Good detective adventure...

[Eristophenes]

My players have started to complain that last adventures were too straightforward... I'd like to make them happy and run a detective style adventure. Do you know any interesting adventure for levels 4 - 6 (or 5-7) with good storyline and interesting detective plot? It can be for d20 or previous AD&D editions (if you can buy ESD...)

Or maybe you can share some of your ideas? They are now in a large city in high mountains - quite isolated but large...

I'm looking forward for your help...

Regards

 

[Piratecat]

EDIT - I should have *read* his post. Sheesh!

(I'm curious; do you play in English, Polish, or a combination?)

 

[Drawmack]

If you have players that are not into the mystery genre of book then you could pick up a good mystery novel (Sherlock Holmes, etc.) Steal the plot and turn it into an adventure. Another idea is to take a real world crime (serial killers work best) and turn it into an adventure for your PCs. Unsolved crimes work best as you can be much more imaginitive with the villian.

I find that high mystery and high intrigue purchased adventures always need a lot of work as you really have to take your player's skills into account when designing the adventure.

 

[Eristophenes]

EDIT - I should have *read* his post. Sheesh!

(I'm curious; do you play in English, Polish, or a combination?)

Hmmm... You mean that my English is far from perfect? I know that unfortunatelly...

We play in Polish but there's no polish edition of D&D (there will be soon as far as I know...) so we created some kind of "cross language" (many Polish players did). This "cross language" is based on fact that some english words don't have exact matches in Polish so if there is no exact word or frase we use something like polish english - I hope you understand what I mean. This will propably change when polish edition of D&D show up...

We don't have such RPG "history" like other countries but there were (and still are of course) some Polish translations of various RPG systems (Warhammer, Shadowrun, Werewolf, Vampire, Vampire: DA, Cyberpunk 2020, Mage, Earthdown, Battletech, Legend of the Five Rings, Fading Suns, Deadlands) but not D&D.

We also have our native RPGs like Kryszta³y Czasu (Crystals of Time) and Dzikie Pola (The Wild Fields). There were few others but they sucked...

The first one is simply a crossover between D&D and Warhammer - nothing spectacular...

But WF are different... This RPG is about age when Poland was at high of her power - 1650 - 1750. Lots of things connected to our history, some magic (most of it is devil's deal ) and thousands of sabre fights - quite cool RPG system really...

Regards

 

[Eristophenes]

Drawmack -> I plan to convert to D&D "The Hound of the Baskervilles" - it's a classic, but I find it quite difficult... My world is a world of medium magic, so all detective stories should take in concern spelle, magic items etc. And what about the HOUND? What type of beast should it be? Hell hound? Shadow Mastiff? Maybe some kind of Fiendish Dire Wolf? I have a lot of problems which I don't know how to resolve...

Regards

 

[Blood Jester]

Hmmm... You mean that my English is far from perfect? I know that unfortunatelly...

I hope you were just joking, but just in case...

I think he saw your location under your name and was just curious. I certainly would not have guessed it just based on your post that you were a non-native speaker of english.

[edit - typo]

 

[Eristophenes]

I hope you were just joking, but just in case...

Of course I was joking I hope noone has felt offended?
If so, I'm very sorry...

But... Back to the main object... Do you often do a detective adventures? Saying (writing?) "Detective" I don't mean something like - "someone/something is killing our sheeps... find out who/what does it after suns sets..." but I mean adventures with strong emphasis on investigation, searching for clues, lots of role playing etc?

Regards

 

[Blood Jester]

No, no! Not offended at all, I just did not want you to think he was being critical!

Sorry to sidetrack the thread...

 

[Havoc]

I love detective stories too and I tried first to include them in my normal fantasy game. But circumventing divination and other types of magic was much of a pain and suspended disbelief.
The later on I ran another campaign where I excluded or altered magic so that it would not solve mysteries; if you want to play murder cases, you do not have to exclude only divination but of course speaking with the dead and, most importantly, raise dead and resurrections .
The PC where members of the Church Inquisition (it was not the same as real-life inquisition, no burning or torture) and where sent to investigate crimes where there was black magic, sacrifice etc involved (but more often than not black magic semblance was used to divert attention from the culprits)

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Some previously published "mystery"-type adventures:

X3 Curse of Xanathon (discover who is behind an ongoing curse in a coastal, mountain town, for OD&D)

L2 The Assassin's Knot (Find out who's behind a murder. Available as a free download from the WOTC classics archive. Great Adventure, for 1E.)

Four from Cormyr (One of the adventures is a murder mystery. A 2E Fogotten Realms module, available as a free download from WOTC).

WOTC's modules The Standing Stone and The Speaker in Dreams can both be looked at as mysteries of sorts.

Of the five I'd recommend The Assassin's Knot or the Four from Cormyr mystery.