Making a murder mystery

[sabayn]

What all would I need to think about in order to create a murder mystery for the players to investigate in the session?

[Pex]

You can be thankful a paladin player can no longer say "I detect Evil!" to ruin the mystery.

[Ghost Nappa]

What all would I need to think about in order to create a murder mystery for the players to investigate in the session?

Who died and why does the party care about solving their death? Is it an important figure in the country, or is it personal, like a friend of the party? Was is a friend of a friend? An old teammate? A lover? Are they getting paid? Is this for justice? Revenge? Are they looking to use the opportunity for fame and glory?

Who is the actual killer and ultimately what evidence is the nail-in-the-coffin trait/item/thing that could ONLY be them? Basically, what is going to allow the party to solve the mystery? Will it be the one book, a crossbow, a position of power? Will it come from an interrogation where they say something they shouldn't know?

What is the actual motivation of the killer? Blackmail, self-defense, revenge? Was it an accident? Assault? It is more complicated than that?

How did the actual killer cover their tracks? Did they try to implicate someone else? Did they hide some form of evidence that implicates them? Did they use magic? Did they leave the area and flee? Will the actual killer try to silence anyone who comes after them or hide and let it blow over? What about when and if they get caught?

What makes it a mystery? Is there a suspicious lack of evidence? The idea that something that can't exist at the crime scene is nonetheless there plain as day? Are there any number of people who wanted the victim dead?

What happens if the party can't solve the mystery? Does the killer get away? Do they get assistance from a detective? What if some crucial evidence gets destroyed?

How man culprits are there? I've only used language that implicates one person, but if there's an accomplice? What if it's an entire organization?

What trail of evidence would the killer leave behind? Was it an indiscriminate rampage leaving footprints, signs of struggle, blood, and other evidence? Or is the killer trying to be a perfectionist and leaves only a single clue out of place?

Which clues are red herrings? Which clues are dead ends? How do you communicate this to the players?

[sabayn]

-snip-

I like that, I am gonna use to to figure things out. I am gonna copy it and answer all the questions and see if I can't come up with a good mystery.

[RealCheese]

A thing i read once about this was for every clue you want the party to get, plant three clues. Things that seem obvious to you as you create this might not seem obvious to the party as you play the scenario.

[huttj509]

A thing i read once about this was for every clue you want the party to get, plant three clues. Things that seem obvious to you as you create this might not seem obvious to the party as you play the scenario.

And then assume they'll miss the first one, misinterpret the second, and ignore the third.

[unwise]

There have been some good points raised so far, especially the rule of using three clues. I would just like to chime in with a few more obscure points from my experiences.

Don't use red herrings - PCs won't let go of things as easily as you think, they are like pitbulls with a bone. Most painful experiences and ruined mysteries have been due to using red herrings. If you do use them, you need it to be unequivical that it was a red herring, but then players just feel you wasted their time.

Misdirection instead - instead of a red herring, have a clue that appears to point to X when in fact it points to Y in the end. For instance in my game, they found a foot print in an ink stain. Long story short, it did not indicate the guy that ran the printing press, it in fact pointed to the chef who had been preparing fresh calamari that day. No clue is pointless, they just might point to something else once they exhaust the obvious meaning.

DM Acting vs Insight rolls - as a DM, before the PCs interrogate somebody, I get them to make their sense-motive roll. Then, as I relay them 1st-person information, I raise one finger every time their PCs should be able to tell I am being evasive or lying. It does not break the flow of conversation and is a lot more natural that rolling after the fact and say "in hindsight you think he lied about X" when the conversation is already over.
The reason I do this is that it is hard for players to tell if I am stumbling over dialogue or if that is the NPC doing so. Some of my players are a bit aspergy too, so don't pick up on facial and vocal tells that I weave into dialogue.

Modularity - lay out the facts, they should then point to lots of potential places and people to explore. City adventures are best for this. A mystery story is one of those times that I actually like to split the party. "I'll go to the docks, see if any strange parcels have arrived recently..." "I'll go get an invite to the dukes party, we will need to talk to his vizier..." "I think I know where that gang lives, Bruno and I will go bash some skulls and see if they talk..." In a mystery game, PC actions should be resolved quickly and in discrete chunks. Every player is interested in finding out what the theif saw in the hidden storeroom or what the bard found out from the lady-in-waiting. Ideally, the PCs have an ever evolving checklist of places and people they want to talk to.

Escalation - Mysteries have no set finish time, so towards the end it can drag on a bit. What I do is, once the PCs are one clue away from really nailing down the mystery, I escalate the tension. They have been split up as mentioned above, now hitmen target them, an innocent person will soon be hung for the crime, a mob is forming and riots are in the street etc You need an artificial timer ticking down, so that when they find that last clue and make sense of it there is a sigh of relief as they race as fast as possible to save the metaphorical princess.

