History of Reno Casinos - The Rise and Fall of Gambling in ...

(shitposting/throwaway account)
I must start by emphasizing that my analysis is based on my Eastern-European country's example alone, but I'm pretty sure you'll find overlaps with yours. I'll be looking at the following state employed categories of workers in this order: 1. healthcare; 2. legal; 3. education; 4. social; 5. police; 6. bureaucrats; 7. transportation; but first I must talk about these in general.
All of the above categories are in non-profit-oriented sectors, meaning that they are paid by the taxes of citizens and provide services in exchange, so the state at best tries to evade their lossmaking, which potentiality is a burden in the eyes of the neolib/neocon statesmen. However, they make up a significant portion of the workforce, and as such the voting age population, moreover, in my experience at least, the voter-turnout tends to be much higher among their ranks for the obvious reasons that for them a change in their respective ministry's personnel promises significant changes in their fields.
As our first general conclusion: the state employee tends to be more vote-cucked than workers in the private sector, because the latter more easily understands that no matter who's in charge in the parliament, his boss in the firm will remain the same and besides, a lot of them know that it is these very bosses that dictate to or lobby at the ministries, while the state employee remains to have hope because she's promised changes in personnel at the ministerial level, in essence a change of "bosses, policies, directions."
Now the overwhelming evidence so far is that while every fucking party, even the most insignificant one, tends to have at least a few paragraphs about healthcare, transportation, police, etc. reform, when finally in power, do basically jack shit to implement their own programs. You'll also find that state employees are also more inclined to read these political programs for two main reasons: 1. they are at the very least a trained workforce, but among them many hold diplomas, so their literacy level is above the general toiling masses in the private sector; 2. the promise of change in the ministries composition poisons them with "voter's hope."
Second general point. Almost all of the above categories contain non-productive workers, meaning that they do not produce new values, and unlike, say, cashiers in a supermarket ( https://pastebin.com/0k34xvEZ ), they aren't exploited in a strict Marxian sense of the term. The state allocates funds for the operation of 50 hospitals, but there's nobody "above them" who profits off of their work. This, however, does not mean that 1. their working conditions can't be absolutely horrible; 2. that inside these sectors there are no formal hierarchies with widely (and unfairly) differing wages; 3. that there's no further stratification possible at the formally equal levels (!), usually tied to corruption.
Which leads me to the third and final general point. Five out of the seven categories mentioned in my first paragraph offer lucrative potentials for corruption. (Can you guess which five I'm talking about? Of course you can.) This, again, differentiates them from almost all workers in the private sector. The possibility for corruption, i.e. extra-services, illegal or para-legal benefits, favorable client processions or rulings, etc. provided in exchange for a citizen's bribe offers a "second income" to those who are willing to dirty their hands working in these fields. Importantly, this introduces a weird intra-institutional dynamic into these fields, splitting these workers in schematically speaking two main categories: 1. those who take the bribes; 2. those who don't. With this comes the spontaneous creation of two main cliques inside the state employed workforce, the dirty bribe-havers on the one hand, and the loyal (to the official rules, to the "cause") dupes on the other. Which clique is more materially inclined to hold together no matter what and even wage war against the other if threatened? The corrupt one, obviously. It is an interesting and rare dynamic where the informal group inside the formal system itself can become more organized, centralized, militant than the group that follows the formal rules and an idealized cause, and this dynamic reaches its apex when the informal and corrupt group basically appoints all the leaders inside the institution while being disincentivized from changing the formal rules they do not adhere to.
Let's now proceed with the promised categories one by one.
1. Healthcare workers
What kind of people tend to become healthcare workers in the first place? (Yes, I realize that the following goes outside the scope of "class analysis" as promised in my title, but psychological typology and class do tend to intertwine.) Not long ago I successfully snuck myself in to a healthcare university's freshman party held at a pub. After talking to them my impressions was that these future healthcare workers tend to have either a very developed capacity for acquiring lexical knowledge or a very well developed emotional intelligence, a capacity for empathy. Even the most mediocre diagnostician has to have an almost lexical knowledge of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, while most nurses-soon-to-be, my impression was, would treat the most annoying asshole patient with equal care as the most grateful ones. Yet these distinctions are superficial at best, since these two qualities often overlap, and I've recently skimmed books on ethics related to healthcare that basically attest to this point. However there are those among freshmen, who, from day one "knew" that they'll be working in this or that very specialized and typically well paid field. These people typically tend to emigrate to Western European countries for better wages or become corruptible, join the "corrupt clique" as I said above, as soon as the opportunity arises. But my tirade is about the state employed.
On the gender front, the overwhelming majority of nurses, pediatricians, dermatologists, and dentists inside the state sector tend to be women, while the overwhelming majority of surgeons, oncologists, obstetricians (!!), heads of departments, and other highly specialized and better paid, etc. tend to be men in my experience. I'm absolutely sure that the wage differential between men and women inside this field is astonishing and I'm kind of baffled how feminists in my country don't focus on this, instead babbling about much more fashionable radlib nonsense I'd rather spare you from me detailing.
In terms of corruptibility, there are positions which are more keen to practice it. A good example are obstetricians. Little gifts (typically wine, champagne, but more efficaciously few dozen bucks, etc. are snuck into their pockets before (if you are superstitious) or after your child is being delivered (if you are results-oriented, yet still rather superstitious). Or take the case of a single broken leg of your teenage child who is brought to spend at least a week in a crammed room. Just go to the head of the department, bribe them with a few dozen bucks, and he'll get a less crammed room with a cleaner better bed. Does your grandma have aggressively spreading cancer, yet her surgery is postponed for 2 more months now? Hundred bucks and they can reschedule her surgery for this week.
All of the above leads to two phenomena. First, a stratification inside formally equal positions, where one nurse, one surgeon, etc. take bribes and soon roll into the workplace with a Mercedes car, them being the "upper 10%" of the same workplace and position. IIRC like 90% of the bribery going on goes to 10% of the healthcare workers, yet officially they can not be distinguished on legal pay levels. A kind of "healthcare aristocracy" is formed.
What are the barriers to the radicalization to state employed healthcare workers? First of all, moralism, which is the bourgeois ideological parasite that feeds on their emotional intelligence mentioned above. How many times in my country have we talked about nurse (etc.) strikes, yet they know that ultimately this would mean a few dozen sick people dying, so they abhor the idea.
2. Legal workers
First of all what should be established here is the fact that inside this field most try to get out of the state sector ASAP for the simple reasons that the private sector promises way bigger bucks than the state does. Typically those who become judges (employees of the state) are the ones who had very strong PHDs and credentials and then proceeded to climb the ladder, or those in the private sphere who published papers, while most lawyers try to divorce themselves from the state as soon as possible. Let me give you an example. Most law post-grads will spend a few years dealing with cases where the state promises every convict a right to a lawyer. That lawyer will be you. Poor Ass dickhead commits a petty crime and can't afford a private lawyer? The state assigns you, you get 100 Poor Ass Dickheads in a few years, you now have credentials and may petition to join a private firm.
In my experience the field of law is riddled with literal psychopaths, but on a brighter note those who become judges tend to be truthful persons. Now all of this is complicated by the appointing system, wherein the mayor of a town, or the government appoints people to crucial positions, like constitutional judges and so on. So there's a rather specific spread to this. If you are a lumpen and commit your nth thievery you'll get processed at the speed of a product does on an assembly belt. If you are a prole, a petit-bourgeois, you'll get a fair trial. Corruption does not enter at this level. Corruption enters the picture at the level of people with political connections and/or tons and tons of money, and typically when they are rightfully charged. A mafia boss can easily bribe a judge. A person with political connections will easily get through the cracks of law. I think what must be emphasized here is this asymmetry: poor ass folk get instant assrape, the folk in between can get a fair deal, the upper class always win. Naturally these are further complicated if the case actually threatens those in power.
In conclusion, I have a rather mixed view of this profession. On the one hand, i.e. when it matters to those who are in power, they will be always the ruling hands of capital. When it comes to the most vulnerable they'll always rule against. When it comes to cases involving the middle classes, well diploma'd (P.M..C s), and "well adjusted" proles, that doesn't threaten capital, you'll very likely have a fair trial.
For their potential to radicalize them. Tricky question. Every state-employed court is a mixed bag. Say, in a leftist town with a leftist mayor leftist judges tend to hold positions. These people every month see two dozen cases that point to a single or an interconnected societal issue: alcoholism, poverty, cultural misery, etc. and I do believe that these judges could be radicalized. However, the main problem is that they are forbidden by law to join parties and so on. For this reason only they should be labeled "nonexistent" in the eyes of radicals when it comes to spreading the basis of the party in a targeted manner. "Objectively" there are many socially conscious judges, yet they are unreachable.
3. Workers in education
Very weird, this one, at least on the gender front. Take this series: "kindergarten -> elementary school -> middle school -> higher education" and you'll see an inverse relationship between educational levels and women's participation, meaning that at the lower levels you'll see more women, and the higher levels you'll see barely any.
The most crucial thing when talking about teachers from a Marxist perspective, is to acknowledge the fact that these people, disregarding their best intentions, generally tend to perpetuate value systems and preconcieved-dogma on a mass scale. They, after receiving a diploma at certain universities, as time passes, tend to forget more and more about their own passions and interests in certain fields and substitute it with "teaching" the official textbook to the students, at least from the lowest-to-mid level of education. As far as I'm concerned the "teacher" is as much the victim of the education system as the student is, with predictably analogous results on both ends. The education system itself grinds up the teacher's and the student's motivation on the long run. (Maybe the most immune from this is the kindergarten teacher.)
Moreover, as we climb the institutional ladder (kindergarten -> [...] -> university) bourgeois indoctrination enters the picture more and more, especially in the humanities (politology, arts, x-studies, etc.) but in the STEM fields as well, where they receive a singular "key" to life (math, statistics, engineering, IT), all of which are just processes of preparation for the highly specialized fields in the capitalist workplace.
In my country there are quite literal obstacles to radicalizing these personnel. In the range from kindergarten to elementary school the teachers are basically duping themselves, thinking that the cute child retards they are dealing with somehow represent an invariable human nature which leads them to be the experts and uncritical supporters of notions of society's general "human nature" as such, while those teachers ranging from low-to-mid level education, tend to focus on literally beating into kids "the facts," while those ranging from mid-to-high education are often the worst: the middle school / gymnasium teacher lowers his/her previous passion in literature, math, etc. to a hobby which withers away as the years pass and the "follow-the-textbook" attitude becomes more and more tempting, while the higher education assholes are the most dangerous, because they, as professors, convinced themselves that they are participants in a rather important academic discourse, which, ultimately just reproduces the values and attitudes of the current capitalist system.
Let me give you two examples from my country. There's a prominent STEM professor who had a hilarious breakdown when teaching first or second year students which was captured on video and widely spread on youtube. He asked at his first colloquium: what percentage of participants understand derivations, and after merely around 10-20% of the students held up their hands he started a long tirade against the students and their supposed inadequacy, while this is obviously a structural issue. Second example would be one of my philosophy professors who had a 10 minutes breakdown about how none of us have actually read Plato before, which was followed up about his reminiscence of his youth where everybody who got to that point knew that shit (hint: he was referencing socialism, without admitting to himself that the general breakdown of literacy and so on could be attributed to our regime change).
In my experience in effect teachers are the most reactionary force inside a capitalist means of production, the wast majority of whom are conditioned to blame systemic problems as personal one, worse, those "on the top," i.e. academics are even more up their own asses, convincing themselves that "only if these idiots understood my teaching better, we'd be living in a better world..." I have never met a single teacher who could even be slightly considered to be a communist, because they live inside a sheltered field of discourse that will always reinforce the ruling ideology either directly or indirectly.
On the voter and union front we get a very similar picture. These assholes typically tend to vote for the eternal opposition because, as it turns out, no party taking power actually gives them better wages, albeit they always promise, so in my eyes this bloc is eternally captured in an eternal struggle without results.
4. Social workers
I said about healthcare workers that a good chunk of them join that workforce because they have rather high emotional intelligence. I'll say about social workers that a lot of them join the field because a good chunk of them are either religious (typically Christian) or totally high on moralist ideology. My ex-gf became a social worker, one of my best comrades is a christian-communist, okay? Both of them are Christians. What I respect about my soc-worker comrade is the fact that he does not even pretend to delude himself. He is communist enough to admit that structurally or systematically speaking, his org. offering food on a daily basis to the lumpen doesn't change shit.
A social worker deals with extremes on a daily basis. Alcoholic half-rotten bodied schizo hobos on the one hand, which make up like 85% of his clientele, and those very few cases where a workable and semi-talented youngster walks in who just needs a job and a place to stay in.
But these extremes the social worker has to deal with is not restricted to the "nature" of his clientele. At the very least on a subconscious level a social worker know that his or her field shouldn't exist at all, or, just like communism, the movement itself should become redundant when the sources of the problems are dealt with finally.
In terms of the "objective effects" of his job, at least from a Marxist perspective, a social worker halts absolute lumpenization. As such he or she is our ally on a structural level. Marx & Engels spent several dozen passages detailing how the lumpen always chose the side of reaction, while tying "lumpenization" to a generalized "demoralization" of this stratum. So even if the social worker couldn't be radicalized, his work ultimately aligns himself with communist processes: "the less lumpen = the less fuel for reaction."
As for hindrances that could halt their radicalization... Similarly to healthcare workers these people tend to have an affinity for empathy, and so on. Still, there's a crucial difference. While the nurse and doctor deals with you "as a physical body," the social worker will inevitably see you as a social entity. From this fact alone they are more radicalizable than, say, healthcare workers. Yet, if they were to strike, literally nothing would happen, since they work on the lumpen.
5. Police
Hierarchy. There are the grunts, parodied in "Reno 911!". There are the actual higher ups, who tend to be either more intelligent or more employment-year sawwy than the others. The most educated, distinguished, intellectual stratum inside the police were and always be detectives. These people tend to be the intellectuals inside this ragged institution. There are also policemen who teach at police academies. In my country these tend to be the most pessimistic regarding the road our country is taking, because they tend to be collected from the most experienced of the policeforce.
I observed an interesting trend inside the police force in my country. The older one officer may be the more likely he is more nostalgic towards our socialist past, before the regime change. The younger the police officer, the more inclined to be drawn towards the profession for possibilities of sadism. Meanwhile, the older generation officers, who mostly teach now, complain about how the new recruits can barely read or count as such.
(I've discussed this in detail here: https://www.reddit.com/stupidpol/comments/i4g9wq/the_lefts_attitude_towards_the_police_is/ ) In terms of gender composition you'll find that the highest % of women will be at the level of regular grunts, while seriously underrepresented on higher levels.
Remember my "general section" above, and its lines about the formal and informal structures? Well, I'm certain that his state employed sector has the most obvious lines distinguishing the two. I've spoken to a rookie who gave me a confession: he was required to beat up a hobo just to be accepted into his "in-group." Naturally he pretends now that he's sorry about all of that, but really, if an org. has such widespread and "informal" requirements, what's there to be surprised about?
In terms of sex, I'd say roughly 20-30% of the total police force is female, while like 95% of detectives and higher ups are male, lol.
As for corruption, you, as a citizen are basically gambling. Are you being caught for DUI? You have like 33% chance of convincing the officer if you offer enough in cash that you'll go free. (Again, see the parallel with the legal apparatus above.) The most brutal, centralized, militant corruption cliques are inside the police force. These policemen can easily triple their net incomes via accepting bribes and so on.
The main obstacle to radicalizing the police (beyond the rather obvious reasons) is that they are legally forbidden from joining parties or running as candidates in elections. Still, as we know well, the far right in almost all countries have organic relationships with them. As the above cited link suggest, and I will say explicitly here, the left should drop its "ACAB" attitude and try to find persons inside the police who openly sympathize with them for the single reason that being close to power, moreover, getting updates from those close to power, will always be useful. Another way to look at it is this: the secret services will always try to infiltrate your org if you are successful. Well then, why don't you try to infiltrate the executive branch yourself, as a member of a communist org?
6. bureaucrats
Which is a very broad category, including your driver licensing boards, monitors of tax payments, unemployment clerks, and so on. These people have a very high chance of being corrupted. What part of society typically becomes such a bureaucrat? Well, honestly, the most mediocre one(s).
In terms of corruptibility their answer to this question is: "okay, when, where, how much?" But then again I'm talking about the uppermost 10-20% of them. Those under the ladder literally can't afford being as corrupted as them.
Are there tendencies that hinder the bureaucrats becoming class conscious and so on? Yes and no. I think we should look at the 1917 revolution's example, where thousands of ex-Tsarist bureaucrats started to support the Bolsheviks for a single reason: the proved to be the ONLY alternative to utter chaos.
Interestingly, at least for me, in terms of genders and so on, this stratum tends to be the most balanced in my experience, if not female dominated.
As for hindrances in terms of radicalizing them, at least in my country, the picture is thus: lower-level bureaucrats are constantly being fired and hired on the municipal level. You are a fucking 1337 if you manage to hold your job for more than half a year as a mid-level bureaucrat, say, in the institution of tax office. The very few who get the opportunity to advance inside the hierarchy also get the broadening possibility for corruption. I would go as far to say that from mid level onward your chances to succeed towards higher levels effectively hinges on your capacity to corrupt yourself, at certain point which the designated gestapo will notice you and say to you that you are a "trustworthy guy/gal" who should try to join the higher echelons of bureaucratic corruption.
7. transportation
First of all, from a Marxist perspective one should note that some of these workers are actually value-producing when they are transporting commodities from place A to place B, but in my country thanks to neolibs/neocons these railway sections have already been privatized, so...
In terms of gender composition a rather baffling picture emerges. I've been using trains since year 3 of my life up until to now, which would mean like 150-300 travels in total, not counting all those times I've been waiting for trains at train stations, and I can only tell you that like 98% of train conductors are male in my country, not even kidding. For long distance buses these numbers somewhat soften, I'd say that throughout my life I've taken like 50-75 long distance bus rides, out of which like 85% were male bus drives. A radical shift happens in local mass transportation (trams, metros, buses) where like 30% of the drivers are women. I'll leave the conclusions to feminists better trained than I am. As for conductors (you know, assholes who validate your ticket and such) on trains, long range buses, and local transportation I'd say 60% has been male, 40% women.
In terms of their potential to be radicalized, since my country is ex-socialist, I'd say this would be rather promising overall, were it not for the fact that their unions have been overtaken by absolutely reformist/party specific leadership. On the one hand like 90% of them know that under socialism "this shit worked 200% better," while the official union simps for this or that capitalist party.
----
To close. I attempted to give you all a kind of inside look to Eastern-European realities. Realities in a country with which the socialist experiment lives on at the level of actually existing memories. What you take from this is completely up to you. Still, I'd like you to compare your country's experiences to mine, and give us fruitful comparisons. I know for a fact, for example, that my "capitalism fucked up our national railroad system" will resonate with Englishmen, for whom'st the privatization of their railroads proved to be an absolute disaster.
Cheers.

