Magical Mystery Tour
We love a good mystery. Since the dawn of human storytelling we have revelled in tales to confuse and intrigue. Running a good mystery in a tabletop RPG is something I have always found a challenge. I have longed for a game that really helps the GM to lead the players on a great mystery without the pitfalls of a more traditional model: missed clues, vital rolls that can be failed, and laying all the responsibility for getting it right on the GM.
Brindlewood Bay turns the mystery RPG on its head. Traditionally this style of game sees the GM lead the players through a story to a fixed conclusion. There may be multiple paths, but the ending is always going to be roughly the same. Brindlewood Bay asks the following question: “What if the GM didn’t know the solution either?”. It is designed and written by Jason Cordeva with additional contributions from Calvin Johns, Petra Volkhausen, and Steffie de Vaan. The art in the book is from Cecilia Ferri and it is published by The Gauntlet.
Brindlewood Bay sees the players inhabit the roles of meddling old ladies. It evokes series like Murder She Wrote, Miss Marple, and daytime murder mysteries like Rosemary & Thyme. The latter reference there sums up the game pretty well. It is described as a ‘cosy mystery series’ and that is the vibe of this game. Cosy mystery, with a dose of horror.
Our old ladies get themselves into all sorts of trouble as they stumble across murder most foul. Father’s are thrown overboard, film director’s come to a mysterious end, and even baking shows are not immune from this blood soaked town. Wherever they go, there is a body. The traditional model for this kind of TV show.
The Mavens, as the book refers to them are all specifically old widows in this Massachusetts town. In addition they are all members of a murder mystery book club. These two facets of character creation give the Mavens a shared history to build upon. A common background that quickly establishes friendships, rivalries, and more.
That is not to say these busybodies are the same, far from it. Mechanism wise their stats will all be fairly similar with only a point or two difference meaning one is better at physical activity than another. What really sets them apart, and gives some niche protection, is their Maven move.
Niche protection is an idea in RPGs where a given character specialises in a certain type of action. Games that are influenced by Apocalypse World, which Brindlewood Bay borrows mechanisms from, do this by giving characters playbooks with unique abilities. The result is that players get their moment to shine when their niche is catered to during a scene.
This action is specific to each Maven and no two old ladies can have the same one. They are all themed around TV shows and detective novels. Maybe you’ll have access to a vehicle with the ‘Michael Knight’ move. Perhaps you like Columbo and will say ‘Just one more thing’ a lot! You can even revel in a hot cup of coffee with Agent Dale Cooper. They are all interesting and spark an idea of what your Maven is like outside their stats. It gives you something to hang your roleplaying on and is a really evocative piece of character design.
You’ll notice I used the term Move a bit. Those familiar with RPGs will recognise it as terminology from the Apocalypse World RPG by Vincent and Meguey Baker. Apocalypse World has been a huge influence on the RPG scene since its release in 2010. The shift to giving characters individual playbooks with everything the player needed to know, was revolutionary. The mechanisms by which each character affected the game were called Moves and had a format of good, ok, and bad result depending on the roll of a pool of d6s and the Move itself.
Apocalypse World is a game I’ve never fully got on with. I found the wide range of moves overwhelming on both the player and GM side. Brindlewood Bay uses a very light version of the Move mechanism. Our Mavens have only a few moves at their disposal and they are easy to digest. A good player aid provided by the publisher helps with remembering what you can do at a given moment.
Enough crunch, lets get to what makes this mystery game so different.
Like other mystery RPGs the characters will investigate scenes, interrogate suspects and witnesses, all in the service of gathering clues. Unlike other mystery RPGs, not even the GM knows who the killer is. That sounds like a recipe for chaos and unsatisfying conclusions. Depending on your approach to RPGs you might be right. Let’s take a look behind the mystery curtain.
As our Mavens poke their noses where they are not wanted, they gather clues. These clues are not in set places but come from a list the game provides the GM for each mystery. This list is on top of the locations the mystery provides, and of course a good number of suspects. Basically the game says ‘you don’t need to be a GMing behemoth to make this work, here are all the tools you need’.
The clues can be anything from a steamy love letter to a severed finger! Most importantly the game emphasises that the GM interprets the clues as they see fit in terms of how to fit them into the narrative. For instance our ‘steamy love letter’ could be a written letter but could equally be an overheard conversation or a message left on an answering machine.
As the Mavens discover clues, interview suspects, and investigate crime scenes they build a picture. Each mystery has a difficulty rating. This rating affects the final ‘Theorize move’. This is the moment when the Mavens lay out how they think the murder went down. When you make this move you subtract the difficulty from the result, but you add all the clues you can explain, or explain away. The result of this move will determine if you are right in your accusations, if your suspect escapes for a final thrilling chase, or maybe they end up dead as you have drawn the wrong conclusion.
