hawkeyefan
Legend
ha I saw your response like halfway through that and I almost stopped.
A Question Of Agency?
At one stage (low Paragon) my 4e D&D game involved a "kidnap" mystery. The general shape of the events and personalities was established by me (as GM), in advance. I'm sure there was some tweaking/massaging to reflect developments as we went along, but it's a bit hazy.
The big reveal was that the "kidnapped" niece (daughter? it's a bit hazy) was in fact herself a necromancer and member of the Vecna cult rather than their victim. I can't recall at what point I decided on that. I can't find stats for her in my files, which means I may have been using a sourcebook (probably Open Grave), which means the decision might have been made quite close to the moment of play. But it seems more likely I had it in mind as part of the set-up.
It's a tricky line to walk (but I'm sure you and your players enjoyed it): The pleasures of ratiocination mysteries (IMO) are either you beat the detective to the solution, or you follow the detective's thoughts as they explain the solution; the former seems difficult without some sort of clock, and the latter doesn't seem tenable to me in a TRPG.
My solution when I ad-libbed myself into this particular corner was to have the mystery they were trying to solve--if the merchant didn't murder his lover, who did (and why)?--tie into a larger plot that was a threat to the entire dwarven stronghold the party were in. The party figured out the broad outlines and started working to alert the stronghold--in the larger scale, it didn't matter much that they'd guessed doppelgangers when the shapeshifters in question were oni (ogre magi), and the party's moves to get word of the plot to the hierarchy turned the party into targets, so things worked out relatively well.
That sounds true for detective fiction, but I'm not sure it's true for mysteries in RPGs. Personally, I think the main draw is straight up the joy of finding things out. Plus a side order of feeling clever.
Yeah, I think that's the way they play at the table. The hard thing, I guess, is getting the difficulty level right, just like anything else. I guess I just didn't (before running one) trust myself to do so--and failing on the too-hard side is kinda fun-breaking, IMO.
As it turned out, lots and lots of clues, and there was some flex as to when other things were going to happen. I think the one that did it was when the merchant and his lover were seen arguing in two places at the same time (or close enough). When the players figured out there were shapechangers at play I was happy we were gaming online so they couldn't see my victory arms. \o/!
I didn't think of it in quite those terms.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I can think of other variations that might work. The PCs are actually trying to pull off the murder (IE cover it up, not solve it). @prabe's idea sounds quite good too. Another set of scenarios might involve situations where it isn't required to solve, like it is politically expedient to pin it on M, and it doesn't really matter who the real killer is (though this begs for a plot twist as well). The PCs could be any of the parties in this sort of thing, or maybe even all of them...
Another option would be a party of PCs who don't trust each other. The Netflix series IMPOSTERS has a story arc sort of like this (there isn't a murder to solve, but there are some other crimes). None of the main characters knows exactly who to trust, and neither do the viewers. Everyone is a con artist, so who trust anything anyone does or says?
I think you can make some of these work with various story telling models as well, but maybe not all of them. A classic whodoneit pretty much seems like it needs one GM who knows the plot and players who don't.
Another option would be a party of PCs who don't trust each other. The Netflix series IMPOSTERS has a story arc sort of like this (there isn't a murder to solve, but there are some other crimes). None of the main characters knows exactly who to trust, and neither do the viewers. Everyone is a con artist, so who trust anything anyone does or says?
I think you can make some of these work with various story telling models as well, but maybe not all of them. A classic whodoneit pretty much seems like it needs one GM who knows the plot and players who don't.
