mysteries are often even less about being "whodunits" and more about figuring out what everyones true motives are. Often in this kind of mystery is also run along side a con like "the sting". Instead of "solving" the mystery typical the protagonist confronts the perpetrator and they confess the details. How the detective made their conclusions is sometimes left completely absent or is built into a
single giveway.

The police procedural is like a hybrid of the hardboiled and Holmes type mysteries. Generally, because they are typically TV shows or movies, they need to be formulaic, but the audience is not really supposed to guess who the killer is based on the evidence the characters collect but instead based on what would be most shocking/unexpected. Obviously there is a lot of variance here but the core is that typically the TV show either explicitly tells the audience who did it and then they follow the principals as they track them down, or they set up up such that the viewer cannot easily guess the narrative so that they have incentive to keep watching.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Agreed, but your point "Watson (the POV character for most of the stories) isn't as good a detective as Holmes" =/= Hyzmarca's assertion that "Holmes sucks as a detective but always seems to dumbass his way into a solution".

The explicit fiction of Holmes stories is that there's a great man who can solve crimes with observation and deductive reasoning, but the implicit fiction is that crimes exist which even can be solved in that way. The great cheat of Holmes stories is that there are always enough physical clues which can be interpreted in unambiguous ways to reach the correct conclusion. I guess you could consider it a kind of fiat, I think of it more as a convention.

It's also a lot better than the kinds of fiat in the stories that Holmes was created as a response to, where the detective stumbled over the solution by sheerest coincidence and/or trailed off mumbling at significant points in their explanations, hoping you wouldn't notice.

[hyzmarca]

Agreed, but your point "Watson (the POV character for most of the stories) isn't as good a detective as Holmes" =/= Hyzmarca's assertion that "Holmes sucks as a detective but always seems to dumbass his way into a solution".

The explicit fiction of Holmes stories is that there's a great man who can solve crimes with observation and deductive reasoning, but the implicit fiction is that crimes exist which even can be solved in that way. The great cheat of Holmes stories is that there are always enough physical clues which can be interpreted in unambiguous ways to reach the correct conclusion. I guess you could consider it a kind of fiat, I think of it more as a convention.

This is, indeed, what I mean. If someone in real life with Sherlock's skillset attempted to solve crimes using his methods, they would naturally have a much lower success rate.

[Iduno]

I love Sherlock Holmes mysteries but unlike traditional mysteries (which I don't care for at all), you, as the reader, are not privy to all of the information that Holmes has. I recall one story where there was a significant bloody finger print (thumb print) on the wall. When Holmes is explaining his reasoning he says something like, 'And what you DID NOT SEE' and he goes on to deduce the answer. I think in the same story he notices some signs created by the local homeless. While Watson might have remarked on the presence of something; he certainly didn't include any significance.

Sherlock Holmes effectively has access to information that the reader does not because Watson does not communicate to it. Since the stories are intended to be stories as told by an eyewitness rather than an omniscient narrator, I think it works for the stories, but a lot of mystery readers don't think it is fair.

For a game you'd want more Encyclopedia Brown, where the clue is there, and you, the player could figure it out if you pay attention/keep track of things. Probably call for several memory rolls, or allow each player so many chances to remember a scene so they can "re-read" that part so they put things together correctly.


For red herrings, something like a list of 3-4 potential motives that need to be dug through would help. Then the players know only one was the reason the person was killed, so they have to eliminate the rest. Knowing you have to eliminate clues helps the players, knowing which set of clues and how many to eliminate makes it reasonable to finish the mystery in an afternoon.


And I wouldn't say Holmes sucks as a detective, he's just very specialized in his knowledge.

“Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:

"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.”

