Hints and Hijinx System
a solo mystery game system By Pandion Games
You can find additional templates at: pandiongames.itch.io/hintsandhijinx
Hijinx, tricky and/or humorous behavior; noisy and mischievous merrymaking.
Inspired by:
- Breathless by Fari RPGs
- Brindlewood Bay by Jason Cordova
- GRANDMOTHERSHIP by Armanda Haller
The Hints and Hijinx system is a purpose-built solo mystery system that's easy to design mystery games for, & puts the power of deduction in the hands of the player!
This is done by a clue gathering mechanic, where the player needs to overcome a challenge or complication with one of their skills at thirteen different locations. On failures, their skill’s dice rating can degrade, making finding future clues more difficult.
After their investigation is complete, the clues they gathered are used to make a hypothesis. The more clues the player can string together to create their hypothesis, the larger the dice they roll to see if their character’s hypothesis is correct. On a 5+ die roll, their deductions are correct and the mystery solved!
Like Choose Your Own Adventure books of yore, the goal of Hints and Hijinx is to provide a structure that players can be familiar with to go on a myriad of mystery adventures. When a player sees the Hints and Hijinx logo, they take comfort in knowing how to play, coupled with the excitement of new mysteries and the twists of each game.
As a designer of a Hints and Hijinx game, how you have players construct clues, complications, and locations is up to you and is how we recommend adding your own flavor and spice to the games! We provide examples below in the
License
Hints and Hijinx is released under CC-BY 4.0 License, meaning can make whatever you want so long as you credit Pandion Games. Include the following text in your game:
This work is based on The Hints and Hijinx System, product of Pandion Games (https://pandiongames.com/), developed and authored by Andrew Boyd, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Hints and Hijinx System Logo
