The Investigation Problem

By the mid-2000s, tabletop RPGs had spent three decades perfecting combat. Initiative systems, damage models, armor class, saving throws — designers had built a deep mechanical vocabulary for violence. Then you tried to run a mystery.

Your players entered the crime scene. You asked them to roll Spot Hidden. They failed. The clue that connected the murder to the cult leader stayed buried. The scenario stalled. Two hours of prep — wasted by a bad d100 roll.

This was the “missed clue” problem, and it plagued every investigative RPG from the original Call of Cthulhu onward. Good GMs fudged the roll. Great GMs placed the clue somewhere else. But the system itself had no answer. Investigation lived in a mechanical dead zone — dice rolls governing a narrative process where failure produced nothing interesting.

Robin D. Laws looked at this and saw a design flaw masquerading as tradition. He didn’t write a GM advice column about it. He built a system that made the problem structurally impossible.