Something Fishy - The PCs don't need to solve each clue, all they need to know is that here is something fishy going on in the old temple district/the vizier is hiding something/this has something to do with exotic gems...if the clues are vague, or if they have just missed some, then the very fact that they are investigating a person/place/thing gives you an opportunity to put them on the right path. Some mooks freak out when the PCs come to investigate, they don't know that the PCs have nothing on them. "Why did the gem smith try to poison me? I was just there to ask about this obscure stone..." "Why did the librarian say he had never heard of this book, surely a learned man would have known something..." The PCs are jumped by assassins after investigating a suspect and it confirms their suspicions. The suspect is found dead after being investigated, now they have a new set of clues to follow.

Plagarise - Find a good and simple mystery and tinker it to fit in your setting. I actually suggest early teen short mysteries for this. You will have to dumb down a Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie or even Murder Mystery Party plot to work as a game. You just don't want that many movie parts. What I do, is read the wikipedia synopsis of mystery movies, that is about the level of detail you want.

No Magic - You might think that the use of magic is adding to the plot, but in effect it destroys mystery. So the door was locked from the inside so...well I guess somebody could have cast mage-lock, or walk through walls, or mist form, or anything really. "A Wizard Did It" is a terrible addition to the mystery genre. It makes mundane clues meaningless or at best always makes them second guessed. Even a confession has to be suspect if somebody could be mind controlling the guy. Even a simple suggestion spell or sleep spell completely throws a mystery off the rails. Do the PCs have to account for magic in every clue? Old man Withers says he did not hear anything, the evidence points to the fact he had to hear something, do the PCs now have to entertain the possibility for a Silence spell? Every alibi is supect if people can cast Disguise Self. The levels of complexity get insane.

[TheOOB]

Here's my stratagy. It may not be for everyone, but it works.

First I make the victim and a series of suspects. I give them all motive, and figure out in rough detail how the murder happened, but not who did it. I then take all the suspects, and write down what they'll say they were doing during the murder, and what they were actually doing that they don't want the players to know(but I don't have any one of them be the murderer yet), and I make a few clues for all their hidden agendas, making as many of them suspicious as possible, and make them all finger someone else.

Then I randomly determine who actually committed the murder, and change their "real" story to allow for the murder and put in those clues.

That way everyone has a secret to discover with clues, but when making the clues I'm not railroaded into knowing who did it. This creates a web of false leads that players will have to unravel.

[JAL_1138]

Make sure that either a) the body is too degraded for Speak With Dead to work, or b) make sure the victim didn't see their killer (backstabbed, poisoned, etc.) so that Speak With Dead doesn't give away the murderer's identity.

[Inevitability]

Some advise, watch out for divination and enchantment. Detect Thoughts or Dominate Person can already ruin your day.

Also, find a way to make the body unable to be raised.

[MadGrady]

DM Acting vs Insight rolls - as a DM, before the PCs interrogate somebody, I get them to make their sense-motive roll. Then, as I relay them 1st-person information, I raise one finger every time their PCs should be able to tell I am being evasive or lying. It does not break the flow of conversation and is a lot more natural that rolling after the fact and say "in hindsight you think he lied about X" when the conversation is already over.

I absolutely love this idea. Will definitely use it in my next game

[Person_Man]

Does anyone have Telepathy/Read Thoughts/Divinations/etc?

Seperately, I find its best not to actually know who the murderer is. Instead, just give half a dozen or so PCs a motivation for being the murderer and clues that lead to them, then see where the PCs go with it. Its much more fun to let them roleplay and come to conclusions and then make decisions on the fly to rule people out or add new clues as needed. Also, PCs tend to overlook and/or ignore clues, so it'd be far too easy for you to spend a ton of time laying out an elaborate plot tree only to have them ignore it entirely.

[Vogonjeltz]

You can be thankful a paladin player can no longer say "I detect Evil!" to ruin the mystery.

Well...technically that was never a problem either.

Crime of passion: Killer was Good/Neutral with a momentary lapse fueled by an intense situation. They regret their actions, but believe nothing can be done about it now.

Evil family: Your party is hired by the Estate lawyer to investigate the circumstances of the victim's death, because it affects how their will turns out. The catch? Everyone has skeletons in their closets (i.e. Everyone who could possibly be a suspect is evil, for one reason or another).

Being evil in 3.5 was all about selfishness. Basically if you didn't care about others more, you were evil (even if you never actually did anything evil).


