Clue Aversion

[Territan]

I have to ask now, because I have trouble believing that I'm being that difficult...

 

Let's say, just as a hypothetical, you found yourself in a situation where your DNPC's car was found burned out off the access road behind a bunch of warehouses. Someone else was driving it. There was almost guaranteed a meta behind that strike.

 

At a later furtive meeting, she confides that she had been getting information from the woman who was driving her car when they were attacked; she got away, but not without watching that other woman die in her place first.

 

Then, shortly after that, she calls in and asks frantically, "Quick, can you tell me if Benjamin and Theresa Duffey reported a burglary in their house on the night of December 18th?"

 

Perhaps dealing with that group for so long has blunted my understanding of how to run a mystery, but...

 

Would the rational, responsible, heroic thing to do under those circumstances be:

1. Do nothing about the mystery, claiming that "I don't have any leads; I'm just waiting for information at this point,"
2. Go on a drunken bender hard enough to end up in another state, or
3. All of the above?

 

I think I can be excused for thinking I need better players.

[Christopher]

39 minutes ago, Territan said:

Do nothing about the mystery, claiming that "I don't have any leads; I'm just waiting for information at this point,"

What you describe certainly sounds like it could cause this reaction. It definitely could cause it from me.

 

But then running a Mystery is always dang hard.

Just recently I had a GM be frustrated by our group of 3 Charcters failing 3 Spot checks each to notice a plot detail in a row. He had to invent reasons and circumstances for us to retry.

 

I think what might work, is to adopt the "never a real failure" option of Narative Storytelling Systems. That way you can avoid the story ever being "stuck" on failing rolls or inventing reasons to re-do the roll. Without making the skill investment pointless. As a example, look at this thread:

Under "Failure is not an option".

[Hugh Neilson]

Perhaps you need players who are engaged in investigation scenarios.  Sounds like they are waiting for an invitation to the next combat scene.

[sentry0]

37 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Perhaps you need players who are engaged in investigation scenarios.  Sounds like they are waiting for an invitation to the next combat scene.

 

My thoughts exactly.  I think one of the most important rules a GM can follow is: know your target audience.

 

If your group is a bunch of murderhobos then putting an RP heavy scenario or a scenario where they can't kill their way out is going to be bad for everyone.

[Scott Ruggels]

I could not make any sense of the clues presented.  Mysteries are hard. If I had to do any of them, mostly they were interrogations, so there was never any room for mis-interpretations of clues. I found clues also started somewhat unproductive arguments at the table. Not all of us are deductive detectives.

[Duke Bushido]

I agree with Hugh. 

 

If it were me, I'd have to find out what my DNPC was investigating and why, and to start quietly checking her alibis, too.... 

[Doc Democracy]

17 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I could not make any sense of the clues presented.  Mysteries are hard. If I had to do any of them, mostly they were interrogations, so there was never any room for mis-interpretations of clues. I found clues also started somewhat unproductive arguments at the table. Not all of us are deductive detectives.

 

I don't think the OP was thinking that we might know what to do as we are not immersed in the campaign and do not know the significance of the people mentioned or the specific date.  I think that the OP was asking whether the actual response of the party in question was rational, responsible and/or heroic. ?  

 

I may not be in a position to follow things up in detail but there are a few questions I could already ask and I would not be in need of a hang-over cure or a plane ticket home...

 

Doc

[Hugh Neilson]

One might start by checking whether Benjamin and Theresa Duffey reported a burglary in their house on the night of December 18th.  Asking what the DNPC is investigating could not hurt.  Perhaps some effort to identify the other woman? 

 

Not sure what any of these might reveal, and I might also have other ideas if I were familiar with the campaign, but it seems like the players have no real desire to be investigators, just passive tagalongs being dragged around or going where they are directed.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

You seem to have provided Proper Nouns to seek out and clear unstated information to ask about.  There's obvious ways forward. 

 

That said, I could see how a player wouldn't follow those paths.  The following isn't intended as a factual criticism, it's intended to represent how a player might see the information presented as unusable.  Please take it in that light. 

