The 'Shroom:Issue 225/An Investigations Retrospective
Welcome, beautiful ‘Shroom readers, into a special personal project!
If you’re familiar with my Mario Boards presence and the projects I’ve undertaken, you might have heard of a little something called Marioboards Investigations. It was a relatively unserious forum game series, where entirely improvised murder mysteries slowly morphed into more structured scenarios (while still keeping that “shitpost” charm). We’re coming up on four years since I hosted the original game, so I thought the time felt ripe to give a bit of a retrospective on the series, offering my thoughts on its experience and legacy before giving some fuller analysis of its structure.
Why do this at all? Marioboards Investigations is a kind of “insular” project; to explain every detail and its impact on the host and players would be a fool’s errand. Fully understanding Investigations requires being there for it and getting enveloped in the brainrot in real time. I agree with this principle, so the core focus here won’t be to get you, the reader, to understand the intricacies of the plot and characters and so on. Instead, I want to do some demystifying of the concept for fresher community faces, and I want to provide an entry point for people who might want to host a game with a similar structure. After all, much like any forum game, Investigations is an iterative format; like how anyone can host a new Mafia or Killing Game, anyone can host a game with the Investigations structure in mind. I’ll give you a backstage peek at how Investigations really came together, what I considered when hosting, and what I would encourage doing if you were to host your own mystery.
Let’s get started by talking about the project’s genesis.
First Formulations & Chapter 1
When I start talking about each chapter, I’m going to be linking to their individual threads for easy reader access. For Investigations 1 specifically, I will caution that the original images were hosted on Discord, and no longer display on the Boards. This is a problem that will someday be rectified by rehosting. If you’re reading this in the future, we’ll pray this has already happened for you.
The first Investigations chapter came about as an individualized gift for one user, GBA (talk), during 2021’s Secret Satan event. For those unfamiliar, Secret Satan is an event where community members lovingly make the best worst, or perhaps the worst best, gifts for one another. When I received the name GBA, I knew I had to create something special. He is the originator of several forum game experiences for the Mario Boards, and has helmed some of my favorite projects I’ve had the joy of participating in for this community. Making him a specialized forum game felt apt. At the same time, this was Secret Satan, so the final project couldn’t be that well-constructed – or at least, it needed a tasteful edge of terrible. Therefore, I opted to host a murder mystery that would be entirely improvised, written by the seat of my pants, and intentionally perverting several of his ideas and characters into silly shitpost facsimiles.
While I was constructing this concept, there hadn’t yet been an experience like it on the Mario Boards. Perhaps unbelievably, nobody had tried to host a mystery forum game that was entirely host run, with only NPCs as your suspects. Killing Game was alive and well by then – we were off the heels of Awards Killing Game 4 – but the idea of “Killing Game-style case without player suspects” was a new one.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
Yes, there was one project that provided a shocking amount of inspiration for Investigations to begin with: InsaneBlathers (talk) made the first motions towards NPC-led mysteries through his Sleuthing Games: The Midnight Hotel thread (lounge thread). Now, full disclosure: this project is over four years old, went uncompleted, and is made by a much younger Blathers. Despite any misgivings, however, it struck gold in one specific aspect: its base concept. It demonstrated that an entirely host-constructed mystery was something that could be done on the Boards, and essentially offered the first iteration of the concept that Investigations would later become. I wouldn’t say I returned to Midnight Hotel as a regular source of inspiration later on, but with how many players agreed that the concept itself had merit, it has to receive some credentials for leading to Investigations.
The other major source of inspiration for Investigations 1 was obviously GBA, but specifically a concept he had brought up multiple times about hosting a mystery game in the Italian Alps, in a similar host-led format to what Midnight Hotel coincidentally popped up with around the same time. GBA will be the first to tell you that he’s a bit of a delayer when it comes to projects, so the primary pitch of Investigations 1 was that I was hosting the Italian Alps mystery game for him. That way, it wouldn’t be delayed any longer!
