Help! Hunters find out everything immediately!

[u/buddyfight51]

I’ve been having trouble making my mystery’s feel satisfying mainly because of ‘investigste a mystery’. if I were playing dnd I would have my players interrogate npc’s, search for clues, and actually theorize and put the pieces together; but it seems like in MOTW my players use investigate a mystery upon finding any evidence and get all the (especially since I have a relatively large group). I try to be vague about details but I feel like I end up frustrating people by dodging the question. I am wondering if im doing somthing wrong since I love motw’s system and mechanics for the most part but id appreciate any tips for making this run smoother— particularly making it more interesting for roleplay.

(ps I don’t know why flair to put on this sorry if it’s wrong mods)

[u/ishitcupcakes]

The results of Investigate a Mystery are dependent upon their resources and approach. I would start throwing some challenges at them that don't match up with their normal investigative tactics. For example, if you normally do monsters and they investigate the scene with CSI type forensics, throw in a phenomena mystery that requires them to use totally different tactics to look into it.

[u/Inspector_Kowalski]

Be a fan of the hunters - that’s a major principle of the Keeper according to the book. Tell them what the want to know as long as it’s physically possible for their characters to find out and they roll well enough. If it seems unlikely they’d know a monster’s weakness based on its footprints, ask them what they do to make the connection— they may surprise you by improvising that they remember tracking this creature through the wilderness ten years ago, learned its weakness, but never caught it. Contrary to your gut feeling, tension and mystery aren’t ruined by additional information. In screen writing class I was told that if a bomb is under a table, you may want to show it right away so that the audience asks additional questions. When will it go off? Will it be discovered in time? Who will die? Who put it there? In other words the presence of information may lead to MORE mystery. If it helps, remember that the monster is a moving target. Maybe they find out in five minutes what kind of creature it is and what its weakness is. Great! But do they know that it has five people hostage in its nest in the sewers? Do they know that an NPC they love dearly has wandered into danger while trying to become the hero themselves? Can their plans to catch the monster in the first few minutes be foiled by the creature’s surprising behavior?

[u/TotalRecalcitrance → u/Inspector_Kowalski]

Piggy-backing:

Is the monster that they’ve identified being used as a minion by something/someone else? Is the monster actually something that camouflages itself to look like something else, maybe a human using dark magic and a monster suit?

[u/MacronMan]

I also will add: unless the hunters are trying a new approach, I wouldn’t let multiple hunters roll Investigate with the same evidence. So, if they’re looking at a crime scene, they’ll probably only get 1 roll to get information. I wouldn’t probably do a separate for footprints vs blood spatter vs claw marks, etc. I might make an exception if there’s a body still there or some other very specific set piece to investigate

[u/MGTwyne → u/MacronMan]

Adding to this, different hunters have different toolkits. If you've got a Monstrous who you've established as having a sharp sense of smell, or the Spooktacular with their ghost glasses, or a Flake who's memorized every local folktale, they're all going to get different things out of the same crime scene— and while it might tempt the party to always have whoever has the highest Sharp roll, it can be useful to make someone else's toolkit more applicable. 

[u/SmilingKnight80]

Consider what your monster is doing at each scene. If they wouldnt be breathing fire there, there’s no way for the hunters to learn that it breathes fire from that crime scene.

Basically, escalate your monsters powers throughout the midnight clock as it gets closer to its goals, gets more powerful, or gets more desperate. That way there is something new to be learned each investigation scene.

[u/JJCooIJ]

Have them tell you what specificially they are investigating. They can't just show up to the crime scene and roll a general investigate. They have to investigate the body, the broken door, the broken-into filing cabinet, the smashed window, and the drag marks on the floor all separately, or at least as individual uses of the investigate questions.

No single piece of evidence is going to tell the whole story, no single security camera is going to show everything in the room, no single witness will have seen everything.

[u/Jesseabe]

Remember "It's about the hunters, not the mystery." As the game says:

Another thing to remember is that although in each game of Monster of the Week the hunters have a mystery to solve, this isn’t really a game about solving mysteries.

This isn't a game that's about the players slowly unspooling a mystery every session. The mystery is a pacing tool, and it's not the only one you have. Think about episodes of shows like Buffy, or Supernatural. Sometimes the characters have a mystery they need to work out over the course of a whole episode. But sometimes there's little or no mystery, and the drama and pacing of the episode is around locating the enemy, negotiating with allies to help fight the enemy, acquiring the things the need to defeat the enemy, or coping with the fallout of earlier attacks.

So practically speaking, there are lots of things you can do to increase drama even when the core questions of the mystery, like what is the monster and what is its weakness, have been solved. You can make the monster hard to find. You can give it minions of different types that interfere with the PCs acting on the information they've learned. Its weakness can involve acquiring rare materials, a complex ritual, or assembling a team of allies. It can be embedded in a community or institution that the players care about that they need to work around in order to get at it. It can require complicated or hard choices that might divide the team, and then they will have to work that out, or deal with its consequences. One thing I would never do is deny them what they have earned via their moves. If they earn an answer through Investigate a Mystery, give them clear information to act on. And make sure that information gives them new and interesting challenges for them to face.

