GM tools · d100 · Noir investigation
One Hundred Questions the City Doesn't Want Answered
Crimes, cover-ups, witnesses who lie—every entry is a scene investigators walk into tonight, with threads that come back.
Investigation fuel
100 Mystery Encounters is not a combat table. It's discovery: documents that don't match, bodies moved before dawn, registries with gaps that have names if you know whom to bribe.
Seven elements: discovery, sensory detail, NPC, first lead, lore, three-rumor set, recurrence thread.
System-agnostic—works with 5e, Pathfinder, OSR, Blades—anything where cities have paper trails and liars.
What's inside
Scenes
Districts
Clues each
GM boxes
What's inside
GM advice woven through: three-clue thinking, witness fragility, documents as weapons, chaining without pre-writing a novel.
What this isn't: a setting bible you must adopt, or a monster manual. Drop-in fiction that respects your homebrew names.
For GMs who…
- Urban campaigns that need mysteries beyond “kill the thing in the basement”
- Grab-and-go investigation with recurring threads
- Moral ambiguity and NPCs who trade in secrets
Features
- d100 investigation scenes, seven structured elements each
- Ten districts with distinct corruption flavors
- System-agnostic; no required stat blocks
- GM advice for chaining and dead ends
Noir at speed
Enough detail to play cold, not enough to bury you mid-session. The seven fields are skimmable headers for when the timer is running.
Paper trails are weapons; this table hands you the serial numbers.
Closing
Pull one thread. Listen for what the city tries to cover with noise.
