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Procedural Investigation Mechanic

8 replies [Last post]
Sat, 05/16/2026 - 16:09
Biggle Bear
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So I have had it in the back of my mind to look out for detective mechanics that I can apply to other games. I think I have come across the inspiration that I needed.

Imagine -

Taking a deck of cards and sorting them by suit.
Have another player position them face down in a random order.
Each player takes it in turn to roll a die for each and remove that many.

All the cards are shuffled together. You then have a deck of cards where there is most likely a single suit with more cards than the others.

Pick the mystery. A lost person/pirate treasure/etc.
Pick four suspects/locations/etc that the clues can lead to.
The largest suit is the culprit/location/etc.

Then in the game that this is being plugged into the players must come up with a way to earn clues. But critical failure will result in cards being discarded. Poor success will result in clues being revealed to all players. Some cards can be boosters that are revealed to trigger events or benefits. Others detrimental. Sometimes players can introduce cards that were discarded at the beginning as false clues (so long as those cards are tracked).

At the end the players bet which is the winning suit, based upon statistical calculation. Then all the original active cards are gathered together. Revealed before everyone. Then the winners take part in a final competition to get the reward.

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Sat, 05/16/2026 - 17:16
#1
questccg
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Ambiguous to say the least...

Biggle Bear wrote:
Taking a deck of cards and sorting them by suit.
Have another player position them face down in a random order.
Each player takes it in turn to roll a die for each and remove that many...

When you said "sorting them by suit"... Do you also mean in order? Or just plainly by suit (Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs) in any order. What does the player who "position them face down in a random order" do? You don't say "shuffle the deck" or "Cut the deck into two"... What exactly is that player doing. Lastly the "roll a die" means you do it for each player and that player removes that many cards from the deck???

Biggle Bear wrote:
All the cards are shuffled together. You then have a deck of cards where there is most likely a single suit with more cards than the others...

This time you say "shuffled together". Then more confusion: "You then have a deck of cards where there is most likely a single suit which more cards than the others" and how does this come to be? I mean if all 4 players roll a "1" that means thy only "remove" 4 cards from the deck?!

Biggle Bear wrote:
Pick the mystery. A lost person/pirate treasure/etc.
Pick four suspects/locations/etc that the clues can lead to.
The largest suit is the culprit/location/etc...

Where do you "Pick a mystery" from? Another Deck of cards?? "Pick four suspects/locations/etc. that the clues can lead to." Again is this from a 3rd Deck also? "The largest suit is the culprit/location/etc." Like I said if only 4 cards were drawn from the original deck ... There would be 3 Suits with more cards and therefore 3 Suits with the most cards...

Biggle Bear wrote:
...At the end the players bet which is the winning suit, based upon statistical calculation. Then all the original active cards are gathered together. Revealed before everyone. Then the winners take part in a final competition to get the reward.

How do they "bet"? They make a wager and can all be wrong?? How is the winning suit "based upon statistical calculation"???

Sorry if I am being so detailed... When you post something it must be CLEAR and not pieces here and there with holes here and there too.

Like any posts, I just read it and could not make any sense of matters since it seems like there are a lot of missing details.

Feel free to address my concerns, reply to my feedback or simply provide more details.

Sincerely.

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Sat, 05/16/2026 - 23:04
#2
questccg
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Also ...

What kind of DICE are you planning to ROLL??? Like 1D10 with values 1 to 10 so as to cover all the Card Values except the Face Cards?? You also did not state if you were using a STANDARD deck of cards to prototype or a CUSTOM deck of cards with various SUITS (other than Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs).

1D6 would be the go-to dice but if may not have enough VALUES for the 4-Players. But then again if you have all STANDARD cards, you my NOT want a 1D10 because this would reduce the dice to hardly any cards left over.

My GUESS is that you are using 1D6 and rolled by all four (4) Players.

This sounds like the best way you could remove SOME cards but leave enough to actually play the game.

Let me know if my assumptions are correct or not!

Cheers.

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Sun, 05/17/2026 - 06:51
#3
Biggle Bear
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Yeah I understand the confusion

Haha, yeah! It’s just an initial thought, not yet defined, not yet tested. I just wanted to give birth to the idea before it stagnates.

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Sun, 05/17/2026 - 20:18
#4
questccg
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I completely agree with you!

Biggle Bear wrote:
I just wanted to give birth to the idea before it stagnates.

Yes the forum is excellent for getting ideas OUT and clearing your mind for NEW ones. It's also good as a sounding board as we too would be willing to help you better DEFINE the procedural mechanic you are proposing.

Maybe some of the STEPS were "unclear" and if you have not tested it out... Well that's another factor to consider.

Remember: IDEAS sound good until you TEST them out.

Then you have all kinds of issues that you did not see before TESTING the concept out. That's the pure 100% honest truth.

If you want us to help in refining the concept, no worries. I'm sure I'm not the only one who had a HARD time following your brief but enigmatic post.

Cheers!

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Sun, 05/17/2026 - 22:00
#5
questccg
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About the Dice rolling...

Here's an IDEA for you to THINK about...

You can roll 1D10 + 1D4 as the dice. 1 = Ace & up to 13 = King.

Each player has "X" number of rolls. For each ROLL the Value "Y" can be removed from ONE (1) of the SUITS. So IF I rolls 2, 2, 7, 11, and 12.

That's FIVE (5) Cards removed from the Deck (per player).