Can anyone help me find an obscure gambling book?

Getting Andrew Yang to the White House Part 5: The Yang Gang’s Last Stand

I’ve been seeing a lot of negativity around here recently, and rightfully so. We lost Iowa. I know that’s not an easy fact to take in given the amount of time and effort put into the state from the campaign, staff, and volunteers, but we have to face the truth. We got out-organized.
So what do we do about it?
I’m the author of these previous 4 posts if you have the time to read them. If not, its ok. This post is very much a standalone post. And probably my most important post thus far:
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/b17slb/ive_worked_on_multiple_campaigns_and_managed_a/
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/b9yyyh/getting_andrew_yang_to_the_white_house_step_2/
Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/c1h0lj/getting_andrew_yang_to_the_white_house_part_3_at/
Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/ds6rh0/getting_andrew_to_the_white_house_part_4/
In this post, I will detail our best path forward. Our best path to shock the political world and get the American people and the media to take us seriously. And it’s not what you think. Andrew has been campaigning tirelessly in IA and NH, but his best chances are not there. Our entire campaign, our entire country’s future rests on us winning Nevada. There is no other state more prime for our message and our vision than Nevada.
I’ve been canvassing in Nevada since November of 2019. I have knocked on hundreds of doors and spoken to hundreds, maybe thousands of Nevadans. We have a chance to take top 3 in Nevada. When textbankers told me to go to IA, I chose to travel to Nevada. And I’m glad I did. The political environment and campaign infrastructure are much better in Nevada. Nevada (and more specifically one city in NV) is a state full of Yang Gang, they just don’t know it yet. Nevada has early voting which has already begun, but their caucus is on Feb 22nd. Nevada is our last stand. And I will detail in this post exactly why we can and should win Nevada. If we don’t, that could very well be the end of this campaign. So buckle up, this is important.
Nevada is the third state to vote. In addition, like Iowa they are also a caucus state. No one was expecting us to win Iowa. Heck, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t win Iowa. With the debacle going on there, our win would have been overshadowed by the IA Democratic Party screwup anyways. That being said, no one is expecting us to win NH either. (If you want to go to NH, please still go. But from this time of posting, we have 5 days to convince NH, we have two weeks to convince NV – do the math). If we lose Nevada however, that is three in a row. More than enough reason for the media to write us off for the rest of the primary cycle. We need to prove them all wrong. We SHALL NOT let the Bernie Bros pass!
We can do this because Nevada has favorable Demographics, the Issues/Politics resonate with its voters, and the Nevada Staff/Campaign are the best I’ve seen.

Demographics:
To win Nevada, we only need to focus on one location. Unlike Iowa and New Hampshire where the population is spread out (there are 99 counties throughout the state of IA), Nevada only has 16 counties and most of them are very sparsely populated. The most important county is Clark County, and the most important city in that county is…..you guessed it, LAS VEGAS. The Las Vegas metropolitan area includes Boulder City, Enterprise, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Summerlin, Winchester, Paradise…etc. The Las Vegas Metro area has 2.2 Million people living in it. The entire state of Nevada has a population of ~ 3 Million people. The Las Vegas metro area comprises of more than 70% of the entire population of Nevada. If we win Las Vegas, we win Nevada. Its that simple.
In addition, you know what Las Vegas has that IA and NH did not? A group of people whom tend to like Yang automatically: MINORITIES!! Las Vegas has a huge Chinatown and we have a Yang office there! Las Vegas had a Chinese New Year’s parade two weeks ago! Did NH or IA have a Luna New Year Parade? FUCK NO! Yang Gang was there and walked in it! We got cheers from the audience! Yang Gang has ran ads in Chinese media for Yang. There are at least several precincts that are majority Asian people! That better be automatic delegate pickups for us. We just need to turn them out!
Las Vegas, unlike Iowa or NH, is very compact. You can finish canvassing 50 doors easily because the houses are close to each other. If you’re really hitting it, you can easily do 100 doors a day. You dont need to hit a few, then drive several blocks. You can simply drive to a neighborhood and bang out door to door very efficiently. Also, unlike IA and NH, it’s a sunny/cool 60-70 degrees in Las Vegas. So people are actually out doing stuff.

The Issues/Politics:
There is no other city where the narrative and issues Andrew Yang champions appear more salient than in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is at the center of the automation revolution, and you can look no further than the famous Las Vegas strip. If you have the money (seriously, it can get pricey) stay on the strip and talk to every bartender, waitress, blackjack dealer, housekeeper, bellman, etc you can. In Las Vegas, the service employees win the elections.
This New York Times article details it very well. (If you cant read it due to paywall, don’t worry, I’ll explain) (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/us/politics/nevada-caucus-2020-culinary-union.html)
The most important special interest groups in Las Vegas are the culinary workers union, Local 226, and the bartenders union, Local 165. These unions see automation in front of them every day. MGM recently automated most of their backhouse bartenders. Servers now pick up drinks from a robot and deliver them to customers. I spoke with a bar manager in the Bellagio and he said that in their contracts, there are clauses that dictate they can be automated away by a machine anytime. And they have to be ok with that. So Andrew Yang's message of the Freedom Dividend resonates. In addition, there is one issue the unions care about more than anything else and that is Healthcare. However, this is the best part: they HATE Medicare for All. Not one union worker I spoke with wanted Medicare for All. Why? Because their unions have negotiated for them stellar healthcare for years and years. They love their healthcare. And they don’t want the government coming in and taking away all the hard work their union has done for them. If you bring up Yang to your housekeeper, your waiter, your bartender, I guarantee you their first question to you will be: “What will happen to my healthcare?”. And unlike Bernie, we can say “You can keep it”. (Note: Biden also said that when he visited the unions). If Andrew Yang can win the endorsements of the Local 226 and Local 165, we win Las Vegas/NV. It was these unions whom delivered Hillary Clinton her victory in 2016. Now Andrew has not met with the unions and their leaders yet, and I hope that the campaign is reaching out to them. But until that happens, it us up to US to talk to as many union members as possible.
(Note also: Nevadans have a bad taste in their mouth for Bernie, especially after how the Bernie people acted in the NV State convention in 2016. Maybe using death threats was not the best look for the Bernie campaign. Just sayin: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/us/politics/bernie-sanders-supporters-nevada.html)
If you stay on the strip, talk to every employee you can. You can change minds. I Yanged an entire bar by myself when I spoke with the Bar Manager about the Freedom Dividend, automation, and that Yang wont take away his Healthcare. He then bought me a free drink, gave me his card, and committed to taking all his employees to the caucus. Imagine if the Yang Gang descended onto Vegas and did this at every restaurant, every bar, every hotel, and every venue. We would win Las Vegas, and get free shots too.
After speaking to many Las Vegas voters, I’ve come to believe that they don’t like politicians. There’s a reason why Tom Steyer has blanketed the state with his ads. Because Nevadans don’t trust politicians. Thus, Yang is a natural alternative to the rest of the field. Steyer may have some traction, but almost everyone I spoke with didn’t like the fact that Steyer was trying to buy the election. Everyone from Uber drivers to strippers (seriously) found Steyer annoying.
Something unique to Vegas that you don’t see anywhere else is the way wealth inequality unravels itself. Las Vegas is the place where the rich and famous come to party and blow their money away. Yet the residents here don’t scorn or hate them. Bernie and Warren’s rhetoric of the “greed and the corruption” fall on deaf ears here because in Las Vegas, the rich treat service employees well. Talk to any bartendeserver long enough and they’ll tell you about that one time when Rihanna came in and left a $10K tip on her tab. The rich come here to live out their vices, yet they are gracious and generous to the people who serve them. You can spend upwards of $5000 at a nightclub and $20 for a drink on the strip, but once you leave the strip prices drop by at least 75%. So residents don’t feel the price inflation. Don’t want to spend money? Party in downtown Vegas, where a drink is only $3- $4. The residents of Las Vegas don’t hate the rich, and they don’t want a “revolution”. They just want to make enough money so that sometimes they can sit down and enjoy a football game with the high rollers. The Freedom Dividend is the ticket to that life.
The Staff
Last, but not least, is the staff. Speaking from meeting as many of them as I have, the Las Vegas campaign staff are absolutely phenomenal. Mark Peckham, the NV state director did a great job picking his team and it shows. Reading through the threads I see talk about the Iowa staff being unprofessional and not ready for the caucus. I see talk about IA not training their precinct captains correctly, and offices hiring people with no experience. I can tell you, that is certainly NOT the case in Las Vegas. Almost every staff member I spoke with was professional and experienced. I consider myself pretty experienced in politics. There was not one staff member I met who didn’t know their shit. Precinct captain training? The NV staff has been doing that on a WEEKLY basis since November! Sign up for canvassing and are late 30 mins, you bet your ass a staffer will call you up and find out where you are. I remembered when I was considering going to IA and I wanted to know if the IA campaign needed a data analytics guy (my specialty). I asked several staff and never got an answer back. I asked the same question to Las Vegas staff and I got an answer back in seconds. The Las Vegas staff know their shit and they’re here to win. Even their volunteer coordinators are dedicated and knowledgeable. They have daily tables at UNLV, and weekly well attended Yang Hangs. Their offices are clean and open on time. Yang Gangs have houses you can stay in free of charge, and volunteers happily drive you around in a Tesla to get you to your canvassing locations. They’re that fucking good. Convinced yet? Here are the contacts you should add/follow on facebook:
Eileen Patterson, Las Vegas Volunteer Director
Gavin Williams, Field Organizer
Alex Pitarro, Field Organizer
Alyssa Monet Manson, Yang Gang House Leader
Nick Joke (not his real name, but his name on facebook), Volunteer organizer
(these are not all the staff, just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. There are several others, almost all are sharp).
Join the Vegas Yang Gang Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vegasyanggang/
The Las Vegas Yang Gang has a website: https://vegasyanggang.com/
The following are their active offices and hours:
Addresses:
Chinatown Office
4276 Spring Mountain Rd Suite 203 Las Vegas, NV 89102
Henderson Office
580 E. Windmill Lane Suite 130 Las Vegas, NV 89123
North Las Vegas Office
2815 W Lake Mead Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89106
Hours
Monday—Saturday: 10:00AM–8:00PM
Sunday: 12:00PM–8:00PM
(Note: I emphasize Vegas because it is the population center of Nevada. However, if you would like to help win other parts of Nevada, Reno is worthy of helping too. I’ve met several Reno organizers and they are all very capable people.)
Lastly, Las Vegas is truly an amazing city. Nothing beats canvassing 50 doors a day and then settling down to a workout, a spa, and a buffet. Want to Yang marijuana aficionados because Yang has the best drug policy? Great, its legal to buy weed in NV. Go to one of the hundreds of dispensaries in Vegas. Want to Yang sex workers and strippers because Yang wants to decriminalize sex work? Great, Vegas has the best strip clubs in the world. Want to party hard and work hard? Great, Vegas has the best nightclubs and bars you could ever dream of. Want to Yang sports gamblers because Yang wants to legalize online gambling, you can do that too!
So lets leave all our chips on the table Yang Gang. There is no other city more prepared to be won than Las Vegas. Lets lay it all out on the floor and say we did our best. Make Las Vegas our Last Stand. And if we win, if we do, that will be more than enough momentum to carry us to victory on Super Tuesday. Nevada/Las Vegas is better representative of America than any other state/city so far, and America will recognize that. If we win Vegas, we carry enough momentum to finish well in Super Tuesday, guaranteeing our bargaining power in a brokered convention in July.
I hope this is not the last time I write these posts. And I hope you all can join me. What are you waiting for? Buy your ticket. We’re going to Vegas baby.
thank u, next.
Note: last but not least, if you can donate, please donate to the Ken Jeong fundraiser this coming 2/13, will help us hit NV campaigning strong!:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ay-events-lv-1215
Edit: Thank you so much for everyone giving me awards! I just want Yang to win and I firmly believe this is our last stand. We’re in the Endgame now....