Investigations was never meant to have more than one player. It was a specialized present for GBA, so he was the intended recipient of the game overall. However, partway through playing, GBA asked if he could invite Superchao (talk), and then later, Snack (talk) and Hooded Pitohui (talk). I obliged, for the sake of satisfying him with his Secret Satan present. This was the best choice that could’ve been made, because it gave us a powerful core of four Investigations participants who would become the beating heart of the rest of the series. Interestingly, their inclusions also means I have to credit Reverse Input, because his Lightning Mafia+ game is the original place for all four of their roleplay characters meeting and becoming connected, later coming to be known as the Girlbosses of Hell. (This image of a group of girlbosses has become a recurrent theme/joke on the Mario Boards ever since, and even popped up mechanically in The ‘Shroom Mafia 4).
Just from this overview of the initial chapter’s planning and inspirations, it might feel evident how much of this series was built from community involvement and circumstance. Like, we’re already at three places of influence, and that’s without mentioning the several games referenced through the NPCs, locations on the map, etc. This concept of a “community celebration” would continue to drive Investigations, and it’s an element of my projects that I hope is still evident through my Awards work and the Mario Boards Mega Brawl series.
Chapter 2
I never intended for there to be a second installment of the Investigations series. I mean, the wrap-up post for the first chapter’s epilogue says “Stay tuned for Case 2, coming… Never!”
Anyway never was an accidental lie, and there was, in fact, a Case 2. This came from all four players in the first round saying they’d be willing to give it another go, and spectators also mentioning their interest in the series. Somehow, Investigations 2 happened after only a four-month turnaround – a speed at which a new Investigations chapter would never happen again. Fresh off the heels of Snack’s phenomenal and innovative Living Game, as well as ‘Shroom Mafia 4, things were really moving in the world of new-gen forum games. This time around, we had Fun With Despair (talk) and Reverse Input (Revin) join in the fun. Revin opted to play as his roleplay from Midnight Hotel, giving extra fun continuity to this entire chain of inspiration!
When I was planning Investigations 2, it was obvious that I needed to evolve the concept just a little. This wasn’t just a gift for GBA anymore; it was for a whole group of community members. Plus, with this now being a “legitimate” installment in a “legitimate” series, I thought that the entirely-improvised approach wouldn’t fly again. I went into Investigations 1 not even knowing who the culprit would be, that’s how spontaneous the game was.
This time around, I opted to decide some key details of the plot beforehand – the culprit, the location, the general method. Then, I left the entirety of the rest of the plot – how the other characters interacted with the kill’s motions, the motivation, etc. – to improv. At the same time, my Ace Attorney-pilled brain was currently considering the idea of hosting three more chapters of the series, to create a satisfying four-case structure. To that end, I knew I wanted to lay out some seeds for the future, while not actually knowing what those seeds would be.
The end result was kind of wild to see in practice. The Investigations 2 plot ended up focusing predominantly on Organization CLXXXI by the end – a throwaway gag based on the fact that the ‘Shroom’s 181st issue was upcoming, and the ‘Shroom used to number its issues with Roman numerals. I wanted something that would sound like Kingdom Hearts’s Organization XIII but way stupider, so that’s what stuck. But then the Organization became the centerpoint of the entire case, and suddenly Bomb Voyage from Pixar’s The Incredibles was a prevalent character and member of their group, and on-the-spot gag name Silke Sonng was an investigative journalist, and everything plot-wise about this became a daze. I knew I wanted to build up to something big by my supposed fourth case, but everything established about the Organization happened in-process of hosting Investigations 2.
Is this the recommended path for an overarching plot like this? Likely not, but I can’t deny that it produced some fascinating results, and gave me a clear trajectory for moving forward. I’ll chat more about my specific recommendations for how to handle an overarching plot near the end of this section.
Chapter 3
In my opinion, Investigations 3 ended up being my most ambitious chapter of the Investigations series. This was for a myriad of reasons. Firstly, I decided to actually have a real tangible mystery! When I say “tangible mystery”, I mean that this time around, I had a clear vision of the culprit, the victim, the motive, the method, and how other characters were related to the kill. This doesn’t mean that there was no room for improvisation; several NPC characters still ended up having on-the-fly insights or connections to the case, but others were more clearly defined in the grand scheme of mystery things.
I do mean several NPC characters, by the way. Overall I designed 14 new NPCs for this chapter (if you include illustrating pre-established character Bomb Voyage), and played 16 total over the course of the case. That’s a lot! I also opted to add on three new players: Cosmic Cowboy (talk), Shoey (talk), and TPG (talk), which brought us up to nine participants total.
