Not DnD, Part 7 (Patreon)

In truth, getting players to sleuth a mystery in-character can be tough. There's stuff they don't know, or won't be aware they should be looking for. It's one of the few cases where it's handy to have a DMPC in the group who can act as a Watson and lead the players in the right direction. For example, if you describe a stabbing, there's a good chance your players aren't going to ask if there's something unusual about the stabbing, but they will ask questions about the scene to find clues. That's when you'd have "Watson" say something like, "Now look here, Holmes. Must have been right quick, wasn't it, because he killed her with just one draw of the knife. How do you suppose he did that?"

If you're lucky, your group won't take the derpy DMPC's word as gospel and will then ask more about the knife wound. As the GM, you can also say, "You look and notice the wound is very clean, which is odd since a murder usually involves a struggle," though that would usually be the result of a requested deduction or forensics roll.

What was funny is that my safety auditor group used to get hints like this and they'd spend a lot of time trying to work backwards from me saying the wound was clean, and try to guess how someone could perform a very clean, out of the ordinary murder that basically never happens in real life. Your players who kill NPCs and bother to hide the bodies, on the other hand, will ironically be more liable to assume there's some kind of deception at play somewhere.

Anyway, I have had TWO days in a row now without a lot of asthma trouble, and I've gone through more things which I hope will be remedial to the problem. I won't know it's solved until good conditions are sustained but I'm hopeful at every sign of improvement!