Advice/Help What do you do when you have a concept, but can't figure out how to develop it?

[bastion]

I've been stuffing a lot lately with getting beyond the concept stage for my ideas lately. I've now got three ideas rattling around my head, but they refuse to take shape. When you've got a concept you like, how do you go about molding it into something tangible?

This can probably be broken down into more specifics than just how do you develop a concept. I know a lot of this is probably gonna come down to I need to brainstorm and whatnot, but I'm hoping to get some direction to help me start thinking.

• When you have an idea for a setting but no plot, how do you develop a plot?
• When you have an idea for a plot, but need the setting still, how do you develop the setting?
• How do you figure out what kind of story you want to tell?

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For reference, here are the concepts I have. They're probably gonna be small group rps or 1x1x1 rps, if that matters.

Monarch Manor

Kinda the most fleshed out. Basically humans working for a strange owner of a manor, who often entertains strange guests. Owner and guests are supernatural beings, which is kept secret from new staff, but the permanent staff are informed.​

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My primary struggle is how to shape a plot around this. It probably doesn't help that I'm aiming for magical slice-of-life, which I'm not super used to writing.​

Green World

Inspired by several groups I've seen with similar ideas (one being on here, by Rusty of Shackleford another being an old and dead group from DeviantArt.) Basically a peaceful post-apocalyptic setting, where nature has reclaimed cities. A group of humans awaken in this new world with no memory of what happened to the old and must establish a new settlement and life.​

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I basically know what I'm doing for plot, it's a community building / survival slice-of-life kinda story focused on dealing with environmental challenges. My problem here is figuring out what I actually want in the setting beyond ruined cities covered in plants.​

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Supernatural Mystery

By far the least developed, more an idea for mechanics than anything else. I know I want to do a mystery of some kind, where each player has a different key to the puzzle, and their own goal their pursuing. When certain actions are taken by a player, the GM narrates it to keep the culprit a mystery.​

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My main struggle here is figuring out what kind of mystery I want to tell. There's the obvious must mystery, but I can't think of any interesting reason for the murders. Is definitely be more interested in a didn't kind of mystery, but I don't know how to figure out what kind.​

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Feel free to give me feedback and suggestions for how to develop any one of my ideas, but I'm just as interested in general advice I could apply to this struggle in the future.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Monarch Manor I think is the easiest to work with. As you are doing every day life, so imagine what kinda of shenanigans happen when you have guests over. So there could be petty rivalries between guests, a guest who treats the staff like crap, a guest who is a little too familiar.

This is basically “customer service meets family reunion.” From a writing perspective most of the plot is going to come from how characters interact with each other. So as the GM your job is going to be more getting everyone posting on a specific schedule. I recommend having a set time for time skips and a few big events to go over throughout the year.

So the big events can be owners birthday, Christmas, some kind of town festival, etc. you need a handful to sort of fill in the gaps between player made interactions but they don’t have to add up to a set plot.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Green World and your mystery seem to need help in logistics.

I will start with Green World, so you want a world where nature has taken over? My friend can I introduce you to the concept of homesteading? That is exactly what you want to research. For this you can specifically look up sustainable farming or homesteading.

Also maybe Google what is biodegradable and what isn’t. As presumably some ruins will exist that can’t be broken down by nature. Also work out how your humans were put to sleep. Presumably that involved some kind of technology they can use going forward.

—- // —-

So again I think research is your best bet here. Mysteries are all about planning, and the best way to learn how to do that is to read a lot of them. Specifically for this I would recommend cozy mysteries. You seem to want the more slice of life side then the gritty noir.

As a fan of the genre here are just some general tips.

Take a look at the players you have and pick three or four red herrings.

Encourage a lot of side plots and sub-relationships among your players. Someone is having an affair, someone is having money troubles, etc.

Understand that mysteries do not stop at murder. They do not even necessarily have to be scary, a good on going scandal is also fun. Who stole what from whom? Who had a secret love child with whom?

Again that’s where your players and their sub plots come in.

I would say a murder is a good starting point to get everyone together but don’t feel like it has to take up the whole roleplay. Especially since with supernatural elements the very existence of magic can be its own long term mystery.

—- For the murder I recommend having the death and motivation worked out yourself and then taking a look at the players your are given to figure out how to reveal it.