 

A : The DNPC is the GM's mouthpiece.  If the GM wanted me to have information on who they were meeting with or what about, the DMPC would have told me.  Therefore, I shouldn't waste time asking about what I'm not meant to know. 

B : I don't have much information on the car-burning.  What am I supposed to do with a burnt car and dead woman?  It's already clear superpowers were involved, and I don't remember any flame-themed villains so can't track them down. 

C : A burglary isn't an arson/murder, the two clearly aren't connected.  And I'm a superhero, why should I be investigating a mundane crime? 

D : Mystery plots are just the GM forcing us to read his mind and ask the right people the right things for no apparent reason, that's not fun so I'm not going to try. 

[Brian Stanfield]

So, I have to start by asking, are you looking for the expected rational response from your players, or from you as a GM. I could see the players giving up (well, not really . . . it seems kind of silly to me, but I can at least understand it), and I could also see the GM getting distraught and drinking himself sideways, but I can't see why the players would go on a bender. Unless that's what they do when they give up . . . .

 

Ok, regardless, it seems to me that this would be a great time for the GM to ask the group of PCs to make a deduction roll. See who makes it and offer a bread crumb, such as, "Do you think that it seems significant that the Duffeys reported a burglary at their house on the night of December 18th?" or, "I wonder what the connection might be to the car explosion and the burglary report . . . ." It is dangerously close to railroading the PCs, but it's also just a nudge in the right direction. Maybe they just need a hint or two, and a reminder that this is a role playing game.

 

Or maybe you need to get them good and drunk before the next session and see if that has an effect . . . .

[drunkonduty]

You can lead a player to the plot.... and hit them over the head with. Repeatedly. But you can't make them pick it up.

 

All you can do in this situation is say "Well, that's what I prepped for this session. See you next session."

[archer]

Sometimes I have trouble getting interested in what's happening to another player's DNPC, especially if that DNPC seems to exist for no other reason other than to give the other player a bag of points.

 

I don't mind rescuing or guarding. Or even doing an investigation if I'm invited by the player to take the lead in an investigation. But some players can be territorial about their DNPC's so I'm not going to jump in and start grilling the DNPC or take over and push an investigation if I'm not sure the other player will be okay with it.

 

Having said that, my impression is that most groups would approach that scenario by investigating the scene of the murder, getting forensic evidence from the car, see what the police know, and question the DNPC about what she saw. And that the group would develop their own leads from there based on the information they'd collected themselves. 

 

Maybe they were thrown off by the DNPC continuing to be in the middle of things and dribbling out clues to them rather than fading into the background? I don't know the profession of the DNPC but unless she's in the business, I'd expect the police or the superheroes to be the ones finding and developing leads.

[Spence]

Mysteries and Investigative games are hard to get right if approached from a standard action RPG angle.  I am a big GUMSHOE player and GM them more than anything else.  In am currently tinkering with an "Investigative Skill" plug in for Hero. 

 

But to topic.  I'd suggest the GM pick up a GUMSHOE game (under $20 for some) and read their guidelines for mysteries and building investigative scenarios. 

 

Not immediately helpful, but worth it longterm.

[Hugh Neilson]

7 hours ago, archer said:

Sometimes I have trouble getting interested in what's happening to another player's DNPC, especially if that DNPC seems to exist for no other reason other than to give the other player a bag of points.

 

 

One issue not addressed by the OP is whether the character whose DNPC is at the center of this has told the other characters what he knows.  PCs do not share a mental bond, so other PCs can only act on information that is shared.

[Christopher]

22 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I could not make any sense of the clues presented.  Mysteries are hard. If I had to do any of them, mostly they were interrogations, so there was never any room for mis-interpretations of clues. I found clues also started somewhat unproductive arguments at the table. Not all of us are deductive detectives. 

For me the issue is never finding interpretations. It is excluding interpretations as unlikely.

 

21 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

One might start by checking whether Benjamin and Theresa Duffey reported a burglary in their house on the night of December 18th.  Asking what the DNPC is investigating could not hurt.  Perhaps some effort to identify the other woman?

