It's been a slow start to the new year, mostly organizing and thinking. I bought a large toolbox, which works nicely as a case to carry miniatures. I've taken several of the smaller craft/tackle boxes I had and used them to separate and organize my minis. I've been able to fit all my minis (at least the small and medium sized ones) and dice inside the toolbox.
I took them all out and separated them first by monsters and characters. These I split up by race - elves, human, halflings, dwarves, etc. The monsters I separated by type along the same lines. Some of these were obvious, like lycanthropes and demons, but others are more general, like aberrations. Most of these are shapeless blobs that I've yet to use in combat ever, so they all feel like the same thing anyway. I did make an effort to keep all of the pieces I use regularly as PCs in the same box, so in a pinch I can just grab that one box and have what I need to play.
On the thinking side… it seems all of us have been considering the mystery angle with D&D. This is something I've been mulling over for years, and have tried to work out on several different occasions. I even tried making it the focus of a NaNoWriMo effort a few years ago, the idea of combining my love of D&D with mystery - Columbo or Sherlock Holmes in a fantasy setting. Oddly, it is a surprisingly difficult thing to manage.
"The jeweled necklace has been stolen, what do we do?" the victim asks. "Get a spell caster and cast locate object." Oh, ok… "Someone's killed Nigel! We need to find the killer." "I'll cast speak with dead and ask him."
Obviously, even in these examples, there are limitations on the spells and so on, but it does demonstrate how easily a lot of modern detecting can be negated with the use of spells. What we're working on now is a little different. With the focus on urban adventures surrounding the fall release of books set in Waterdeep, the interest has shifted to more of a heist adventure, something like Ocean's Eleven. It has the advantage of being a scenario that can work in D&D, and the disadvantage of being complicated enough to require some careful thought.
I think we have a consensus about wanting to play a higher level heist. My example is a formal reception/dinner party with a regional ambassador in town to display a treasured item or donate it to the town. There are invited guests, security, extra help, etc., as well as multiple interests looking to acquire the object. This offers multiple ways of infiltrating the setting, multiple allies and adversaries, but more than anything makes for a complicated environment to manage and resolve as DM.
We recognize the complications, and have turned to simpler versions in order to test some of the possibilities. Even these are proving to be complicated. I've been working on a bandit outpost with a rescue mission. I see three elements - observation, infiltration, and escape. The players need to study their adversary, get inside, and get away with the object of the rescue. What makes it difficult is that you find yourself playing all the roles, bouncing between them at every turn.
What are the players looking for? What can they learn? Now, you're plotting all the movements of the bandits. What are they aware of? What will they notice or ignore? Now you're back thinking about player movement. What if they fail, how will that change things? Back and forth, getting more involved and complicated as you go.
My son has been thinking about locked room scenarios. All the suspects in one place, how does the crime take place? What things can complicate the mystery? Silence, darkness, and other spells - how can they affect the story? Another problem here is motivation. Part of the reason these work well in fiction is that everyone has a secondary motive that they want to keep to themselves. That gives them a reason to lie. They suspect someone else and wish to protect them, they have a guilty secret they want to keep, they have an old grudge against someone and want to frame them, and so on.
This can be harder to get in game terms. I think it is part of the effort made in the 5th edition adventures to create factions and encourage players to align with them. It is related to backstory, but has a communal element that can be manipulated for reasons external to the individual. Still, these only work if the players buy into them and use them. Otherwise, the plot deflates and the adventure goes too flat to work.
To make the plot work, you need to plant ideas in the players' minds. That makes it feel like you're designing a new game more than a new adventure. It feels like it would be easier and work better as a one-off with pre-gen characters. That might not be a bad idea, and might be useful to refine the mechanics, but I think in the end it should be possible to create an adventure that could work without pre-gens.
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