What do You Think Happened? A Game Changing Plug and Play Mystery Mechanic From Brindlewood Bay
I’ve been watching From which is a series by the creators of Lost, and it’s very much in a similar vein. Our protagonists are trapped in a contained location, and its spooky, dangerous, and ruddy mysterious. Whilst watching it, I’ve spent most of the time thinking of how awesome it would be as a TTRPG game, but I’ve been very conscious of not wanting it to turn into a railroad - where the actors, mysteries, and events play out exactly as the show.
This sent me down a rabbit hole where I discovered a little gem of a game called Brindlewood Bay, and its nifty investigation mechanic.
This post will contain some spoilers about From, up to season 3, so if you plan on watching it (you should) and if you care about spoilers, then look away now. In fact, better yet, Go look at my series on GOZR instead, and come back when you’re all caught up on the show.
Spoilers for From Ahead - Be Warned - I don’t Want to Hear any Moaning From You!
The premise of From is that people travelling about America seemingly randomly come across a tree blocking the road. When they turn around they find that the road is now unfamiliar, and it soon takes them through a strange little one street town. Typically they pass through town and then out the other side, but after a few miles on the road, they find themselves entering the town again the way they came in, sort of like the old mobile game Snake, where you exit from one side of the screen and enter from the opposite side.
Protagonists are trapped this way, and to make matters worse, there’s no cellular network or internet anywhere in the area. The world thinks they’re missing, presumed dead.
In addition to this, there’s a small cluster of other problems keeping the pressure on:
Immortal vampire style monsters come out of the surrounding woods at night, and literally eviscerate anyone they can catch. They use psychological trickery to lure people into vulnerable positions, and take great pleasure in inflicting physical and emotional trauma on their victims.
Some townsfolk hear voices in their heads, some entity is insinuated to have the power to enter peoples minds and communicate with them directly, often causing them to act irrationally and murderously.
Ghosts (some benign, others less so) frequently appear, driving townsfolk into madness, and dangerous situations.
Crop harvests fail for no reason, leading to starvation and pressure to find new resources further afield.
Each new person that finds themselves trapped in the town is a risk to themselves and the community at large, with many in denial about their new situation leading them to lash out or make poor choices which impact the lives of others.
On top of all this, the show piles on mystery after mystery
Who was the man who’s voice appeared on the radio?
The electricity and water conduits in town go nowhere, so how do they supply power and water?
Who made the Talismans?
Who is the little boy on the telephone? What does he want?
Who is the ghostly boy in white? What does he want?
Who are the ghosts of the dead children that appear to Tabitha and Jade?
Who is Martin, why was he chained up? Why did he infect Boyd with worm like parasites?
Why is there a magical dungeon in the woods?
Who is the mysterious man at the end of season three that killed Jim?
Why is Julie time-travelling?
A glaring issue with all this is that A) Since the show hasn’t provided these answers yet, it’s a phenominal amount of prep work for GMs to do so in a way that makes satisfactory narrative sense for the players. And B) It’s too big of an ask to hope that the players would come to all the right conclusions about these mysteries to enable them to solve the grand conspiracy and use this knowledge to escape as per your design.
As a GM, I can easily see that you’d either have to heavily railroad players from event to conclusion to event to conclusion… or you’d leave them to figure it out for themselves and they would get bored and frustrated.
Non-starter then, right? Wrong.
Done with Spoilers Now, This is Where Brindlewood Bay Comes In
This is so cool. I was on r/RPG speaking about my idea for From, and someone mentioned that they would incorporate mechanics from Brindlewood Bay. What the hell is that, I thought?
So, quick trip to Drive Thru RPG, one purchase, and scan through later. I am now in the know.
I’m not going to go into the full mechanics that Brindlewood presents, as I probably couldn’t do them justice after the one read through, but I will give you the gist, and then I’ll tell you where my head took the idea.
You know that old D&D meme, about how as a GM you should listen to your players theories during play, and then mine them for good ideas? Well, Brindlewood Bay takes that idea seriously, and then codifies it. If the players are able to tie all the clues together into a satisfying narrative and beat a dice roll - then whatever narrative that they come up with is the truth of the matter.
This is pure gold!
As a GM, you don’t need to spend hours prepping and weaving a web of clues into a grand conspiracy anymore, you just need to come up with an overview and a vibe. The players are in charge of sewing it all together and making it work.
No more players getting frustrated and bored at the table, unable to piece together some complex plot. Now as long as whatever they have come up with passes your sniff test, and a dice roll, then it’s good!
So, How WOuld I Stand on the Shoulders of Giants?
First and foremost, I think this might be truly system agnostic. Obviously games that already focus on investigation have a leg up here, but I can’t see why this couldn’t work in something like D&D. So that’s nice to know, going in.
Here’s how it works.
There are Clues, and there is Evidence. A Clue is a hint that points players in the direction of some Evidence. Evidence is either witnessing first hand, finding supporting proof of, or corroborated witness statements supporting something ruddy mysterious, to do with the grand conspiracy.
When the players find evidence, the most important thing to give them is a post-it note for the wall, or something similar, which they write their evidence onto. Then it goes up on the wall or similar for all to see. Obviously they can have hand outs and props and stuff too, but the Post-it notes are essential.
Over the course of the adventure, the players will find lots of Evidence, and you should encourage them to theorise and attempt to tie the evidence together.
Some of the evidence might be ignored, this is OK - it might turn out to be a Red Herring.
When they are ready, and when they have unanimously agreed, the players present the GM with their theory. This should do two important things:
Tie chosen supporting evidence together in a way that makes sense.
Conclude with a proposed tangible action to take which would test their theory and resolve the grand conspiracy (E.G Catching the killer, escaping the township)
As GM, if you’re satisfied that the theory narrative is logical, you count all of the pieces of supporting evidence from the wall of post-it notes that were referenced in the theory, and you deduct all the Red Herrings from that (I.E the Evidence that was not woven into the players theory). The result is your target value.
So if there were 10 pieces of evidence available, and the players used 8 of them in their theory, you'd deduct the 2 they didn't use, leaving 6 as your target number.
You then roll a dice in secret. If the result is less than your target value then the players’ theory is correct, but don’t tell them. Either way, the players should proceed with their proposed action. If they were right, and if their action succeeds then they win. If not, well, better luck next time - but maybe they will find some more Evidence. Perhaps they were close to the truth after all?
The key variable at play here is the size of the dice that you use. The bigger the dice, the harder it is to get a low number, and therefore the more Evidence will need to be gathered and used. I like this, it means that you could have a short adventure using maybe a d6 or a longer adventure using a d20.
I’m going to flesh this out more over time, and who knows, maybe when I’ve finished The Rusted Colossus I’ll even have a go at building my own game system with it at it’s core.
Conclusion
Firstly, thanks to The Gauntlet for making Brindlewood Bay and inspiring me. If you want a cool, rules lite, Murder, She Wrote style investigation game about Grannies foiling Cthulhu then you should definitely check it out - it looks awesome.
Secondly, I really hope that you can see the potential for this like I can. I can’t wait to try it out next time I run an investigative game!
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could help us out by sharing it on your socials, dropping us a comment down below, and maybe even think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.
This post contains affiliate links.
I’ve been watching From which is a series by the creators of Lost, and it’s very much in a similar vein. Our protagonists are trapped in a contained location, and its spooky, dangerous, and ruddy mysterious. Whilst watching it, I’ve spent most of the time thinking of how awesome it would be as a TTRPG game, but I’ve been very conscious of not wanting it to turn into a railroad - where the actors, mysteries, and events play out exactly as the show.