YCombinator
2016-03-09, 11:18 AM
Hey everyone,
I'm creating a sub adventure that my characters will be invited to join and I am hoping to write it up for other DMs to use eventually after I've worked out the kinks.
The hook.
The characters will be invited to a house party. A murder will occur while they are walking about and the mystery will have begun. The mystery will play out as a puzzle that follows the rules of Clue.
There are six other guests at the party, all of whom could have killed the victim. There are also nine rooms where the event could have taken place. There are six weapons that could have been used to murder the victim and which one is unknown.
The weapons are magic weapons immune to the typical raise dead spells but have their own separate raise dead spells that can be found in the house's library of scrolls. The raise dead spells require several components and the house only has enough for one ritual to be cast. In addition a drop of blood from the murderer is a required component of each ritual. The ritual must also be conducted where the victim's soul is, which is obviously, where the murder took place.
With this, the characters are capable of raising the victim from the dead, provided they figure out who the murderer is, which weapon, and where. If the characters succeed in raising the dead the reward could be to keep the magical weapons, which are level appropriate for their characters. There's also the possibility
that the victim is a character that they care about.
Mechanics overview.
The game of Clue, ignoring the board, is played out as follows. From 6 suspects, 6 weapons, 9 rooms, one of each is chosen as the guilty pile. The remaining 18 cards are dealt out equally to six players who have 3 cards each. The players take turns suggesting a guilty triplet of cads. If a player, going around the table, is capable of disproving the suggestion, she shows her card to the suggesting player. That player knows one card is not guilty and the other players have learned that that player has one of the three cards suggested.
Within a few turns of this, it's possible to use process of elimination to deduce the chose guilty pile of cards. I would like for my players to get a series of these answers and then the puzzle is to use logical deduction to figure out the answer.
The issues I'm facing.
I of course don't just want my players to be playing a game of Clue. I also certainly don't want to rob them of any player agency in terms of their ability to explore the house or discover the various things. But I do think the logic puzzle framing is a lot of fun.
One thing I'm a little stumped on is how suggestions get made. In Clue each player takes a turn. In my game, the player characters are the only ones that need to take a turn. But in Clue, you get information from other people's turns (if you're good at the game) by knowing who can't or can disprove some suggestions. I am not sure how to model the suggestions. They could be minor, less costly rituals you perform to see if a ritual would work. That's easy but feels a little bit lame.
I could have every NPC know some things about the crime. Basically I deal out three cards to my players, and three to each of the other NPCs. I can construct in-game reveals that reveal the players own hand to them. For example, if the PCs were dealt Col. Mustard, Knife, Ballroom... then I could wait until they go to the ballroom, send Col. Mustard in there alone with them, make sure the knife is on the table in that room, and then have the victim scream. Clearly Col. Mustard didn't do it, because he's there with them. But anyone else could have done it.
I could have the NPCs who know things answer about the suggestions. For example, if the players suggest Prof. Plum, with the Pipe, in the Kitchen... then one NPC could object to that being impossible because he was in the kitchen.
There are a couple of problems with this. For one, they don't have any reason to trust these NPCs. After all one of them is the killer. Secondly there's no reason to make suggestions in this contrived way. You'd be better off just asking everyone what they already know. An insight check could fix the issue of people lying, I suppose.
Another key issue is that in Clue I know every player has exactly 3 cards (assuming 6 players.) This is critical to the deduction and I don't know how to really explain that without explicitly being very meta game about it. The Clues don't have to exactly fit. Just so long as it has that theme, it's a fun puzzle, and it feels like a murder mystery.
I want players to have to explore the house and go to the rooms. I think it would be interesting if there was a potential to be alone with the murderer and have some sort of combat. I'd also like for players who come up with clever uses of spells to be able to gain some advantage. For example, if you charm person, perhaps they'll just "reveal their hand" and tell you the three things they know.
Does anyone have any ideas for filling out the details?
I've found this live-action Clue game: http://www.hrsfa.org/sigs-clue.php but I'm not sure it really works for me. It adds a lot of elements to find out things that aren't the murder, which could be cool, but it also seems to work much better if it's competitive. I would really like for my PCs to be a cooperative. Mostly because when they get a bunch of Clues written down, they are all going to want to work it out together. That will probably be most fun.
Alternative: One of my players could be the murderer. They could have been possessed. The only thing this would mean is that they their blood needs to be used.
