Murder Mystery Adventures

Hey all!

I was wondering if anyone has any good suggestions for low level murder mystery adventures? I am looking to run one on the Orien Lightning Rail for my Eberron campaign, but I have no good ideas. All suggestions are welcome.

I also do not my heavily modifying it to fit in Eberron.

Thanks in advance!

Murder on the Orien Express is a 64 page module that is BEGGING to be written.

Sadly, I can not offer you much in the way of advice. I know of one murder mystery module that was written a long time ago for an issue of Dragon. It's more than old enough to be on the CD-ROM. We're talking a module written in the 1987-1991 timeframe here. However, it cheats, and you're not allowed to use divinations on anyone legally.

Forgive me while I ramble....

I'm not a student of murder mysteries, but I do know just enough about them to babble on an internet message board, while not knowing enough to be truly helpful. I can tell you that sometime about a hundred years ago, it was fashionable in mysteries to have the butler do it. That's because the butler was an invisible person in high society and most in the upper classes wouldn't think of the butler in the first place, much less assign any guild to him.

Ergo: Suggestion 1 - Make the villian a person who "hides in plain sight"

This became cliche. Suddenly butlers everywhere were bumping off their employers. So the murder mystery writers had to think of something else. They couldn't have the villian leave any obvious clues. The villian couldn't be any kind of mastermind (or the reader would figure the mastermind to be the villian). And the villian couldn't be the butler. A stranger sneaking in like a ninja and killing the victim is "cheating" in mysteries, so that's out too. So they came up with the idea of making the murderer someone who didn't know they commited a murder. This is ideal for D&D purposes.

Ergo: Suggestion 2 - the murderer is a pawn who was influenced by magic. Or had his own memories erased. Or was undead/construct and has no true mind to read. Or is such a high level that mind blank is a standard spell going on at all times (all suspects would have to fall in this category).


... now THAT was some rambling! Good luck!

Wulf Ratbane's 1st round Iron DM entry is frankly the best murder mystery for D&D I've seen in years.

http://www.aquerra.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=194&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=27

And it's free!

BiggusGeekus said:

Murder on the Orien Express is a 64 page module that is BEGGING to be written.

Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly!



Piratecat, thanks for the suggestion and the link. It is indeed very, very good. Even if I can't fit it into the scenario I am looking for, I'll probably use it somewhere else anyway.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? I was thinking that some old 2nd ed. Ravenloft might have something useful, but I am not that well versed about that setting. Perhaps someone who knows more about can help me out?

I began my last campaign with a murder mystery. Lemme see if I can remember the broad outlines:

Joe is a powerful, doddering old millionaire from old money.
Linda is from old money too, but her family is on its way down: next time her bills come due, she's losing the family estate.
So she hires a group of low-level creeps to help her out. One of them infiltrate's Joe's household staff and begins poisoning him with a wisdom-draining poison. Another one creates a Philtre of Love, and manages to slip it into Joe's food just as Linda comes on the scene. The third acts as muscle.
The plan is to get Joe to fall in love with Linda, marry her, and then let him die a "natural" death so that she inherits his estate.
HOWEVER, Bobby the Gnome, a slave at the local baths who's made a profession out of blackmail, figures out a bit of the plot, and blackmails Linda for his silence. Linda pays Bobby with a beautiful necklace that Joe had given her, part of Joe's dead wife's collection. But Bobby asks for more, so Linda has him murdered by the wizard creep she's employing.
The PCs were on the scene when the murder happened--the killer turned invisible right after offing poor Bobby, and they had to proceed from there.

Okay, this scenario ain't one you can use, but I think I did a few things right:
1) Twist the Plot. If it's twisty, then you can hand out the clues freely without giving everything away at once. Twistiness allows PCs to make real progress, but still take a few sessions to solve everything.
2) Everyone's got secrets. When the PCs find out the murder victim wasn't an angel, it noirifies the scene. The PCs had some purely helpful allies, sure, but they also got the runaround from Joe, Joe's adult daughter (who suspected them of being in cahoots with Linda), Linda herself, Bobby's wife, and so on.
3) Variety of bad guys. The PCs got in a couple great fights against the low-level creeps, but also had a lot of fun facing off against Linda in some purely diplomatic scenes: they knew she was up to something, but didn't quite know what it was.
4) Bad guys who are active. When the creeps found out the PCs were on their tail, they set up a couple of ambushes. When Linda found out, she first tried to move things along by arranging for Joe's death (covering up the evidence), and then, when that didn't solve her problem, fled town, elading to a fun chase.

Good luck with it! I love murder mysteries.
Daniel

Bump.

staz100 said:

Bump.

Click to expand...

Low level murder mysteries? The key is to think about a wrinkle using D&D magic, and go from there.

Consider these clues, found at the scene:

The body, with scorch marks upon it. (Perhaps someone with a dragonmark?)

A bit of hemp.

The severed hand of a warforged.

What does it mean? The PCs need to investigate. Who had motive to kill the dead person? Are they on the train? How were they killed? Why?

The scorch marks on the body may be identifiable with Spellcraft as magic missile burns. There are four of them. (The caster was 3rd level, and had to use it twice.)

The bit of hemp is from a rope trick. (The murdered cast it, pulled it up and hid before the dead person's bodyguard swept the cabin.)

The severed hand is a ruse. (The killer acquired it for a price elsewhere, and tossed it down to throw investigators off the scent.)

Now you need to tie it in. Your players may be looking for someone to kill. Perhaps there's some group on board (rival dragonmarked house?) that's itching for trouble and starts it, impeding the investigation. Maybe a monster in a cage being brought back to a laboratory gets loose. Then there's always the unmasking of the killer who is accompanied by several accomplices. For a D&D game this is probably a shout down the cars, followed by dice clattering for initiative: "That's him! Stop him before he gets away."

I watch Case Closed on Cartoon network week day nights at 1am. And let me tell you they inundate you with so many insane way to commit murder that DMs of the world can yoink this perfectly.