My problem is that it sounds like the Mystery only progresses on external input (like the GM having the DNCP call).

That would make it a railroad plot, where the Players can not even decide the pace the Locomotive moves at. Wich is one of the few things more frustrating then a Railroad plot.

 

That is why I said that I can totally understand the players reaction. And might react the same way.

[Territan]

On 3/11/2019 at 9:16 AM, Christopher said:

But then running a Mystery is always dang hard.

Just recently I had a GM be frustrated by our group of 3 Charcters failing 3 Spot checks each to notice a plot detail in a row. He had to invent reasons and circumstances for us to retry.

This is not about a character failing to spot a detail. This is about a character having a detail dropped squirming into his lap, casually brushing it aside, and going out that night to get plastered.

Actually, several details, but I'll get into that in a minute.

 

On 3/11/2019 at 10:27 AM, sentry0 said:

If your group is a bunch of murderhobos then putting an RP heavy scenario or a scenario where they can't kill their way out is going to be bad for everyone.

But this is a Champions game. Technically, that would make them "murderheroes." That ...doesn't sound like an improvement. It also doesn't sound inaccurate.

 

On 3/11/2019 at 11:25 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

I could not make any sense of the clues presented.

You're also coming in on the tail end of this, so you don't have all the information as it's been thrown at them. That information is forthcoming here.

 

On 3/11/2019 at 11:44 AM, Duke Bushido said:

If it were me, I'd have to find out what my DNPC was investigating and why, and to start quietly checking her alibis, too.... 

And I think many people would. Hence, my frustration.

 

On 3/12/2019 at 8:38 AM, Spence said:

Mysteries and Investigative games are hard to get right if approached from a standard action RPG angle.  I am a big GUMSHOE player and GM them more than anything else.  In am currently tinkering with an "Investigative Skill" plug in for Hero. 

 

But to topic.  I'd suggest the GM pick up a GUMSHOE game (under $20 for some) and read their guidelines for mysteries and building investigative scenarios. 

You mean like buying into The Esoterrorists (both editions), Fear Itself (both editions), Mutant City Blues, Trail of Cthulhu, Ashen Stars, Night's Black Agents, and The Gaean Reach? And any one of those would help me run a mystery? Golly! (⬅︎ sarcasm tag) Okay, seriously, I have tried running Night's Black Agents for these guys. They had trouble keeping track of two things: the names, and the facts. That experiment didn't last long, and still went on longer than it should have.

 

And to everyone I promised a more proper recapping of the story:

 

A More Proper Recap

PC is a lawyer. He's also an inventor and "Powered Armor" character, very much like Tony Stark except with less guilt, ethics, or concern over the repercussions of his actions. His DNPC (yes, his DNPC, and until recently he thought he had paid for her as a Contact) is a tabloid reporter out of necessity since she tries to sell some far-out stories. This particular plot started in early December, when PC attended a bar association dinner, interrupted only by a disturbance where some tabloid reporter (yes, DNPC) had gotten hold of a catering company uniform and was trying to gather information first and fit in second. The information she was trying to gather was about some robberies that had occurred at the homes of people who attended this particular catering company's functions. (Although, let's jump back a week or two and note that he met someone who worked with that catering company at another bar in town.) After checking on the security of his own home, he looked briefly into those robberies, found nothing super-powered (read: interesting to him), and let the issue drop.

 

A month later, the catering company's main building had burned to the ground, with the owner inside. (Incidentally, PC also met the owner of that catering company at the function.) The police didn't immediately spot anything meta-powered, just suspicious and unexplained. To the team, the incident wasn't noteworthy, so they let the issue drop.

 

Finally, around September, DNPC is still doing some digging on the catering company story, and struck not paydirt but lava. Behind a bunch of warehouses (one of which was used by the catering company as a walk-in fridge and storage facility; the owner paid a year in advance around November, and the lease was still technically valid), DNPC met with Girl From Club in one of those warehouses, was interrupted by the powered individual the team probably wouldn't mind taking down if they knew about him. DNPC gave Girl From Club her car keys to give her a fighting running chance and snuck away in the other direction. The powered individual went after the car, and burned the occupant to death. (Remember again that PC had met Girl From Club before, on two separate occasions. He might have felt something, if he remembered her.) DNPC, quite naturally, went into hiding, emerging only briefly to meet with PC at a restaurant and discuss some of the details of the incident.

