Help with mechanics of cooperative deductive game

Hello guys,

almost 1 year later I'm still evaluating different ideas and options. I've considered and discarded that "contamination" thing and went back closer to the original idea.
Ineed, I've added a few different things that I think are interesting. One of the main changes is the movement mechanics: the players no longer use dice to move from one location to another, but the train is now divided into different "hotspots" (2 per wagon, 10 overall). There are 3 cabins (1, 2 and 3 class), dining room, lounge, "jail", kitchen, etc. Each one has its own special action(s).
The player can pick cards from the "locations" deck and use those cards to move around the train. On cabin hotspots there are small (4 o 5 cards) decks that represent passengers and special events. The player picks the top card and if that is a passenger she can do some actions. If it is the "empty cabin" card then the player can look for clues without loosing "trust points" etc.

I'm currently trying to imagine how the player should choose where to go and why at each turn. Sure, she has limited options (the location cards she owns) but there seems to be no reason for just not jumping into the same cabins and simply get all the goods they offer.
I've introduced the "trust point": players cannot for example stand in the same hotspot tool long or they would raise suspicion and loose trust points. Then I thought it would be interesting if players had to manage/trade trust points in order to make use of the "services" of the hotspost.

But still I can hardly imagine how to drive the players decisions: how do they choose one hotspot instead of another at each turn? I fear this could break my whole desig, so I'me gere for advices on this specific point, if you have any to share.

Thank you!

Thank you very much for your reply. My game (which is still fully cooperative at this time) started as a deduction game. I've never been satisfied by the way I was shaping it, and all the new ideas were not related with the deduction part.
Currently it is an adventure where players cooperate to find 3 pieces of information by discarding those pieces that can't be what they are looking for (because already contained twice in the clues deck).

But this is a "dummy objective": I can imagine to remove it, and players just have to get to the end of the trip without their "trust bar" to reach 0. With the addition of the mistery, I can end the game whenever I accomplish that goal.

>>Drama and obstacles are not the same as interesting choices.

You are right and I better keep that in mind. Thank you for that hint!

>>It's doubtful, however, that you need to have the track and train car mechanic you mention

What do you mean? That the event cards are enaught? Yes, they could (by changing things a bit) but the railroad provides information about where are the stations, where the breakfast/lunch/dinner etc and provides some scenography to set the game into.

>>Is there a player action that reveals more event cards, or are they done automatically?

At the moment I have 3 types of events:

"route" events which are mainly a way to tell the player to move the train pawn to the next cell but can also contains events like "blackout, if you are here and there you loose a clue".

Wagon events which add a bit randomness by giving small submissions to the player that triggers them ("you find a key that opens this and that"). These events must be kept secret and serve the pourpose to mitigate the alpha player problem: if a wannabe alpha does not know what you are trying to achieve, then he cannot tell you what to do.

"Adventure" events. On the top of the described mechanics I could add an "adventure", that is a sequence of story driven events that are triggered when the train reaches specific spots on the track (mainly stations). I'm not going to dicuss the adventure part here because it's kind of a plugin that can be added or ignore without the mechanics to be really influenced. Once the mechanics work, I could try and add a story on the top of it.

>>Can you incorporate a way for players to do certain actions that reveal clues to them more frequently

Clues are distribuited on marked spots before the game starts. When a player enters an hotspot (let's say the 1 class cabin) the first thing he does is picking the topost card from the passengers deck and do what it says. Once the player has done that, he can choose among a few actions, one of which is to look for clues: if the card he got is "empty cabin" he can resolve one clue (turn the coin to see if it is an object or a clue) without rolling the dice. If there was a passenger, the player can try to look for clues by rolling a dice (and using his and the passenger stats to decide the result). If he fails, he looses a trust point.
On the stations each player gets all his trust poionts back, but the "global" trust bar looses a corresponding amount of points (the group as a whole has lost trust). Should this bar reach 0 the game is lost.

I'm trying to imagine how a game would go with these rules: how would players evaluate options and give then a priority value? Which tactical/strategical decisions would the perceive as successfull? And are they correct in this assumption? Would they end up just wandering around collecting things randomly or would they find a personal view of what has to be done?

I think that leading players in these kind of games is important, and I'm not sure that what I have works in that respect. I could add a second resource type (the first being trust points) so that managing it will keep the player busy and give him hints about what to do.
Or I can give players a lot of optional/required submission so that they are have no time to wander around. And the will collect clues in the process. Correctly balancing the pressure of the trust points would also help in the same way.

Any advice?

I've thought quite a bit about the issues and watched a few reviews/playthroughs of games that could have something in common with mine (in particular, Dead of Winter seems reaaaaalllyyy interesting to play).

I've come up with these ideas:

1) clues and objects are separated: while clues are on the board since the game starts, objects are a new deck of cards for each cabin. This offers way more possibilities.

2) in the previous system, when a player wanted to resolve a clue, he had to collect it somehow and pick a card from the corresponding deck.
Now he first has to spot it (dice + card "magnifier", the more cards he uses, the more dice he can use). If he spots the clue, he turns the disc face up and checks the type. Some types cannot be collected without the right tool (i.e powder for fingerprints). And only then he can get the clue and wait for the next stop to resolve it.
This added complexity serves the pourpose to increase movement: if you don't have the tool you need to get it elsewhere.

3) when you enter a cabin you have an encounter. If you want to look for clues you do a skill check against the passenger. I change it as follows: if the player fails it, the passenger get suspicious and stays there, face up. Nobody can look for clues there until he calms down. If another player enters the cabin, a new passenger card is drawn. Now you have 2 passengers to deal with. At each round,every cabin with a suspicious passenger is drawn another passengers which gets also sospicious (with special action if one of them isthe conductor/police and so on). This change serves the pourpose to limit camping, limit clues collection, add pressure (pandemic-like).

4)Players need to feed their characters: 1 class can only feed in restaurant car (for free), 2 class can too, but requires a whole turn (they must wait) and perhaps they have to pay. But they can also eat found food, though for half the food value (so they need to find 2x food). 3 class can eat whatever they want whenever they want and can save some for later, but have to find their own food.

This rule would increase mobility and add special activities. Not really sure about that (it should be a deduction game, non a survival one) but I need something to challenge the players.

I believe that these new rules, and a few other minor things I'm evaluating, could give a first green light. I have now to think which special action(s) to give to each cabin.

I've heard of flash point, but I don't know it. I will definitely look for more info, thank you!

Regarding the passengers leaving the train, that could be an interesting idea, but this detail will most probably governed by the "adventure" and I should really consider the implications of reducing the number of passengers.

That said, I could consider for some of them this behaviour!