Nightmare on Elm Lane Quest

[Omegaxicor]

I am preparing a quest for a few weeks time and I want to make a murder mystery, A guy who kills people in their sleep but I don't have ANY experience in murder mystery style quests and any help in the "getting to the culprit" aspect would be appreciated.

I have the basic design of the town and the possible suspects done

 

[James the Newbie]

I can give you a few basics

be sure to remind your players how important charisma based skills like sense motive, and gather information are, lots of these skill checks make the dice element good

Make the murderer have protection from divination, or finding the culprit could be made a bit easier

Pre plan several routs to find the killer, your players not following a liniar rout could cause complication; players tend to do things in the wrong order.

Dont be too harsh with charm person, let it work a bit, charms are much fairer here, and let divinations help find clues, just not them directly

 

[Omegaxicor]

I can guarantee the murderer is protected from divination but the several routes might be a problem (I have two steps at the moment which is the problem), charm person I don't understand the relevance of that spell?

 

[Kinak]

It would help to know what your party looks like and the sort of resources (especially divination) they have available. These sorts of adventures can look drastically different with a mid-level wizard or cleric handy.

People being attacked through dreams provides some really interesting options to get around divination, though. Sure, you can speak with dead, but they'll just tell you about the freaky dream they had. Even more advanced scrying may not find the dream creature normally (depending on your cosmology, it's probably on another plane).

So, let's say your second stage is at a particular location. There's obviously going to be some connection between them, so that's one clue, let the remaining targets know they spent some time together there. Have the setting of the dreams where they die, if the players can talk to the dead, be another clue. And some hint at the murder scenes (wounds of a certain type, bodies turn up covered in water, witnesses mention a specific scent, etc.).

That's the sort of multiple routes thing you want. Put in three clues at each stage leading to the next stage and you should be golden.

Of course, even once they figure out what the victims did to attract the creature's attention, they still need to catch it somehow. I'm a big fan of making them attract its attention themselves, then fight it out in their dreams. But there might be other options, depending on its exact nature.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[James the Newbie]

If a player charms someone, they can very easily persuade that person to give out information that might otherwise be kept secret

A charm could make a big secret that someone is very unwilling to unveil seem like a good idea to give away, say they said "Telling me what you know is a good idea, for you and your family" The person they charm should believe this and be very compliant.

What two steps do you have, we may be able to help expand it in the way your looking for, how many stages do you want to include?

 

[Omegaxicor]

There's the problem my party are...combat focused, we have a wizard, paladin, rogue and fighter but the wizard has mostly attack magic rather than divination they will be level 3-4

I see what you mean about the multiple clues I will have a think about it and see what I can come up with.

What I have so far (broadly because I don't know my players don't visit this site) is that the party are delivering a message that requires a reply and they wait in the town for two days and both nights a victim is found dead, both "linked" to crimes committed recently both with a strange symbol carved into the victims chest (which is nailed to the wall separate from the remains of the body ) the wizard can translate the symbol which is a clue that leads to the guy in the town who translates strange texts and somehow the party discovers the culprit and meditate allowing them entry into the next victims dream where they defeat the killer

EDIT: Thanks James I understand what you mean now, I thought you meant charming someone into committing the crime for you (which would be good but not what I have in mind)

 

[Kinak]

Okay, well, no worries about divination then.

On the bright side, if it's run correctly they won't need any real skill checks or spells, just old-fashioned detective work. Some parties don't take easily to that, so I'd probably mix in some (unrelated) combat.

If they come into town and the murders start immediately afterwards, the townsfolk's reaction should be interesting. That could be your source of unrelated combat, people challenging them when the guards aren't around and even vigilantes (local adventurers?)

Alternately, the murders could be somehow related to the person they're waiting to get the message back from, so they can either find the real killer or deal with increasingly panicked peasants. Maybe the symbol is the recipient's crest or personal seal.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Gilladian]

When I want to run a heavy investigation game, I usually create a flowchart. Start with, say, victim 1. How many clues are there at the scene? How many people to question? List each clue, and the "expected" interpretation.

Draw a circle on a sheet of paper, write "victim 1". Draw a line for each clue to it's circle. Where does that clue or piece of info take them? Which ones lead to dead ends (ie red herrings)? How can you loop things around to lead them back into the mystery?

I've attached a file that shows a flowchart for a simple spying/info gathering mission from an old campaign. It worked very well...

 

[Omegaxicor]

[MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] Thanks that gives me a few ideas, but it is for a big criminal conspiracy web sort of adventure more than a single serial killer

I will try the flow chart idea and see where it leads (I didn't think about that)

[MENTION=6694112]Kinak[/MENTION] I like the idea, the peasants believe the party are responsible and decide to "run them out of town", especially for a low level party

 

[Samloyal23]

Check out the Ethereal plane book for the original 2E Planescape campaign. It has rules for penetrating dreams from the Ethereal. If the monster Faer, a living Phantasmal Killer spell, learned to do this, no one on any plane would be safe...