I'm creating a sub adventure that my characters will be invited to join and I am hoping to write it up for other DMs to use eventually after I've worked out the kinks.
The hook.
The characters will be invited to a house party. A murder will occur while they are walking about and the mystery will have begun. The mystery will play out as a puzzle that follows the rules of Clue.
There are six other guests at the party, all of whom could have killed the victim. There are also nine rooms where the event could have taken place. There are six weapons that could have been used to murder the victim and which one is unknown.
The weapons are magic weapons immune to the typical raise dead spells but have their own separate raise dead spells that can be found in the house's library of scrolls. The raise dead spells require several components and the house only has enough for one ritual to be cast. In addition a drop of blood from the murderer is a required component of each ritual. The ritual must also be conducted where the victim's soul is, which is obviously, where the murder took place.
With this, the characters are capable of raising the victim from the dead, provided they figure out who the murderer is, which weapon, and where. If the characters succeed in raising the dead the reward could be to keep the magical weapons, which are level appropriate for their characters. There's also the possibility
that the victim is a character that they care about.
Mechanics overview.
The game of Clue, ignoring the board, is played out as follows. From 6 suspects, 6 weapons, 9 rooms, one of each is chosen as the guilty pile. The remaining 18 cards are dealt out equally to six players who have 3 cards each. The players take turns suggesting a guilty triplet of cads. If a player, going around the table, is capable of disproving the suggestion, she shows her card to the suggesting player. That player knows one card is not guilty and the other players have learned that that player has one of the three cards suggested.
Within a few turns of this, it's possible to use process of elimination to deduce the chose guilty pile of cards. I would like for my players to get a series of these answers and then the puzzle is to use logical deduction to figure out the answer.
The issues I'm facing.
I of course don't just want my players to be playing a game of Clue. I also certainly don't want to rob them of any player agency in terms of their ability to explore the house or discover the various things. But I do think the logic puzzle framing is a lot of fun.
One thing I'm a little stumped on is how suggestions get made. In Clue each player takes a turn. In my game, the player characters are the only ones that need to take a turn. But in Clue, you get information from other people's turns (if you're good at the game) by knowing who can't or can disprove some suggestions. I am not sure how to model the suggestions. They could be minor, less costly rituals you perform to see if a ritual would work. That's easy but feels a little bit lame.
I could have every NPC know some things about the crime. Basically I deal out three cards to my players, and three to each of the other NPCs. I can construct in-game reveals that reveal the players own hand to them. For example, if the PCs were dealt Col. Mustard, Knife, Ballroom... then I could wait until they go to the ballroom, send Col. Mustard in there alone with them, make sure the knife is on the table in that room, and then have the victim scream. Clearly Col. Mustard didn't do it, because he's there with them. But anyone else could have done it.
I could have the NPCs who know things answer about the suggestions. For example, if the players suggest Prof. Plum, with the Pipe, in the Kitchen... then one NPC could object to that being impossible because he was in the kitchen.
There are a couple of problems with this. For one, they don't have any reason to trust these NPCs. After all one of them is the killer. Secondly there's no reason to make suggestions in this contrived way. You'd be better off just asking everyone what they already know. An insight check could fix the issue of people lying, I suppose.
Another key issue is that in Clue I know every player has exactly 3 cards (assuming 6 players.) This is critical to the deduction and I don't know how to really explain that without explicitly being very meta game about it. The Clues don't have to exactly fit. Just so long as it has that theme, it's a fun puzzle, and it feels like a murder mystery.
I want players to have to explore the house and go to the rooms. I think it would be interesting if there was a potential to be alone with the murderer and have some sort of combat. I'd also like for players who come up with clever uses of spells to be able to gain some advantage. For example, if you charm person, perhaps they'll just "reveal their hand" and tell you the three things they know.
Does anyone have any ideas for filling out the details?
I've found this live-action Clue game: http://www.hrsfa.org/sigs-clue.php but I'm not sure it really works for me. It adds a lot of elements to find out things that aren't the murder, which could be cool, but it also seems to work much better if it's competitive. I would really like for my PCs to be a cooperative. Mostly because when they get a bunch of Clues written down, they are all going to want to work it out together. That will probably be most fun.
Alternative: One of my players could be the murderer. They could have been possessed. The only thing this would mean is that they their blood needs to be used.