There are plenty of popular tabletop RPGs that empower you to solve problems with your sword or avoid confrontation with sneaky tricks. But what about those players who like piecing together clues to discover the GM’s carefully laid-out plot twist? Those who would rather have a tense exchange with a secretive NPC than roll initiative? For you investigation aficionados, here are some of the best mystery TTRPGs. Whether you like complex cases that reward smart questions, uncovering eldritch lore, or sussing out a suspect’s motives, there should be something here for you.
Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu is the big name of investigation TTRPGs. The system’s emphasis on individual skills instead of a bundle of abilities tied to a class gives you more freedom to customize your character’s style of mystery solving. You can be a research specialist, but there’s also room for a sneaky private eye or jack-of-all-trades debutante. Combat is very much not the preferred resolution, and players will fall if they don’t follow the clues and bring the proper information to a final confrontation.
Brindlewood Bay
While many mystery TTRPGs feature dark settings and tortured characters, Brindlewood Bay has an oddly cozy vibe to it. That’s because it mixes a Murder, She Wrote style into Lovecraftian horror. You play as a group of elderly women who help the police solve murders in a sleepy town. A unique part of Brindlewood Bay is that players help build the sprawling web of mystery as the session goes on. This makes it more of a storybuilder than a pure investigation game, but it’s a blast to play either way.
Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game
Taking things to the future, we have Free League’s Blade Runner RPG. This one really leans into detective-style investigation gameplay. Officially published cases provide crime scene photo handouts. There are several leads to chase down, timed events that could blow the case wide open, and moral choices to make at the end of it all. Players are invited to immerse themselves in the world of the Blade Runner movies and test how they would handle the morally grey shades of the law.
Delta Green
Reviews on Delta Green’s official StartPlaying page call it a modern equivalent to Call of Cthulhu. It streamlines the large amount of character skills from CoC into something that quickens the pace of creation and learning to play. Delta Green also brings the setting forward into a modern day government agency so you can have access to firearms and other advanced tech to fend off horrors. That said, Delta Green still maintains an air of threat. Characters will not be returning from their investigations the same as they left.
Candela Obscura
The setup of Candela Obscura is that you belong to a shadowy organization that protects a normal city from various supernatural forces that invade it. Being a mystery-solving club is right there in the core setting. That said, the setting is decidedly the early 1900s, with the vibe being parlor horror mixed with industrialization. This gives it more dramatic heft than the Scooby Doo antics a lot of mystery TTRPGs eventually fall into. It makes sense as Candela Obscura is a Critical Role product, so it’s made to appeal more to roleplayers.
Vaesen
This is the opposite side of the coin to Candela Obscura; Vaesen also gathers the players into a monster-hunting organization, but gameplay consists mostly of gathering clues and preparation. The setting is a small community outside of burgeoning industrialization, a place where folklore is very much still real. To stand a chance against threatening creatures of lore, players need to piece together clues about their weaknesses. This often involves a careful and methodical approach where brute force combat is not rewarded.
City of Mist
In a city where legends are reborn into human bodies, you have to find and root out corruption. City of Mist presents a moody noir city in a vaguely modern time where mythology is real. Your character is an incarnation of some storied hero or fabled monster. So are the bad guys. You’ll hit the streets to question witnesses and dig up dirt on the supernatural forces that control the city. The presence of what are essentially superpowers might be too fantastical for those wanting tense mysteries, but the way abilities and narrative weave together is top notch.
Gumshoe
I tried to include a variety of time periods, settings, and levels of gameplay/roleplay here, but you might be looking for something different. Maybe a more down-to-earth, detective-in-the-city game, or a spy thriller. The Gumshoe system covers several genres within one set of rules. There’s a sci-fi tv setting, forensics in a superpowered world, time travelers, and more. Check out what kind of Gumshoe games StartPlaying GMs are running today!
Sergio Solórzano is the best Dungeon Master in the USA (according to a Wizards of the Coast competition, anyway). He loves minis and terrain but also goes all-in on improv!
