I am running a short campaign that is all centered around a single main mystery. I am looking for some advice on good programs to create a schizo relationship board in order to keep all of the interpersonal relationships of those involved in the mystery straight. Since the mystery is basically all they're doing keeping all those people/places/etc. and their relationships clear seems something I should really do with a visual rather than just in note form and I need a good program for that.
MS Paint
>>93192105draw.io
>>93192105Crayons on torn out sheets from a scribbler, might as well fullsell it.
Rescubebumping this because I am also interested.Every time I try to construct of play a mystery more complex that three-layer three-clue nodeshit, I end up with either totally incomprehensible spaghetti, or re-drawing the network after every other revelation.
>>93192105My group played through Masks of Nyarlathotep and we went through a few iterations of programs to use for this. Notion was the one we stuck with longest, but we struggled with that one too.
>>93192105While not directly related to your question, I do have one important piece of advice for you thats tangentially related: for a mystery game, include important information in documents. If you describe a book that your players that contains an important clue in it, you have to say outside WHAT the clue is, which basically spells out the mystery for the players.Instead, write up a short document. A note, a couple pages of made up book passages, etc that has the clue buried in it and when your players 'find the clue' you give them the document. They know that crucial information is in there, but its still up to them to read through it and make the connection themselves instead of just being told what the relevant passage is and why its important.Its more work, but the payoff is that the players get to feel like they are actually figuring out the mystery by putting the clues together themselves around the table and thats an experience they are going to remember. I did this with a modern fantasy game last year that was absolute figuring out what a group of would-be wizards had tried to do and what had gone wrong and how to fix it, and it was a blast.
>>93198486This anon has a good idea. Check out the old Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective game for inspiration OP. It's a game that had you poring over newspapers and books and poring over maps and timetables to solve cases.
>>93193627Pins on a corkboard and colored thread.
>>93192105Read this rulebook. Adapt as much as possible.
>>93198486>for a mystery game, include important information in documents.I did this for a Delta Green game recently.The most satisfying moment in the whole three and a half hours was hearing The Quiet Guy interrupt the other two with>"Hang on, what's the date? Because these phone records say the victim was talking with this one number every day until a week before we arrived, and the milk in the fridge expired five days ago..."Flipside is the number of times I did stuff like that and gave up and told them after all the spoonfed leads were exhausted.
>>93193627lol