So like if all your players are bumbling idiot types then it’s unlikely they orchestrated an eleborate murder plot. So in that case you gotta kinda NPC the clues.

If however you get a player who makes a character that fits the murders MO have a chat with them in private. Hey do you wanna be the murderer? Here is my basic outline for how it went down.

Absoluteu under no circumstances should anyone outside yourself and whoever players the murderer know what happened.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Lastly (not to spam) but to answer your initial question it’s all about asking why/how?

Like a lot of people stop at the initial question but world building specifically is legit just keep asking yourself (why/how does this work)

For plots it’s one part player engagement, one part managing teams, and one part having themed parties essentially.

Like depending on the genre you are only ever doing a handful of vague talking points and letting your players grow from there. Especially in slice of life. Your job is way more about making sure people post on schedule then creating some three layer cake of a plot/motivation.

 

[GojiBean]

Hoyo!

Well, the easiest way for me to break this down is to break it up into chunks.

So!

Your Question: When you have an idea for a setting but no plot, how do you develop a plot?

My Answer: Ask yourself if you have a genuine setting, or a genre. Because "Fantasy," "Scifi," etc are all genres. They're not settings. The Setting is the physical world itself in which the characters exist in. Also, do you have any sub-genres? For example, primary genre is "Futuristic" and the sub-genre's are "sci-fi" and "war."

So ask yourself what the world looks like. Do you have a map of the world, either self-made or found online? Once you have an image of the physical world in which the RP takes place you can ask yourself about the distribution of races and peoples. Who lives where? What sort of lifestyles do they lead? Are the people of the mountains rugged, tough, and built for hardship? Or are they just everyday people with no special traits?

Questions like these can really help flesh out the world and make it feel more alive and natural, which builds immersion.

As for coming up with a plot, ask yourself about both the genre and the setting you've come up with. Let's say you have a map with 5 continents on it, and it's a futuristic sci-fi genre. Is there a sub-genre like war, colonization, etc?

The sub-genre will usually be a far greater determining factor in coming up with a plot than anything else. And the reason for this is because the primary genre will usually be very broad and on its own it won't say very much. For example, "Fantasy" is the primary and "adventure/exploration" are the sub-genres. In this case, "Fantasy" as a genre will not say much because fantasy is such a broad topic. But the sub-genres of "adventure" and "exploration" say a lot more. The plot, in this instance, will revolve around movement throughout the setting (the world) and most of the events and major plot points will probably revolve around specific locations in the setting.

So identify your Setting, identify your Genre, and identify your sub-genres. But keep your eye on those sub-genres more closely because they'll basically be helping scream at you as to the bulk of your plot's identity and the course it will be taking.

Your Question: When you have an idea for a plot, but need the setting still, how do you develop the setting?

My Answer: While the setting doesn't say much about the plot, the plot will say a lot about the setting thanks to it being comprised of elements from multiple sources including genre, sub-genre, created characters, etc. For example, let's say the plot is about a group of pirates on a quest to prove their innocence after being framed by a group of shadowy rogues, and if they can't clear their name then all the seven seas will be on their asses until they're either dead or in prison. The bulk of your setting will be on the ocean as the method of travel for most pirates is the sea unless the destination lies further inland in which case they're walking or on horseback. So find a good map online, or make one yourself, and make sure it has plenty of water on it.

Your Question: How do you figure out what kind of story you want to tell?

My Answer: This is the multi-million dollar question, isn't it? (this isn't an answer, I know, lol, I'm getting to it)

What is "story?"

Put simply, "story" is the journey that the characters undertake and the culmination of all the obstacles they overcome to reach their objective at the end.

Every character in the RP, even if they're part of an overarching storyline given by the RP itself, has their own story to tell along the way to consider as well. Let's say one of them is a disgraced noble looking to reclaim his honor, reputation, and his estate after it was stolen. His "story" is the struggle and the journey to achieve those goals, and the obstacles he's forced to overcome, and how he overcomes them. So you'll have to understand and respect that character's story and give that player room to develop the character as such along the way by helping put obstacles which are personal to that character in his path.

So how do we define an RP's story?

The bulk of it comes from the obstacles you put in the way of the characters. No obstacles equals no story. Because with no obstacles, there's no real "journey" to a goal that's worth anything. Period.

So figure out the obstacles.

