Murder Mystery Adventures

[RangerWickett]

E.N. Publishing released the 2nd adventure in the ZEITGEIST adventure path today, and it involves a city-wide murder mystery with multiple interconnected plots. What sorts of experience do you have playing in or running investigative games?

Personally, I've played in a few Call of Cthulhu one-shots and a D20 Modern game where we were like the Men in Black for magic instead of aliens. I ran a modern fantasy conspiracy game, and a multi-season Eberron cop drama set in Sharn. And of course I've lived in a culture with Law & Order, CSI, and Psych on every week, so it's hard not to get a steady dose of murder mystery plots.

But running mysteries is hard, at least if you want it be challenging. Easy-to-solve mysteries and impossible-to-solve are easy to design. Either you string clue to suspect to clue to suspect, or you have masterful crimes with clues that only make sense if you already know the criminal's identity.

I remember an old blog post that suggested that for every revelation you want the PCs to reach, you should seed three possible clues, and then keep your mind open for your players to come up with something completely different. Did the killer sneak in through the septic system by transforming into an ooze, and you want them to head into the sewer to track him? Make sure to mention a fetid stench at the murder scene, the inch of water on the floor of the bathroom, and droplets of slime stuck to the victim's body.

Any favorite RPG mysteries, especially modules? Do you have advice to GMs who want to run a murder mystery, to make the game a solid challenge for the players?

 

[Bedrockgames]

E.N. Publishing released the 2nd adventure in the ZEITGEIST adventure path today, and it involves a city-wide murder mystery with multiple interconnected plots. What sorts of experience do you have playing in or running investigative games?

Personally, I've played in a few Call of Cthulhu one-shots and a D20 Modern game where we were like the Men in Black for magic instead of aliens. I ran a modern fantasy conspiracy game, and a multi-season Eberron cop drama set in Sharn. And of course I've lived in a culture with Law & Order, CSI, and Psych on every week, so it's hard not to get a steady dose of murder mystery plots.

But running mysteries is hard, at least if you want it be challenging. Easy-to-solve mysteries and impossible-to-solve are easy to design. Either you string clue to suspect to clue to suspect, or you have masterful crimes with clues that only make sense if you already know the criminal's identity.

I remember an old blog post that suggested that for every revelation you want the PCs to reach, you should seed three possible clues, and then keep your mind open for your players to come up with something completely different. Did the killer sneak in through the septic system by transforming into an ooze, and you want them to head into the sewer to track him? Make sure to mention a fetid stench at the murder scene, the inch of water on the floor of the bathroom, and droplets of slime stuck to the victim's body.

Any favorite RPG mysteries, especially modules? Do you have advice to GMs who want to run a murder mystery, to make the game a solid challenge for the players?

I think multiple leads are important, but multiple paths and outcomes are also critical. In my experience GMs really get bogged down when they start with the assumption that the PCs have to solve the mystery and save the day. That isn't always the case. You can have just as much fun with the fallout for failing to solve the mystery.

My first piece of advice to anyone running a mystery adventure is to be inspired by the mystery genre but don't try to replicate it. You have to account for player freedom and the fact that as a GM you can't set things up in the same way a writer can.

My second piece of advice is keep running myteries until you get it right. A mystery is like any kind of adventure, it takes some trial and error to figure out what works for you GMing style (how many of us hit it out of the park on our first dungeon crawl?). Because mysteries are a type of adventure people usually save for special occassions or only run once or twice, a lot of GMs view them with trepidation.

Finally tailor the thing to the tastes of your group. Every gaming group is different. Some have fun with mysteries as a metagame puzzle, others want to have their character's skill rolls take care of finding clues. Some players want the difficulty set to easy, some want to be genuinely challenged with the possibility of failure in the air.

PS Can you provide a link to the adventure path?

 

[Janx]

a couple weeks back there was a thread about murder mysteries. bedrock said almost the exact same thing in his first paragraph in that thread as well.

that thread had some good tips from a few different styles of running it (like making it more probable to be solved, vs. bedrock's advice to accept that it might not be solved).