An Extensive Guide to Building a Murder Mystery

Requests for tips on running murder mysteries are a somewhat common question and it’s difficult to get good answers as they’re more complicated and in-depth than some more conventional adventures. Everyone brings up the three-clue rule, which is helpful, but that’s just one thing that goes into building a mystery. I have experience with mysteries and I’ve found that several times people have copied my answers (kindly crediting me) and pasted them when the question comes up again. I’ve decided to write a more thorough guide to how I run mystery adventures and hope that others will find it useful.

TWO TYPES
There are essentially two types of mysteries, the first involves solving a complete mystery, the second involves solving a crime. The first type is like an Agatha Christie mystery, there's a murder and the detective has to figure out how it happened and who did it. At the beginning all you know is that someone is dead. Sometime the murder isn’t actually what it appears to be, sometimes the suspects aren’t who you think they are. The detective has to go through all the possible suspects trying to discover who committed the crime, why, how, and then proving it.
The second type, solving the crime, is a police procedural. This is the type of mystery popularized by the TV show Columbo. Almost right from the beginning the detective knows who committed the murder, there may only be one suspect. There are similar mysteries in this vein where the detective may start out with two or three suspects, but he quickly narrows it down to the actual killer. This is the most common type of mystery we see because it can be resolved in an hour show. The challenge of the police procedural is in gathering enough evidence to prove the killer committed the crime and catching the criminal.

ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS
In the first type of mystery there are a larger number of suspects who must all be investigated and the detective is figuring out the mystery as he goes along. Every element must be discovered and it’s not always clear what’s actually happened, only that someone is dead.
There are two main variations of this style of mystery, “hardboiled” and “cozy.” Hardboiled mysteries are often told from the detective’s point of view, he’s a jaded antihero with his own personal code, The Maltese Falcon is a good example of this type. I think there are probably other games that can handle this style of mystery better than D&D, which usually has several party members and a setting that often doesn’t lend itself to the noir style.
Cozies cover a wide range of mysteries from Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes to The Name of the Roseor The Thing. They’re called cozies because the setting itself confines the mystery to a small area. There are also usually a large number of possible suspects, although I recommend the DM limit the number to no more than a dozen.
There is another variation of this theme in which there are potentially dozens or even hundreds of suspects, much like the Jack the Ripper murders. My belief is that this doesn’t translate well to D&D, it’s not something easily solved in the confines of the game. The policemen who worked the Jack the Ripper case did thousand of interviews, had a pool of three hundred potential suspects, and held over eighty people for questioning, that’s not possible in the game.
In the “cozy” mystery the suspects are often together either in an area or literally confined, the detective knows the guilty party is present. Whether it takes place in a house, on a ship, or in an island, there are a limited number of suspects and there’s often a restriction on how long it can take to solve the crime. There’s a deadline involved because the weather will clear, the ship will dock, the wagon train will be leaving town.
The detective has to cast a wide net, question everyone involved, collect clues, check alibis, and then figure out the sequence of events. It's complicated for a DM because there are a large number of people involved. The DM has to create the actual crime and the clues surrounding it, but it’s also necessary to come up with other crimes or situations that suspects want to conceal. It’s not just one mystery that’s being solved, the detective has to figure out who everyone really is and what they’re trying to hide. The other suspects are often doing things that makes them look guilty, but that are not actually associated with the crime. They're embezzling or having an affair or something unconnected to the murder. It’s usually necessary to provide red herrings and misleading paths, the challenge for the detectives is in eliminating everyone so they can focus their attention on the actual killer. All the evidence they’re gathering is helped in reducing the number of possibilities.
Because so much is involved, the DM should limit the number of suspects. I recommend the DM go no higher than eight suspects and some of them should be easily eliminated. Not just for his own sake, but because the players will have a hard time keeping track of everyone if there are too many people involved. While you’ll find that some cozy novels often have a dozen suspects or more, I think it’s difficult for the DM and the players to handle so many at once. Even with eight, right from the start there should be a few suspects that can be ruled out immediately so the party only has to investigate about five or six. Shortly thereafter the detectives should be able to reduce that to three. There should always be two or sometime three suspects for the party to focus on, this stops the mystery from being solved too quickly, and it creates tension in the party. The players are each going to have their “favorite” suspects, let them work it out themselves.
In the police procedural most of this is unnecessary. The PCs know from the beginning it was one of about three people, or there’s a clue that strongly suggests someone in particular. It should be possible to immediately discount the other suspects and focus on the actual killer. The complications are based on how smart you want the killer to be, did he try to cover his tracks, did he frame someone else, is he looking for a battle of wits? These adventures go more quickly, there’s less work overall and it’s possible to have a recurring villain if the PCs know who did it, but can’t prove he did it. Or perhaps they can prove his guilt but the killer outsmarted them or he’s simply untouchable because of his position. Initially identifying the killer isn’t that hard, but gathering the evidence and getting him convicted is the issue.

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
My experience has been that you should give all the suspects ordinary names if possible. Typical D&D names or historically accurate names can be confusing and the players lose track of who’s who. Even if you’ve already established that an NPC is Duke Æthelred, General Starketh Bloodraven, or the elven Ambassador Mellaril, the rest of the NPCs should be named Robert or Madeline. It’ll be easier for you and the players to keep everyone straight if the suspects are Greg, Marsha, Peter, and Cousin Oliver, rather than Æthelstan, Ælfgifu, Ælfthryth, and Cousin Æthelwulf. If it’s a police procedural there may only be one or two suspects, then their names aren’t as important.
Something I like to do is to find pictures online and use them for the suspects. If I imagine the duke’s wife has red hair, I’ll look around until I find a photo of a woman of the appropriate age with red hair who was sort of what I was picturing. After I gather all the photos I’ll print them out or show them on the screen, it helps the players recognize everyone. If you’re going to do it for one suspect, you’ve got to do it for all of them. Don’t tip your hand by having pictures for one of the important suspects while ignoring the others. I try to avoid using recognizable people, sometimes you can just search for “Irish women,” or something similar and you’ll find people with red hair (or whatever) of varying appearances.
A benefit of using pictures is that sometimes the players make assumptions based on appearances. The duke’s nephew looks suspicious so the PCs will investigate him thoroughly, the duke’s daughter looks innocent so they believe her stories and don’t follow up. The players make snap judgments based on photos and act on those judgments. Then when they learn the duke’s daughter was lying to them the entire time they’ll actually have an emotional reaction. They can’t believe she betrayed them, she looked so nice in her picture. That’s something that happens in real life as well, the DM shouldn’t feel guilty about enticing the players to judge people based on photos, we’ve all been warned that appearances can be deceiving.

DON’T THINK OF ELEPHANTS
This doesn’t apply to a police procedural as the PCs are aware of the crime and have learned about it after the fact, but if you’re running a cozy mystery, don’t tell your players in advance that there’s going to be a murder for them to solve. Don’t tell them what the adventure is about, present it as something else if possible; the duke has asked the PCs over to discuss his invasion of Freedonia, or he’s going to send them on a quest to recover some item. Then when they wake up in the morning and someone is dead, or they’re in the dining room and hear a scream, they can be drawn in immediately. If necessary, you can relate previous events in flashback. When they go to question the nephew you can mention that they saw everyone at dinner except him, or the maid seemed nervous about something when she was turning down the beds.
That involves you talking and describing instead of them doing, but what ends up happening is that if you tell them the adventure entails solving a mystery, they want to interrogate everyone and search for clues of a crime that hasn’t happened yet. They’re siting at dinner and an NPC says “Pass the salt” and the PCs are making Insight checks to figure out what he meant by that. They want to do a chemical analysis of everything on the table, they’re trying to check wine glasses to see if there’s poison or fingerprints. The PCs enter the house and one says, “I ‘accidentally’ bump into the butler, does he have a dagger under his vest?” The moment you say “murder mystery” the players are going to want to solve it, they’re not concerned with details like whether or not the murder has actually occurred. Keep the mystery a mystery.

RESPECT MY AUTHORITY
Something I’ve found, which I didn’t expect, is that some players feel their characters don’t have the authority to investigate a crime. They don’t feel right about interrogating people and searching houses. They’ll happily stab a goblin in the face and loot his cave, but they’re a guest of the duke, it’s not for them to frisk someone or search the house.
Have someone with authority on hand to let them know—or even order them—to solve the crime. The visiting ambassador has been murdered, the duke asks them to solve the crime. There’s been a series of murders by the docks, the sheriff asks them to look into it. Or put the party in a situation where they’re obligated to investigate the murder, an NPC contacted them, now he’s found dead on their doorstep. Once they take on the responsibility of being detectives it’s not as if they get badges and have an actual legal role, but they know they’re expected to solve the mystery and that they can act like investigators.
This doesn’t usually exist in stories or shows, the characters are police detectives, private investigators, or nosey old spinsters, they either have authority or act as if they do, but the DM should let the PCs know they’re responsible for solving the crime and have some power in that role.

I SHOT A MAN IN RENO, JUST TO WATCH HIM DIE
Crimes are composed of three parts, Motive, Means, and Opportunity. When the DM is planning the mystery an important part is the motive, why the murder occurs in the first place. There’s a reason the killer is willing to kill someone to get what he wants. In most mysteries discovering why the murder occurred goes a long way toward solving it.
For the DM, knowing why the murder took place determines everything that comes afterward. If the queen plans to seize power, she’s got to kill the king first. Her motive is power, she’s taking over the kingdom. That suggests she’s not going to just attack the king with a dagger, and she doesn’t want to make herself a suspect, not getting caught is part of committing the crime. If she’s alone with the king and stabs him in his sleep it’s going to be difficult for her to explain how she’s not the killer. The queen is probably going to choose some method that keeps her hands clean, getting blood all over yourself is a giveaway that you’ve been up to no good. Now the DM has to decide if she’s using poison, is she arranging an “accident,” is she hiring someone, is she getting a loveally to kill the king? Determining the motive will often lead to the means, how the crime was actually committed.
Once the why and how have been decided, the opportunity has to be considered. There has to be a reason the crime is being committed at that time. The DM has to determine if there was some sort of event occurring which made the crime necessary or convenient at that time, was the king’s bodyguard attending a joust that weekend, was there going to be a big party at the castle, was the king planning on divorcing his wife next month? The killer is going to choose a time to commit the murder because circumstances have forced his hand, or they’re going to help him commit the crime or get away with it.
The motive should be believable, the players should accept there’s a reason to want someone dead. Being evil isn’t enough, just because the royal advisor is Neutral Evil doesn’t mean he’s going to kill someone, there should a specific reason the royal advisor picked this time to commit murder. It’s important to come up with a convincing motive, and motives are usually related to things like jealousy, power, revenge, money, etc. Find the reason the murderer wants to kill and the rest will fall into place.
It’s also important to create a piece of evidence that will show the motive; a partially burned love letter, a treaty, a grant of deed. Somewhere in the course of investigating the crime there should be a piece of physical evidence that suggests or confirms the motive. The detective should be able to get possible motives from questioning the suspects and witnesses, but it’s useful for the PCs to discover something concrete that tells them why the murder was committed. Note that they may not initially understand that piece of evidence tells them the motive, but it should become clear in the course of solving the mystery.