If it's a futuristic sif-fi war RP, for instance, what are the obstacles there? Technology is one. Who's got the best tech, and who's got the worst tech? Obviously the enemy has the best tech and the main cast has the worst tech, otherwise it'll be a stomp and the enemies present no obstacle. Giving the main cast the better tech would rob the RP of any sense of story related to the technological side of things. You don't want that. So make the enemies better equipped and more tech savvy.

If it's a medieval high fantasy with magic and mythological creatures, who's got access to the most dangerous forms of magic? Enemies. Who has access to the greatest throes of knowledge? Enemies and/or the highest social castes who hoard it for themselves and/or are otherwise irresponsible with its distribution to the public (if they even distribute it at all). What about the creatures? How easy are they to kill for would-be "beast hunters?" If they're too easy for one person to kill, you may as well not even include them.

You get the idea, yeah?

How do you find the RP's story? Obstacles, obstacles, obstacles.

Every obstacle you place in the way of the hero's journey will add "story" to the RP, and every major event adds to the plot. A good way to differentiate the two is to say the Plot is the "what" while the Story is the "why."

The Mystery Concepts

Monarch Manor

Kinda the most fleshed out. Basically humans working for a strange owner of a manor, who often entertains strange guests. Owner and guests are supernatural beings, which is kept secret from new staff, but the permanent staff are informed. My primary struggle is how to shape a plot around this. It probably doesn't help that I'm aiming for magical slice-of-life, which I'm not super used to writing.

My Answer: What's the purpose of the owner's "entertainment?" Even if you aren't telling us what it is, you should know what it is. So what's the owner's agenda? What's their goal? What are they trying to achieve/accomplish by providing these services and the entertainment for their "guests?" The more fleshed out this goal, the more easily you can use the main cast to present obstacles to his success and thereby push him to more and more extreme measures to prevent their continued interference. The obstacles bounce off each other adding story and consequence to the RP's plot and event line along the way.

If you're not super used to magical or slice of life, don't worry about it. You don't need to be. Magical is simply magical. There's not much to it. But you will need to figure out the extent of the magic's capabilities, as well as the consequence each form of magic has on the world around the user. Fire Magic, for example, is naturally volatile and will catch anything flammable on fire with little effort. This can have major consequences for the world around the user, so maybe consider the practice of Fire Magic to be either forbidden or something only granted to those who undergo very serious disciplinary training to ensure that only those with a stable mind and a strong sense of responsibility are able/allowed to wield it. That's just one example for one magical form. So think about the various types you want to see/use and make sure each has their respective limits and clearly defined capabilities.

For slice of life, just relax and let things happen. That's what life's all about. So long as the characters are all just living their lives and reacting to things as they happen, that's a slice of life. No real effort or serious involvement from you is necessary. Just let come what may.

Green World

Inspired by several groups I've seen with similar ideas. Basically a peaceful post-post-apocalyptic setting, where nature has reclaimed cities. A group of humans awaken in this new world with no memory of what happened to the old and must establish a new settlement and life. I basically know what I'm doing for plot, it's a community building / survival slice-of-life kinda story focused on dealing with environmental challenges. My problem here is figuring out what I actually want in the setting beyond ruined cities covered in plants.

My Answer: Consider what it means for a world to be "post-apocalyptic" and go from there.

Post-apocalyptic simply means the world suffered a serious and cataclysmic event that destroyed much of the elements that made life what it was at the time before the cataclysm. And if nature is now reclaiming the landscape, there's not much you need to worry about in the way of setting. Nature outside of any city scape will largely remain unchanged as nature is very adept at recovering and restoring itself to the way things were before. There will be some changes, of course. Depending on the nature of the cataclysm and how far the event spread or affected the world what were once flower fields might now be grasslands, what was once a massive mountain might be a shadow of its former self, what was once an open field might now be forest depending on how the threes and wildlife that helps spreads the seeds were affected and how they survived and continued thriving in the wake of humanity's collapse.

The world of a post-apocalyptic RP will almost always simply be nature as it has always been. However, because that nature is now usually a much more direct part of the character's lives it will take on a new life of its own as a potential threat where around any tree up ahead there could be something lying in wait for you.

Supernatural Mystery

By far the least developed, more an idea for mechanics than anything else. I know I want to do a mystery of some kind, where each player has a different key to the puzzle, and their own goal their pursuing. When certain actions are taken by a player, the GM narrates it to keep the culprit a mystery.