Now although the GM doesn’t know the answer to the mystery they are more than welcome to throw in their own ideas when the players come to bringing the mystery to a conclusion. Everyone will take part in trying to figure out who killed who and why, using all the clues they have gathered. It’s a beautiful moment of collaborative storytelling and one my players and I absolutely adored. I even got them a murder board, pins, and string to give them something to sort out all the clues on.
As a GM I love this mystery system. It means the game doesn’t put all the pressure on me to lead the players along a carefully laid path of clues, where a mistake here and there can ruin the game. It is an elegant and engaging solution to the issues I have with mystery focused RPGs.
However.
Not all is sunny in Brindlewood Bay.
Brindlewood Bay follows a trend I’ve been enjoying in RPGs where there is a fixed, and short, campaign length baked into the structure of the game. Agon has this as does the forthcoming Deathmatch Island, alongside DIE which I just picked up recently. Some RPG designers have realised that busy adults don’t have time for years long efforts and are starting to provide structures for a smaller number of linked sessions. It is interesting to note that TV seasons have trended this way as well.
Brindlewood Bay’s campaign revolves around a Lovecraftian cult up to no good. They appear initially in the background of your Maven’s investigations, but make their presence known more as the game progresses. As they investigate murders, the Mavens will turn up special clues called Void clues. These do not contribute to the final Theorize Move. A void clue is a horror inflected hint that there is something weird going on in Brindlewood Bay, and that there is a cult behind it.
The GM keeps track of the number of Void clues gathered and at certain numbers is instructed to start revealing more of the strange history of the town. Eventually this leads to direct confrontation with the cult. As the cult tries to summon their eldritch god the Mavens try and put a stop to it, potentially using spells and occult means they have picked up along the way.
Only we never got that far.
Our Brindlewood Bay campaign fizzled out after 4 sessions. The main reason we didn’t feel compelled to continue was the Lovecraftian elements of the game. Everytime I revealed a Void clue, or some of the weird history of the town, the players simply didn’t engage with it. They knew what was going to happen in terms of game structure, but it just didn’t grab them as part of the narrative.
The GM is actually called the Keeper, the same term used in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The Lovecraft mythos is woven into the structure of Brindlewood Bay, but for me it is the least interesting part of the game. It feels tacked on. It’s like the designer thought that people wouldn’t play a game if it was just straight ‘old ladies solve crimes’. Instead they have planted a big 42 page long flag in the middle of the book that says ‘But wait! Cthulhu’.
It also feels like it doesn’t work mechanically. As I’ve said the GM (Keeper) reveals bits of the cult and the weird history of the town as the characters gather void clues. Void clues appear when players roll a 12+ when meddling (gathering clues), from some Maven moves, and as a keeper reaction to a failed roll.
Now you are only rolling d6s and adding maybe 1 or 2 to the roll, so the probability of hitting a 12 isn’t very high. By the time we wrapped the players had 6 void clues. I should have likely revealed more, as the advice in the book is 2 or 3 per session regardless of dice rolls. However I didn’t feel I ran the game wrong, but I ended up with the following issue.
There are 6 mysteries in the core book. You need 15 void clues to trigger the final mystery against the cult. It feels to me like the pace of void clues I was revealing was correct, but I would have run out of mysteries before the campaign ended. Now there is a supplement called ‘Nephews in Peril’ with more mysteries, but I am trying to stick to a review of the core book here. I feel like the book could have spent less time on the cult and included 2-4 more mysteries for variety and to make that void clue reveal pace a little less urgent.
Brindlewood Bay feels like a game that with a bit more focus would have become a firm favourite of mine. As it is I will be checking out some of the other games that use this core system, but I doubt I will be revisiting Brindlewood Bay itself. Maybe for a one shot but not the campaign mode. Brindlewood Bay feels like a victim of trying to appeal to more people, by the inclusion of an aspect that feels like an afterthought, and has definitely become a gaming crutch. For me smaller RPGs, and tabletop games general, should be laser focused on what they do well and not be afraid to wear that badge with pride.
My group and I got on well with the mystery structure in Brindlewood Bay. I loved the improvisational nature of the investigations and my players enjoyed trying to link all the clues together into a coherent answer. If you find that mystery focused RPGs have left you cold in the past, try out this bold idea and see if it solves those issues for you. It’s one of the most interesting mechanisms I have seen and I can see it having a wide influence on the scene.
I bought Brindlewood Bay with my own money, along with the expansion Nephews in Peril which I did not use during our campaign. If you would like to buy Brindlewood Bay you can do so from Drivethrurpg via this link and we get a percentage of the money.
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