I was just giving it as an example, of course. As long as the author has justification, it’s fine. I’d still avoid putting something like that in my gameboard, simply because such specific actions coupled with red could mislead players and just make it more of a guessing game than fun.
But yeah, point is - having a “why” for human actions is something that genuinely made my mysteries better, I think. I wouldn’t say I’m great or even terribly good at them, but it’s made the process more fun for me - both in terms of writing and discussing it with the players. It’s a fantastic lesson, and I was fortunate enough to have someone point me in the right direction and tell me straight-up “no human being would DO this”.
I think the mystery I got told that went something like…
A person getting stabbed early in the evening, but pretending as if everything was fine for hours, with a bleeding wound. They then went on to kill another person, constructing a locked room, and then dying of their injuries (it was something like that, I’m pretty sure). Obviously, the question that was asked of me was - “why in god’s name did they not tell anyone about the wound and proceed to socialize with the person that gave them a fatal stab wound”. (The story was pretty bare-bones, so there wasn’t really any character explanation to be provided here, either - and what was known about the characters didn’t really give a good explanation either.)
I like to think I’ve improved by quite a bit since then, but… guess we’ll see.