Whisperers is a game that centers around finding someone that either doesn’t know they’re being looked for or doesn’t want to be found. In the end, that’s a mystery. I know games like Gumshoe and others have systems for handling mystery but I need to figure out the system that fits exceptionally well with what Whisperers is all about.
Each player will start out with strategies that they use to find a Whisperer. Because this is likely to be the first part of every game, it has to be a fun part of the game and not just drudgery that you have to do to get to the good stuff.
One of the problems with most mystery games I’ve seen is that they center around clues. That works for novels but in a lot of games clues fail you. The problem with this approach is that you’re giving the players a fact, not an event. The clues have no depth to them and if interpreted wrong can lead to dead ends.
What I’m thinking of is defining anomalies that the clues come from. These are weak points in the secret that you’re trying to discover. They’re the bit of hair on the floor, or a chance sighting in a grocery store that the witness didn’t know was significant until later.
I’m not sure how to approach this yet. Would it make sense for a GM to define the secret and then build the defenses that obscure the secret around it or just assume that the defenses are there and define the anomalies that would allow the secret to be discovered? The latter seems easier to me but maybe there’s a hybrid that would make the structure more rich in detail and allow the GM to think on their feet about the player’s investigation.
That’s the goal though, a way to make the player experience of investigating fun. I’m also thinking about time shifting the events that are being investigated, so that the attempts to obscure are rolled for by the NPC and the PCs get to roll against that. This way there’s more of a head to head competition going on between the NPC and the PCs. The players will get a flavor of what they’re up against before they ever meet the NPC they’re looking for. That sounds good to me because an investigator can learn a lot about the person they’re looking for by the clues they find and I think that would help encourage that feeling.
I just have to effectively communicate all that and put it in a structure that’s simple and fun. No problem, right?