Are you a fan of mysteries?

Sleuths is a new way of conducting "procedural" investigations in tabletop roleplaying game format.  If you want to play:

• Genteel sleuths like Hercule Poirot, Jessica Fletcher, or Sherlock Holmes
• Savvy police detectives like Monk, Columbo, Shawn Spencer, or DCI Tom Barnaby
• Dedicated forensic scientists like Gil Grissom or Temperance "Bones" Brennan
• Medical examiners like Quincy, Watson, or Harrow
• Adventurous gumshoes like Phryne Fischer or Sam Spade
• Historical detectives like Judge Dee or William of Baskerville
• Sci-fi and fantasy detectives like Rick Deckard or Constantine
• Or even plucky teenagers like Velma Dinkley, Encyclopedia Brown, or Veronica Mars

...Sleuths gives players and gamemasters the experience of having incredible mystery-solving adventures.

Hit All the Traditional Mystery Beats

The mechanisms of the game are carefully crafted to provide the same twists and turns to investigations that you see in major mystery shows and novels. The detail that seemed innocuous at the start of the investigation suddenly gains shocking relevance. The prime suspect suddenly winds up dead or turns out to have an air-tight alibi.  The elusive clue lying in the background of the serial killer's first victim is not realized until it's almost too late. All these sorts of twists and turns emerge naturally from the investigation system.

Procedural, Nonlinear Mysteries

The game system can generate compelling mysteries with several evocative enigmas along the way. The mystery landscape changes and evolves based on your decisions, reacting to your choices and changing the challenges as you go. Unlike many mystery adventures in TTRPG's, mysteries in Sleuths are naturally non-linear, with sleuths uncovering enigmas in any order, or even at the same time.

Using an innovative and powerful Questions and Masks plotting system to drive the investigation, players have a simple structure for working their way through even the thorniest of mysteries. These plot elements are managed by a Stars and Strikes system that makes everything work in a similar way.

And with many pages of "generators" – tables you can roll on for new content and ideas – you will be able to easily create mysteries filled with exciting twists and turns.

Simple, Powerful Sleuth Creation

Based on the character system introduced in the popular Dungeon Hero and Welcome Aboard, Captain games, character creation takes  very little time and allows for all sorts of interesting, dramatic characters.

Want psychics in your supernatural private investigator game? No problem. Want your sleuth to have OCD?  It's easy.  Do they have a powerful "mind castle" that lets them replay crime scenes for insight?  Gotcha covered.  Want them to be able to make precise calculations by examining bugs or blood spatter found at the scene of the crime? Easy peasy. Whatever characteristics your sleuth has, they're easily expressible in the game system, and it works naturally with the game's mechanics.

It's About the Investigation Choices 

The focus of gameplay is about the strategies, hunches, procedures, and risks the sleuths take pursuing their goals, not about whether they look under the right rock for a clue, guess what the GM was thinking, or roll high enough for their theory of the mystery to be correct.

There's an objective reality to the murder from the very beginning – no hand-wavy, make-the-murder-up-as-you-go stuff here. Your sleuths really are honing in on the killer, really are sussing the method and motive of the murder.  It's not about whether they can figure out the solution – it's about what they did to arrive at it, and what choices they make to bring the killer to justice once they do.

Players Don't Have to be as Shrewd as Sherlock Holmes or Benoit Blanc

This one is huge.  In traditional mystery RPG sessions, the players have to solve the mystery, interpret the clues, etc.  That means the mystery can only be as befuddling as the players themselves can unravel.  Who among us would notice that the Colonel switched to walking with his cane in his right hand for exactly twenty-two minutes during the wedding reception, and understand what that means in relation to the hourglass-shaped callouses found on the dead maid's left ring finger?  How do you play a character like Sherlock Holmes, who is a world class detective, if you aren't one yourself?

Easy! You give the player a leg up!

In Sleuths, the players get extra information about the mystery that their sleuth characters don't have.  That way, their sleuths can be smarter than the players are because the sleuth characters can make logical jumps that the players already understand.  If you, as a player, know what that blinking red light on the tower across the bay means, then you can have your sleuth character cleverly deduce it!

Clues are Character

A consequence of the above is that players can create the clues their sleuths discover, rather than having the game master create them. This allows the clues that a sleuth finds to be a way of expressing their character.

For example, say a jewel thief ended up dead in the vault. What clues would a sleuth find to solve the case?

• The doctor sleuth might find telltale abrasions on the body.
• The gentleman sleuth might notice strange, regular grooves on the vault floor.
• The mathematician might notice a telltale pattern in the guard timetables.
• The busybody old mystery writer might talk amiably with the employees until she finds a curious contradiction.
• The CSI tech might analyze a strange scent of pine oil in the air with a chromatoscope.
• The spirit medium might go into a trance and get terrifying visions about the death of the thief.

The nature of the clues these sleuths find reveal a lot about how they go about solving the mysteries. Part of the fun is coming up with creative, fun, and interesting clues that focus in on your sleuth's particular skills, talents, training, and insights.

What The Game Comes With

The game comes with almost 200 pages of PDF content containing everything you need to play.  The vast majority of that is GM support, sample adventures, and mystery randomizer tables.  The rules themselves fit in a lean 23 pages including examples, and sleuth creation is only four pages.

The game comes with:

• Sleuth creation
• Gameplay rules
• How to run the game / GM support
• Pages and pages of mystery generator tables
• The Willow Point Werewolf sample adventure
• The Matryoshka Murders sample adventure
• A "Rosters" document with character sheets and reference tables
• A GM Screen with handy tables

The Willow Point Werewolf is a sample mystery in the "cartoon kids solving spooky mysteries" genre. During a Fourth of July celebration, a werewolf appears atop the highest hill of the roller coaster at Willow Point amusement park. As it terrorizes visitors night after night, the park soon becomes deserted and closes. Can the gang of teenage mystery solvers get to the bottom of the mystery and save Mr. and Mrs. Funningham from having to close their beloved park for good? Comes with a theme park map brochure handout to give to your players.

The Matryoshka Murders is a sample mystery in the "gritty serial killer chaser" genre. When a matryoshka doll is found with severed fingers in it, echoes of a similar case from decades ago lead a team of Albuquerque detectives to suspect they are looking at the work of a serial killer. As they unravel the mystery, they need to discover the hidden identity and dark history of a brutal killer before fear and panic of the "Russian Doll Killer" takes hold in the city. Can they bring the killer to justice, or will the killer escape, leaving the Duke City to live in fear of a killer in their midst from then on?

The game's rosters document contains a few pages intended to be printed for play, with character sheets / sample sleuths, two mystery tracking form styles, and some handy reference tables. You only need to print these rosters to play – the rest of the rules content can be used digitally or optionally printed.

So, will you catch the killer?