JUST THE FACTS
There’s a lot of roleplaying in mysteries and the purpose is gathering information. The PCs have to speak to everyone, they’ll have questions, they need to keep track of what people said and a possible timeline. They should be able to get down to two or three and then really start to focus on the determining the killer. If your players don’t write things down and keep reliable notes, they’re going to have a hard time with this sort of mystery. It’s not something they can do off the cuff, at least one player has to be willing to create a file with a list of everyone and everywhere, the clues they’ve found, a timeline, alibis, etc. The DM should encourage the players to choose one person to take notes, it’s often helpful for the others to take some notes as well.
For the DM, a flow chart or “link list” is helpful. Write the mystery as it happened, including the details, but then keep notes to how everything is connected. You might have a page for what the nephew knows and it should include who he saw, what he did, how he interacted with the evidence, etc. Here’s a sheet I used (a Google Doc) which has some basic information. I had other pages which discussed the actions of the suspects and how they interacted with each other, but this sheet was useful for keeping track of where everyone was and how they interacted with suspects and clues. I also do something similar for each room. I keep a list of all the rooms and then a list of the clues in each room. As the PCs find the clues I check them off. This is a sample file with a list of Location Clues from one of my mysteries.
Talking to the NPC suspects are useful in helping to absolve or implicate others. The butler was sneaking around with the maid, but they didn’t kill the lord. However, not only do they clear each other of the crime, the butler saw the nephew downstairs whispering the in the library, the maid saw the lady in the upstairs hallway looking over the railing. Now the PCs know to focus on the lady and the nephew and see what they were up to. It doesn’t mean there’s a connection between the two, but it gives the players something to ask them about.
In the police procedural type of mystery, the players are going to quickly have a suspect or suspects, now they need to figure out how he did it. There’s some roleplaying, talking to witnesses, questioning the suspect, but there are less people involved. A lot of it is collecting the evidence and putting it together. This can be easy or difficult. The evidence can tell the players how the crime was committed, or they’ll have seemingly unconnected clues and they’ll need to figure out how they relate to each other. That can be frustrating in that the players aren’t actually detectives and may not put things together, and if you just have their characters roll to figure things out, the players might feel they’re not solving anything, they’re just going along for the ride.
There might also be a bit of cat and mouse between the party and the killer. It’s important to not only determine the murder’s motive, method, and opportunity, but his personality. Is he going to taunt the party, is he going to shift the blame, is he going to pretend to be an innocent bystander? In police procedurals the killer often develops an antagonistic relationship with the detective. They both know he did it, but the detective has to convincingly show that he did it by discovering the telltale mistake the killer made.

THE RULE OF THREE (OR MORE)
There should be multiple ways to discover the same thing. The PCs will fail a roll, forget about something, ignore something, or not even check on a lead. If they don’t find the earring at the crime scene, they should find the single earring in the jewelry box, have a witness recall that the lady lost her earring, and the maid should remark that the lady asked her to look around for her earring. Even if the players catch on to the clue when it’s first presented, it’s fine to have the players learn all three of these clues. The repetition reinforces to them that the clue is a clue and it’s something important.
You might find that the players also find a clue but don’t really do much with the information. They know it’s a clue, but by itself it doesn’t mean anything to them. The players see the butler’s footstool is broken, but they can’t connect it with anything. The DM knows the stool broke when the butler fell off after trying to hide something on top of the armoire, but the players don’t know that, there need to be other clues associated with the situation to help the players make sense of it. The butler seems to be limping or has back pain, the person in the next room heard a noise like something falling during the night, the molding on the armoire is damaged, it looks like it’s pulled forward. All together this will get the PCs to focus on the butler and take extra care in searching his room, they’ll find the papers hidden on top of the armoire. They might even tell you directly that they search there, the clues were unnecessary, but it’s better to prepare clues for the PCs to find.
PCs should be able to find the clues they need to find, it’s up to them whether they realize they’re clues. Even so, I don’t allow my players to say, “I search the room,” I want to know what they’re searching—to a degree. If they say they’re searching the bed, that’s fine. I assume they search every inch of that bed, in the mattress, under the pillows, on top of the canopy, everywhere. If the desk has a hidden drawer and they tell me they’re searching the desk, they’re going to find the hidden drawer, the envelopes inside, and the items on top and inside. Have them make one roll for each large object, the floor is one object, the walls are one object, the fireplace is one object. When they look over an object, everything associated with that object is also investigated. Don’t make them tell you they’re picking up the decanter off the dresser, draining the wine, and seeing if the key is inside. If the bottle is on the dresser, and they search the desk, they realize there’s something suspicious about the bottle that warrants further examination. This means you need to keep a list of everything in the room and whether or not it’s a clue, one of the sheets I provided is useful for this purpose.
Some DMs might not like the notion of “I search the bed” encompassing everything related to the bed, and will want multiple searches, but I’ve found you’ll get one of two situations. A player never says that he searches inside the mattress and thus he never finds the murder weapon, of after the first bit of evidence is found inside a mattress, the PCs will tear open every mattress they find. Since they either need to find something or they find something and keep looking in the same place in the other rooms, you might as well just rule that “I search the bed” means they search every bit of the bed methodically.
If one PC misses some rolls someone else can check. I encourage the players to have multiple PCs search for things. It’s not necessary for everyone to be involved in every room and some PCs’ skills will lend themselves more to the detective role. The DM should make an effort to keep things moving along though, and if a PC has searched and missed something you can say, “Youdon’t find anything.” You can also say, “You searched thoroughly, there’s nothing there” if there is nothing there. Be careful about being too clever, if the poison was disposed of in the vase and they search the table with the vase, don’t just say, “You check the vase and there’s liquid inside,” you’ve got to tell them there’s something different about the liquid. “You take out the flowers and there’s something strange. The bottom of the stems are black and there’s an odd smell,” or “As you search the table you notice the flowers in the vase smell strange. There’s the smell of flowers, but also a bitter smell.” Let them ask follow questions or investigate further.
Even if you judge that noticing something has a high DC, the PCs should be able to find it if they specifically mention looking for it. Perhaps the wall in the study has a bunch of weapons and shields as decorations, and the clue is subtle and difficult to spot, when the murder weapon was returned to the wall it was placed crookedly or mounted the wrong way. If one of the PCs is specifically searching the wall, checking the weapons, he should definitely find that weapon was tampered with, no roll necessary. What he does with the information is up to him, but he should absolutely find that information. If someone says, “I look at the wall, do I see anything?” then you should apply the DC to his search. You might also want to use tiered DCs, the DC to find the misplaced weapon is 25, the DC to notice there’s something off about the wall is 15.
The DM should be aware that some clues are more important than others. The broken stool is really just a hint for the players to check the top of the armoire for the poison recipe which is the important thing. It doesn’t really matter if the PCs find all the clues surrounding the butler hiding the poison recipe. The broken stool, the bump in the night, the bruise and limp are ultimately just there so the players find his notes about making poison. If a player goes into the room and says, “I search the armoire,” he’s going to find the incriminating paper, that’s solid evidence. The players must find that evidence for the mystery to be solved, once they have it, whether they determine what happened to the stool or why the butler is limping is irrelevant.

HISTORY IS ONE DAMN THING AFTER ANOTHER
If the DM has an idea for running a mystery several adventures in advance, it creates the possibility of connecting the mystery to other themes in the campaign. In a political campaign where the king’s two sons have been vying to succeed him, perhaps one of them takes matters into his own hands so he can inherit the throne a little earlier than nature intended. Perhaps an alliance between the elves and the dwarves is disrupted by the ambassador’s death.
The DM also has the opportunity to introduce clues that will assist in setting up or solving the mystery later on. The PCs were previously hired to recover the Dagger of Diomedes for a duke, imagine their surprise several adventures later when they learn he’s been murdered with it. Maybe they helped a mage obtain some rare spell components, he was working on a spell with unusual effects. Weeks or months later in real time, the crime scene shows signs of these effects, and the PCs immediately know whom to question. Assuming the mage isn’t the killer, he should be able to provide a list of suspects based on the people who had access to the spell.

RED HERRINGS
Before refrigeration, fish were preserved by salting or smoking them. These preservation methods turned the fish red in color and gave them strong odor. Smelly red herrings are possibly part of the iron rations the PCs carry around with them while traveling (which could be why wandering monsters find them so easily). Some dog trainers used the smelly, preserved fish as ways to teach hunting dogs to follow a scent, but the person who popularized the term described a situation where herrings were used to confuse and lead someone away from the right trail, the opposite of its actual meaning. The term red herring is a red herring.
In mystery terms, a red herring is a “clue” which leads the detective into following a false path or coming to a wrong conclusion. In the Agatha Christie story, And Then There Were None, the killer fakes his own death early on thus leading the other guests to conclude that one of the remaining guests is the murderer. He then has free rein to murder the others without ever being suspected.
Red herrings can be used two ways in mysteries, by either leading the PCs to suspect someone else, or by distracting them from a suspect. The butler was seen sneaking around, he has a flimsy alibi, his tie was found at the crime scene, and he lies to the PCs. Eventually the PCs will discover that he didn’t kill the duke, he was actually sneaking around with the duke’s wife. He’s been hiding something and leading the PCs to suspect him as the murder, when in fact he was innocent of that crime. He accidentally created a false trail by trying to conceal his adultery.
The killer may also use a red herring to distract the PCs from his trail, and incriminate someone else. Perhaps the nephew killed the duke, and knowing about the affair between the butler and the duke’s wife, he planted the butler’s tie at the crime scene to keep the investigation headed toward someone else. Or the killer creates a bit of evidence—he hangs the duke after killing him, suggesting it’s a suicide, or makes the crime scene look like a robbery to make everyone think the duke was killed during a crime which really didn’t occur. The book/movie Gone Girl uses this to an extreme, a trail of clues and phony evidence has been left to incriminate someone of a crime that hasn’t even been committed.

INVISIBLE HERRINGS
There are things you can find that are clues, but there are also things you can’t find that are clues. In the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of Silver Blaze, a racehorse is stolen and the trainer is murdered, and Holmes and a detective from Scotland Yard investigate. Holmes asks if the policeman has noticed “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The policeman points out the dog didn’t do anything. Holmes thinks that’s what’s curious. The absence of something happening is the clue, Holmes wonders why the guard dog didn’t bark. That leads him to deducing it’s because the killer was someone familiar to the dog, the dog wasn’t disturbed by someone he knew coming into the barn and taking the horse.
No mud on their boots and a dry hem on their cloak could indicate that the suspect wasn’t out of the house when the murder took place, poking a hole in their alibi. The suspect claimed to be in their room, but the PCs discover the fireplace is clean, the suspect didn’t burn any firewood that bitterly cold night. Through closed doors the PCs heard the daughter singing, the butler fall off his stool, and the duke and his wife arguing, why did no one hear the victim’s room getting ransacked and the furniture being overturned? The clue is what the PCs don’t find.
These invisible herrings can be a little difficult for the players, they naturally assume that they need to find something for it to matter. If the clues are that the suspect’s clothing isn’t wet and muddy and there are no footprints outside, there should also be clues letting the PCs know that those things are missing. It should be pointed out to them that they’re all wet and tracked mud into the house, or they couldn’t track because their own muddy footprints obscured the trail.

THE SPIRITS TELL ME “NEPHEW, LIBRARY, CANDLESTICK”
In the beginning think about what spells or objects will let the PCs shortcut the adventure. You don’t want them casting Speak with Dead and asking the victim, “Who killed you?” Make sure the victim didn’t actually see the killer; maybe the murderer poisoned the wine, snuck up from behind, or wore a mask.
You’ve also got to anticipate spells like Zone of Truth when they’re questioning suspects. One of the caveats of the spell is that everyone is aware they’re in the spell’s effect, they don’t have to answer questions. They can also say things that are truthful, but misleading. “Kill the duke? That’s absurd. Why would I kill the duke?” or “I don’t how to use a dagger or sword, I could never stab anyone. What kind of accusation is that? It’s horrible! Who are you to go around accusing people of murder?” while ignoring that they poisoned the wine. Also, count down how long the spells last. Clever or nervous NPCs can eat up a lot of time in not answering questions. If you let the players see the time counting down, they’ll be concerned about the time running out and won’t use the spells to their best advantage.
Think about what magic items the PCs have as well. If someone remembers they have the Goggles of Secrets or the Potion of Confession, things will come to an abrupt end. You don’t want someone with an item or spell to negate the mystery because you planned for everything but their scroll of Locate Object.
Also be aware of pets, animal companions, and familiars. You don’t want the Ranger bringing his dog to sniff around the crime scene and it immediately starts growling at the killer. See what benefits having the animals will give the PCs in learning things and either incorporate them as a help or counter them to preserve the mystery. My experience has been that sometimes players forget they have a helpful animal, so don’t make the mystery entirely dependent on the Druid’s pet badger smelling the poison on the killer’s cuff.

