A Murder Mystery as an RP?, Could this work? Options

[Darkblade]

Hey gang.

Had a random thought after watching some Agatha Christie stuff.

Could a murder mystery style of scenario work as an RP?
What couldn't work?


I guess setting up the murder itself would be the hardest part and allowing people to actually find clues to solve the murder(s).
Amount of people too could also be an issue.

[Sparrowsmith]

I tried something similar to this with my Section Seven RP. The clues DO exist, and simply have to be looked at by the RPers, but it's hard getting them to look in the right places.

The problem is that all good murder mysteries (or crime mysteries) are solved by geniuses... But you have to make one that can be solved by your everyday person (no offense to our RPers, but not everyone is a genius) which dumbs it down to a level of unsubstantiality.
That's not to say it couldn't work, but you'd need to work pretty hard (inside clues, etc) which would render player input as close to 0 as to make no difference.

If you did make a murder mystery, it would have to be competitive (as with the DN RP) so as to establish a winner or some sort. I can't imagine a group force would work as well.

[Rukiri]

I would suggest taking a case from Sherlock Holmes or from history, I would not recommend dumbing it down but give out hints and clues that are in plain sight.

I wouldn't say that every murder case is solved by a genius but than again I did solve a case locally and I'm considered a genius because of my IQ level.

Don't dumb it down, just give small hints and make the game convincing.

[X-M-O]

I agree with Rukiri in the sense that it isn't necessary to "dumb it down".
If your average person starts a murder mystery RP, then average people should be able to figure it out, given the sufficient information and clues.
If a genius were to create the murder mystery, you might then require geniuses to figure it out, but I wouldn't claim to be a genius myself, nor would I accept that claim from anyone I haven't spent a great deal of time with (or anyone who hasn't proven their genius in ways that would cause the public to generally accept them as a genius -- such as Albert Einstein, who is more "proven" as a genius than "accepted" as such).

[Sparrowsmith]

I meant more along the lines of, if it's obvious enough for the general public to figure out, then the police could probably find the culprit a lot quicker.
Unless there are no authorities, in which case a murder mystery could definitely work following the above rules.

Case and point, Holmes is based on the man who invented criminology, and was a genius. His name was Eugene Francois Vidocq, if I remember correctly. Clues out in the open, yes, easy to interpret the correct culprit, no.

[Nicsp]

When in doubt, blame the butler.

In all seriousness, though, how about we try something along the lines of...Everyone that signed in gets a turn for trying to make a mystery for our detectives. When being the criminal, the said RPers will have his detective put aside from the investigation for whatever reason and then proceed to be responsible for describing all of the crime scenes and suspects that the players will investigate.

It will be that RPer's challenge for, at that moment, try to be as descriptive as possible, detailing places in the crime scenes where the detectives could...Well...Detect clues and changes in the behaviour of the suspects which would allow the player to guess whether the suspect is lying or telling the truth. In case the current crime reveals itself to be too hard for the players or maybe shows a few flaws in it's logic or whatever, the current "Crime Lord" can choose to either try and fix up the problems by changing a few things or he can choose to pass his turn over to the next person.

[Darkblade]

Thanks for the input everyone.

If I go ahead and make a Detective RP, I'd probably leave the authorities out of the story somehow, let it be more of a vigilante, random guy type thing.
Just bring in the police at the end to arrest the bad guy.

Anyway, I'd probably try keep things simple, so I probably wouldn't borrow from a Holmes, Marple or Poirot story.

That's not to say it couldn't work, but you'd need to work pretty hard (inside clues, etc) which would render player input as close to 0 as to make no difference.

This is something that kind of worries me and made me kind of put an alternate RP idea on the back burner.
Outside of the mystery itself, there'd be little room for players to make their own lore or story input, it'd mostly be character development which isn't bad, but I liked the kind of world we'd all created for WoA.

I like Nicsp's idea, although I'd worry that too many mysteries in a single RP story would be too much.

[X-M-O]

Thanks for the input everyone.

If I go ahead and make a Detective RP, I'd probably leave the authorities out of the story somehow, let it be more of a vigilante, random guy type thing.
Just bring in the police at the end to arrest the bad guy.

You mean Batman style vigilante?
I would make the point that this random guy would need to have some credibility for the police to believe the evidence he's collected.
So maybe he's a retired police officer and whatever crime was committed affected him directly, so the police told him to go home and let them take care of it, then the RP starts and the character figures everything out and takes it to the police, who then make the arrest. Or something.
Just helping with ideas here. =]

[Sparrowsmith]

The truth of the matter is that the actually art of catching and convicting criminals is an incredibly complex process. There's literally no TV show or Movie that comes even close to how it works. It's systematic, tedious, and incredibly bureaucratic.
So really it's a matter of making it truthful (and boring) or complete bull (and enjoyable).

Or... Leave the authorities out altogether.
Sure it's a bit cliche, but your typical "There's been a murder, and it was one of us" stories are usually pretty good. Make the catching of the murderer essential to the plot resolution, and you have a story. Say the characters are on a boat. A piece of the engine goes missing, and an engineer is killed. Slowly others start dropping like flies as well. Find the murderer, retrieve the engine piece, get home safely.
Same template could be repeated several ways: Old mansion with only one broken phone link to the outside world, for example.

Also, I have a possible resolution to this problem:

Outside of the mystery itself, there'd be little room for players to make their own lore or story input, it'd mostly be character development which isn't bad, but I liked the kind of world we'd all created for WoA.

Encourage RPers, or demand it if you feel evil enough , to create mysteries within the main mystery.
The owner of the boat, for example, has gone broke, and would make a fortune off of the insurance.
One of the engineers is an illegal immigrant, and the other engineer had just found this out.
Shady business deals, affairs, armed robbery.
Let players reveal clues to their own story at their own discretion, allowing input, and throwing everyone else off the scent of the main story.

Possible suggestions for consideration