[Dean]

Ok here’s take 1 at the layout of a mystery manual entry. The assumption of the “rules” of the mystery is that if you talk to a person who has a clue your DM should say the clues they have in natural conversation or if it’s a physical clue you find it, Gumshoe style. What I’m trying to build is a format of mystery entry that would allow a person to run a mystery with 15 minutes of preparation rather than several hours to write a complete mystery. I ran this and it worked well but what I really want to know is if the presentation seems like it would work as a way to put 200 of these in a book to let people run mysteries with as little trouble as possible. Each mystery contains a bit at the end for how to modify it so that you could even run the same mystery multiple times and have them go differently. With enough mysteries and the ability to change names and specifics as well as some larger alterations included in each mystery you'd make it so that even Veteran players wouldn't know exactly which one was being used

This mystery is themed for an Ancient Greek setting so all the names are greek. But even a version that wanted to be setting nuetral would still use proper names for everything, as I wrote it both ways and it’s definitely easier to remember that “John the Shopkeep” becomes “Thranduil the Barkeep” in my game instead of “Store Owning Witness” becoming “Thranduil the Barkeep”.

Alright here’s Mystery Manual entry #1:

Trying Times

Niko owns and operates a port in the city of Mikonos and lives in a home near his docks. One night he is awoken by the sounds of splintering timber coming from his docks and rushes over to find out what is happening. Upon arrival he finds a man smashing and overturning things and is ambushed by a second man. The attempt on Niko’s life is only stopped by the timely arrival of the PC’s who either kill, chase off, or capture the thugs. If the PC’s are not self motivated to investigate on their own the King of Mikonos summons them and requests their help in determining why someone would attempt to murder one of his citizens. The investigation is assumed to begin with an interview with Niko

What’s Going On: Niko has a beautiful wife named Kiera. Kiera was born into a noble family but married someone far below her station for love. Her family rules the small town of Hicea but they have come upon tough economic times now that piracy has become rampant in the region. The King and Queen of Hicea have made an arrangement with the King of Damos, who greatly desired Kiera growing up, to arrange that Kiera’s husband would be killed and she would be married to him in exchange for the protections of his navy so that Hicea’s ships may once again conduct trade. Lyrus, the Prince of Hicea and Kiera’s brother, has been sent to Mikonos on business to arrange for Niko’s death while he is there. Lyrus went to the Hog’s Head and inquired about the criminal underbelly of the Mikonos and learned there was a duo of criminals considered highly capable in town who go by the names “One-Eye” and Ginty. Lyrus had one of his soldiers meet with them and pay them to kill Niko, Lyrus then sent that soldier (and one more to accompany him) back home to Hicea to distance himself from any ties to the murder attempt.

Progression: There are three main suspects in this case the PC's will be pointed to. The Merchant Guild in town who want Niko's port, a man named Perion who is a former lover of Kiera, and Lyrus (who is guilty). The party will likely begin suspecting the Merchant Guild or Perion. Perion has strong alibi’s and the Merchant Guild is candid enough about the misdeeds they have committed to somewhat diffuse suspicion. Talking to Lyrus or the Merchant Guild should give an indication of some larger scale troubles in the region and discovering the connections to the King of Damos from many involved should direct players to suspect him working through some intermediary. Investigations at the Hog’s Head or the thugs hideout should direct the PC’s to understanding Lyrus was involved and finally going to the King of either Damos or Hicea to gain proof of their misdeeds. In the end the King of Mikonos, if shown proof, will likely demand reparations from the Kings of Damos and Hicea for attempting to kill a citizen of his land and give most of those reparations to Niko and Kiera.

Reference of People and Places

Niko: Husband, owner of a port, and man the thugs attempted to murder
Kiera: Beautiful wife of Niko, daughter of the rulers of Hicea
(Suspect)Perion: An old suitor of Kiera’s, wealthy and a friend of the King of Mikonos
(Suspect)Head of the Laketown Merchant’s Guild: Wants control over Niko’s port, has paid thugs to make trouble for him before
(Suspect)Lyrus: Brother of Kiera who disapproves of her marriage, Prince of Hicea, paid thugs to kill Niko
Ginty and One-Eye: The two thugs who tried to murder Niko, commonly seen in the Hogs Head Taverna
Bartender of the Hogs Head: Knew the thugs, saw Lyrus in his bar asking about the towns criminal element
King of Miconos: Person who sets the PC’s to investigate and who they should report to
King of Damos: has a powerful navy, has long desired Kiera, has made a deal with Kiera’s family for her hand in marriage
King and Queen of Hicea: Kiera’s family, made a deal with the King of Damos to arrange Kiera’s marriage to him