My Answer: If I understand this premise correctly the GM serves as a narrator and helps protect the identity of a culprit whenever actions are taken, and each player has a "key" to the mystery of the RP's overarching story.

A rather interesting concept, and one which I admittedly have little experience with. It feels kind of like a table top game.

Since I'm not familiar with this concept and have basically no experience with it I can't say much about this one other than the fact that you're going to have to create a very strict and very easy to understand set of rules to ensure that nobody steps on each other's toes, and you'll need to create some kind of road map of the mystery itself that you can follow and guide people along as the RP moves forward.

The main thing that I can say about this, however, is that whatever mystery you do is going to have a lot to do with the setting. The world the characters live in, or are confined in, will dictate where they can go, who they can talk to, and how much room the mystery itself has to breathe in the overall story. For instance, if you were to make it a story where the entire world was the setting, there would be too much breathing room for the mystery and every step needed to solve it could take in-RP weeks, or months, or even years to reach. That'd make for a very slow and uninteresting RP. But if you confine it to a single building, like a hotel, there might not be enough breathing room depending on what kind of hotel it is, how many floors it has, etc.

So be sure to give enough of a setting space that allows breathing room, but not too much or too little. It's the old Goldie lox argument. It has to be just right.

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Cheers!

~ GojiBean

 

[Idea]

When you have an idea for a setting but no plot, how do you develop a plot?

The first thing to note is you don't really need one. Indeed, there's plenty of sandboxy RPs which could very well be described as "hey isn't this setting neat, wanna make a character and explore it?" There's definitely some merit to this, as it can give your players a lot of freedom, though if you're aiming for anything other than a slice of life or utter chaos it may not be the best. The only question you really have to answer nomatter what is "How and why will players meet/interact with each other?", or if you wanna put a step above that "what will make the characters work together?". After all, even in an RP with only your setting, you need the characters to interact or you can hardly be said to have a roleplay. The most important part to emphasize about this method though, is that players are far more likely to be focused in their characters than your setting. The dracolich sitting on a pile of cursed gold deep in the maze-mountain is a secondary thought to the fact that their character wants a sword that's pointy in both ends. This is not something to fight against, but something to recognize and use to make your RP more interesting by indulging the players in exploring their characters and weaving a narrative and worldbuilding born out of that character exploration. Make it so the blacksmiths don't have time to make a silly idea like that sword with two points, but make rumors that if you can hunt a certain beast, the best blacksmith in town will make a sword to your specification, a little contest that will have the players excited to learn enough about your world to reach their goals.

That being, that whole thought is an exception. In reality, you generally want to have a plot, if not outright make it the focus (of the premise). In that case, an excellent place to start is by going over the most interesting parts of the world or the conflicts it has in it. What's REALLY special about your world? Note that this doesn't have to be something only your world has and you don't have to the best at it, but it should be something that is invokes the feelings you want people to experience from that setting. A horror setting will probably want to highlight things that are dangerous and off-putting, that create suspense and the sensation that you never really know when what is coming, a comedic setting will want the sensation that things don't tend to work out right and that it really doesn't take itself too seriously. In most cases, as a rule of thumb the things you're looking for are the things that make players feel excited and that satisfy cravings they may be having. All of that is just rules of thumb though, and most of the time if you need to resort to them your setting may be lacking a strong identity.

As a point of example, I will bring up two settings of mine: Euphorium, and the near-future of the plot "London B Train". Euphorium is a fantasy world in which free will is a property of matter, capable of breaking the laws of the universe. From life to sapience to magic itself, all of those things are depending on the concentration of free will. Euphorium then has several eras, creating a rich interconnected history and a roleplay in it can be placed at any of its points. Magic and its use changed over time as well, and so depending on the time chosen you might be striving for dominance between tribes where the only use of magic aside from innate 'mutations' will leave you like a ragdoll, or you might be in an urban city fueled by magic where people are searching for wish-granting rings. To me the magic if Euphorium and how it plays into the rest of the setting elements is the selling point of it, and the thing I want to emphasize.
The second example, from the plot London B Train, is that of a near future where public teleporters (there are no private ones cause it's too expensive and cumbersome) have been invented, effectively putting many means of transportation on the path to extinction. Those means of transportation had to adapt to survive, and in the case of trains they began putting emphasis on the journey rather than the destination, converting themselves into hotels and restaurants. Here where I put the emphasis is on this central detail of the setting, the fact that there are teleporters now and transportation had to convert. I also try to point out the slice of life possibilities in this setting, as the plot I am aiming for with it is a slice of life one.