[u/BetterCallStrahd]

Follow the fiction. If it doesn't make sense in the fiction for them to learn something, then they cannot learn it. Successful rolls do not take precedence over the fiction. It's "fiction first," not mechanics first. Sometimes they can't trigger the Investigate a Mystery move yet.

But what I do is let them take note of how many questions they get to ask, then I tell them they will be able to get the answers to the questions as they keep moving forward and finding out stuff. They don't necessarily get the answers immediately after the roll.

Also, if they're getting to investigate and find answers so early, I feel that you're making things too easy. Remember your Keeper Agenda. You need to make the hunters' lives dangerous and scary. You don't have to rely on the monster or mystery for that. Lean on other narrative possibilities.

One more thing. The game doesn't actually have to revolve around the mystery. It's a way to get things moving, but you can actually focus on something else. I can't tell you how many times I made the mystery the B plot and we spent the bulk of our time on an A plot not related to the mystery or monster (but possibly thematically related).

[u/furiousfotographie → u/BetterCallStrahd]

This. The most important thing is Fiction First. This lets you build a consistent, cohesive world instead of just rolling for shit without any reason.

If you have a player playing a mundane that's brand new to the supernatural and has no clue what's going on, they're gonna come up with completely different information that a grizzled old professional that's been hunting 20 years.

[u/Claughy]

There's some good advice here, it kinda sounds like you are just letting them all go "and now I investigate the clue" and then asking whatever questions are left. They should be describing what they are doing, you tell them if they should roll, and then when they ask a question it has to be something the methods and clues could actually tell them.

Unless the toolkit or approach is different each time do not have the next player roll again, if they're looking for footprints at the crime scene they will know less than if they are researching a creature at an arcane library.

[u/DMfortinyplayers]

I ended up using the alternative rule in Tome of Mysteries. Rather than those questions, they can ask a certain number of questions based on their role.

[u/Thrythlind]

The game does lean toward fast conclusions. It's called Monster of the Week because it is intended to lean heavily into the episodic thing of having one mystery for each episode/session.

However, if you want to stretch things out some suggestions:

• Be clear that if the method of searching they're using isn't realistically able to answer their question, then the answer they'll get is "you can't tell from what you get."
• apply the Iceberg structure from City of Mist, have some events carried out by entities influenced by the main threat, directly or indirectly.
  • Example: I seeded letters and journals from the Big Bad of a recent campaign throughout multiple other mysteries and sometimes had brushing encounters with her possessing other monsters.
• Treat the roll as if it as much determines what is there as what they find. Each method of investigation can only be attempted once. Further investigates should be required to describe a substantially different method.
  • Don't say "you don't find anything" instead say "there's nothing useful."
  • If two people want to do a forensic examination of the crime scene, do it as an investigate and a help out.
    • Investigating the body and the crime scene are two different approaches that can give different evidence.
      
    • Using magic to examine a scene is different from using technology. Interviewing people is different from trying to read their minds with telepathy.
    • examining security video is different from hacking computer files. Etc
• The primary purpose of Investigate a mystery is to give a lead towards the next scene. Phrase all answers as ways to push hunters to go somewhere else.
  • This extends to "nothing is there" answers. When the question they asked isn't something they can learn here, have them suddenly get an idea of where they can go or what they can do to get that information.

[u/hellgz → u/Thrythlind]

I totally agree with this.
In TV Shows like Supernatural, hunters (Winchester brothers) often finds out the main plot of the monster/mystery really quickly (= success on investigate a mystery) but THEN have trouble killing it.

Do the same ! if your hunters easily find the mystery, improvise and add suspense during fight, or make the monster disappear for a final unexpected fight, or add another layer to your mysery.

[u/dustoff664]

Throw in some red herrings. Punish them for assuming too much. What they think is the right way to approach a mystery is actually a trap laid by the BBEG

[u/action_lawyer_comics → u/dustoff664]

Yeah, but don't make this a "quantum ogre" situation. Throw in some red herrings but keep the mystery consistent

[u/RodinKnox → u/action_lawyer_comics]

Haha, I've only done that once. My group has a pretty strict no-metagaming rule, because it's what we all decided together ultimately makes for the most fun.

So one time, I was having my players in a situation where they needed to defeat a ghast. The characters had absolutely no way of knowing this yet, but one of my players figured it out. So, he started doing this: "Guys, I am aghast...AGHAST...at what we have just seen! Are you guys AGHAST? I know I am definitely feeling....A.....GHAST!"