On top of all of those elements, I decided to incorporate two new mechanical concepts for the series: a mystery-less first day, and a “jury session” at the end of the investigation.
Let’s talk first day shenanigans. I had a sense going into chapter 3 that a lot of what people enjoyed about Investigations was the ability to character-improv between their weirdo scrimblos and also my weirdo scrimblos, so I decided to design a map that would capitalize on this, and allow everyone to hang out and have fun with their characters. Did this work out conceptually? Eh, kind of? I think people still had fun, it got people acclimated with the NPCs before the case started up in earnest, and Pitohui got to spend the day playing as his Nexus of Chaos roleplay Heinz Basil, which is easily some of the funniest character writing Pitohui has ever done. So there were upsides, but what’s also worth remembering is that a lot of people like playing characters in forum games because the structure of the game creates interesting scenarios for character-writing. When you ask those same players to just hang out in unstructured improv mode for a while, it can be tricky to feel like the balance or engagement is right. That said, I don’t think the case fully suffered for it, but it caused some funky frontloading in our schedule, and if a phase like this was to exist again, it could’ve easily been truncated.
Then there was the jury. The jury happened because of community jokes surrounding the recently-released-in-the-west The Great Ace Attorney Collection, and how the court portions of those cases had juries in them that needed convincing to vote in your favor. Surely there would be a way to incorporate a jury into a forum game? In yet another case of getting hit with Apollo’s gift of prophecy, Blathers’s Midnight Hotel also had a jury mechanic in play, but I had admittedly long forgotten about it by the time Investigations 3 happened.
Anyway, the goal of the Investigations 3 jury was to ensure that the mystery was actually solved. When Investigations games are so freeform in their character actions, it felt too easy for the players to kind of stumble into a conclusion, rather than solving the case – and because I had intentionally constructed the case this time, I wanted them to actually y’know, solve it. There were six jury members, and each of them had a specific angle of approach for how to get them on your side, be it providing the right evidence/theory or saying the right thing in in-character roleplay. I quite liked how this felt in practice, but it came as fatigue was setting in after three days of Investigations nonsense, and the weird weighting of the first day did not help it out. It probably would’ve been best served in a more serious structure, too, since it can be pretty easy to miss the key clues in a game as shitpost-y as Investigations. Still, I would be very happy to see this jury idea get another go. The Circitus Island portion of Awards Killing Game Odyssey ended up having its own version of the jury, but that was tailored towards dead players and spectators being able to participate. The NPC jury is still available and ripe for reiteration.
Chapter 3 is probably the one time my plans with Investigations felt too big for their own britches. There were a lot of players and a lot of movement, and its shape felt unfocused in a broader sense. I still think it was a fun product in the end, though, and I’m pleased with the opportunities it gave my players.
Chapter 4
Investigations 4 was the chapter that went through the most iterations before landing on a relatively subdued execution. A long time ago, I had this vision of a dramatic opening scene where GBA’s character Nobu would wake up in a dark corridor in case villain Banana Man’s castle, and have to investigate all the rooms to find the other girlbosses. I also had an idea for an ending portion that would play out like a jrpg boss fight, complete with all the players taking turns doing attacks against Banana Man and his mechanical hands (if you’re confused, just read the thread). Ultimately, especially after how hectic chapter 3 felt, and with how much simpler I could make the game’s setup, I returned to case basics.
This was probably the smartest way to handle the chapter, because in my opinion, this was the most competently put-together mystery of the Investigations series. With the shenanigans and number of NPCs reigned in, it allowed me to simultaneously structure a murder and create closure for the Organization storyline that had been building up to now. In retrospect, the murder proper really wasn’t that hard to solve, but with the other Organization ongoings and with 11 players now in the building (Turboo (talk) and Waluigi Time (talk) joined for our final go-around), I don’t think it ever felt too simplistic.
