Notes and Commentary

In this section, we’ll discuss the thoughts and design elements of the Hints and Hijinx System, why we made them the way we did, and discuss ways you can tweak them to fit your own game. If you are looking for the copy and paste game rules, jump to the Hints and Hijinx Game Template section.

Introduction

In great mysteries there’s a three act structure: The Opening, The Investigation, and The Reveal (or what we call The Deduction). In Hints and Hijinx games, the Introduction section is Act I: The Opening. Write what is happening and why the character in the game is going on an investigation - what is the mystery to be solved? A good introduction should telegraph to the players what they’re trying to understand with their clues and questions they need answered. Reinforce the introduction throughout the entire game: The cover, art, layout design, color choices, etc. Should all exude and reinforce your introduction.

Character Creation

Character Creation in Hints and Hijinx is fast and simple and is loosely based off Breathless by Fari RPGs. It includes assigning dice to two stats, and answering a series of questions about whom the character is. We recommend including at least 3-4 questions, and can include defining important NPCs they will interact with. Such as:

• What is your name?
• What are you running from back home?
• What aspirations do you have?
• Why are you here?
• What is the name of your supervisor?
  • What is their personality?
  • Late last night they radioed you, a bit tipsy, and asked prying questions. What were they? How did you answer in the moment?

Playing the Game

Skills

By default, characters have two skills, and they will assign a d12 and a d10 die to them. If you want to give characters additional skills, we recommend giving additional stats a d8. Consider the types of skills the character will want to overcome the complications or events in your mystery. These should be somewhat thematically appropriate. In Waffles for Esther, the main character is a waitress, and so the two skills were: “Waitress” - Keep the waffles safe, make small talk, avoid people
“Detective” - ask questions, get into places you don’t belong. In The Jester King’s Dance, the two Skills are “Jester” and “King” and are polar opposites of each other, such as being subservient vs. standing tall. Dice Rolls resolve into four possible outcomes. Regardless of the outcome, the complication wraps up, and the character moves onto the next location. As written, Hints and Hijinx does not have a death mechanic. We don’t recommend writing in rules that prevent players from moving forward in the story/mystery. It usually just isn’t fun. While the base rules rely on the players to determine what happens during Failure or Hijinx outcomes, you can provide a list of possible examples, or even write what the Failure and Hijinx outcome is per complication.

• 1-2: Failure - Something bad happens because of the character’s actions, and the skill die is reduced.
• 3-4: Hijinx - Something silly, a prank, or unexpected happens that prevents the character from succeeding, and the skill die is reduced.
• 5+: The skill check succeeds, and players are rewarded with a clue.
• 10+: The character did an outstanding job and gains 2 clues.

Refill Your Cup is a mechanic to reset the character’s skills to their max at a cost. It can be renamed to something thematically appropriate that the player does to rest. By default, this counts towards a location visit (so you only visit 12 instead of 13 for instance). However, the cost of using this can be tweaked to fit your game, or removed completely for a harder game. “Hijinx” can be renamed. The goal of the Failure / Hijinx / Success scale is the difference between something bad happening because of your attempt to find a clue, and something unexpected or silly happening that prevents you from finding a clue. Think major/minor complications.

Setup

Setup and needed materials will change based on any tweaks you make. Make sure to revisit this section after your game is complete.

Map Drawing

Map drawing is optional. What is important is providing guidance to players for tying clues, complications, and locations together to give all of it context for their journaling. We use mapping for players to visually draw the map of the building, town, layers of hell, or anything else and then mark where each clue was found. Drawing a map can be removed in favor of just writing where they found clues, or a traditional evidence board with push pins and red strings!

The Investigation

The Investigation Process can be expanded to include things like travel events, additional complications and locations, or updated with changes you make to your clue and complication sections. The Investigation, Clue, Location, and Complication sections of the game are what we recommend playing with the most to dial in the feeling and flow you’re going for. For example, instead of rolling on the d66 complication table, roll on a d6 compilation type, and then a d66 theme table and let the player interpret the results. Or have a card draw determine the location, the event that happens there, and the clue found by successfully completing the event. (ie, value = location, suit = event at location) Hints and Hijinx games should feel familiar to players, while still being unique to emphasize your style, theme, subject, and pacing. We recommend keeping the overall round structure, but how each step is designed can be modified: Go somewhere -> Resolve the situation with a roll -> Get clue or don’t -> Continue or begin The Deduction.

The Deduction

We generally don’t recommend changing the structure of The Deduction section too much. The Deduction is a core mechanic that makes it a Hints and Hijinx game. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t add to it. We provide some examples of that below.

Writing a Hypothesis

Provide guidance on writing a hypothesis. Some leading questions that the player can lean on while they look over their clues and begin formulating a story of what really happened. An idea to add to this section, is providing a twist or additional questions to answer depending on certain combination of clues used. This could be a table with clue combinations and questions. Example: Clue 1 | Clue 2 | Additional Question Pinwheel | Sewer Cover | What does the sewer clowns have to do with this crime?

The Deduction Roll

The Deduction Roll uses a different dice depending on how many clues are found, starting at d0 and can increase to d12. If the player used more clues, they then start adding +1 to the roll after reaching the d12 die. The progression for the Deduction Roll’s Dice is (slightly) balanced for 13 locations. If you reduce the number of locations/clues, start the Deduction Die at a higher value, such as a d2 or d4. If you have more locations, consider increasing the target number for success, as it becomes more likely, they will have many clues giving them a d12 + 7 or more for their roll. There are two failures states: An actual bad outcome, and a more lighthearted setback. Even if you aren’t running a funny or hijinx based mystery, there should still be two distinct failure states of actually bad, and unexpected.

Locations

By default, there are 13 locations. However, you can increase or decrease that number to suit your game. Locations can be anything you want: Buildings in a town, a room in a mansion, a cupboard in a room, the teacup on a messy table, a person to visit, a geographical location, a campsite to hike to, a city, a planet, a solar system. Provide a list of questions players should ask themselves, or provide guidance, about each location to make it unique to their own play through and spark their imagination. Such as:

• What is the name of this place?
• Who works here that you know?
• What is unique or unusual about this place?

Complications

The difficult part with complications is ensuring that the complications - or events - that arise make some kind of sense for each location. The more complications you provide, the more replay value there is, but the less control you have over progression and story. Another option is to tie each of the 13 locations to the 13 values on a card deck. Then players draw one of four possible events for that specific location (Location 11 = Jack, and then a Heart, Diamond, Club or Spade event at the Jack location) A third option is to provide tables for players to construct the complication from multiple rolls.

Clues

There can be a huge range of clues, and you can be as detailed as you want. Give your players enough description to build their hypothesis, but also keep it generic enough that they don’t feel forced into a deduction. Clues can be built as a single card draw table, or by relating the suit and card value to two different tables, or use 2 d66 tables that have adjective + noun. It’s up to you! If you tie complications to locations, you can also tie the resolution of that complication to a specific clue as well. This gives you finer control over the whole story, while still giving 4 possible outcomes at each location.

The Map

Part of the larger design goals at Pandion is turning the game book themselves into play session artifacts by providing space for a character sheet, map drawing, or journaling directly in the book. We think it’s neat.