This is a really cool game!
Are there any published scenarios, or scenario seeds, or advice on how to construct the Case? Since you need a Case that also features the mystery of the detective's own past, I've had a lot of difficulty building my first Case (and RPG mystery scenarios are hard in the first place).
Hey Zeedox, thanks for checking it out!
I've been working on my first full Case File, The Case of the Signal Fire, and I hope that the back half of the book contains some useful Case framing advice. There's also the Case of the Example of Play, which is an example of play for the game but also could be a scenario seed to build on.
My big practical piece of advice would be that the Detective's own past can be relatively simple - and so can the Case, given the Detective's significant challenges (amnesia, etc). They'll also get more complicated when the Detective players (and the World) add in more details over time. Also, steal from movies and books! Grab a fun murder mystery, then make it much easier to solve (double or triple up on clues, make sure the Detective has many more ways to figure it out than in a Sherlock Holmes story, and be prepared to toss Investigation rolls to players that snap things together when they need it).
Another piece of advice is that the amnesia doesn't necessarily have to be a direct result of the Case. Two of my playtest cases had the Detective's amnesia be a direct result of the main plot, but another three involved coincidental amnesia - the classic 'bonked on the head' option from some investigation, but also catching a fever or having an unrelated psychological crisis are options I've used. That last one can be really easily tied in to the themes of the story - whatever the Detective's past self was dealing with that reached a crisis, it can be reflected in the Case in some fashion (It's also, basically, what Disco Elysium does, with some Exofamiliar twists).
I hope this all helps, and let me know if there's anything else I can help with.
So! I managed to build a Case - The Case of the Fall, where a husband and his butler has murdered his wife and thrown her out a window to make it look like an "accident". You were right to keep things simple - even though all the clues seems TOO obvious to me, for the players it was just hard enough that we could finish in a single sitting. Inspired by the real death of Appia Annia Regilla.
It was hard to drop clues about the identity and backstory of the detective, but I imagine that will be easier on a second playthrough. I'm really eyeing the optional rule to color descriptions based on the current holder of the glass. Also hard to decide when to ask for a roll, and when just to give a Clue directly to the players.
Fun game, all in all! The players we're imagining it like Pixar's Inside Out, which I thought was a great take on it.
Oh, and as a second suggestion: Consider having them roll, but the roll is to determine if they get Deja Vu, or the World gets Deja Vu, or Morale or whatnot, and the Clue happens either way. This can be usefully be framed as 'do you easily find and digest this detail, or does it take you a moment or remind you of something you don't want to remember, in an inchoate way.'
It's a good way to split the difference between knowing they really need the Clue and wanting it to be something they can engage with.
That’s good framing - you get the result but with a little flavoring, and maybe some resource gain / loss. I’ll try that next time.
How about when there are many clues in a place, some a little bit more hidden? For example, I had a ring hidden in some high grass that the players never rifled through, and I didn’t know if how heavy handed I should have been in pointing it out.
My advice on that front is just to have more clues than you need, and so if they miss a few juicy ones it's not the end of the world. You can tell them after they solve the Case! There's a Reconstructure expertise, if I remember my own writing correctly, that also lets them know if they haven't found any clues you had pre-written.
If they absolutely need a clue, force it (offer them a roll where no matter what, they find the clue, but a bad roll stings a bit) as discussed above. Missed clues are actually good, because they mean the players genuinely get to carve out their own path through the mystery - as long as there's enough clues to get there in the end. You may have to generate some on the fly to make sure, but again that helps the players take ownership of their solution.
