Ideas for a murder mystery session?

[MonkeySage]

I wanna start this journey to the west campaign off with a murder mystery, taking place at an isolated monastery.

The overarching story is that shadowlands taint is bleeding out all over the world, causing war, famine, and all that nice apocalyptic stuff. Shadowlands creatures, including certain types of oni and a whole mess of undead creatures, are appearing in places that were once considered completely safe.

The group is on a pilgrimage, which serves two purposes; investigate the source of this problem, and put a stop to it(with the help of a set of scriptures from heaven).

So they come to this isolated monastery(i'm starting them in media res), and eventually learn that someone or something has been killing off the monks. I'm thinking... the eldest monk there recently got back from his 2 week fast, and there is also a new, younger monk that the elder has taken to.

I don't wanna send the group in any particular direction, mainly i want ideas about how i could set up the mystery itself, and how I might tie it in with the main story.

My group are the DMPC Tripitaka(level 3 monk with low stats), two half onis (homebrew race roughly based on tieflings and common oni), one a hexblade and the other a barbarian, a vanara rogue with the dark template, and a hengeyokai sorceress. The PCs have 5 class levels each.

[MonkeySage]

Second page, no response... :/

[AMFV]

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

This basically holds most of what I would give as advice. Murder mysteries are tough for the reasons listed in this particular article, hopefully this helps.

[dragonkingofthe]

you could work it so that some Shadow beast is both making one of the monks do it to themselves while they sleep and making them forget about it upon waking, while also granting them some basic 'shadow' skills that make them sneaker. (IE: grafts some rouge levels into them)

the players attempted to find the killer in the act, and try to lure him out, thats day one as they attempted some generic mystery finding that runs them in circles as they get almost the whole monastery implicating each other, until knight falls and they go to sleep.

Each night have your players roll a Will save (or just make one do it), and any that fail knock off a monk or maybe fight a player. (don't actually have the players fight each other, roll up a NPC who is in every other way identical save some of his levels replaced with rouge or some rouge levels added and give some somewhat contrived reason why the missing one does not show up, some one should be sleeping alone)

upon fighting the 'NPC' they should be able to figure out it's one of the other players before they kill it, (hay that's there weapon!) and they start trying to break though the curse, each round prompting the character to roll a will save (come on fight it!) after the fight were they either break the curse either with magic or beating him unconscious, or him passing a will save they figure out the magical nature of whats going on and go to find the monster in the wilderness, while trying to keep the monks and themselves from killing any more of themselves.

that good nuf?

[MonkeySage]

I remember this anime I saw once where the protagonist had been hired to track down this guy at a casino called "The King", who'd frequent the poker tables, and if anyone lost against him, they'd inexplicably die of heart attack or something. Towards the end, it turned out that this "King" was infact whoever was winning the game at the time, and that a demon would inhabit the winner's body until they started losing.

This was actually one of the things that came to mind earlier when I was thinking of a way to run the mystery.

At the very least, I do think the real killer may be an evil spirit, whose taken to possessing these monks, leaping from one host to another. Maybe it hitched a ride on the elder's back, or on the newcomer. Maybe it's a construct born from the jealousy of an older monk.

I'm wondering if I should add in the possibility that the victims' bodies are reanimated, as if under the influence of taint?

[HammeredWharf]

Make the clues independant from each other. Assume the PCs will fail at everything. Alter the ending a bit for each clue they succeed at finding.

Make it more of an action/mystery session than a real mystery. Maybe the bad guy can summon nasty minions, some of which are caught in the act and fight the players. Maybe he hired some goons. Anyway, give them a fight, because during a session that's all about skill checks your BSF players will most likely get very, very bored.

[Maginomicon]

My idea for passive intelligence and passive wisdom (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=310882) may be of use to you.

[Seharvepernfan]

This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14874559&postcount=20) might help.

[Togo]

Go to a second hand bookshop
Look at the 'crime' section
Look for anything that looks vaguely medieval themed. Bad quality is preferable (less likely players will have read or remember it)
Of those, look for mention of monks on the cover.
Write down the title and author's name.
Look up on the internet for a synopsis of the plot.

A good murder mystery should have several suspects with motives. It should have a few conflicting clues/accounts of what happened, some of which are true, some of which are inconsistent for innocent reasons, some connected with secrets that are being hidden for good reason, but are not connected with the murder, and some which point to the murder. The process of discovery should be winnowing down the clues to eliminate the false leads, until you build up a picture of what happened.

Because this is D&D, a few precautions. Don't make the murderer a habitually evil person, or else a simple detect evil will reveal them. Don't allow detect thoughts to be used indescriminantly, and don't allow the PCs enough power in the situation to badger people while under the influence of magic. High level divinations need to be blocked for whatever reason, and lower level magic needs to be have plenty of false leads and dark secrets unconnected to the murder to be discoverable.

Because this is a roleplaying game, don't make each stage dependent on the PCs finding a particular clue. They won't interpret the situation the same way you do. Instead, have a fixed timetable of murders, getting gradually worse and worse, so that the PCs have an incentive to hurry and rush, but where more and more blatent clues can be left as time goes on, so that the PCs will always have the chance to progress early, and will have most of the plot handed to them on a plate late, so that they proceed at the pace of their own investigative discoveries, but can't get stuck and be unable to proceed.

The foe should be something dark and sinister that can be killed in a climatic end scene, but the reason for it's appearance should be an actual human perpetrator that can only be caught through investigation rather than swordplay.

Investigations can bore some players. Make sure there are random fights and/or roleplaying scenes for those who are unlikely to enjoy it.