 

A day or two later, DNPC called, with some urgency and asking that very oddly specific question involving Benjamin and Theresa Duffey, a burglary in their house, and the night of December 18th, which incidentally was the night that bar association dinner took place. DNPC got the answer from PC ("Google says ...no, they didn't"), and hung up. And PC, having no leads to go on, threw his hands up in apathy disgust and proceeded to go out and get blind stinking drunk—he has immunity to toxins and alcohol, unless he chooses to turn it off, which he does at times like that. And that's how he ended up in a completely different state.

#30#

 

The group has a reputation as little more than "funtime heroes," or "Beavis and Butthead and Powers" for a reason. They're all stinking rich, leave pretty much all investigation to the police, and names tend to go in one ear and out the other, if they even make it to the first ear. As a group they can remember some names, like their two administrators (one of which really is plotting against the team, but doing so slowly), the three primary members of the monitor room staff (there are nine in rotation now, and they can't remember their schedules worth a damn), but for the rest? Fuhgeddaboudit. Hydrocephalic goldfish have better retention. They also treat the powers list like a mix of sugar and cocaine, and the skills list like a mix of boiled Brussels sprouts and Hitler. A look at their character sheets would suggest that yeah, they're trolling as hard as they possibly can.

 

In the discussion above there was talk of "invitations to combat." In a sense, all superhero adventures are just that: an inciting event that leads the heroes down the potentially twisty path to a knock-down drag-out fight at the end, to allow justice to shine forth (yay!). The catch here is that the criminals, in a fit of pure, cold pragmatism, all don't want to send that invite. They'd rather continue their nefarious deeds unhindered and unopposed. Rarely do they send out invitations; usually the heroes just find them, dropped accidentally at crime scenes. They needn't call for full investigation with cattle prods and microscopes, but my interpretation of the genre that one must be willing to be at least a little informed and ask some questions. It's prompted the question, "how directly must I present the invite, and how much gilding and engraving must it have, to get them to come to the party?"

 

The question "are they investigators?" need not be asked; no, they are not. And three points in Criminology isn't going to make them one. (I was actually impressed surprised he went that far, instead of adding more combat effects to his suit.) The problem with the next question, "are they heroes?" is that if the answer is "no they are not," the follow-up question is "then what is the point of this team and this campaign?" And that question has an answer that, in the long run, they're not going to like. But if it gets that far, it's on them.

[megaplayboy]

I believe that Streetwise and Deduction are still everyman 8- skills, yes?  Treat the major clues as "easy" level tasks(+5 to roll) and have them roll their deduction to get the inference you believe they should get.  Then if legwork is a factor, again give them an easy bonus to get the most basic information.  If they're still stuck, then have something happen to advance the plot and move them further along.  At this point it should be a matter of either a player finally clueing in, or handing them another deduction roll.  

Short of handing them a stack of Sherlock Holmes books, a handbook for criminal investigators, a few seasons of CSI, and Critical Thinking for Dummies, you can't turn a team of combat monsters into sleuths.  But you can probably ask them to go through the motions a bit.  

[archer]

1 hour ago, Territan said:

 His DNPC (yes, his DNPC, and until recently he thought he had paid for her as a Contact) is a tabloid reporter

 

Thanks for identifying the problem.

 

A DNPC is a vastly different thing than a Contact and requires a completely different type of commitment from the player.

 

The player obviously didn't sign up for her to be a DNPC and refuses to treat her as one. Make him buy off the DNPC complication for her then give him the option of whether to buy her as a Contact in the future.

[Spence]

1 hour ago, Territan said:

 "then what is the point of this team and this campaign?"

 

After reading through, and based on very limited information, I don't think you are even close to being on the same page as far as the game is concerned.