Niko and Kiera’s home: A home just off the docks that Niko owns and operates
The Palace of Mikonos: Where you can interview Lyrus and the King of Mikonos
The Hog’s Head: A Taverna in the seedy parts of Mikonos
Mikonos: City where the mystery begins
Damos: Town with a powerful navy nearby
Hicea: Small town ruled by Kiera’s family

Investigations
NOTE: Any clue or red herring listed under a person should be information they gain after interacting with them. Extra Clues are not required

Niko: Niko knows it’s the Merchant Guild who tried to have him killed, he runs the port in town and they’ve wanted control over it for years. He mentions that they’ve even sent the same men to push him around before, intimidating people and shops doing business on his waterfront
Red Herring: The Merchant Guild wants my port and those men have worked for the merchants guild before

Kiera: Kiera asks to speak to the PC’s when they have a chance and tells them she thinks that an old flame of hers, Perion, may in fact be behind it. She also tells the PC’s about her past to give context...
“I was born a princess, I had many offers of marriage from Kings and nobles. My family was very disappointed in me for marrying Niko. My brother is actually in town this week and I’ve heard little else. When I turned down the King of Damos, Perion thought it meant I must mean to marry him as we’d been seeing each other but then I met Niko and knew he was the one for me. Perion is something of a friend still, but he’s always been vocal about still wanting me. He’s said before that if the guild got rid of my husband he would still marry me, while drunks he’s even wished for things to happen to Niko so that we could be together”
Red Herring: Perion has told her many times he would still marry her if something happened to her husband and, while drunk, said he wished something would happen.
Clues:Her brother is in town, her family disapproved of her marriage, she turned down an offer of marriage from the King of Damos

Lyrus: Lyrus is Kiera’s brother. He is a guest in the Palace of Mikonos while in the city. He is officious and has his soldiers around while talking to the PC’s. He offers only the mildest sympathies to the attempt on Niko’s life, mostly centered around not wanting his sister to be very unhappy. He is in Mikonos to buy bronze tools and riggings to repair ships damaged by pirates in his region, he is also ordering some trade goods (like salt) that their ships can no longer reliably bring in and complains harshly about the Guilds high prices, saying (hyperbolically) that before long his family will have to sell every precious thing they own if they want to have basic comforts.
Clues:Lyrus disapproves of Niko, Hicea is under tough economic pressure from pirates and is getting poorer because of it
Extra Clues: He has soldiers and hasn’t sent them to protect his sister, indicating he knows they aren’t in ongoing danger. If the players ask specifics from anyone who saw Lyrus come into town they will say he had a dozen soldiers with him and when speaking to the PC’s there are only 10

Head of the Merchant’s guild: Seems sly and calculating. May talk about how his business is doing very well as they have enough ships to move in convoys safe from the pirates in the region.
“I’ll freely admit we used those men before to intimidate Niko’s clientele but they never directly hurt anyone so it wasn’t strictly illegal. Word came down that the King wanted it to stop so we stopped. But lets be clear, we want that port and we’re going to have it. It’s a fine time to be doing business in the region, with the pirates picking off the ships in the area everyone is coming to us for what they end up missing. Well everyone but Damos that is.”
Clues: Damos has a uniquely strong navy and is near Hicea, this means Damos’s ships have not suffered from pirates like everyone else as they’ve effectively chased the pirates out of their waters.