Once you've decided what you want to highlight, you can construct a lot that really interacts with that or which puts a lot of emphasis on it. One of my favorite roleplays to date was a 1x1 where my character was a monster in an era they were going extinct, who hired a bounty hunter to help her chase down the aforementioned wish-granting rings and London B Train is a plot about the characters working together in a restaurant-train in that near future. Plus, although I've mainly discussed the interesting focused of the setting, you can also just go for the conflicts. Is there a war coming up / going on? You could try to prepare for it, fight in it or try to stop it. Has a Mcguffin been stolen? Chase after it! Is there a great deal of mysterious ruins? Why not be explorers, and if there is political conflict, why not invite players to try to navigate the complex courts and try not to start bloodshed by accident?

If you really, really are just plain out of ideas, but you also really want to use that setting, you may want to see what players may be after. As a GM this isn't the most fun and you do run a serious risk of losing motivation quickly, but it is an option. Consider "what kind of plots would attract players to this?". Of course, any kind of plot-building needs to consider players, but this is one is making that the whole goal rather than a partial goal or even a constraint. We're talking about "I don't know what else to put here, so I'll just make a magic highschool in my setting" kind of stuff. Now, despite how that may sound this is not a bad approach. Just a very delicate one. In this approach you may want to consider things like "what kind of roles would players most enjoy in this world" or "what's a good general plot that is cohesive but has enough room for players to add many different kinds of characters?". Making a magic highschool can be pretty interesting if your magic or the highschool itself are openly sufficiently interesting (ah, but you see there was this secret chamber with awesome stuff! Is an awful excuse because we can't be excited for what we don't know about) and allow players a lot of opportunity for exploring and getting the highlight, then you could have a great plot with this -but it's still delicate, because you're not putting emphasis on what you actually want, so you might end up neglecting either the player side (making their plot too generic or not paying enough attention to characters for instance) or your own (not tying in your setting enough and thus you lose interest).

When you have an idea for a plot, but need the setting still, how do you develop the setting?

Ah, for this one I will bring up a classic of mine: The golden rule of consistency.

For those who don't know yet, the golden rule of consistency has two components: Internal consistency and consistency of consequence. Internal consistency states that you must remain consistent with any rule you establish, but that you can establish any rules provided they don't contradict each other. You can have a world where people fly by picking their nose. If someone picks their nose normally during a conversation and doesn't take off though, that may be an issue unless you have a way to stop that in-universe.

Consistency of consequence extends the previous principle to the implications, both cause and consequence, of the actions, under the general principle that everything has a cause and effects. It brings up questions like "why can everyone fly by picking their nose" and "how have people responded to this?". Maybe there is a lot more medical focus on noses because people are more prone to getting hurt on their nostrils. Maybe there are safety rules for picking your nose, or devices that let you stick to the ground. And if you apply the rule again, now maybe those rules are a big point of contention, or the devices are being weaponized.

If you already have a plot, then you already have a core you can build this from. All you need do is pick the components of your plot and apply the golden rule of consistency to them. "Seven adventurers find an ore in a mine that could stop the rise of the dark lord". Alright, let's see: Who is the dark lord? Why are they a threat, why did they fall, what is causing them to rise, what might that mean for the world? How can this ore stop that, what properties allow for that to happen, and do those properties have any other applications? Is the ore rare, or common, if it is common what kind of applications does it have and how has that affected the markets, if is rare do people try to find it anyway, has tension occurred because of that, and maybe there are groups dedicated to finding it? Of course I've only touched the tip of the iceberg, and if you start making and answering questions like this you will see they create more questions. The main questions though that the rule of consistency asks is "remaining consistent with what was established, what does this imply as a cause or consequence".

I should note that one can also use the rule in the case of having a setting and making a plot, but it's generally easier to do for a plot cause the plot is more concise whereas a setting may span a whole set of different things.

How do you figure out what kind of story you want to tell?

By process of elimination.