 

It sounds like the players really don't want a Superhero game, they want Super-fights leaving you with few options.

1) Continue as you are and hope.

2) Give up and just feed them plot-less Super-battles.

3) Establish a "boss/contact" they work for/with.  It could be a Detective that routinely asks for their assistance or they could be associated with "the Foundation for Law and Justice" and get missions.   In other words, someone (an NPC) that fills in the blanks and points them at the bad guys. 

 

I'll admit these are not the best options, but if the players won't step up and you really want to continue running, then a little duct tape and glue might be called for

[Christopher]

2 hours ago, Territan said:

This is not about a character failing to spot a detail. This is about a character having a detail dropped squirming into his lap, casually brushing it aside, and going out that night to get plastered.

Actually, several details, but I'll get into that in a minute. 

Then it sounds like your Group does not want (this) Mystery. Hugh guessed the reason right in his first reply:

On 3/11/2019 at 2:52 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

Perhaps you need players who are engaged in investigation scenarios.  Sounds like they are waiting for an invitation to the next combat scene.

 

 

45 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

After reading through, and based on very limited information, I don't think you are even close to being on the same page as far as the game is concerned.

 

It sounds like the players really don't want a Superhero game, they want Super-fights leaving you with few options.

1) Continue as you are and hope. 

2) Give up and just feed them plot-less Super-battles.

3) Establish a "boss/contact" they work for/with.  It could be a Detective that routinely asks for their assistance or they could be associated with "the Foundation for Law and Justice" and get missions.   In other words, someone (an NPC) that fills in the blanks and points them at the bad guys. 

 

I'll admit these are not the best options, but if the players won't step up and you really want to continue running, then a little duct tape and glue might be called for

You can always use the fight Option as the "fallback" path for this approach:

 

On 3/11/2019 at 2:16 PM, Christopher said:

I think what might work, is to adopt the "never a real failure" option of Narative Storytelling Systems. That way you can avoid the story ever being "stuck" on failing rolls or inventing reasons to re-do the roll. Without making the skill investment pointless. As a example, look at this thread:



Under "Failure is not an option".

Even just the time fights take will eventually get someone to use their Mind Axe to skip the boring combat.

 

2 hours ago, Territan said:

The group has a reputation as little more than "funtime heroes," or "Beavis and Butthead and Powers" for a reason. They're all stinking rich, leave pretty much all investigation to the police, and names tend to go in one ear and out the other, if they even make it to the first ear. As a group they can remember some names, like their two administrators (one of which really is plotting against the team, but doing so slowly), the three primary members of the monitor room staff (there are nine in rotation now, and they can't remember their schedules worth a damn), but for the rest? Fuhgeddaboudit. Hydrocephalic goldfish have better retention. They also treat the powers list like a mix of sugar and cocaine, and the skills list like a mix of boiled Brussels sprouts and Hitler. A look at their character sheets would suggest that yeah, they're trolling as hard as they possibly can. 

  

In the discussion above there was talk of "invitations to combat." In a sense, all superhero adventures are just that: an inciting event that leads the heroes down the potentially twisty path to a knock-down drag-out fight at the end, to allow justice to shine forth (yay!). The catch here is that the criminals, in a fit of pure, cold pragmatism, all don't want to send that invite. They'd rather continue their nefarious deeds unhindered and unopposed. Rarely do they send out invitations; usually the heroes just find them, dropped accidentally at crime scenes. They needn't call for full investigation with cattle prods and microscopes, but my interpretation of the genre that one must be willing to be at least a little informed and ask some questions. It's prompted the question, "how directly must I present the invite, and how much gilding and engraving must it have, to get them to come to the party?"

 

The question "are they investigators?" need not be asked; no, they are not. And three points in Criminology isn't going to make them one. (I was actually impressed surprised he went that far, instead of adding more combat effects to his suit.) The problem with the next question, "are they heroes?" is that if the answer is "no they are not," the follow-up question is "then what is the point of this team and this campaign?" And that question has an answer that, in the long run, they're not going to like. But if it gets that far, it's on them.