King of Damos OR the King and Queen of Hicea: Seeing either of these people results in a similar encounter. Both will offer the PC’s to be their guests, doing their base duties as hosts. They will ask about Kiera and her husband if the topic comes up. They will acknowledge a cooling of relations between Hicea and Damos since Kiera rejected Damos’s offer. They will become quite cold and excuse themselves to take care of other affairs if the PC’s seem to even possibly be on their trail. That night, an unusually warm night, smoke will rise from the chimney of the royal bedchamber as they burn the letters sent to make the arrangement. The next morning they will send a messenger to the other with a letter that simply says “Burn all correspondence”
Clues: Smoke from his chimney on an unusally warm night indicating burning letters, acknowledgement of cooling relations between their families since the marriage proposal to Kiera

Bartender of the Hogs Head: Runs a seedy bar in a bad part of town, answers your questions honestly.
Red Herring: Has seen members of the Merchants Guild make deals with the thugs in his bar before.
Clue: Lyrus was in his bar 2 days before the attempted murder asking about how safe the town was out of concern for his sister, he asked if there was anyone that should be watched out for and was told about the thugs.
Extra Clue: The thugs didn’t work exclusively for the Merchants Guild, they just have a reputation for being the people to go to if you want something done. Has never seen Perion

Perion: Lives in a large villa with guards and servants though if you go there you will find he has left town yesterday, leaving his Head Servant in charge. Perion was asked by the King of Mikonos to travel to a nearby town that produces uniforms for the King’s staff. Perion is to offer amphorae of wine as a gift, inspect the products, make payment and return. Perion is mostly going for personal reasons however as he has been courting a noblewoman there and may even ask her to marry him. Perion’s guards and servants only know he will be gone, the Head Servant knows the details but the amount of detail he’ll give directly relates to how legitimate the PC’s present themselves as. If they seem to be working directly on the Kings orders he’ll tell everything, if not he might merely tell them that Perion is out on an assignment by the King. The party could also just catch up to Perion with a days travel and ask him the details himself.
Clues: Perion left before the attacks and had been planning the trip for a while, while it is correct that he desires Kiera he isn’t trying to arrange a marriage between them and is in fact actively courting another woman.

Ginty and “One-Eye”s: If either Ginty or One-Eye is captured they’ll be quite difficult to make talk. They’re hard men, former mercenaries, and they’re likely to face death for their crime so they have little reason to say anything. If the party can get a Magistrate (or the King) to lessen their penalty to banishment with what possessions they can carry they’ll tell the party everything they know. What they know is they were hired for a sizeable sum (currently hidden in their hideout) to kill Niko and not to endanger his wife. They’ve never seen the man who hired them before and they know a lot of people so it might be an outsider to the town, they don’t know the man’s name but could identify him if they saw him. If Ginty and One-Eye are both dead the most relevant information you can get from people about them is that they were known criminals who spent a lot of time at the Hogs Head Taverna.
Clues: They were paid a large amount to kill Niko, the man who hired them is likely an out of towner.