My favorite addition to this case was the Memory Matrix. When I was envisioning the setting being Banana Man’s castle, I imagined going into paintings to step into other scenes; in the final iteration, it was a much simpler VR-type experience. The mechanic involved accessing a victim’s memories and being able to directly investigate scenes from the past. This allows you as a host to build context backwards, such as demonstrating a potential motive for someone to kill the victim. I took this as an opportunity to set up the victim’s personality, and tie up a number of loose ends that had occurred as a result of this series being basically improvised. It wouldn’t work for every game in the future, but I’d be pleased to see another pass at the Memory Matrix.
When the case was nearing its close, it felt like the smartest move was to go with a “standard” escape sequence ending. Just about all Killing Games at this point end with an escape sequence, where all living players submit actions to get themselves out of the map while avoiding obstacles or overcoming challenges. The same happened here, but I encouraged player submissions to return to the Investigations series’s roots: absurd improv! With all sorts of silly, anime-esque nonsense, it made for a bombastic ending to a series I had grown far more attached to than I ever expected.
I don’t have too much else to report on the case’s structure. It was a basic murder case with some unique plot weaving. If there’s anything else to say about this chapter, it’s that Investigations 4 is fully indicative of how much heart existed in this series. Even just reading the thread, the passion everyone has for these characters and the act of collaboration is palpable. Although people expressed their gratitude in playing, I will always feel gracious that these community members hopped on my wild ride and had a hell of a time during.
Investigations as a Format
Right, so, we’ve gotten through my reminiscing on the specifics of each chapter. What is there to say about the format of Investigations as a forum game model?
I’m pleased to note that I think Investigations is a powerhouse in the forum game department. Already there have been other attempts at following a similar structure. Blathers is appearing for a third time today, but this time for his Marioboards Investigatory game, which is more his own spin on the humorous murder mystery nature of Investigations. Early this year, GBA lent his hand to Odyssey Investigations: AEAEA, a successor game to Awards Killing Game Odyssey that is still awaiting its second half, but has a number of new mechanics to mix up the formula, such as every player having specific role abilities (ala KG) and goals they want to accomplish. The most notable aspect of AEAEA, to me, is the relative seriousness of its storytelling. It absolutely still has its moments of humor, but this is a serious attempt at building out the world of AKGO, as opposed to Marioboards Investigations’s inherently shitpost-y aesthetic.
What are the strengths of going with an Investigations format over something like, say, a Killing Game? The main advantage I would name is that your mystery doesn’t have to accommodate the input of your players. In a Killing Game, players submit night actions and kill attempts, and the mystery emerges as a result of how these submissions interact with one another. For Investigations-style games, however, the host is in full control of the mystery. You get to decide every aspect, all the characters and clues, and align them to your exact vision of the story you want to tell.
Now, this comes at the cost of player characters having less impact on the world before the mystery starts up, which could be seen as a weakness. Additionally, the mystery writing falls squarely onto your shoulders when the players aren’t directly adding to the submission pool. At one time, AEAEA was planned to have a submission phase between mysteries, but GBA has since adjusted this plan. So whether or not Killing Game-like submissions could work in the Investigations sphere is, at this point, undemonstrated. I personally don’t see why not, though! It would just need careful balancing between the story the host wants to tell, and the story the players inherently produce.
Another strength to the Investigations format is that these stories can be more condensed than your standard Killing Game. Most people expect a Killing Game to take, at minimum, three to four cases to finish. These three to four cases come with all the expectations of a KG host: writing night results, satisfying player submissions, running the mystery itself, rinse and repeat. Altogether, even if a case happens every week (which is a charitable estimation), a KG host still has to dedicate themselves to a full month of that kind of work. Comparably, an Investigations episode will require work and writing up until launch, but once the episode’s complete, it’s complete. Investigations inherently lends itself to being a self-contained story. Even in a chaptered sequence like I hosted, the chapters were still, by their nature, a new plot with new characters and a new mystery. It’s also easier to space out new entries as a result; a year-long break could sink the momentum of a KG’s plot, whereas a year-long break between Investigations was much cleaner to section off.
Basically, here’s my primary encouragement: for anyone who has an interest in hosting mystery stories and games for their community members, but the scale of a Killing Game endeavor makes you nervous, consider giving the Investigations format a shot! It’ll allow you to craft what you’re envisioning, while still providing a unique story and gameplay loop for your friends itching to solve a crime. That’s not to discourage you from ever hosting a Killing Game if it also piques your interest, of course; if you host an Investigations but wish that player involvement resulted in a more natural, longer-term plot arc, Killing Game could be the game for you.