That sounds like there is a disconnect between the Player and GM Vision even more. The player did not want a DNCP. Nor do they want to solve mysteries.

 

I can not exclude that 1 or 2 might have been theoretically interested in proper play and only made this kind of Character to "fit in" with the other guys. There can often be a Dominant personaltiy at the table, especially with old groups. Look at the Film "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising" for a cinematic example of this problem.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

3 hours ago, Territan said:

A look at their character sheets would suggest that yeah, they're trolling as hard as they possibly can.

If you really feel this way and it's not just hyperbole, don't run this for them.  No game is better than bad game, and if you've really landed a bunch of irredeemable murderhobos you're not going to see a miracle occur. 

 

That aside, it seems to me like they might be suffering from a mental worktime difference.  If you're weaving all these intricate and slow-paced plots, you'll be thinking about them frequently and they'll stick in your head.  Your players likely only think about these things when you've met for game and so will have much worse memory for things.  Did you explicitly remind the PC that the 18th was the day of the bar dinner, and about the robberies, and the arson?  If not, he may have completely forgotten those and felt the only clues he had were "so and so not robbed, girlfriend's car burned". 

Or they're [insert favored slur here]s. 

[Territan]

3 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

I believe that Streetwise and Deduction are still everyman 8- skills, yes?  Treat the major clues as "easy" level tasks(+5 to roll) and have them roll their deduction to get the inference you believe they should get.  Then if legwork is a factor, again give them an easy bonus to get the most basic information.  If they're still stuck, then have something happen to advance the plot and move them further along.  At this point it should be a matter of either a player finally clueing in, or handing them another deduction roll.  

 

Earlier I rattled off a bunch of Gumshoe titles (and come to think of it, I omitted The Fall of Delta Green). It's possible that I've opened one or two of those books too.

 

I've had a few hours to consider the situation, and I've come up with a few ways to twist the knife. One very minor event might spur him into action: the police sending over a picture of the Girl from the Bar, who "you met two previous times, once at a nightclub in town, and once at the bar association dinner way back on December 18th. She worked for the company that catered the event, the one that DNPC said hosted events where guests got burgled, and which burned down about a month later with the owner inside (a tall, lanky fellow who you also met at that dinner)." It's almost an "It was Bob Barker, and he was eating a bologna and cheese-ball sandwich"-grade summation of the situation. That might well light a fire under him. If it doesn't, then I have two different courses where the fate of DNPC takes a very dark turn indeed. And the one in which she lives might be even more tortuous, so I'm torn...

 

3 hours ago, archer said:

The player obviously didn't sign up for her to be a DNPC and refuses to treat her as one. Make him buy off the DNPC complication for her then give him the option of whether to buy her as a Contact in the future.

 

He just very recently twigged onto the distinction. I think he just doesn't know how to look after someone in-game.

 

2 hours ago, Spence said:

1) Continue as you are and hope.

2) Give up and just feed them plot-less Super-battles.

3) Establish a "boss/contact" they work for/with.  It could be a Detective that routinely asks for their assistance or they could be associated with "the Foundation for Law and Justice" and get missions.   In other words, someone (an NPC) that fills in the blanks and points them at the bad guys.

 

I wouldn't be posting here if (1) was an option. (2) is singularly unrewarding, considering that I think I've taken more notes on this one campaign alone than they have on all the games they've played in combined. I have an idea for something like (2/3), where a certain administrator who's inclined to treat them as useful idiots actually does so at the behest of someone interested in using all available resources for social control. They get their super-fights, someone above them gets an almost villainous level of control in the city... everybody wins!

 

1 hour ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

4 hours ago, Territan said:

A look at their character sheets would suggest that yeah, they're trolling as hard as they possibly can.

 

If you really feel this way and it's not just hyperbole, don't run this for them.  No game is better than bad game, and if you've really landed a bunch of irredeemable murderhobos you're not going to see a miracle occur. 