Modifying the Mystery
Alternate Themes: The easiest way to make this mystery feel different is to change the theme of the regional troubles. The building blocks are that the region has troubles, Damos has something that solves them, and Lyrus is buying supplies that the Merchant guild has made expensive because of them. If instead of pirates the troubles are failing crops then Damos has huge stores of grain and would feed Hicea’s people without payment. In this case Lyrus is buying a shipment of grain at inflated prices. If the troubles are invading forces then Damos can provide troops to Hicea and Lyrus is buying weapons and armor from the Merchants that are war profiteering. The troubles changing to monsters or foreign armies can greatly change the feel of the mission.
Bodyguard: In this version Lyrus is not the brother and prince of Hicea but rather the families handyman and bodyguard. If Kiera references him having been her bodyguard growing up it may reduce suspicion of him. You may choose whether he comes across as a hardened man doing what he's told or someone who has been genuinely convinced that this is the best thing for Kiera and Hicea. In this model he will not be staying in the palace.
New Servant: In this version the PC's don't save Niko, instead his life is saved by a new servant he recently purchased who turns out to have a lengthy military experience and who's ability to kill may cause the PC's to look into them.
Follow the Money: The money paid to Ginty and One Eye can be a clue on its own. Hidden in their hideout is a large purse of silver. Unusually it does not contain a single Hicean coin which, statistically in this region, is unlikely. You can also have a Temple of Hades or bank operate as a money lender in town and they can report, if shown a seal of the King or properly intimidated or convinced, that a large sum was changed out during the dates in question.
Ticking Clock: In this version it should be occasionally mentioned that there are bandits operating out of the forest nearby, possibly caused by the overall economic uncertainties in the area. With that being the case Lyrus, on learning the initial attempt on Niko’s life was a failure will pursue an alternate plan. After taking a day to plan he will ride out with his soldiers to find the bandits and make a deal with them. He will then demand that Niko and Kiera come with him back to Hicea for a time until it is known that the danger to them has passed, he is firm in his demand but will make every attempt to be gracious, make requests of the King of Mikonos to have their house and port under guard, and even offer to leave 2 of his own men behind if neccesary. Upon riding back with Niko and Kiera the bandits will set upon them in a staged attack and kill Niko before being driven off. In this model the players only have 3-4 days to solve the mystery before Niko is killed on the road back. It also creates a Bandit Leader character that can be interviewed though for most of the mystery he has no relevant information to give besides knowledge of the widespread piracy and perhaps the naval strength of Damos.
Trailed: In this model Lyrus, upon learning the PC’s are attempting to solve the case, can task his men to trail the players. In this version the soldiers should be elites to provide a reasonable threat. Lyrus should first offer them to the PC’s as protection and then, if refused, send them to trail them secretly. If the players detect their presence Lyrus can play that he merely wanted to send his help in discovering the threat to his sister. If the players seem like they have figured out that Lyrus or the families of Damos and Hicea are behind things the soldiers ambush the PC’s.

[Trill]

Reading the first two paragraphs I was confused who Perion and the Merchant Guild were and what their relations to the main actors were
maybe add some clarification in such cases, like
Perion (Former lover of Kiera)
Merchants Guild (rivals to Niko)

[Dean]

My question is, essentially, does this seem like a thing that would let people actually run mysteries. If I published a book of 100 of these do you think that would effective as a way for DM's to insert mysteries into their games with 15 minutes of prep rather than several hours, because if so I think that would make it worth writing. If there are any apparent problems with the presentation or concept, or if there's something I could add that would make it obviously better I'd love to know before I've written 99 more.

[Dogbert]

Personally I enjoy Gumshoe.

I enjoy it because having had on my table for over ten years a player hell-bent on always wanting to play Sherlock Holmes (regardless of game) without possessing one iota of deductive reasoning skills or inquisitive drive, I find blessing in a system that grants automatic success on detective legwork and then only requires the players to look at all the (ultimately free) clues and put 2 and 2 together (something lots easier than starting form the ground up).

The closest to "detective videogames" that I enjoy were the Baman Arkham videogames (sans the last one), and without Batman's cowl identifying iron oxyde dust on a roof ledge and then the game having Batman tell me "this is the most optimal place to mount the assassin's smoking gun and the only place that oxyde can come from is Sionis' steel works" I'd have had nfi on how to even make sense of that finding.

Gumshoe is to detective work what Guitar Hero is to actually playing guitar... it is not, but it lets you pretend you're doing it while actually just putting you in charge of more menial things you can actually do (like the combat minigame).

[amethal]

Gumshoe is to detective work what Guitar Hero is to actually playing guitar... it is not, but it lets you pretend you're doing it while actually just putting you in charge of more menial things you can actually do (like the combat minigame).

How do your players find the rest of the game?

Mine weren't bothered one way or the other by the investigation rules, but hated almost everything else. I started an adventure for Mutant City Blues and kept getting questions like "But what does Teleportation 7 actually mean? How far can I teleport?" and them not liking the answer ("well, if you spend all 7 points in one go you can teleport x far, but if you only wanted to spend 1 point you can teleport y far.")

They gave up before we even got to the bit that I thought might have been a problem, the combat, where you spend points to modify your hit roll before you roll, potentially wasting some or all of them.

