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The Grue
2013-10-12, 05:40 PM
Thinking of doing a one-shot Eclipse Phase murder-mystery game for my RL pals around about Halloween. About half the people I'd invite have a lot of experience playing tabletop RPGs, and the other half is pretty green. Myself, I've played a lot and GM'd a handful of times(mostly 3.e, Rogue Trader on one occasion), and have been told I'm not terrible at it. I tend to run one or two sessions and then get burned out, though, hence this being a one-shot. Also, one of the potential players (who also posts here, you know who you are) is a legit stage actor and five-star GM I can fall back on for help if things go awry.

Anyway, have any of you run or played a murder mystery sort of adventure? What's the best, or at least an acceptable way of going about crafting such an adventure? Typically a murder mystery plot has a chain of clues for the investigator(s) to follow, but I'm concerned that approach might result in a too-linear adventure. What are your thoughts on how to run such a game?

RochtheCrusher
2013-10-12, 06:15 PM
Well, the Gumshoe system (which is made for such things) seems to suggest that you always leave at least three clues that your players can find... in addition to anything you didn't think of that the players did.

There was a pretty good article on such that I found on the Google... seemed to advocate letting the players chase red herrings if they come to the wrong conclusion, but always make sure they can see where they ought to be from where they are? You know, if they head to the Moon, and that's wrong, they can still go accost the wrong guy but there'll be a clue on the Mesh to lead them back the right way?

Probably worth looking up Gumshoe RPG and seeing what you get. Never done it myself, but they seemed knowledgeable.

Edit:

Aha! Found it!

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Hope it's helpful. ^_^

Kaun
2013-10-14, 05:24 PM
Yeah the rule of three is important.

If they get stuck, force the story along with some action and drop some more clues.

Don't decide the outcome before the game. See what your players come up with. Alter it, put a twist on it but you will get better results from working within their train of thought rather then trying to force them towards yours.

Don't run CSI. Keep your plot simple, don't expect your players to make any particular conclusions from the clues you give them. The only thing you can guarantee is they wont look at the clues the way you thought they would.

If there is a key piece of info your players need to solve the mystery.. GIVE IT TO THEM... don't make make them find it... Don't hide it or make it to enigmatic/confusing. Especially don't require them to make a roll to get it.

Don't do red herrings. It never works out well, your players will get stuck on them and frustrated by them.


One of the biggest pitfalls in murder mystery type scenarios is players that either aren't good at or don't enjoy murder mysteries. And a GM that thinks his plot is to easy so he makes it more difficult. I have made all these mistakes myself and i am still cautious when i try to attempt this kind of thing.

So to sum up;
Keep it simple.
If your players aren't connecting the dots then give them more dots.
Mix in some regular action to keep them excited.

If they do find it to easy, well sweet! Make them feel like they did really well solving the mystery and you can make it a harder for them next time.

DonEsteban
2013-10-15, 05:25 PM
From the essay cited above: "Second, there’s really no need for you to make up a red herring: The players are almost certainly going to take care of it for you. If you fill your adventure with nothing but clues pointing conclusively and decisively at the real killer, I can virtually guarantee you that the players will become suspicious of at least three other people before they figure out who’s really behind it all."

I wouldn't say don't include red herrings, but make sure that if they follow the red herring they're guaranteed to find some solid proof against it and gain some useful information on the real fish.

Don't underestimate the time needed to follow and draw conclusions from hints.

This series (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach) is also gold for designing mystery plots and adventures in general.

Acatalepsy
2013-10-15, 05:37 PM
A word of warning: Eclipse Phase has some fairly ridiculous data mining and information synthesis compared to your average setting, and PCs can and will be set up so as to take advantage of this. I'd be worried that, without a fairly clever setup, the PCs would either (a) solve the problem reasonably easily - bad for obvious reasons - (b) constantly be running into blocks where capabilities that they expect don't function mysteriously, or provide small clues that they can't really investigate further for similarly mysterious reasons - which is frustrating in its own right - or (c) the adversary is skilled enough at cleaning up after themselves that they're left with an technical puzzle, and are simply waiting for their skill rolls to give them the answer without needing to do much brainwork as players themselves.

Zavoniki
2013-10-15, 08:41 PM
Adding on to that... how exactly are you killing a character in Eclipse Phase? Is this perma-death or just their current Ego dies and the cortical stack is lost/destroyed. Is there backup available. Murder Mysteries are kinda hard to run in a setting where one of the basic premises is that Death is a minor inconvenience. The basic problem is well... why does anyone care? So someone's Morph died. Ohh well. And if its a perma death a larger question comes about in how? Because that means you hit every backup that person has, killed them before they could backup again, then destroyed their stack.

And as Acatalepsy pointed out, remember that characters have access to a lot of information in Eclipse Phase, quite a lot.

Honestly the main problem I see here is I'm not really sure Murder Mystery and Eclipse Phase go together particularly well...

The Grue
2013-10-15, 08:43 PM
Some good advice, thanks guys.


A word of warning: Eclipse Phase has some fairly ridiculous data mining and information synthesis compared to your average setting, and PCs can and will be set up so as to take advantage of this. I'd be worried that, without a fairly clever setup, the PCs would either (a) solve the problem reasonably easily - bad for obvious reasons - (b) constantly be running into blocks where capabilities that they expect don't function mysteriously, or provide small clues that they can't really investigate further for similarly mysterious reasons - which is frustrating in its own right - or (c) the adversary is skilled enough at cleaning up after themselves that they're left with an technical puzzle, and are simply waiting for their skill rolls to give them the answer without needing to do much brainwork as players themselves.

Excellent points. While the adventure I have in mind will take place with significantly limited external mesh access(shuttling between habs on a space bus, the idea being cut all mesh traffic once someone turns up dead to prevent the murderer from forking an infomorph and egocasting to safety), I'm making an effort to keep in mind the capabilities of PCs in the setting, and what steps a perpetrator might take to cover his tracks.

Also, the legal implications of being arrested for a crime your un-integrated fork comitted, or that you otherwise have no memory of, are interesting.


Adding on to that... how exactly are you killing a character in Eclipse Phase? Is this perma-death or just their current Ego dies and the cortical stack is lost/destroyed. Is there backup available. Murder Mysteries are kinda hard to run in a setting where one of the basic premises is that Death is a minor inconvenience. The basic problem is well... why does anyone care? So someone's Morph died. Ohh well. And if its a perma death a larger question comes about in how? Because that means you hit every backup that person has, killed them before they could backup again, then destroyed their stack.

And as Acatalepsy pointed out, remember that characters have access to a lot of information in Eclipse Phase, quite a lot.

Honestly the main problem I see here is I'm not really sure Murder Mystery and Eclipse Phase go together particularly well...

The victim is an extremely well-known bioconservative who makes a point of not backing up; figures there's no point because it "can't back up the soul". Bit of a fudge, I grant. Might change the premise to be a more plausible crime. I'm not married to the "murder" part of "murder mystery", the key element is that there's a mystery to solve and one of the passengers is guilty.

Even if the victim did keep regular backups, a "murder" is still willful destruction of property and the "murderer" liable to make financial restitution. The fact that the victim might be the one to press charges for his own murder doesn't make it less a crime, at least not in the inner system where the hypercorps are still trying to pretend that civilization works the way it did a century ago.

Ravens_cry
2013-10-15, 08:52 PM
Try to follow the rule of three. Every time things come to an impasse, give three (or more!) ways forward. You never want a bottle neck where there is only one solution to the problem. Now, not all solutions have to be equally ideal, some might have repercussions later on, but each should keep the game moving forward.