Greetings gamers from all systems, places and timelines,
Here at 3WD, it’s no secret that we love one-shot adventures and holiday-themed games. They can spice things up or provide a welcome change with the routine of your campaign. And with Halloween having just come, what idea could be more of a low hanging fruit than a murder mystery? However, this being a different style of game, it can be tricky – which is why we made a list of seven tips to guide you through making your own in-game murder mystery something that will be remembered.
1. Create the Story of What Happened
Tell the story you want and then work the details of the game around it.
This sounds obvious but doing this first will say you have a huge headache later. So figure out who was the murderer, did they have an accomplice, what was the murder weapon, and what was their motive? Once all of these things are established then you can decide who has what information and what other pieces of it can be found where.
2. Prepare the Opening Statement
When anyone talks about leadership, they bring up the value of clear communication. Why is that important here? Because if the players aren’t clear on the initial setup of your story, odds are they will only be more confused thirty minutes and six clues later.
Also when giving the players their opening statement don’t get lost in a monologue. You can be detailed but this is potentially a beginners trap to drop too much information at once. So choose a method of your choice to deliver the statement, such as letter or NPC, and then encourage them to seek out more information during the actual investigation.
3. What Can and Can’t Be Done?
In our game, before the investigation began, it was established that neither magical or physical coercion was not to be used with any of the witnesses – I mean, unless you’re okay with the party casting mind control spells or using torture. Lay out some reasons for this such as these methods are forbidden by the laws of the kingdom, so it doesn’t come off as not being allowed because the DM said it would ruin the game.
4. Whodunit? Preparing the Witnesses
The way which worked best for me was to first create a physical list of the suspects, with a brief description of them, so the players could reference it. Then when the characters went to interact with them, it opened with some brief boxed text about their appearance and how they greeted everyone.
I developed some prepared statements, such as answers to the question what they were doing on the night of the murder, and who you think the killer was. Now, obviously, some improvisation is required but just make sure that they deliver any information you deem vital to the story.
5. Where are the Clues?
Similar to the witness list, create a list of rooms which are relevant to the investigation. And relevant is the key phrase because, if your investigation takes place in a castle, you probably don’t have the time to check, literally, everywhere. Nor do you want to go through the leg work of designing an entire castle space when the core of the mystery only takes place across eight to ten rooms.
Then deliver solid descriptions of these rooms, but don’t make either clues or secret passages too difficult to locate. Because you would have to be pretty mean to say “well, you didn’t specifically search behind the books in the philosophy section of the library.”
At the same time, a little more description and effort would be appreciated on the players’ part other than rolling into every room and saying “hey I rolled a 17 on investigation, did I find anything?” Try and strike a happy medium here.
6. Make the Story Solid
If you followed step one and established the story first, you’ll have more time to cover any plot holes – even if you change or allow the plot to evolve before the actual game. However, unless you have a team working with you, it’s quite possible that some aspect of the story might get overlooked, which could affect the flow of the story.
If one of the players questions something which you hadn’t considered, it can go one of two ways: 1) They have found a way to forward the case that you hadn’t, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, or 2) You slipped up somewhere and need to roll something back.
For example, if one of your NPCs said he only spent five minutes cooking his grits for breakfast and one of your players thinks he broke the case open because it actually takes twenty to do so… well they’re right but not because the NPC was lying but rather you never saw the movie My Cousin Vinny.
7. Leave It Up To The Players
Sometimes one of your players may make an incredible roll in a key moment of the game and you feel in the spirit of the game that they should be awarded accordingly. However, when you’re dealing with higher level characters, and all of their roles with certain skills are awesome, you don’t want them to auto solve all the problems.
Likewise, if the players are stuck on a key aspect of the story consider that odds are, while their character might have a Wisdom of 19, the player may not. Give them a hint by helping them refine the evidence they have already gained, or remind them of somewhere they haven’t looked. Or even let them know after a decent insight check that maybe they need more evidence. Just don’t spell it out for them because where is the fun in that.
Final Thoughts
This is something which we might do once in an entire campaign. But in a world of dungeon crawls and mass combats, which are worthy of the finale of a Marvel movie, this can be a nice change of pace.
It’s not uncommon for a DM to want to run a murder mystery, and let all the players take out their magnifying glasses, deerstalker hat, calabash pipes, and start going all Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in game. But, as I discussed in these seven tips, there are some specific things that need to be done – with some mattering more or less depending on the system that you’re running the mystery in.
Is this something you would like to introduce in your current game? Or maybe this is something you have already had success with. We would love to hear some of your stories.
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