I play-tested an early draft of these rules with Jamis a couple years ago and I think the final version is an excellent framework. It provides a simple and comprehensive system for generating mystery plots. There are clear guidelines for crafting the initial hook, generating clues, obstacles, threats, and confirming hypotheses. There are expanded tables with a lot of highly specific prompts that are still broad enough for most genres. Most tables also have compact versions with prompts that are even more freeform.
I especially like the mechanisms for naturally escalating tension as you gather clues during an investigation.
This framework also seems pretty modular and easy to add to any game. You could start or stop using the system in the middle of a session without a lot of fiddling.
(I wrote this when rating the game but it's not showing, so I'll just copy it)
I never thought a generic mystery system could exist. I was wrong.
I've been playing TOTWSaM for most of its beta period, through I think 4 different iterations of the game. There have been changes, of course, but the core always remained the same. And that's because it works.
Jamis has found a way to dissect what makes a mystery a mystery, what kind of clues are there and how you can get them... All of it independently of the specific genre you might be playing. I've played mysteries regarding: a jedi trying to find what happened to an old contact decades ago in a remote planet, a normal dude in today's actuality wanting to know if his uncle's death was really natural or not (and why is there a ghost in the manor he just inherited?), a university student in a steampunk/post-post-apocaliptic world receiving a mystery letter from a secret organization...
Whatever mystery you have in mind you can play. TOTWSaM doesn't make any assumptions. You can play with characters and worlds you already know, or you can build it from scratch as the game progresses.
I usually like to change things up and after a game move on to a new system, but since TOTWSaM is not a system but a framework that acts as an add-on I feel confident in saying that it's going to be a regular presence in my games.
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I play-tested an early draft of these rules with Jamis a couple years ago and I think the final version is an excellent framework. It provides a simple and comprehensive system for generating mystery plots. There are clear guidelines for crafting the initial hook, generating clues, obstacles, threats, and confirming hypotheses. There are expanded tables with a lot of highly specific prompts that are still broad enough for most genres. Most tables also have compact versions with prompts that are even more freeform.
I especially like the mechanisms for naturally escalating tension as you gather clues during an investigation.
This framework also seems pretty modular and easy to add to any game. You could start or stop using the system in the middle of a session without a lot of fiddling.
(I wrote this when rating the game but it's not showing, so I'll just copy it)
I never thought a generic mystery system could exist. I was wrong.
I've been playing TOTWSaM for most of its beta period, through I think 4 different iterations of the game. There have been changes, of course, but the core always remained the same. And that's because it works.
Jamis has found a way to dissect what makes a mystery a mystery, what kind of clues are there and how you can get them... All of it independently of the specific genre you might be playing. I've played mysteries regarding: a jedi trying to find what happened to an old contact decades ago in a remote planet, a normal dude in today's actuality wanting to know if his uncle's death was really natural or not (and why is there a ghost in the manor he just inherited?), a university student in a steampunk/post-post-apocaliptic world receiving a mystery letter from a secret organization...
Whatever mystery you have in mind you can play. TOTWSaM doesn't make any assumptions. You can play with characters and worlds you already know, or you can build it from scratch as the game progresses.
I usually like to change things up and after a game move on to a new system, but since TOTWSaM is not a system but a framework that acts as an add-on I feel confident in saying that it's going to be a regular presence in my games.
Happy gaming!