None of us had played it before, and I don't know to what extent the problem was the players, and myself as GM, rather than the system.

[Mord]

My question is, essentially, does this seem like a thing that would let people actually run mysteries. If I published a book of 100 of these do you think that would effective as a way for DM's to insert mysteries into their games with 15 minutes of prep rather than several hours, because if so I think that would make it worth writing. If there are any apparent problems with the presentation or concept, or if there's something I could add that would make it obviously better I'd love to know before I've written 99 more.

I think your presented scenario is more analogous to an entry in a hypothetical "Encounter Manual" than a "Monster Manual". From your earlier description, I was expecting something more like a set of atomic mystery elements that could be blended in a procedural manner to produce a mystery like the one you actually wrote up. Kind of like how the Monster Manual provides atomic encounter elements (monsters) that can be procedurally assembled into an encounter using the EL calculation procedure.

Like, if you showed how your writeup was the product of some modest MC creativity assigned to the output of random draws executed in a defined content generation procedure, I think that would have much broader utility and be much closer to the Monster Manual analogue you were describing. As it is, you're basically talking about writing "100 Premade Adventures in 100 Pages" with a focus on mysteries. Which is all well and good, but seems to me to be less an MC creativity facilitator than an MC creativity replacer.

[pragma]

Re: entry

This seemed like a useful tool to me., but I think it would benefit from some formatting. If I were flipping through a book of these things I'd need the hook and "What's going on" to pop off the page.

Re: gumshoe

I'm skeptical of the system, but the most fun my players ever had with a mystery was when there was one clue in every scene that they could follow to the next set piece. They were surprisingly oblivious to the fact that they weren't doing any synthesis of information; they seemed to be most interested in acting out the idea of following clues.

[Pedantic]

I'd absolutely benefit from a book of mysteries as described above, though some useful keywording would be nice, perhaps describing scope (individuals, organizations, governments etc.), theme, motive or even kinds of crimes?

I see Mord's point about combining mystery elements, but I don't think mysteries are as fundamentally atomic as monsters are. Putting together a mystery from a bunch of setpieces is going to result in all your mysteries being middle-school five paragraph essays.

[Dogbert]

How do your players find the rest of the game?

That depends on whether you actually sell the system properly or you fell for the sales brochure of games like Night's Black Agents and Mutant City Blues.

Gumshoe is a game for playing, well... gumshoes, not action heroes. It is an extra-low powered game where, barring potential "one microscopic particle = now I know where the killer is hiding" leaps of logic, you're meant to do the kind of things Humprey Bogart does in the Maltese Falcon. Bogart is a "badass" in a world where most predicaments are of the most mundane variety, and where conflict scenes are brief (lethal ones much more so). Bogart confronts the killer at the very end, on a 1-1 encounter (mostly). Unless you're some loudmouth, I'm sure if I ask you how easily you can take on two guys, you'll tell me "I'm in trouble," because that's how things usually go... now get four or more guys pissed at you and you're pretty much dead meat unless you have a good headstart and are possessed of hearty lungs and legs. That's gumshoe (literally, because in melee, retreating would require you to have more skill points than the four of them... not happening). Now, put Bogart in a vanilla Hollywood action flick and of course he's gonna die more times than Dirk The Daring.

Try to play Night's Black Agents pretending you're Daniel Craig in the opening scene of Casino Royale and you're going to fail catastrophically (About 69 skill points short if I remember right, I actually analyzed that scene frame by frame to shut an apologist up) and get killed hilariously... and don't even get me started on MCB's weaksauce powers.

The best way to work with gumshoe is Mission: Impossible (the TV series, not the movies). Inform your players that each PC is supposed to devote all of their points in a single specialization (a "master of disguise," a crack pilot, a hacker, etc)... and tell the team's "action guy" to invest half of his skill points in Endurance (or whatever the name "HP bar" skill) because he's taking at least three shots every round.

...it's either that or stick to bottom-tier Bogart stuff (I can work with that).