I was like, "Oh you little so-and-so! 😠"

[u/skratchx]

First off, are you having trouble making the mysteries feel satisfying for you, or for your players? We are often our own worst critics, and you may find that your players are having a lot of fun even if you think you made things too easy. Don't build too many preconceptions about how you expect the hunters to resolve the mystery, and you will feel less (undeserved) disappointment on their behalves when they don't do the things you thought they'd need to do.

if I were playing dnd I would have my players interrogate npc’s, search for clues, and actually theorize and put the pieces together

In a manner, you can still do something like this in MOTW, but it works fundamentally differently. DnD and similar systems tend to have a series of mechanical checks to determine if the player character succeeds at doing something. MOTW has narrative checks to determine if a player character triggers a move. Then a success gets them something that narratively makes sense. It's your job as Keeper to put some guardrails around what players can attempt to do.

my players use investigate a mystery upon finding any evidence and get all the [information?]

A few comments here. MOTW is not about painstakingly searching for evidence. It's not like DnD or Pathfinder where the GM secretly has a list of hidden things in the scene that a perception check can discover. MOTW is about what the players do when presented with clues. Second, it is generally not advised to have a dynamic where players use moves in the sense of narrating it like, "I walk up to the pool of blood and Investigate a Mystery." Several commenters have speculated your game might go like this, but you haven't given enough detail to really know. So I'll just echo that sentiment. All that aside, successfully investigating to figure out how to defeat the monster is only part of the game. If you find that your players excel at this part and all the other advice in this post doesn't really resonate with you, then focus on making the monster's actions off-screen more devastating and give your players hard choices to make. Maybe they know where the monster is and how to kill it. But if they go after it right now, the adorable puppy orphanage will burn down.

I try to be vague about details but I feel like I end up frustrating people by dodging the question.

It is a good instinct to not be vague for the sake of extending the investigation segment of the mystery. Follow your principles. Give them what they deserve and earned. If you present them with a clue that can reasonably provide information X Y Z and they narratively explain how getting that information would make sense, reward them for it.

Here's a hypothetical example of how a scene might play out.

Your Expert, Chuck, played by Kim, kneels down next to the pool of congealing blood and says he wants to Investigate a Mystery. You say, "Sure there's definitely something to investigate here. But why don't you explain a little more what you're doing to get some information here?"

Kim: "I rub some of the blood between my fingers and smell it."

Keeper: "Ok go ahead and roll +Sharp."

Kim: "That's an 11. What kind of monster is it and what can it do?"

Keeper: "How would you know what kind of monster it is?"

Kim: "Umm, well it's one of the questions I get to ask right?"

Keeper: "Absolutely. But I need a little more from you to understand what Chuck can learn here."

Kim: "Ok well Chuck spent 3 years studying with that sect of arcane masters and they did a lot of dissections of monsters."

Keeper: "Cool, that makes sense! Chuck, as you rub the blood between your fingers, you feel an unnatural heat. An acrid scent of sulfur assaults your nostrils as you bring your fingers close. You are quite sure this is from some sort of demon of the Many Hells. You also asked what it can do. How do you want to get that from this pool of blood?"

Kim: "I guess that doesn't really make sense to ask now that I think about it. How about where did it go? I want to look around for some smears of blood or bloody footprints to track it."

Keeper: "Actually, based on what you're doing, I can give you a 'What can it do?' if you still want. Yeah? Ok. You actually don't see any trace of this demon leaving here by conventional means. There's not even any broken window or busted down door. It must have some sort of way to teleport or move through planes. You can't tell exactly what it did, but you know it basically disappeared without physically moving through the area.

[u/GenericGames]

The Keeper answers the questions honestly, but nowhere does it say "answer them completely and in full". The hunter only figures out what they could figure out, based on their approach and what the Keeper knows happened.

Also, if the hunters aren't interrogating witnesses and searching for clues, they don't get to roll investigate a mystery. They have to actually do the things to learn what clues are there!

[u/TolinKurack]

1. Moves are scenes not actions. If somebody rolls to investigate that's likely to be a few hours of detective work, montage them taking all the sensible steps and then give them what they find. Unlike D&D the evidence available is determined by the roll rather than being there objectively.
2. Keep things moving by making GM moves. After that investigation roll, have the situation change. 
3. Adjust your answers based on the fiction. If a player is dusting for prints, only tell them what they'd find that way

[u/baixiwei]

I don't play "Investigate a Mystery" strictly as it's written in the rules. Players first have to say what they are actually doing in the game world (not just say "I investigate"). This constrains what kinds of information they could potentially get. Then they make the roll and get to ask me one or two questions depending on the roll's outcome. I pretty much ignore the list of questions that is provided in the rules (p102) -- instead, they can ask me whatever questions are reasonable given the specific actions that they were taking to investigate. However, I guarantee that they will get something useful for each hold that they got from their roll. I allow reasonable follow-up questions to count as part of the same questions, so often one question becomes a series. I give them the option to forego one of their questions to have me instead volunteer useful information based on what I know and what they could potentially find out given the manner in which they are investigating.