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Murder most Foul
🕑 Added 2019-09-08 23:43:17 +0000 UTCThis week I really wanted to play some adventures featuring investigating some mystery or another. However, only using an oracle to generate clues and define the mystery can often lead to jumbled results, and not really give you the exciting feeling that 'you are on to something'.
This got me thinking on a story mechanic able to take a solo player's deductive questioning of his or her own theories about a mysterious event, and somehow provide that feeling that you are getting closer to the answer.
The 'Murder most Foul' story mechanic is the result, and I must say it was heaps of fun testing it out with various mystery scenarios!
One of them, the murder of an elven ambassador, wound up serving as the main example, but you can really use any mysterious event your character may want to investigate.
I thought it was almost like playing a mini-game trying out different scenarios. For example, I tried a wizard spellbook heist, a Call of Cthulhu inspired scenario and a kidnapping scenario, all during work breaks and had loads of fun. Enjoy!
Cheerio,
John
Some artwork © 2015 Dean Spencer, used with permission. All rights reserved.
Comments
Isambard
These days I will start a small campaign with the Midderlands-Setting in Great Lunden. I play an investigative reporter who writes for ‘The Thrilling Peeker’s News’. A peeker is a city guard and ‘The Peeker’ (in short) is based on the 19th century London newspaper ‘The Illustrated Police News’. Hopefully this will result in some weird pulp stories with a lot of investigations.
John
That sounds interesting! I'll have to give that a try :)
Isambard
Thanks for sharing. For investigations, I complete tasks or mini-quests like "Infiltrate the guardhouse and examine the captain's desk for evidence". If it was successful, I throw a d100 to determine how much evidence I collected. Then I complete further tasks until more than 100 percent have been reached. But every time there is a 30% chance that this was a wrong path, I didn't find anything interesting or the rumor isn't true. With this method, I usually have to fulfill two to four tasks to successfully complete the investigation. For murder investigations, I'll make up a list with some suspects. For each of them I do exactly one smaller task (e.g. interviewing witnesses) and also use a d100. The person with the highest number is my main suspect. Then I try to collect more evidence as described above until I have the 100 percent together. But there is also the mentioned 30% chance that I will find evidence to relieve the person. In this case, I examine the person with the second highest number.
