DETECTIVES & DUTY is an attempt to bring serious detective work into the world of pen & paper RPGs.
This system was loosely based on “Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective”, the 1981 Sleuth Publications game. These guidelines are intended to provide an intellectual challenge to players well-versed in logic and deduction. The guidelines, however, can also support a more kick-in-the-door style of play. It’s more difficult to build a solid case when incorporating traditional detective work, but it’s also more satisfying.
This system emphasizes the challenge to the players above the challenge presented to their characters. Each case should be a mystery or puzzle for the players themselves, who must work out the answer or solution based on their own wits and wisdom, rather than simply relying on the attributes of their characters.
Detectives & Duty was developed within the context of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, so these documents will use the terms of that system – DM instead of GM, 5e terms for skills, levels, and so on. It can, however, be easily adapted to any system.
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The first document below contains the rules and guidelines for the system. The second document is a description of Ancaster, a city designed as a setting for the system. The final document is a high-resolution map of Ancaster and its districts. Also included are three example cases set in the city.
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Detectives & Duty – System Rules
(Warning! Reading the example cases below will spoil you against being able to play them. Don’t read if you want to be able to play these cases! Check with your DM first.)
Detectives & Duty – Ancaster Example Cases
A Method of Composing Mystery
Some of my players and friends have mentioned that it would be interesting to have a guide describing how to write these cases, perhaps with some commentary on how the game itself should be run.
One thing I’ve learned about writing is that it’s much easier to get words down on the page when you write with a specific person in mind. This idea is echoed in a lot of writing advice. Vonnegut, for example, said, “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” Steinbeck said, “Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.”
Since the idea had been planted in my head, I had been slowly collecting bits and pieces of my method, but I was finding it hard to get all the elements together. So when Bea mentioned the idea again, I figured I would try writing a guide with Bea in mind as my target audience.
Somewhere along the line I started thinking of the guide as being a little like The Screwtape Letters — maybe it’s because it’s a letter from a “senior deceiver” to a “junior deceiver” — so it’s gone a bit in that direction, and the format is a little strange. At no point in the writing of this letter, however, did I become a large centipede.
At long last, for the enjoyment of the public, I present: