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Three Clue Rule

Overview

The Three Clue Rule is a reliability heuristic for investigative and discovery-driven play. It treats every required conclusion as a potential chokepoint and solves that by redundant clue paths.

Core Rule

For any conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

Design Impact

  • Reduces hard stalls from missed rolls, ignored details, or misinterpretation.
  • Makes scenarios resilient to unpredictable player focus.
  • Encourages richer environments where multiple approaches remain valid.

Extensions

  • Apply the same redundancy to any chokepoint problem, not only mysteries.
  • Use permissive clue-finding: reward clever investigative methods even when not pre-scripted.
  • Keep proactive fallback triggers (new events, opposition moves, fresh incidents) to re-open momentum.

See Also