What all would I need to think about in order to create a murder mystery for the players to investigate in the session?

I think Ghost Nappa probably nailed it.

Killer, Victim, Motive, Why no one knows, why anyone cares.

Another useful thing when determining how the PCs are getting involved: How will the NPCs react to this? Will they treat the PCs kindly? With Hostility? What were their relationships with the deceased? Have they taken precautions against magic use against them? How will they react to unprovoked magic use?


-snip-

I like it, then no matter what direction the PCs tear off in, they're going to come to a satisfying conclusion. You could layer it though, dictate that the first person they go after is no the killer, but provides the clue as to who the real killer is. I mean, yes, it's technically railroading, but it's more like "It's a small world" railroading in that the rails are less overtly there.

[BRC]

I've played in a few mystery campaigns, and the hardest thing to do is pacing.

First of all, it's easy for only a few members of the group to be engaged. The longer you go between developments, the worse that will get.
It may be tempting to have lots of false leads and red herrings, but that's a bad idea. Players don't want to spend lots of time chasing down a lead only to get "I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that". Red herrings are fine, but in chasing them down the PCs should learn SOMETHING about the crime. If the killer planted the evidence to cover their tracks, then in uncovering the ruse the PCs learn something new about the Killer. Pacing a good mystery is key. The plot should be thickening at regular moments, either as the PCs uncover clues, or as developments occur (Perhaps the Killer tries to cover their tracks).

Next: Details. Details are important. The last mystery game I was in we spent three sessions on what seemed to be a locked-room mystery. Well, it was a blind Alleyway with a camera pointed at it, so we could see who entered and exited, and we were able to eliminate everybody we saw go in as a suspect.
We finally figure it out, and while we're wrapping up the session out-of-character, the GM mentions that he never actually figured out how the Killer got into the alleyway (The killer was a hired assassin, we were able to figure out who hired them). After six weeks (We played every other week), with lots of time spent on figuring out who went in and out of the alley, one would think that he would have at least decided how the killer got in. If the Players start asking a question, come up with an answer that fits.

Clues. Never have the "One, Critical" clue that you count on the PC's finding, especially not if that clue is hidden behind a dice roll. The PC's could roll poorly at that point, miss it, and spend the rest of the session stumbling around making no progress. If they miss a clue, find some way to point them back to it.

Finally: Keep everybody engaged. Murder Mysteries are friendlier to party-splitting than most, but try to make sure the Party is meeting up regularly to pass along what they found and discuss theories. If a player isn't doing anything for a while, try to reach out to them. Give them something for their character to do.

[Mellack]

Zone of Truth

It is only a second level spell and they know if someone has made or failed the save. If they have all the possible suspects they just ask them in turn. Magic makes mysteries much harder to do.

[Vogonjeltz]

Zone of Truth

It is only a second level spell and they know if someone has made or failed the save. If they have all the possible suspects they just ask them in turn. Magic makes mysteries much harder to do.

I believe that is the scenario in which all parties take violent offense at having their privacy violated.

[Inevitability]

Hm... If you character is like that, simply use deception to make people believe you found the murderer. Who you'll be framing is determined randomly. :smalltongue:


I believe that is the scenario in which all parties take violent offense at having their privacy violated.

Just knock out whoever you want to interrogate, put them in a Zone of Truth (or force a 150 GP Elixer of Truth down their throat) and Intimidate/Persuade/Bluff them into speaking.

[Beleriphon]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the conceits of a modern murder mystery story are driven by the idea that people have rights. Even in 10 Little Indians it never occurs to any of the visitors to torture each othe for information, because we just don't do that. A medival sheriff (mind you a sheriff in medival Europe was more akin to a mayor) would have no qualms torturing a false confession out of somebody they don't like and then moving on. In fact this might be your plot point, the town has already picked the wrong person as the murderer and now its up to the players to find the real killer! Complete with townsfolk that don't want to talk about since only Jerry the Juggler could have killed Burt the Baker since the two had a long standing rivalry over Mary the Milkmaid.

[Frenth Alunril]

I actually had another player tell me murder stories, we had him roll everything up, and I went through them and dug up all the clues! You'd be surprised when speak with dead goes off in perfect detail, how confusing it can be.

The players were so engrossed in the murder mystery that they actually dismissed direct evidence that their friend was a psychotic sociopath. When they finally got the "nail in the coffin," it lead to five minutes of cold stares and creative swears.

The payoff for the experience was epic.

Today we are returning to town, with a new party, and they are sworn to not meta game, all while the killer is the town mayor, and they have intimate knowledge of the npcs.

Of course, once the killer became mayor, ingeniously, actually, I claimed him as an Npc.