Since I have two "2" ... I can remove a "2 of Hearts" and a "2 of Spades" (for example). And then a "7 of Diamonds", and "11 and 12 of Clubs".

I know it's NOT as simple as ONE (1) DICE... But it works very well. Values go for the two (2) dice: 1 (0 + 1) to 13 (9 + 4).

You can use ANYDICE to compute probabilities:

https://www.anydice.com

The Function is: output 1d{0..9} + 1d{1..4}

Values "4" to "10" are 10% equally likely. 1 to 3 and 11 to 13 are lower 2.5% 5.0% to 7.5%... The edge cases are a bit off.

But it works "none-the-less". It may FEEL a bit STRANGE to use 1D10 + 1D4. But if you can get over the FACT that it is DIFFERENT ... You'll see that it serves a PURPOSE and works with your Card Counts.

Let me know what you think about this... I know it's a bit "WEIRD" but it does what it promises to do: get values between 1 and 13. With a prominent outcome for values 4 to 10.

I think it's CLEVER TBH. Please feel free to comment and respond to these IDEAS and provide us with feedback as to how YOU had planned to roll a DICE.

Cheers!

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Sun, 05/17/2026 - 22:53
#6
questccg
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Some additional thoughts

You can USE Dice #3 (a 1D4) to determine the SUIT. Because you have FOUR (4) SUITS ... a value of 1 to 4 determines which SUIT to remove the dice.

So IF I roll a BLACK 1D10 (3) and BLACK 1D4 (1) = 3 + 1 = 4.

If the SUITS are: 1 = Hearts, 2 = Diamonds, 3 = Spades and 4 = Clubs. You roll an ADDITIONAL WHITE 1D4 to determine the SUIT. Let's say you roll a "1".

That means you would remove the "4 of Hearts".

That's also a bit of CLEVER mechanics and RE-USEABILITY.

The "4" was a 10% chance and the Hearts was 1 in 4. And you have equally likely SUITS on the extra 1D4.

Again just some ideas for you to ponder about.

If you have questions or need clarification, feel free to reply and I can provide feedback to how this Dice-Rolling System would work.

It's better than SELECTING a Card at RANDOM. And it makes the game a bit more TACTICAL. Sure rolling dice is RNG (Random Number Generation). But like I said it gives a feel for what players are TRYING to do. Something they can use to complain about poor dice rolls or not the rolls they wanted.

IDK maybe you prefer choosing the Cards as a CHOICE. But then it's very swing-y...

Best.

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Mon, 05/18/2026 - 01:11
#7
questccg
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Optionally...

You could just use the 1d10 + 1D4 to roll the Card Value ... And leave the SUIT selection as a CHOICE.

This is a bit of BALANCING in that part of the process is RNG and another part is more Deterministic: choosing the SUIT.

So this means that IF you roll a "4", you COULD choose the SUIT of your liking.

But this also means that down-the-line ... If multiple "4" have been rolled, you can simply choose from the REMAINING "4" in the Deck.

Of course this doesn't mean that "4" can't be all removed from the Deck before another ROLL... But it kind of SHIFTS the selection to making it a bit more FLEXIBLE.

So 4x "4" = 4 rolls of that value (1 for each SUIT). The number of rolls can be DETERMINISTIC in that each player could have five (5) ROLLS as in my example...

Again... If you would like to discuss things further ... Let us know.

These are just IDEAS based on what you've stated in that it was a "brain fart" you wanted to document but are unsure about it being viable in that you have NOT had the chance to playtest the entire Procedural Mechanic.

Cheers.

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Fri, 05/22/2026 - 00:46
#8
Noah McQ
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Super Cool!

I think this idea is really cool. Whenever I think of mystery games, what comes to mind are ones where the mystery is hand-crafted and, as such, have no replay value. This mechanic seems cool, though maybe not a fix.

If you were using regular shmegular playing cards, I think I'd limit the removal rolls to one roll per suit instead of one roll per player per suit because each suit only has 13 cards, and even if the players are using a d4, they could sum up to needing to dispose of 16 cards if there are 4 players haha.

You also provide some cool ideas of messing with the blatant strategy of just counting how many cards of each suit you know of:

Biggle Bear wrote:
But critical failure will result in cards being discarded.

That for example! This would be super cool if one of the "detectives" got to look at a bunch of cards in the deck, but then some of them got discarded! Now, who knows what's left? The peeping detective will still have good information, but they don't know what their bad information is.
Biggle Bear wrote:
Sometimes players can introduce cards that were discarded at the beginning as false clues (so long as those cards are tracked).

Another cool idea, but definitely impossible with playing cards. For the false cards to be tracked, someone's gonna have to know which of the cards are false clues. That someone's gonna have to be a player.

You should cobble a prototype together, it'd be neat. I have an idea too:

Biggle Bear wrote:
At the end the players bet which is the winning suit, based upon statistical calculation.

This only works if not every player has the same information, which I'm sure you know, but that's not present in the original post. That's not my idea though, it's this:
Biggle Bear wrote:
Then the winners take part in a final competition to get the reward.

Instead of a "final competition", how about a second round? One game I think could contain multiple mysteries, which would mean multiple rounds of betting, which would mean a player who has won the most in bets by the end of the game. Because of this, the game can be themed around a detective agency solving several cases, and each player is a detective.

I'd like to see a prototype of that

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