There is a style of adventure design – primarily of the investigation genre – that places several clues in the environment and lets the players loose to discover them in whichever order they like. The intention here is that one clue on its own doesn't make much sense, but when you have gathered several clues together you have the solution to the puzzle and can proceed to the next stage of the adventure.
— Merric Blackman (@MerricB) August 13, 2021
When this works very well (in my estimation) is when you don’t need all the clues. You just need enough of them. Putting clues A, B, and C in the adventure and requiring the players to find all three of those is a good way of frustrating players.However, having nine clues in the adventure and finding three or four of them being enough? That's a lot better. It allows variation of approach.
— Merric Blackman (@MerricB) August 13, 2021
This is NOT easy design to do, however. Clues need to be overlapping. It’s not A*3, B*3, C*3. It’s clue A gives facts a & b, Clue B gives facts b & c, Clue C gives facts c & a – but even more involved. It's entirely too easy to design a clue that gives all the solution at once! So, the investigation gets bypassed. Oops!
— Merric Blackman (@MerricB) August 13, 2021
But this technique of clues having multiple, overlapping facts, give rise to very entertaining play. And the players feel good about solving such puzzles. Not only that, if they find reinforcement through clues, it helps them arrive at the answer.One of the reasons I'm thinking of this is @Alphastream's recent blog post about adventure structure. (Go read it). And explaining the structure of this sort of investigation isn't easy, especially if it's a larger one.
— Merric Blackman (@MerricB) August 13, 2021
There isn’t a simple flow chart. If you’re clever, perhaps you have a matrix that explains where each clue is, what facts it reveals, and how that all fits together.
If I were cleverer, I would have included such a matrix in “Ghoulies and Ghosties”, but I was still learning. What you have is a set of interrelated locations and personages that you can visit in any order, but each one offers pieces of the puzzle you are trying to solve.
— Merric Blackman (@MerricB) August 13, 2021
Note that some of the facts & clues could point you to other significant locations! Yes, you could say “visit these three places” at the start and have nothing else relevant, but I think it feels better when the players through their discoveries open up options When I said "I was still learning" a couple of tweets ago, it's not like I have worked out everything – or even a majority of things – yet. But I feel that I am coming closer to an approach to investigation design that would entertain.
— Merric Blackman (@MerricB) August 13, 2021