Suggestions
While preparing your Investigations game, here’s some recommendations that I would offer. You don’t have to follow these exactly, obviously. I am not the ultimate authority on running a forum game! But here’s a series of thoughts I would fully consider.
- Don’t be afraid to create a tailored experience. The nature of Investigations being an invite-only event was always kind of awkward to some players, which is understandable. You’re essentially playing in a private experience on a public venue, the forums. That said, I would argue that there is no harm in hosting a game for the people you know will engage with it. The reason why Marioboards Investigations worked as well as it did is because I was so familiar with my playerbase and could tailor gameplay and jokes towards their taste – don’t forget, this started as a gift for just GBA! You can absolutely host an Investigations with open general sign-ups too, but if there’s some characters or a corner of a world you want to explore, and you know that a few players would be perfect for it, feel free to make a game for them! Think of it like running a D&D campaign. We always want to accommodate new players, and it’s also always good to get some trusted experience in the door, people you know will engage with your project well.
- Create the tone you want to see. Investigations is a malleable format! Your game doesn’t need to be a bunch of in-jokes like mine was. Want something fantastical, or tense? Go for it! AEAEA is already a great example of this format put towards a new sense of style.
- Be intentional with your scale. Take it from me and Investigations 3: you don’t need 15 NPCs and 12 plot threads to have a satisfying Investigations episode. Oftentimes, a finely-tuned cast of characters will service your goals better than a bunch of miscellaneous characters. This goes for your player cast, too; in my experience, somewhere between four and six players is a pretty golden number for Investigations. Nobody gets overshadowed in terms of gameplay or character presence that way. Investigations 4 ended up being really well-balanced cast-wise but I legitimately think that was a fluke. Don’t host 11 player Investigations if you can help it.
- Refine your schedule. Many projects can struggle when the timeline isn’t apparent, or is too bendy. All of my Investigations chapters happened over the course of one weekend. There’s probably space for a case to happen over the course of, say, a week, but I’d struggle to see engagement remaining much longer than that. If you can help it, have your case wrap up sooner than later.
- Tell one-off stories. Scheduling players is hard. Part of the reason why Investigations gaps became so wide is because I was busy and everyone else was also busy. You can plan a sequence of cases if you really desire, but for my money, I’d love to see more one-off mysteries explored on the Boards. If you truly want it to be part of an overarching series, ensure that each chapter remains self-contained, so that the wait between chapters doesn’t break your momentum. If anything, tell a one-off, and if your players insist on more from your premise, consider hosting more! Just don’t be afraid to create a one-and-done. They’re just as fun as any long narrative.
- Leave some room for improvisation during the case. Players will surprise you with their actions and discoveries! It takes a careful touch as a host to ensure that there’s a chance to respond in kind to these submissions. Though you ought to have a game plan and a sense of mystery flow, don’t expect to railroad your players down one path to the answer. It’s that interplay between host and players that truly makes a mystery game engaging.
- Give it heart. Of any of these points, this is probably the biggest. Make characters you love. Write a mystery you find engrossing. Create a setting you want to see more of. Have fun with it! I’m sure it goes without saying, but players can feel when you care about the product you’re putting together. Your care as a host helps them to care. However you feel inspired, push with that inspiration, and you’ll find an excellent product by the end.
I believe that about covers my main pointers, but naturally, there’s plenty of little lessons and nuances I’ve caught onto along the way, so this isn’t an exhaustive list of advice. Anybody interested in hosting an Investigations style game is welcome to reach out with your concept or concerns, and I’ll provide the feedback I can. Otherwise, this retrospective should give you something to latch onto for future hosting.
As I wrap this up, I want to yet again thank every person who contributed to Marioboards Investigations. Whether you were a player, spectator, source of inspiration, or just made some side comment that managed to get referenced in a chapter at one point, you made the Investigations series what it was. I’m thrilled that we could all experience that nonsensical narrative together. Now more than ever, and with the energy of a freshly-finished Killing Game buzzing in the air, I’m very excited to see the future of mystery games in this creative community.
Thank you for reading, and have a restful holiday season!