SCUM AND VILLAINY
Since D&D involves a lot of killing, many times we forget that people who commit murders are not nice people. The wife killed the duke, now she might make friends with the Rogue, perhaps even seduce him, and tell him all about how she never trusted the butler, how the maid was caught stealing, how the nephew was in debt from gambling. Sometimes NPCs can befriend PCs and then betray them whether they’re trying to conceal their own crime or the killer’s. Or maybe they’re just nosey and have a theory about everyone, “The wife did it! She told the duke she’d kill him if he kept bringing his hounds inside the house!” Carrying this to an extreme, there’s an Agatha Christie novel where the person helping Poirot solve the crime is revealed to have been the killer all along. He involved himself in the investigation to direct it away from himself.

IT WAS ELEMENTARY
At the end of the Sherlock Holmes stories and Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, the detective always explains the crime. Holmes tells Watson and the police what really happened, Poirot calls all the suspects together. They detail what happened to everyone involved, how the killer used this person to get an alibi, why the nephew was really in the library. The detective draws a road map of the crime and lets everyone see what happened, even answering questions or shooting down denials. Your mysteries don’t have to end that way, but you should encourage the players to walk through the crimes out loud before they come to a final judgment. Request that one of them tell the rest of the party the story of the murder and let the PCs poke holes in it or fill in details they’d forgotten until now.
The PCs shouldn’t have to have every clue to solve the mystery, but they should be able to account for nearly everything. If they’re stuck on something, point it out; ask them why the maid lied, ask them how they know the nephew stole the knife. Sometimes the players will think they’ve solved the mystery but they’ve excluded the evidence they didn’t find, didn’t like, or didn’t understand. Sometimes they jump to conclusions because they take a dislike to an NPC.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS
It might be helpful for the DM to write confessions and the suspects’ reactions to being caught. Even if you’re not reading it to the players word for word, writing everything can fill in a variety of details. If the butler and wife were having an affair, the butler’s confession should account for that. “Yes, we were seeing each other, I was sneaking into her dressing room when I saw the nephew’s door was ajar.” The things mentioned in the confession can either give clues to the PCs so they can solve the mystery or fill in details they missed. It also lets the DM have all the evidence and connections for a suspect in one short paragraph.
It’s also important to decide on what the murderer’s response to being caught will be. Is he going to attack the PCs? Is he going to confess everything? Is he going to deny it, knowing the prince will dismiss the charges? Very often in cozies the killers confess or give up, in a police procedural the criminals have a variety of reactions, the DM needs to know what reaction it’s going to be.

BOOK ’EM, DANNO
Think about the resolution after the criminal has been caught. Do the PCs just have to inform the authorities, are they authorized to take matters into their own hands, is the adventure going to become a courtroom drama? Players like it when they catch the killer and justice is served, they find it upsetting when things are covered up. The DM should decide if the players get a satisfying resolution or the killer gets off and becomes a recurring villain.
There should be a little thought given to the consequences of these crimes before the fact, so you’ll know how to handle things after the mystery is solved or the culprit is caught. I often run campaigns that are very late Iron Age/Early Medieval in nature, small kingdoms, independent city-states, and the law is what the person in charge says it is. Evidence isn’t going to be dismissed because the PCs broke into someone’s house and searched it, but evidence might be dismissed because an alliance or political connection takes precedence. No one is thrilled that the Necromancer has been killing prostitutes so he can turn them into undead and run his experiments, but he’s more important to the Count then a few dead commoners. It also works the other way, too, the PCs are convinced the nephew is guilty, but their accumulated evidence isn’t entirely convincing. That’s not a problem though, as the nephew is very popular and imprisoning/killing him solidifies the lord’s position.
The DM should also plan for the players deciding they’re going to cover up the crime. If the victim was killed because he the murderer stood to gain financially the players are going to want to turn him in and convict. If the victim was killed because the murderer wanted revenge for the victim from having abused and murdered the killer’s younger sister, the players might feel being pushed out a window was justice served.

TWELVE ANGRY MEN
Mysteries themselves can often take several sessions, it’s easy to underestimate how long they’re going to be. You’ll find that players will often gather a few clues, interview a witness or two, and then formulate a theory, often based on incomplete information. Then there’s a lot of discussion amongst the players over how it all happened. That’s something to watch out for when it happens early on. They all have theories based on nothing and they’ll argue them vociferously. Sometimes you just have to tell them they’re jumping to conclusions without any actual evidence.
While I try to limit unnecessary discussion early one, there’s no timetable for discussions at the end of a mystery. The players have had to keep a bunch of notes and navigate a bunch of twists and turns, I let the players work it out until they’re satisfied. If the DM feels the discussion is getting off track he should ask questions about particular facets of the mystery he thinks the players are a bit hazy on.

THIS IS THE END
I think this is a pretty in-depth guide and it should be helpful whether you’ve never run a mystery or whether you’ve run a few but wanted to expand on them a bit. These are the things I take into consideration, I don’t necessarily use all of them. A police procedural can be pretty direct, no red herrings, one suspect, a few helpful witnesses, and a smoking flame blade. Everything can be wrapped up pretty quickly, particularly if PCs pester the killer by asking one more thing, and getting him to confess his plan or superior intellect. Or you could choose to run an extensive adventure like Murder on the Orient Express, over a dozen suspects, multiple false alibis, conflicting statements, red herrings, fake evidence, and a conclusion that torments the detective.
One murder is going to be a lot less complicated than the other, one is going to require more planning by the DM, more thinking by the players, and more time to solve overall. Hopefully this guide will help you regardless of the scenario.

An Extensive Guide to Building a Murder Mystery

Requests for tips on running murder mysteries are a somewhat common question and it’s difficult to get good answers as they’re more complicated and in-depth than some more conventional adventures. Everyone brings up the three-clue rule, which is helpful, but that’s just one thing that goes into building a mystery. I have experience with mysteries and I’ve found that several times people have copied my answers (kindly crediting me) and pasted them when the question comes up again. I’ve decided to write a more thorough guide to how I run mystery adventures and hope that others will find it useful.

TWO TYPES
There are essentially two types of mysteries, the first involves solving a complete mystery, the second involves solving a crime. The first type is like an Agatha Christie mystery, there's a murder and the detective has to figure out how it happened and who did it. At the beginning all you know is that someone is dead. Sometime the murder isn’t actually what it appears to be, sometimes the suspects aren’t who you think they are. The detective has to go through all the possible suspects trying to discover who committed the crime, why, how, and then proving it.
The second type, solving the crime, is a police procedural. This is the type of mystery popularized by the TV show Columbo. Almost right from the beginning the detective knows who committed the murder, there may only be one suspect. There are similar mysteries in this vein where the detective may start out with two or three suspects, but he quickly narrows it down to the actual killer. This is the most common type of mystery we see because it can be resolved in an hour show. The challenge of the police procedural is in gathering enough evidence to prove the killer committed the crime and catching the criminal.

ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS
In the first type of mystery there are a larger number of suspects who must all be investigated and the detective is figuring out the mystery as he goes along. Every element must be discovered and it’s not always clear what’s actually happened, only that someone is dead.
There are two main variations of this style of mystery, “hardboiled” and “cozy.” Hardboiled mysteries are often told from the detective’s point of view, he’s a jaded antihero with his own personal code, The Maltese Falcon is a good example of this type. I think there are probably other games that can handle this style of mystery better than D&D, which usually has several party members and a setting that often doesn’t lend itself to the noir style.
Cozies cover a wide range of mysteries from Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes to The Name of the Rose or The Thing. They’re called cozies because the setting itself confines the mystery to a small area. There are also usually a large number of possible suspects, although I recommend the DM limit the number to no more than a dozen.
There is another variation of this theme in which there are potentially dozens or even hundreds of suspects, much like the Jack the Ripper murders. My belief is that this doesn’t translate well to D&D, it’s not something easily solved in the confines of the game. The policemen who worked the Jack the Ripper case did thousand of interviews, had a pool of three hundred potential suspects, and held over eighty people for questioning, that’s not possible in the game.
In the “cozy” mystery the suspects are often together either in an area or literally confined, the detective knows the guilty party is present. Whether it takes place in a house, on a ship, or in an island, there are a limited number of suspects and there’s often a restriction on how long it can take to solve the crime. There’s a deadline involved because the weather will clear, the ship will dock, the wagon train will be leaving town.
The detective has to cast a wide net, question everyone involved, collect clues, check alibis, and then figure out the sequence of events. It's complicated for a DM because there are a large number of people involved. The DM has to create the actual crime and the clues surrounding it, but it’s also necessary to come up with other crimes or situations that suspects want to conceal. It’s not just one mystery that’s being solved, the detective has to figure out who everyone really is and what they’re trying to hide. The other suspects are often doing things that makes them look guilty, but that are not actually associated with the crime. They're embezzling or having an affair or something unconnected to the murder. It’s usually necessary to provide red herrings and misleading paths, the challenge for the detectives is in eliminating everyone so they can focus their attention on the actual killer. All the evidence they’re gathering is helped in reducing the number of possibilities.
Because so much is involved, the DM should limit the number of suspects. I recommend the DM go no higher than eight suspects and some of them should be easily eliminated. Not just for his own sake, but because the players will have a hard time keeping track of everyone if there are too many people involved. While you’ll find that some cozy novels often have a dozen suspects or more, I think it’s difficult for the DM and the players to handle so many at once. Even with eight, right from the start there should be a few suspects that can be ruled out immediately so the party only has to investigate about five or six. Shortly thereafter the detectives should be able to reduce that to three. There should always be two or sometime three suspects for the party to focus on, this stops the mystery from being solved too quickly, and it creates tension in the party. The players are each going to have their “favorite” suspects, let them work it out themselves.
In the police procedural most of this is unnecessary. The PCs know from the beginning it was one of about three people, or there’s a clue that strongly suggests someone in particular. It should be possible to immediately discount the other suspects and focus on the actual killer. The complications are based on how smart you want the killer to be, did he try to cover his tracks, did he frame someone else, is he looking for a battle of wits? These adventures go more quickly, there’s less work overall and it’s possible to have a recurring villain if the PCs know who did it, but can’t prove he did it. Or perhaps they can prove his guilt but the killer outsmarted them or he’s simply untouchable because of his position. Initially identifying the killer isn’t that hard, but gathering the evidence and getting him convicted is the issue.

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
My experience has been that you should give all the suspects ordinary names if possible. Typical D&D names or historically accurate names can be confusing and the players lose track of who’s who. Even if you’ve already established that an NPC is Duke Æthelred, General Starketh Bloodraven, or the elven Ambassador Mellaril, the rest of the NPCs should be named Robert or Madeline. It’ll be easier for you and the players to keep everyone straight if the suspects are Greg, Marsha, Peter, and Cousin Oliver, rather than Æthelstan, Ælfgifu, Ælfthryth, and Cousin Æthelwulf. If it’s a police procedural there may only be one or two suspects, then their names aren’t as important.
Something I like to do is to find pictures online and use them for the suspects. If I imagine the duke’s wife has red hair, I’ll look around until I find a photo of a woman of the appropriate age with red hair who was sort of what I was picturing. After I gather all the photos I’ll print them out or show them on the screen, it helps the players recognize everyone. If you’re going to do it for one suspect, you’ve got to do it for all of them. Don’t tip your hand by having pictures for one of the important suspects while ignoring the others. I try to avoid using recognizable people, sometimes you can just search for “Irish women,” or something similar and you’ll find people with red hair (or whatever) of varying appearances.
A benefit of using pictures is that sometimes the players make assumptions based on appearances. The duke’s nephew looks suspicious so the PCs will investigate him thoroughly, the duke’s daughter looks innocent so they believe her stories and don’t follow up. The players make snap judgments based on photos and act on those judgments. Then when they learn the duke’s daughter was lying to them the entire time they’ll actually have an emotional reaction. They can’t believe she betrayed them, she looked so nice in her picture. That’s something that happens in real life as well, the DM shouldn’t feel guilty about enticing the players to judge people based on photos, we’ve all been warned that appearances can be deceiving.

DON’T THINK OF ELEPHANTS
This doesn’t apply to a police procedural as the PCs are aware of the crime and have learned about it after the fact, but if you’re running a cozy mystery, don’t tell your players in advance that there’s going to be a murder for them to solve. Don’t tell them what the adventure is about, present it as something else if possible; the duke has asked the PCs over to discuss his invasion of Freedonia, or he’s going to send them on a quest to recover some item. Then when they wake up in the morning and someone is dead, or they’re in the dining room and hear a scream, they can be drawn in immediately. If necessary, you can relate previous events in flashback. When they go to question the nephew you can mention that they saw everyone at dinner except him, or the maid seemed nervous about something when she was turning down the beds.
That involves you talking and describing instead of them doing, but what ends up happening is that if you tell them the adventure entails solving a mystery, they want to interrogate everyone and search for clues of a crime that hasn’t happened yet. They’re siting at dinner and an NPC says “Pass the salt” and the PCs are making Insight checks to figure out what he meant by that. They want to do a chemical analysis of everything on the table, they’re trying to check wine glasses to see if there’s poison or fingerprints. The PCs enter the house and one says, “I ‘accidentally’ bump into the butler, does he have a dagger under his vest?” The moment you say “murder mystery” the players are going to want to solve it, they’re not concerned with details like whether or not the murder has actually occurred. Keep the mystery a mystery.

RESPECT MY AUTHORITY
Something I’ve found, which I didn’t expect, is that some players feel their characters don’t have the authority to investigate a crime. They don’t feel right about interrogating people and searching houses. They’ll happily stab a goblin in the face and loot his cave, but they’re a guest of the duke, it’s not for them to frisk someone or search the house.
Have someone with authority on hand to let them know—or even order them—to solve the crime. The visiting ambassador has been murdered, the duke asks them to solve the crime. There’s been a series of murders by the docks, the sheriff asks them to look into it. Or put the party in a situation where they’re obligated to investigate the murder, an NPC contacted them, now he’s found dead on their doorstep. Once they take on the responsibility of being detectives it’s not as if they get badges and have an actual legal role, but they know they’re expected to solve the mystery and that they can act like investigators.
This doesn’t usually exist in stories or shows, the characters are police detectives, private investigators, or nosey old spinsters, they either have authority or act as if they do, but the DM should let the PCs know they’re responsible for solving the crime and have some power in that role.