 

Yeeeeah, that's the funny thing. Despite being so Clue Resistant, they've had enough knock-down-drag-outs in this campaign that they like this game. They look forward to it, and it's like they see these investigations as an intrusion into the purity of their RP and their combat. And it could get worse now that they've basically told the people preventing alien attacks to let them through. (And now I can't stop thinking they did that so they could get into more fights with aliens.)

 

It was a much larger group before; it started with five people who knew jack about playing Champions. One of them was so nervous he almost ran his minivan off the road, taking two players with him. Getting them to play then was a triumph, and given how many there were, it made sense to de-emphasize people's Complications (like DNPCs). Now the group has thinned down to 2 regulars and 1 groundhog (comes out of his hole once a year), essentially.

 

Maybe it has run its course.

 

The trick is convincing them.

[MrKinister]

It strikes me that you may need to pay attention to the player's personal preference. You, as the GM, have absolute control over the story, except where public rolls cannot be denied (hence a GM screen).

 

If you have a series of players that do not like investigations, you need to adapt your game to those players. It looks to me your players are into the game as a way to splash stuff around with powers in combat. You have combat junkies. There's nothing wrong with that. Other players will be more skill oriented, and others will be more roleplay oriented.

 

There is no point in giving an action player a mystery to solve. They will look at it and walk away like a cat faced with distasteful food. Just bury it.

What do your players want? Give that to them. It will make them happy. Now, the question then remains, what do you, as a GM, want? Do you want to run combat scenarios all the time? Do you want to make things more clever or cerebral? It might help a bit to give the players an idea of what to expect in a scenario. Something along the lines of "Hey guys, these next three sessions are going to be about a mystery you have to solve. Put on your thinking caps." Unless they are unusually stubborn, or being passive-aggressive, they will at least know what is expected of them and they may pay attention to things they might not normally pay attention to.

 

As a last resort, you may just have to spoon feed them the information in a way that makes sense to them. You can present it as a the characters reaching the conclusions that the players then learn about through your exposition. After all, the characters are usually much better at what they do than the players. Sometimes the characters will have better investigation skills (and perhaps more common sense) than the players. ?

 

And that might just be the case: If the players are new to "investigations", they really may have no idea how to go about them. A few in-game examples of how to think through such a situation, and what to pay attention to, and the types of questions to ask, will give them an education on how to proceed in those types of scenarios. Again, unless your players are deliberately dragging their feet because all they really want to do is get into the next fight they will eventually pick up on these details.

 

This may be especially true if their only background to roleplay is fantasy-based, where the typical plot is "there's trouble in town (cave, dungeon, dimension, etc), go there, find the monsters, kill them". Not much of a thinking man's game. They may be stuck in that "we need someone to tell us where the monsters are so we can kill them" mindset. I know I was stuck there for a little while, until I learned more by watching more and more investigation games. I got better. ? 

 

Just my $0.02.

[MrKinister]

Oh, yeah. And in order to not get stuck on rolls, any information that is critical to the plot should NOT be behind a roll-wall. If it is really that critical, they will have to get it, no matter how. That will have to be an investigation freebie. It should be easy to get, even if there are rolls present. Otherwise you may be shooting yourself in the plot-foot. ?

 

[Christopher]

15 hours ago, Territan said:

I have an idea for something like (2/3), where a certain administrator who's inclined to treat them as useful idiots actually does so at the behest of someone interested in using all available resources for social control. They get their super-fights, someone above them gets an almost villainous level of control in the city... everybody wins! 

And maybe at one point they have a realisation like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE

 

15 hours ago, Territan said:

It was a much larger group before; it started with five people who knew jack about playing Champions. One of them was so nervous he almost ran his minivan off the road, taking two players with him. Getting them to play then was a triumph, and given how many there were, it made sense to de-emphasize people's Complications (like DNPCs). Now the group has thinned down to 2 regulars and 1 groundhog (comes out of his hole once a year), essentially. 

I personally dislike the Rules Construct of Complications. It is less bad in 6E then before, but it still feels like I have to invent complications to fill up the pool. Not nessesarily complications I want to have.

 

It think the Intention behind Complications is to provide "GM Storyhooks". But we can provide those without nessesarily needing a rule construct.