Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Writer's Workshop

Mar-16-2007 14:49

The power of Sleuth is now in your hands!

There is now an online Scripted Mystery editor available in the new Writer's Workshop section of City Hall. The idea here is better empower all of you to contribute your own content, which will hopefully keep things fresher for longtime players.

Also, if you just want to keep the mysteries you write private, you can can choose to do that. We'll be providing ways to share those private mysteries with your friends soon.

Note: Scripted Mysteries = Featured Mysteries, although since we're likely to have a lot more of them soon, eventually we'll start to "Feature" some of the "Scripted" mysteries, and the non featured ones will just be referred to as Scripted Mysteries. Confusing?

Feel free to use this thread for questions about the Mystery Editor and to discuss mystery writing.

If you had previously submitted a mystery by email, feel free to resubmit it through the tool. Doing so will also allow you to preview the mystery before it is published for public consumption.

I'm looking forward to see what you all come up with!

Aug-13-2007 22:19

I think difficulty level should be based not so much on no. of suspect or length of story, but on:

* the percentages you set for each suspect / witness AND the no. of opening questions you allocate

combined with

* any twist / research you might set that are necessary for plot progression.

and compared with

* previous mysteries difficulty level. [that will necessitate playing one or two SM's before writing one. A good idea, for all sorts of reasons, in my book]

That's not exactly a definitive answer, but there isn't one.

If your mystery is:

Sequential, A > B > C. No dead ends, false leads, chances of failure.
Has the suspects / witnesses set to %80 > %90
You allow the suspect / witness to answer many initial questions

Then regardless of narrative or length or number of twists it should be set to an easy level.

Likewise the opposite applies.

S'just my opinion.

Aug-14-2007 00:31

The wisdom of the Squirrel strikes again!

Is the difficulty something the editors check to see if it is set realisticly? I took a bit of a guess on my SM, an educated one so perhaps that's all we can do!

Aug-14-2007 05:32

I've changed at least one difficulty level to easier than what it was set at originally, for the abovementioned reasons.

So yeah I check 'some' times. But I'll always check now it's been brought up!

Aug-15-2007 18:18

Thanks Anikka, that does help. It took explaining.