I SHOT A MAN IN RENO, JUST TO WATCH HIM DIE
Crimes are composed of three parts, Motive, Means, and Opportunity. When the DM is planning the mystery an important part is the motive, why the murder occurs in the first place. There’s a reason the killer is willing to kill someone to get what he wants. In most mysteries discovering why the murder occurred goes a long way toward solving it.
For the DM, knowing why the murder took place determines everything that comes afterward. If the queen plans to seize power, she’s got to kill the king first. Her motive is power, she’s taking over the kingdom. That suggests she’s not going to just attack the king with a dagger, and she doesn’t want to make herself a suspect, not getting caught is part of committing the crime. If she’s alone with the king and stabs him in his sleep it’s going to be difficult for her to explain how she’s not the killer. The queen is probably going to choose some method that keeps her hands clean, getting blood all over yourself is a giveaway that you’ve been up to no good. Now the DM has to decide if she’s using poison, is she arranging an “accident,” is she hiring someone, is she getting a loveally to kill the king? Determining the motive will often lead to the means, how the crime was actually committed.
Once the why and how have been decided, the opportunity has to be considered. There has to be a reason the crime is being committed at that time. The DM has to determine if there was some sort of event occurring which made the crime necessary or convenient at that time, was the king’s bodyguard attending a joust that weekend, was there going to be a big party at the castle, was the king planning on divorcing his wife next month? The killer is going to choose a time to commit the murder because circumstances have forced his hand, or they’re going to help him commit the crime or get away with it.
The motive should be believable, the players should accept there’s a reason to want someone dead. Being evil isn’t enough, just because the royal advisor is Neutral Evil doesn’t mean he’s going to kill someone, there should a specific reason the royal advisor picked this time to commit murder. It’s important to come up with a convincing motive, and motives are usually related to things like jealousy, power, revenge, money, etc. Find the reason the murderer wants to kill and the rest will fall into place.
It’s also important to create a piece of evidence that will show the motive; a partially burned love letter, a treaty, a grant of deed. Somewhere in the course of investigating the crime there should be a piece of physical evidence that suggests or confirms the motive. The detective should be able to get possible motives from questioning the suspects and witnesses, but it’s useful for the PCs to discover something concrete that tells them why the murder was committed. Note that they may not initially understand that piece of evidence tells them the motive, but it should become clear in the course of solving the mystery.

JUST THE FACTS
There’s a lot of roleplaying in mysteries and the purpose is gathering information. The PCs have to speak to everyone, they’ll have questions, they need to keep track of what people said and a possible timeline. They should be able to get down to two or three and then really start to focus on the determining the killer. If your players don’t write things down and keep reliable notes, they’re going to have a hard time with this sort of mystery. It’s not something they can do off the cuff, at least one player has to be willing to create a file with a list of everyone and everywhere, the clues they’ve found, a timeline, alibis, etc. The DM should encourage the players to choose one person to take notes, it’s often helpful for the others to take some notes as well.
For the DM, a flow chart or “link list” is helpful. Write the mystery as it happened, including the details, but then keep notes to how everything is connected. You might have a page for what the nephew knows and it should include who he saw, what he did, how he interacted with the evidence, etc. Here’s a sheet I used (a Google Doc) which has some basic information. I had other pages which discussed the actions of the suspects and how they interacted with each other, but this sheet was useful for keeping track of where everyone was and how they interacted with suspects and clues. I also do something similar for each room. I keep a list of all the rooms and then a list of the clues in each room. As the PCs find the clues I check them off. This is a sample file with a list of Location Clues from one of my mysteries.
Talking to the NPC suspects are useful in helping to absolve or implicate others. The butler was sneaking around with the maid, but they didn’t kill the lord. However, not only do they clear each other of the crime, the butler saw the nephew downstairs whispering the in the library, the maid saw the lady in the upstairs hallway looking over the railing. Now the PCs know to focus on the lady and the nephew and see what they were up to. It doesn’t mean there’s a connection between the two, but it gives the players something to ask them about.
In the police procedural type of mystery, the players are going to quickly have a suspect or suspects, now they need to figure out how he did it. There’s some roleplaying, talking to witnesses, questioning the suspect, but there are less people involved. A lot of it is collecting the evidence and putting it together. This can be easy or difficult. The evidence can tell the players how the crime was committed, or they’ll have seemingly unconnected clues and they’ll need to figure out how they relate to each other. That can be frustrating in that the players aren’t actually detectives and may not put things together, and if you just have their characters roll to figure things out, the players might feel they’re not solving anything, they’re just going along for the ride.
There might also be a bit of cat and mouse between the party and the killer. It’s important to not only determine the murder’s motive, method, and opportunity, but his personality. Is he going to taunt the party, is he going to shift the blame, is he going to pretend to be an innocent bystander? In police procedurals the killer often develops an antagonistic relationship with the detective. They both know he did it, but the detective has to convincingly show that he did it by discovering the telltale mistake the killer made.

THE RULE OF THREE (OR MORE)
There should be multiple ways to discover the same thing. The PCs will fail a roll, forget about something, ignore something, or not even check on a lead. If they don’t find the earring at the crime scene, they should find the single earring in the jewelry box, have a witness recall that the lady lost her earring, and the maid should remark that the lady asked her to look around for her earring. Even if the players catch on to the clue when it’s first presented, it’s fine to have the players learn all three of these clues. The repetition reinforces to them that the clue is a clue and it’s something important.
You might find that the players also find a clue but don’t really do much with the information. They know it’s a clue, but by itself it doesn’t mean anything to them. The players see the butler’s footstool is broken, but they can’t connect it with anything. The DM knows the stool broke when the butler fell off after trying to hide something on top of the armoire, but the players don’t know that, there need to be other clues associated with the situation to help the players make sense of it. The butler seems to be limping or has back pain, the person in the next room heard a noise like something falling during the night, the molding on the armoire is damaged, it looks like it’s pulled forward. All together this will get the PCs to focus on the butler and take extra care in searching his room, they’ll find the papers hidden on top of the armoire. They might even tell you directly that they search there, the clues were unnecessary, but it’s better to prepare clues for the PCs to find.
PCs should be able to find the clues they need to find, it’s up to them whether they realize they’re clues. Even so, I don’t allow my players to say, “I search the room,” I want to know what they’re searching—to a degree. If they say they’re searching the bed, that’s fine. I assume they search every inch of that bed, in the mattress, under the pillows, on top of the canopy, everywhere. If the desk has a hidden drawer and they tell me they’re searching the desk, they’re going to find the hidden drawer, the envelopes inside, and the items on top and inside. Have them make one roll for each large object, the floor is one object, the walls are one object, the fireplace is one object. When they look over an object, everything associated with that object is also investigated. Don’t make them tell you they’re picking up the decanter off the dresser, draining the wine, and seeing if the key is inside. If the bottle is on the dresser, and they search the desk, they realize there’s something suspicious about the bottle that warrants further examination. This means you need to keep a list of everything in the room and whether or not it’s a clue, one of the sheets I provided is useful for this purpose.
Some DMs might not like the notion of “I search the bed” encompassing everything related to the bed, and will want multiple searches, but I’ve found you’ll get one of two situations. A player never says that he searches inside the mattress and thus he never finds the murder weapon, of after the first bit of evidence is found inside a mattress, the PCs will tear open every mattress they find. Since they either need to find something or they find something and keep looking in the same place in the other rooms, you might as well just rule that “I search the bed” means they search every bit of the bed methodically.
If one PC misses some rolls someone else can check. I encourage the players to have multiple PCs search for things. It’s not necessary for everyone to be involved in every room and some PCs’ skills will lend themselves more to the detective role. The DM should make an effort to keep things moving along though, and if a PC has searched and missed something you can say, “Youdon’t find anything.” You can also say, “You searched thoroughly, there’s nothing there” if there is nothing there. Be careful about being too clever, if the poison was disposed of in the vase and they search the table with the vase, don’t just say, “You check the vase and there’s liquid inside,” you’ve got to tell them there’s something different about the liquid. “You take out the flowers and there’s something strange. The bottom of the stems are black and there’s an odd smell,” or “As you search the table you notice the flowers in the vase smell strange. There’s the smell of flowers, but also a bitter smell.” Let them ask follow questions or investigate further.
Even if you judge that noticing something has a high DC, the PCs should be able to find it if they specifically mention looking for it. Perhaps the wall in the study has a bunch of weapons and shields as decorations, and the clue is subtle and difficult to spot, when the murder weapon was returned to the wall it was placed crookedly or mounted the wrong way. If one of the PCs is specifically searching the wall, checking the weapons, he should definitely find that weapon was tampered with, no roll necessary. What he does with the information is up to him, but he should absolutely find that information. If someone says, “I look at the wall, do I see anything?” then you should apply the DC to his search. You might also want to use tiered DCs, the DC to find the misplaced weapon is 25, the DC to notice there’s something off about the wall is 15.
The DM should be aware that some clues are more important than others. The broken stool is really just a hint for the players to check the top of the armoire for the poison recipe which is the important thing. It doesn’t really matter if the PCs find all the clues surrounding the butler hiding the poison recipe. The broken stool, the bump in the night, the bruise and limp are ultimately just there so the players find his notes about making poison. If a player goes into the room and says, “I search the armoire,” he’s going to find the incriminating paper, that’s solid evidence. The players must find that evidence for the mystery to be solved, once they have it, whether they determine what happened to the stool or why the butler is limping is irrelevant.

HISTORY IS ONE DAMN THING AFTER ANOTHER
If the DM has an idea for running a mystery several adventures in advance, it creates the possibility of connecting the mystery to other themes in the campaign. In a political campaign where the king’s two sons have been vying to succeed him, perhaps one of them takes matters into his own hands so he can inherit the throne a little earlier than nature intended. Perhaps an alliance between the elves and the dwarves is disrupted by the ambassador’s death.
The DM also has the opportunity to introduce clues that will assist in setting up or solving the mystery later on. The PCs were previously hired to recover the Dagger of Diomedes for a duke, imagine their surprise several adventures later when they learn he’s been murdered with it. Maybe they helped a mage obtain some rare spell components, he was working on a spell with unusual effects. Weeks or months later in real time, the crime scene shows signs of these effects, and the PCs immediately know whom to question. Assuming the mage isn’t the killer, he should be able to provide a list of suspects based on the people who had access to the spell.

RED HERRINGS
Before refrigeration, fish were preserved by salting or smoking them. These preservation methods turned the fish red in color and gave them strong odor. Smelly red herrings are possibly part of the iron rations the PCs carry around with them while traveling (which could be why wandering monsters find them so easily). Some dog trainers used the smelly, preserved fish as ways to teach hunting dogs to follow a scent, but the person who popularized the term described a situation where herrings were used to confuse and lead someone away from the right trail, the opposite of its actual meaning. The term red herring is a red herring.
In mystery terms, a red herring is a “clue” which leads the detective into following a false path or coming to a wrong conclusion. In the Agatha Christie story, And Then There Were None, the killer fakes his own death early on thus leading the other guests to conclude that one of the remaining guests is the murderer. He then has free rein to murder the others without ever being suspected.
Red herrings can be used two ways in mysteries, by either leading the PCs to suspect someone else, or by distracting them from a suspect. The butler was seen sneaking around, he has a flimsy alibi, his tie was found at the crime scene, and he lies to the PCs. Eventually the PCs will discover that he didn’t kill the duke, he was actually sneaking around with the duke’s wife. He’s been hiding something and leading the PCs to suspect him as the murder, when in fact he was innocent of that crime. He accidentally created a false trail by trying to conceal his adultery.
The killer may also use a red herring to distract the PCs from his trail, and incriminate someone else. Perhaps the nephew killed the duke, and knowing about the affair between the butler and the duke’s wife, he planted the butler’s tie at the crime scene to keep the investigation headed toward someone else. Or the killer creates a bit of evidence—he hangs the duke after killing him, suggesting it’s a suicide, or makes the crime scene look like a robbery to make everyone think the duke was killed during a crime which really didn’t occur. The book/movie Gone Girl uses this to an extreme, a trail of clues and phony evidence has been left to incriminate someone of a crime that hasn’t even been committed.

INVISIBLE HERRINGS
There are things you can find that are clues, but there are also things you can’t find that are clues. In the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of Silver Blaze, a racehorse is stolen and the trainer is murdered, and Holmes and a detective from Scotland Yard investigate. Holmes asks if the policeman has noticed “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The policeman points out the dog didn’t do anything. Holmes thinks that’s what’s curious. The absence of something happening is the clue, Holmes wonders why the guard dog didn’t bark. That leads him to deducing it’s because the killer was someone familiar to the dog, the dog wasn’t disturbed by someone he knew coming into the barn and taking the horse.
No mud on their boots and a dry hem on their cloak could indicate that the suspect wasn’t out of the house when the murder took place, poking a hole in their alibi. The suspect claimed to be in their room, but the PCs discover the fireplace is clean, the suspect didn’t burn any firewood that bitterly cold night. Through closed doors the PCs heard the daughter singing, the butler fall off his stool, and the duke and his wife arguing, why did no one hear the victim’s room getting ransacked and the furniture being overturned? The clue is what the PCs don’t find.
These invisible herrings can be a little difficult for the players, they naturally assume that they need to find something for it to matter. If the clues are that the suspect’s clothing isn’t wet and muddy and there are no footprints outside, there should also be clues letting the PCs know that those things are missing. It should be pointed out to them that they’re all wet and tracked mud into the house, or they couldn’t track because their own muddy footprints obscured the trail.

