In this article series, we’ll be revisiting and reviving the Insomnia project, a book designed to bring horror to your D&D game.
These posts have been LONG, so it seems like we’ll be doing one post, instead of two, each week whenever long, unbroken systems are on the chopping block.
One thing that was readily apparent when playtesting various horror adventures was that, when combat isn’t the focus of the D&D experience, you need something else to fill the time. You obviously speak to more NPCs in horror games (we’ll talk about that in a later article), but you also do more in-depth investigation scenes — like snippets of a Sherlock Holmes or noir detective novel. After all, our focus in Insomnia games is on unraveling a mystery thread-by-thread.
Furthermore, it’s clear that the default mechanic for this in 5th edition — rolling an Intelligence (Investigation) check is woefully inadequate at both engaging players and filling out an otherwise lean session. Therefore, in this article, we’ll break down our specific implementation of investigation scenes: how to run them, and how to weave them into your larger adventure framework.
Investigation Scenes
When the mystery is afoot or the characters stumble upon an unfamiliar scene, it’s time to investigate. An in-depth investigation involves much more than use of the Investigation skill; it demands inquisitive thinking, sharp observation, and careful deduction on the part of the characters, plus a bit of preparation (or practiced improvisation) on your part.
You can divide a typical investigation scene into three parts: setting the scene, asking questions, and deductions.
Setting the Scene
Generally, investigations are localized to a single scene where clues can be uncovered and conclusions can be reached. This might be a crime scene, where evidence is left behind, or something as innocuous as someone’s living room.
In the following example, we’ll imagine the players have broken into the office of a local priest, the minister of Old Nazareth church to discover more about a lycanthrope sighting nearby. When the characters arrive at the scene:
Set the Scene. Provide some exposition describing all the relevant details in the area. You don’t have to describe every detail; an overview will do for now. For example:
The minister’s office is moonlit by an open window, whose curtains blow into the room. You spy a pair of legs horizontal behind the desk: the minister lies dead, flat on his back with his hands crossed over a gory wound on his abdomen.
Establish Secrets. Decide what information is concealed at the scene, to be unraveled from the information left there.
You decide to establish that the minister was a part of an order of monster hunters.
Asking Questions
Investigations are led by players asking specific questions about the scene. The following examples are excellent specific questions:
“What’s in the minister’s pockets?”
“Is the blood fresh?”
“Is the window broken?”
You should present answers detailing what the characters discover, and you can sometimes detail how they do so, but refrain from extrapolating conclusions from this information. For example:
You reach your hand into the minister’s pockets and feel something small and cold: a silver arrowhead, marked with three intersecting lines.
If a player is unsure which question to ask (or you think that a player’s question is too vague), the player can roll an ability check using a skill of their choosing. Rolling a check is a shot in the dark; the player doesn’t need to specify their reasoning for the check or what they hope to accomplish. A player can only use each skill once in a scene. If the check is successful and turns out to be relevant, you can reveal fruitful information.
For example, if a player is unsure which questions to ask about the minister’s office, they could attempt an Intelligence (History) check. On a good roll (against a DC you determine on the spot), the character notices the following:
The minister’s personal library contains a half-dozen books on the witch trials that took place here over two hundred years ago. Some of the books bear a sigil of three intersecting lines on the cover.
Deductions
At any time, players can ask a question that pieces together information uncovered at the scene with a deduction that explains something previously unknown. In our example, the players could ask:
“Is the minister part of a circle of witch-hunters?”
“Was the minister killed because of his witch-hunter ancestors?”
Or “Did the minister know what was happening around town all along?”
If the players successfully deduce some hidden information, you give the players a Lead. Leads can be spent when piecing the mystery together.
Players can only deduce information relevant to the investigation at hand. Larger ruminations on more complex mysteries should be unraveled when the characters piece the mystery together.
Piecing the Mystery Together
After multiple investigation scenes, it’s sometimes to scratch your chin and think about the larger, underlying mystery. During a long rest, the characters can meet and piece the mystery together.
When they do so, summarize all the clues the characters have uncovered with some relevant context. Like an investigation, players ask questions, but when piecing the mystery together, you answer only with “Yes”, “No”, and occasionally, “Redacted”. The latter is for answers which are neither yes nor no, questions that contain an important false assertion, and conclusions that the characters couldn’t reasonably deduce from their current information. Players can ask a number of questions equal to the number of characters trying to piece the mystery together, and can expend a Lead to ask an additional question.