One idea I had, was to mesh the two styles.

assuming the PCs are actual detectives and thus should solve murders every game, make the first cases be easy. Not out of coddling the players, but to represent that most murders are straight-forward. The husband killed the wife because it's almost always the husband whodunnit.

Once you've set the pattern, the change of pace is the hard case, where you run a mystery. this one is what the other cases were training for and to set the bar.

What this sets up:
the PCs are competent investigators
sets up the twist, where this case is not like the others (it's harder)

If you ran every case as a Holmsian challenge, and did it failure-is-probable style, then the PCs will have a craptacular solve rate, disqualifying them from being detectives.

This is no different at the micro scale of using easier challenges in the beginning and making them harder later. it provides contrast, and lets the PCs show off a bit.

Another side effect is, if the first cases are straightforward, you'll still have to run it as a mystery and the players will still be chasing clues and compiling evidence. The difference is, you're not making it hard, but letting the natural challenge of the situation do your training for you.

Forex, the Wife is found dead in her home. She has a small head wound. The husband walks with a cane with a fancy handle (he whacked her with it in a heated argument about money). Your other suspects are: the moneylender whom the husband owed money to. Some burglar who's been hitting houses in the neighborhood.

The husband made the house look like it was broken into, then left for some drinks to build an alibi.

So the cops show up, and suspect a burglary. And the husband's a default suspect, but he also reveals he owed money, and maybe the moneylender sent a thug to collect. In either case, it looks like someone broke in, found the wife, and whacked her.

Not a hugely complex case. Work with something simple like that, so the PCs can get the hang of an investigation. They should succeed because the case is easier, not because you fibbed anything (but you could fib if that was your style).

By running 2-3 cases like that, everybody gets used to the mechanics and concepts. Then you bring in the serial killer/fancy murder case. Following the same methods your PCs are used to, the case is harder because the clues go deeper and there's more suspects and motives and lying going on.

 

[Bedrockgames]

a couple weeks back there was a thread about murder mysteries. bedrock said almost the exact same thing in his first paragraph in that thread as well.

Maybe we should link to that thread. I will try to track it down.

EDIT: Here it is http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/312409-investigation-mystery-adventures-2.html (apparently I was the OP)

that thread had some good tips from a few different styles of running it (like making it more probable to be solved, vs. bedrock's advice to accept that it might not be solved).

Just to clarify my position as well (since it may come off as a "let the game flounder" kind of advice), if you take my approach, which has worked well for me, be sure to make sure there is still interesting stuff going on even if the PCs don't solve the case. I like to have lots of moving pieces in my mysteries. The PCs may zip through the mystery and nab the bad guy, or they may hit a wall as a major villain prepares an even bigger blow against justice. There are all kinds of opportunities to exploit here to make sure stuff stays fun. As a general rule think about the consequences of the PCs not solving the investigation (both in terms of what the player experience will be but also in terms of the plot).

 

[Janx]

thx for the link bedrock. Your tips were good, and I definitely don't mean to disparage the idea of letting the PCs fail. The trick is to have a balance such that the nature of the format doesn't lopside it into failure is likely if you don't fudge.

I just watched an episode of Bones during dinner. Free tip:

Of the suspects, at least one of them appears guilty because they lied about something to conceal something illegal/illicit they were doing that they think would have made them look guilty.

So the moneylender may have paid a visit to the home, perhaps before the wife died (because he collected payment in the form of a little somethin-somethin) as a side arrangement with the wife. Since he'd been there in the time frame, a neighbor fingers him, and he lies about being there.

So he's lying, but he didn't kill her. And evidence leads the investigators to him because the situation looks like he did it, until you find out what the lie was.

I see this pattern in the crime shows I've been watching, and it's a bit more likely suspects will do this, than super complex Dr. Moriarty crimes with snazzy red herrings and stuff.