THE SPIRITS TELL ME “NEPHEW, LIBRARY, CANDLESTICK”
In the beginning think about what spells or objects will let the PCs shortcut the adventure. You don’t want them casting Speak with Dead and asking the victim, “Who killed you?” Make sure the victim didn’t actually see the killer; maybe the murderer poisoned the wine, snuck up from behind, or wore a mask.
You’ve also got to anticipate spells like Zone of Truth when they’re questioning suspects. One of the caveats of the spell is that everyone is aware they’re in the spell’s effect, they don’t have to answer questions. They can also say things that are truthful, but misleading. “Kill the duke? That’s absurd. Why would I kill the duke?” or “I don’t how to use a dagger or sword, I could never stab anyone. What kind of accusation is that? It’s horrible! Who are you to go around accusing people of murder?” while ignoring that they poisoned the wine. Also, count down how long the spells last. Clever or nervous NPCs can eat up a lot of time in not answering questions. If you let the players see the time counting down, they’ll be concerned about the time running out and won’t use the spells to their best advantage.
Think about what magic items the PCs have as well. If someone remembers they have the Goggles of Secrets or the Potion of Confession, things will come to an abrupt end. You don’t want someone with an item or spell to negate the mystery because you planned for everything but their scroll of Locate Object.
Also be aware of pets, animal companions, and familiars. You don’t want the Ranger bringing his dog to sniff around the crime scene and it immediately starts growling at the killer. See what benefits having the animals will give the PCs in learning things and either incorporate them as a help or counter them to preserve the mystery. My experience has been that sometimes players forget they have a helpful animal, so don’t make the mystery entirely dependent on the Druid’s pet badger smelling the poison on the killer’s cuff.

SCUM AND VILLAINY
Since D&D involves a lot of killing, many times we forget that people who commit murders are not nice people. The wife killed the duke, now she might make friends with the Rogue, perhaps even seduce him, and tell him all about how she never trusted the butler, how the maid was caught stealing, how the nephew was in debt from gambling. Sometimes NPCs can befriend PCs and then betray them whether they’re trying to conceal their own crime or the killer’s. Or maybe they’re just nosey and have a theory about everyone, “The wife did it! She told the duke she’d kill him if he kept bringing his hounds inside the house!” Carrying this to an extreme, there’s an Agatha Christie novel where the person helping Poirot solve the crime is revealed to have been the killer all along. He involved himself in the investigation to direct it away from himself.

IT WAS ELEMENTARY
At the end of the Sherlock Holmes stories and Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, the detective always explains the crime. Holmes tells Watson and the police what really happened, Poirot calls all the suspects together. They detail what happened to everyone involved, how the killer used this person to get an alibi, why the nephew was really in the library. The detective draws a road map of the crime and lets everyone see what happened, even answering questions or shooting down denials. Your mysteries don’t have to end that way, but you should encourage the players to walk through the crimes out loud before they come to a final judgment. Request that one of them tell the rest of the party the story of the murder and let the PCs poke holes in it or fill in details they’d forgotten until now.
The PCs shouldn’t have to have every clue to solve the mystery, but they should be able to account for nearly everything. If they’re stuck on something, point it out; ask them why the maid lied, ask them how they know the nephew stole the knife. Sometimes the players will think they’ve solved the mystery but they’ve excluded the evidence they didn’t find, didn’t like, or didn’t understand. Sometimes they jump to conclusions because they take a dislike to an NPC.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS
It might be helpful for the DM to write confessions and the suspects’ reactions to being caught. Even if you’re not reading it to the players word for word, writing everything can fill in a variety of details. If the butler and wife were having an affair, the butler’s confession should account for that. “Yes, we were seeing each other, I was sneaking into her dressing room when I saw the nephew’s door was ajar.” The things mentioned in the confession can either give clues to the PCs so they can solve the mystery or fill in details they missed. It also lets the DM have all the evidence and connections for a suspect in one short paragraph.
It’s also important to decide on what the murderer’s response to being caught will be. Is he going to attack the PCs? Is he going to confess everything? Is he going to deny it, knowing the prince will dismiss the charges? Very often in cozies the killers confess or give up, in a police procedural the criminals have a variety of reactions, the DM needs to know what reaction it’s going to be.

BOOK ’EM, DANNO
Think about the resolution after the criminal has been caught. Do the PCs just have to inform the authorities, are they authorized to take matters into their own hands, is the adventure going to become a courtroom drama? Players like it when they catch the killer and justice is served, they find it upsetting when things are covered up. The DM should decide if the players get a satisfying resolution or the killer gets off and becomes a recurring villain.
There should be a little thought given to the consequences of these crimes before the fact, so you’ll know how to handle things after the mystery is solved or the culprit is caught. I often run campaigns that are very late Iron Age/Early Medieval in nature, small kingdoms, independent city-states, and the law is what the person in charge says it is. Evidence isn’t going to be dismissed because the PCs broke into someone’s house and searched it, but evidence might be dismissed because an alliance or political connection takes precedence. No one is thrilled that the Necromancer has been killing prostitutes so he can turn them into undead and run his experiments, but he’s more important to the Count then a few dead commoners. It also works the other way, too, the PCs are convinced the nephew is guilty, but their accumulated evidence isn’t entirely convincing. That’s not a problem though, as the nephew is very popular and imprisoning/killing him solidifies the lord’s position.
The DM should also plan for the players deciding they’re going to cover up the crime. If the victim was killed because he the murderer stood to gain financially the players are going to want to turn him in and convict. If the victim was killed because the murderer wanted revenge for the victim from having abused and murdered the killer’s younger sister, the players might feel being pushed out a window was justice served.

TWELVE ANGRY MEN
Mysteries themselves can often take several sessions, it’s easy to underestimate how long they’re going to be. You’ll find that players will often gather a few clues, interview a witness or two, and then formulate a theory, often based on incomplete information. Then there’s a lot of discussion amongst the players over how it all happened. That’s something to watch out for when it happens early on. They all have theories based on nothing and they’ll argue them vociferously. Sometimes you just have to tell them they’re jumping to conclusions without any actual evidence.
While I try to limit unnecessary discussion early one, there’s no timetable for discussions at the end of a mystery. The players have had to keep a bunch of notes and navigate a bunch of twists and turns, I let the players work it out until they’re satisfied. If the DM feels the discussion is getting off track he should ask questions about particular facets of the mystery he thinks the players are a bit hazy on.

THIS IS THE END
I think this is a pretty in-depth guide and it should be helpful whether you’ve never run a mystery or whether you’ve run a few but wanted to expand on them a bit. These are the things I take into consideration, I don’t necessarily use all of them. A police procedural can be pretty direct, no red herrings, one suspect, a few helpful witnesses, and a smoking flame blade. Everything can be wrapped up pretty quickly, particularly if PCs pester the killer by asking one more thing, and getting him to confess his plan or superior intellect. Or you could choose to run an extensive adventure like Murder on the Orient Express, over a dozen suspects, multiple false alibis, conflicting statements, red herrings, fake evidence, and a conclusion that torments the detective.
One murder is going to be a lot less complicated than the other, one is going to require more planning by the DM, more thinking by the players, and more time to solve overall. Hopefully this guide will help you regardless of the scenario.

A few pages out of my books about Sports Gambling

In 2019, you could go on this road trip and go to EIGHT Mountain West games before October

Problem Gambling: An Interplay Between Law and Medicine and A Platform to an Interdisciplinary Approach to This Mental Health Disease- Juniper Publishers

Juniper Publishers- Journal of Physical Fitness, Medicine & Treatment in Sports

Introduction

Gaming and betting contracts are a practical expression of homo ludens: they symbolize a desire for entertainment, a ludic desire. That ludic desire of the player, symbolizing an eminently personal need, does not have enough material foundation to merit the right to legal protection, because it lacks economic interest [1]. This consideration is no small one. Governments worldwide are not keen to legalize the gambling activity. Social costs inextricably linked with gaming leisure industry underpin this widespread hesitation. Efforts concerning the creation of a sound responsible gaming model that strives to achieve the deemed harm-minimization is a definitely the goal that one ought to tirelessly pursue in this realm. This cannot be achieved without an interdisciplinary engagement between the knowledge creators (scholars, researchers, medical doctors) and the end-users (casinos, public entities, lawyers, psychiatrists, whose main purpose is to curb problem gambling).
As far as the aforementioned goes, there are not many papers that proficiently combine the legal side with the other side (medical, psychologic, psychiatric, neurological, sociological, social policy), aiming to curtail the issue of problem gambling. To shape a proper responsible gambling model it is crucially important to address the problem gambling in an interdisciplinary way. Needless to say, this is the main aim of this paper.

Background - What is Problem Gambling?