If I don't have an idea I want to do, then I don't start anything. There's plenty of other stuff to do after all. Once I do have ideas (and I certainly have no issue coming up with more than I can chew worth of ideas) then what I do is try to dig into the core of what I really want to do. A lot of it is done with gut feeling in my case or because I already knew from the start what the core that interested me was, but one can also do it by other means such as trial and error. I find it an important step because finding what's really important in the story is key to knowing how flexible you can be and about what, and helps me know what exactly what I want to make more central in the story.

A lot of the times though, because I have a lot of ideas and I strip them down to the core, each individual core ends up not having that much. One could build a whole story out of the core, but it often has details that need fleshing out, and and so one of the methods that I also often use is mixing and matching things. This helps me both in getting plots and getting settings, especially since I may well have a plotless setting and a settingless plot that happen to be compatible.

One thing to be careful of though, is to not overextend in terms of "the story you want to tell". After all, we are talking about RPing, collaborative writing where you take the role of a character. The medium just isn't as adept to having a particular story in mind. What you have are mostly premises, and some potential ideas attached for later events. But being too fixated (unless you are a very heavy planner working with another) on a very specific plotline is likely to lead to railroading. As a rule of thumb "the story you want to tell" ought to be general, flexible, the exploration of a premise or some mixture thereof.

Monarch Manor
Kinda the most fleshed out. Basically humans working for a strange owner of a manor, who often entertains strange guests. Owner and guests are supernatural beings, which is kept secret from new staff, but the permanent staff are informed.
My primary struggle is how to shape a plot around this. It probably doesn't help that I'm aiming for magical slice-of-life, which I'm not super used to writing.

When I read this my immediate feeling is disappointment. So the NPCs get to be supernatural beings, but the PCs are regular humans. The fact that your setting knowingly has all these supernatural creatures and they are such a big emphasis, but you aren't allowed to actually play one yourself is like being hungry with a fruit tree right next to you, just barely out of reach.

Personal complaints aside, a slice of life plot around this is basically just presenting the scenario: You are recruited to be staff here or you already worked here, so you deal with the various guests disguised as supernatural creatures. That is a good enough plot on it's own, and I think adding other things might make this stray from it's primary point, though I also think you shot yourself a bit in the foot by making new staff unaware of the supernaturalness of the place. I just seems to me like it would be far more engaging for a player to have their character having to knowingly figure out how to deal with situations involving supernatural beings, having to figure out the characteristics and how to best cater to those guests.

Do remember that if you do engage with a slice of life sort of RP, characters are key. Players are more likely to be interested in their own characters than the hotel or its residents, so try to shape the slice of life elements around letting the players explore their characters, have their strengths and weaknesses highlighted, getting the spotlight and diving into their stories, personalities and character arcs.

Green World
Inspired by several groups I've seen with similar ideas. Basically a peaceful post-post-apocalyptic setting, where nature has reclaimed cities. A group of humans awaken in this new world with no memory of what happened to the old and must establish a new settlement and life.I basically know what I'm doing for plot, it's a community building / survival slice-of-life kinda story focused on dealing with environmental challenges. My problem here is figuring out what I actually want in the setting beyond ruined cities covered in plants.

Now, first of all, the biggest question for players and yourself is: What the hell happened to make the world like this?

And also: Why are the player characters without memories, together, in a place like that?

Pick your reasons, pick any traits you have in mind regarding the ruined cities covered in plants, and start applying the golden rule of consistency from there. What has the cause of the apocalypse led to (aside from plant cities)? Are there other survivors, what are their communities like? How has the biosphere changed?

Also, what led to the cause of the apocalypse? Did that have any effect on what the world looks like today?

What are the implications of the existence of whatever happened to the characters?

Etc...

Supernatural Mystery
By far the least developed, more an idea for mechanics than anything else. I know I want to do a mystery of some kind, where each player has a different key to the puzzle, and their own goal their pursuing. When certain actions are taken by a player, the GM narrates it to keep the culprit a mystery.My main struggle here is figuring out what kind of mystery I want to tell. There's the obvious must mystery, but I can't think of any interesting reason for the murders. Is definitely be more interested in a didn't kind of mystery, but I don't know how to figure out what kind.

If you can't think of an interesting for the murders... maybe you don't need to have murders? Not every mystery needs to be a murder mystery after all, if anything the genre is saturated with those. And since what you have in mechanics is puzzles and the like, it makes more sense to perhaps make more a "ruin-delving" type mystery? Maybe you could even put this in your post-apocalypse roleplay.



Anyways, hope that helps. Best of luck and happy RPing!