atamajakki:

winterwombat:

lionesskate:

I tend to have an answer but there’s been times when my PCs have come up with something more interesting and I’ve retroactively made them correct.

The last time I ran a big mystery game with an answer firmly in mind, it only took my players three sessions to consider my intended solution, notice a bunch of logical inconsistencies with it, and conclude that it clearly wasn’t possible. 

Meanwhile, I’m just sitting there desperately trying to think of something better, thankful that years of running games has given me a much better poker face than most people realize. In retrospect, it was a good lesson on the importance of being flexible. 

The Dracula Dossier (for Night’s Black Agents) is essentially a published campaign that is built for this structure, and it’s one of the best books I own.