First things first. How can one outline an accurate definition of problem gambling or problem gambler? [2] Despite the existence of problem gambling, there have been ongoing difficulties with grasping a widely accepted definition of this mental health disease. Conversely, despite being often used, the legal taxonomy «responsible gambling» and «responsible provision» are also scarcely defined. «Although, differences in definition are quite important because they impact on solutions provided to overcome the problem» [3].
«For instance, the Australian Productivity Commission (1999), included a vast range of definitions of problem gambling that variously emphasized either symptoms (e.g., loss of control, chasing debts) or effects (e.g., disruption and damage to personal, family or work life). One widely accepted definition is that adopted by the Victorian Casino and Gaming Authority (VCGA) which states that problem gambling occurs “where a person´s gambling activity gives rise to harm to the individual player, and/or to his or her family, and may extended into the community» [4]. On the other hand, «Problem Gambler», as far as the Canadian doctrine is concerned, is widely carved out as any person whose ability to resist the impulse to gamble has been impaired, or whose gambling has compromised, disrupted, or damaged personal family, or vocational pursuits [5].
While gambling may be portrayed by the vast majority of gamblers as a dazzling form of entertainment and an enjoyable leisure pursuit, its very nature means that there are staggering risks involved in this activity [6]. «Problem gambling (PG) behaviours (as a reminder, problem gambling is a mental disease) occur when an individual gamble in a manner that exceeds their means, for money than they can afford and spending excessive time gambling, both which can cause deleterious effects on the lives of the gambler. Such effects may include neglecting family, health, hygiene, and even employment, as well financial obligations, which highlights PG as not only an issue at the individual level, but also for wider society. Indeed, for every PG there is potential for a multitude of individuals to be negatively impacted» [7].
Background - Problem Gambling, an Overall Shift of Perspective in Relation to Research and Theory?
«Over the last 15 years or so, the field of responsible gambling (RG) has developed from a basic interest in minimising gambling problems, to a fast-growing field of research, theory, and practice covering all aspects of the gambling experience. Even in the recent past, RG was typically the remit of perhaps one or two individuals in an organisation, maybe just a minor part of the primary role. However, over the last few years and in many gaming companies, RG has become a concept embraced at all levels from the CEO down to the point-of-sale retailer, and all those in between. Whilst some of this focus has been driven through regulatory policy and an increased awareness of problem gambling across many jurisdictions, much of the interest stems from a realisation that problem-free players make for a better business. That is, long term customers are going to be those who continue to play, without problems, primarily for reasons of leisure. In short, proactive gaming companies have developed socially responsible business models, that are based on increasing the number of moderate-spending, long-term repeat customers and, that strive to avoid custom from players with gambling problems» [8].
The burgeoning growth of Responsible Gaming practice has been accompanied by an overall shift of perspective in relation to research and theory. «Previously, RG was largely influenced by a view of gambling problems that primarily adopted a medical and/or disease model, with little control or power attributed to those that were most negatively affected. However, increasing support for individual autonomy has become the main issue. This position was outlined in detail by the «Reno Model» [9] which argues that responsible gambling should be based upon two fundamental principles: « (1) decisions to gamble reside with individual and represent a choice, and (2) in order to make good decisions, individuals need to be well informed. This shift in perspective also reflects wider social and cultural changes that have seen more of an emphasis on the importance of consumers making informed purchase choices across a variety of products and services. On the other hand, technological developments have become a driving force, for both the design of games and gambling environments, as well as for tools and services that can assist players to play responsibly» [10].
However, whilst there has been a significant development in research and technological breakthroughs in the Responsible Gaming realm, the translation of valid research into wide-spread practice has sometimes been slower to take effect than initially expected [11].
This portrays a huge gap between the above-mentioned knowledge creators and end-users. This gap surely needs to be bridged. But how?
By engaging in an interdisciplinary path that ought to connect both sides of the gambling industry (medical doctors, gambling leisure industry, lawyers) that would significantly boost the benefits of the global innovation in gaming leisure industry. There is no other way. This particular issue will be addressed later and its concretes features will be also thoroughly carved out.
Background - Problem Gambling as a Repository of Interdisciplinary Contributes: The Cardinal Importance of Empirical Evidence in the Context of Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs)
Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs) represent a sweeping part of the gambling leisure industry. It is widely accepted that EGMs are the core of gambling leisure industry, except in the casinos of Macau, where the table games, namely the Baccarat, heavily outweigh EGMs. That´s the reason why Knowledge Creators focus have been driven towards the empirical evidence for the differential impact of gambling outcome on behaviour in electronic gambling [12]. The research undertaken in this specific field has achieved a major breakthrough: EGM´s are the realm of addictive patterns of gambling behaviour as they enhance the illusion of control of the players about the outcome of the game. Furthermore, EGM´s are markedly the domain of the loss-chasing behaviour, the core characteristic of Problem Gambling, which can be thoroughly explained because:
«§ Approximately 13 % of EGM gamblers meet diagnostic criteria for problem gambling (PG) which is one of the highest rates of among all other forms of gambling. EGMs are interactive, computerised gambling platforms found in many licensed betting offices, casinos, and other leisure facilities.
§ They adopt variable ratio schedules of reinforcement that subject a player to addictive patterns of gambling behaviour. EGMs have been shown to instil and maintain irrational and superstitious beliefs, as well as distort concepts of randomness and probability that can contribute to illusions of control. Such features may act in maintain or indeed contribute to the onset of PG behaviours. § In addition, EGMs offer high maximum stake and prize sizes, where an individual can bet up to £ 100 on a gambling event and win jackpots equalling £ 500 and the fact that accessibility of EGMs are abundant on the high-street, means even inexperienced and leisure gamblers are at risk of increased rate and volume of loss, irrespective of whether they would be classed as PG or not. A rapid speed of play provided by EGMs offer fewer opportunities between bets to break trancelike dissociative states gamblers experience, as well as less time to consider one’s decisions in an informed and controlled manner.
§ The rapid event cycle in EGM play also allows for a high rate and volume of loss, which is allowed to further exacerbate if ones engage in loss-chasing behaviour – as stated above, a core characteristic of PG. Loss chasing may not however, be limited to PGs, and there is potential for the fast-paced characteristic of EGM play to negatively impact on» [13]. In this regard, a recent research (conducted by renowned scientists) has investigated how these EGM characteristics interact with winning and losing outcomes and the resulting gambling behaviour, «as there is wide body of evidence outside of gambling research that suggests gains and losses have an asymmetrical impact on affect and arousal, as well as cognitive capacity and decision makingessential components to controlled and rational gambling decisions [14].
Conversely, losses squarely compared to the bulk of wins, have a larger effect on physiological arousal. Hochman and Yechiam (2011) reported significantly larger pupil diameter and increased heart beat in response to losses compared to equivalent sized wins» [15]. On another hand, if losses lead to a greater increase in psychological arousal, this may result in the gambler´s optimal level of arousal being surpassed, which may be detrimental to rational decision making (crucially important when it comes to cease immediately the gambling endeavours) and lead to a loss of control during gambling, «where the fastpaced and high stakes features of EGM play may exacerbate the harm caused by a loss of control» [16].
Having this body of evidence very firmly in mind, it is very important to implement strategies that enable the gambler to remain in control during the gambling session so that gamblingrelated decision are made in a rational manner. Moreover, that assortment of measures embodies the deemed harmminimisation strategies that the legal side of gaming leisure industry should not forsake.
Background - The Importance of Empirical Evidence in the Context of Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs) and The Harm Minimisation Strategies: The Pop-Up Messages and The Personalised Feedback
If wins and losses do indeed result in an asymmetrical impact on a gambler´s behaviour during EGM gambling, it is important to implement harm minimisation strategies in a timely manner before harmful behaviour augment or escalate. As a consequence, prior to the implementation of any harm minimisation strategies whatsoever there is a major paradigm shift yet to be undertaken: the problem gambling should be approached in a proactive manner rather than a purely reactive one. Meaning, knowledge creators (medical doctors and scientists) and end-users (gaming leisure industry, governments, lawyers) ought to synergetically contribute to the creation of healthy gambling environments in a timely manner.
Alongside the technological developments, research into cognitive psychology of gambling has shown that irrational gambling-related cognitions and misunderstandings inextricably connected to randomness and probabilities represent some of the key ingredients contributing to the initiation and maintenance of problem gambling in general, and in electronic (or online) gambling specifically [17]. «More importantly, it has been shown that problematic gambling behaviour can be decreased in response to cognitive-behavioural therapy and other cognitive interventions. As a consequence, some organisations and gaming operators are beginning to offer players information about common gambling myths and erroneous beliefs. Furthermore, players can now access general advice on healthy and responsible gambling» [18].
«A small body of empirical research has shown that educational programs about erroneous beliefs can successfully help change the targeted cognitions. For instance, Wohl developed an animation-based educational video regarding the function of slot machines, their results demonstrated that the animation was effective in promoting responsible play as demonstrated by those viewing the video staying within their pre-set limits. The study also showed that animated educational information on slot machines can be an effective to increase user adherence to pre-set limits» [19].
Research conducted in this realm have also shown that the way the information is presented to problem gambler has a significant impact. Several studies have duly investigated the effects of interactive pop-up messages during gambling sessions either taken online or in a simple brick-and-mortar casino. Static (and colourless) messages do not appear to be as effective, whereas interactive pop-up messages and «attractive and coloured» (say animated) information can thoroughly quash both irrational beliefs and behavior [20]. Stewart and Wohl (2013) highlighted that gamblers who have received a monetary limit pop-up reminder were more prone to adhere to monetary limits than participants who did not [21].
Increasingly arising on the horizon of the gambling field is the personalised feedback, developed for responsible gambling purposes. In sum, personalised feedback is a behavioural tracking tool, for responsible gambling purposes. There are several programs that constitute a striking example of it, such as Playscan, mentor, Bet Buddy [22]. Eulogized scholars emphasized that gamblers receiving carefully tailored feedback about their online gambling behaviour are far more prone to swiftly alter their gambling behaviour (as gauged by the amount of time and money spent gambling online or in a brick-and-mortar casino) compared to those who do not receive a tailored feedback [23].
«A recent study investigated the behavioural change in 279 online gamblers that received personalized feedback after they had signed up to a voluntary service (i.e. mentor) at a European online gaming website. Those signing up to use the personalized feedback system were compared with 65, 423 matched controls. The preliminary results of that study show that personalized behavioural feedback within a motivational framework appears to be an effective way of changing gambling behaviour in a positive way (i.e., players significantly reduced the amount of time and/or money they spent gambling after receiving personalized feedback). For instance, if a player significantly increases the amount of money they have deposited over a half year time period, they received the following message: “Over the last 6 months the amount of money deposited into your account has increased. Are you spending more money than you intended? You can check the account you have spent gambling on your account page and use our helpful tools to set a daily/ weekly/monthly limit» [24].
The aforementioned example conspicuously portrays that the messages are non-confrontational, attractive, colorful, personal, and motivational. Additionally, the often-emphasized interactive aspect was taken into account through the use of a pop-up window that has been carved out into the casino operator´s gambling site [25]. Overall, the personalization approaches outlined above strive to significantly alter a person´s behaviour via behavioural feedback. Such approaches are underpinned on both the «Stages of Change”» model (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983) and «motivational interviewing». Specifically asserted the paramount importance of carefully tailored information. In their study they have summarized a vast array of motivational psychology literature to develop a motivational framework based on the Transtheoretical (i.e. States of Behaviour Change), «which states that individuals attempting to change their behaviour in some way go through a series of stages (i.e., pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and relapse)» [26]. For each stage, they highlighted the motivational goal (s), and recommendation (s) as to how technologies can motivate sustainable energy usage behaviours by people [27]. In sum, behavioural feedback systems enable an optimistic approach of responsible gambling, as they achieve the targeted goal of helping the players sensibly limit the amount of time and money spent gambling [28].

Discussion

The implementation of a responsible gaming model does not override an interdisciplinary approach. Quite the opposite, the foundation of a proper and sound responsible gaming model cannot be successfully applied without an interdisciplinary approach. Conversely, in order to embrace such a challenge, a collaborative approach between the knowledge creators (e.g., researchers, medical doctors and academics who effortlessly study the social and medical phenomenon of problem gambling) and end-users [29] (e.g., policy makers, lawyers, gambling industry, regulators, gamblers) is now needed more than ever. A collaborative problem-solving between knowledge creators and end-users ought to be based not only in a science-based empirical approach, as emphasized by the Reno Model, but be shaped through linkage and exchange of knowledge between both sides of gaming leisure industry.
As far as an interdisciplinary approach goes, mutual learning in the gaming industry requires the input of a wide range of stakeholders, as the aforesaid mutual learning has multiple stages such as planning, producing, and applying existing empirical research, and its concrete implementation in practice should not disregard the input of any the end-users or decision makers. An interdisciplinary approach of responsible gaming is a two-way street: researchers produce and gather empirical research and decision makers tend to apply existing or new research in decision-making. Researchers do not successfully transfer their empirical findings without the input of the decision makers; conversely, decision makers cannot benefit from an evidence-into-practice approach if they not successfully engage with the researchers.
An effective knowledge exchange involves, oftentimes (if not always) the interaction of both sides of the gambling industry aimed at accelerating the benefits of global innovation in this realm. Therefore, knowledge creators and decision makers, as they are planted itself squarely in the middle of the gambling industry, play a pivotal role both in the creation and implementation of harm minimizing strategies and, ultimately, in the construction of a functional problem gambling model.
Because of that they are the key players of the process of taking knowledge and converting it into practice; they are the protagonists of a strategic framework that intends to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
The guidelines for the implementation of an interdisciplinary approach of responsible gaming, can be summarized as follows:
a) The deemed Knowledge Exchange (KE) is a process of taking knowledge and converting it into practice;
b) KE is a form of interdisciplinary engagement between the knowledge creators and decision makers;
c) To ensure mutual learning, knowledge creators and decision makers should arrange regular meetings and issue joint statements about the major priorities of problem gambling;
d) Knowledge creators and end-users should provide guidelines and recommendations in implementing harm minimization strategies;
e) The creation of a task-force of specialists in psychology, psychiatry, sociology, law, that should jointly operate inside the casino facilities;
f) This task-force should be primarily responsible for the implementation of harm minimization strategies and complementarily should be also responsible for training the casino staff, as far as spotting, tracking down, identifying and handling the problem gamblers is concerned;
g) The needs of the end-users should be timely identified by the knowledge creators;
h) To facilitate the aforementioned goal, an atmosphere of trust between the knowledge creators and the end-users is needed;
i) To facilitate that reciprocal approach, regular briefings should be held in order to discuss preliminary results of the implementation of harm-minimization strategies, such as the aforesaid, personalized feedback, loss-limits, win limits, pop-up messages;
j) The communication channel between the researchers and the end-users should always be open, as their relationship should be strengthened through linkage, exchange and joint production;
k) The public entities, or governments, should play a pivotal role as well in establishing priorities, preferences, and goals related with the problem gambling;
l) Moreover, governments should create joint structures that, symbiotically, address the issue of problem gambling;
m) Those joint government structures should have an interdependent relationship, and they should hold meetings and briefings in a regular basis with the casino operators and their interdisciplinary teams;
n) In a regular basis, that joint structures should issue joint guidelines, and should issue joint statements in which they set up harm-minimization strategies to curb problem gambling;
o) Governments who depends heavily on the gaming revenue, for instance Macau, should take the problem gaming seriously;
p) As a consequence, a responsible gaming model should be embraced by the government of Macau, and its focus should be geared not only towards the problem gamblers but, likewise, the positive players, those who just play for fun – in the long run, those are the ones that will keep going to the casinos and not the problem gamblers;
q) Therefore, positive play should be, more than ever, an axiom that the government of Macau should take into account.
r) Focus groups constituted by decision makers from the casino industry and the problem gamblers should take place in a regular basis, in order to assess and appraise ongoing harm-minimization strategies.
s) Problem gamblers input should be taken into account; as far as setting up feasible responsible gaming features, their insight is invaluable.
t) Problem gamblers family should also participate in the process of creation of harm-minimization strategies - they are the core of the personal structure of the problem gambler, and they are the ones who can provide the muchneeded guidance and support throughout the whole process of dealing with the problem gambling.

Conclusion

Problem Gambling is now so ingrained in the culture of gaming industry as a whole that it will not cease to be a part of service industries anytime in the foreseeable future. For this very reason, an interdisciplinary approach to problem gambling poses a considerable challenge to the casino industry as a whole. For the sake of long-term sustainability of gaming industry as a whole, such a challenge should be timely embraced.

is gambling legal in reno video

With the growing number of legal and illegal card games and the slot machines that were found everywhere it made Reno the gambling capital of Nevada. A change in leadership in the 1930s changed the whole gambling industry in Reno and the entire state of Nevada. Governor Fred Balzar approved Assembly Bill 98 which made all gambling games legal. Reno Online Gambling – Listing Reputable And Legally Licensed Reno Gambling Sites. Known as the Biggest Little City in the World, Reno, Nevada is certainly a name that most people recognize. Unlike Las Vegas, of course, Reno doesn’t have that much esteem and notoriety, like The Strip and the hundreds of casinos that line each of its sides. Legal Gambling Age In Reno Reno Online Sportsbooks – Legal Reno Sports Betting The Biggest Little City in the World doesn’t have the reputation it has due only to proximity to Vegas; it’s actually an incredibly popular city able to stand alone on its own merits and offerings. A combination of legal casinos and easy divorces gave Reno a risqué reputation. Soon, people were coming here to indulge in adult activities just as much as they were for the simple divorces. Reno Becomes the World’s Most Popular Gambling Destination. This city’s gambling industry continued to grow throughout the 1940s and 50s. The Gambling History of Reno. Reno, Nevada is the third most populated city in Nevada and was founded in 1868. Reno is known as "The Biggest Little City in the World" and is famous for its many casinos. Reno is one of five places named after American soldier Jesse L. Reno and is also the birthplace of popular Caesars Entertainment. 1864 - 1930 In an attempt to lift the state out of the hard times of the Great Depression, the Nevada state legislature votes to legalize gambling. Located in the Great

History of Reno Casinos - The Rise and Fall of Gambling in ...

is gambling legal in reno

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Fallout 2, Best Ending for New Reno

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An Extensive Guide to Building a Murder Mystery

An Extensive Guide to Building a Murder Mystery

A few pages out of my books about Sports Gambling

Can you really make a living from wagering on Sports by The Outlaw Micheal Tomsik

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In 2019, you could go on this road trip and go to EIGHT Mountain West games before October

Week Zero

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Week Five

Problem Gambling: An Interplay Between Law and Medicine and A Platform to an Interdisciplinary Approach to This Mental Health Disease- Juniper Publishers

Introduction

Background - What is Problem Gambling?

Discussion

Conclusion

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