(Kickstarter) #ZineMonth2022 - Unchained Mysteries by Jesse Burenko

Unchained Mysteries is a game agnostic critical examination of mystery scenarios in role-playing games in three parts. The first part deconstructs the popular linear or branching scene structure whereby a mystery unfolds as the players follow a chain of clues from one encounter to the next. It's a hard look at the creative limits, unfair demands, lack of uncertainty and removal of player agency in this common scenario format.

The second part is all about rebuilding the very idea of a mystery from the ground up. It starts from the premise that role-playing is its own unique medium not beholden to the constraints, assumptions, structures, and tropes of other media. Proceeding from the heart of a dramatic mystery: a desperate crime and building outward through a vibrant cast of NPCs impacted by that event, a methodology for scenario construction that is teeming with unresolved dramatic tension is revealed.

The final part discusses the practical execution of the scenario in play. The focus is to move away from the idea of concrete clues and planned reveals and instead to focus on active and motivated NPCs that work to bring the player characters into their crises. The mystery is no longer an inert thing to be discovered but rather a set of conflicts still in motion desperate for resolution