Has anyone ever ran a murder mystery campaign?
Did your party have fun?
Any tips for someone wanting to do this?
I tried once, although it was meant as part of a larger campaign.
Long story short, the party was in a country where slavery had been recently legalized.
>Party is serving a noble in this country in order to build alliances.
>While the party is there, I drop all sorts of hints that things aren't what they seem. Slaves whispering in suspicious tones, rumors of rebellion from the commoners, signs that the nobles are brutally executing dissenters and using the military on their own citizens, ect.
>Plan is to have one of the slaves murder this noble, and then when the party investigates, have them get offered a position in the rebellion or the country's military command structure to put down the rebellion.
Anyway... when I put my plan into action, the players went full-retard, instantly assumed another noble did it, marched over to his manor with no proof, slaughtered everyone there (including the innocent servants and slaves), and started looting things like common criminals. They ended up being wanted criminals with huge bounties by both the military and rebels after that.
Did I mention they completely ignored the investigation part of the story arc and pretty much did all this on no evidence?
Yeah... if you're running any kind of mystery, be prepared for unforseen player jackass'ery the minute they get bored or think killing someone would be more entertaining lulz.Then again, this was an online game, not an IRL one, so I probably should have expected this from internet randoms.
>>44623721
Damn, I'm sorry your campaign was such a tragedy, because that seems like a pretty well thought out storyline that could have been quite fun.
Mine will be in person with bros, and we all enjoy watching shows like Criminal Minds and Law & Order (and more recently Making a Murderer), so I figured the guys would enjoy something like this since we haven't gotten together for a good game of D&D lately.
I would like to either set up some sort of murder mystery, or maybe have the party play as a group of ragtag volunteers for the town hold's royal guard and have them solve some sort of corruption mystery.
>>44623640
I tried once but one of my players is literally a federal criminal investigator in the murder division and she could see through all my bullshit plots from a mile away so I went back to hack and slash.
Hard to do with D&D as you can just cast speak with dad on the victims, assuming that their jaws haven't been cut off
I plan on doing it eventually, probably with a system where casters can't fly around and other crazy shit at the start, or with something like WoD or CoC
>>44623640
Yes. Several years ago. As it turns out my players are really bad at investigation. Their time spent on the crime scene mostly consisted of them huddling about and asking themselves if they shouldn't just call the police instead and let them handle it.
Once they tried to leave without making as much as much as an effort to investigate anything of relevance at all I had to have an NPC run up to them and give them all the clues he had "found" while they were there or the mystery just wouldn't go anywhere. Well, it still didn't go anywhere, because my players refused to take up any of the leads they now had and instead tried to hand everything over to another NPC and force him to do the investigation for them.
what's the best D&D race/class to be a good private investigator, /tg/?
>>44623640
Plenty.
In all the settings.
The tip is to make things moving.
Don't assume you can put some clue and the player will get all of them, or even understand them.
And don't assume that if you don't give enough clues, the players will not figure it out all either. They may surprise you.
Have some "release valves" in your campaign.
You need some mechanism to make the game proceed or slow down if needed, with consequences.
Keep the paste as you want but don't forget to give the players prizes if they get things early, and make bad things happen if they slow down, but the important thing is that the campaign must always be fluid.
>>44623982
With PF the Bard detective archetype, the Alchemist forensics archetype, the Rogue investigator archetype, and of course the Sleepless Detective prestige class.
>>44623982
Cleric is the way to go if you want to go all out murder investigator.
>>44623982
The best class to play investigation in D&D?
Anyone, but it must be D&D 4.
You shouldn't play investigation in the other D&Ds, because players have a thousand shortcuts possible.
Every kind of retarded spells.
It's not that you can't physically do it, but it will suck, i guarantee it.
>>44623721
>>44623779
This sounds like such a breakdown in communication.
If I want to run a themed campaign, I ask the players and then we brainstorm ways to fit it in and how to start things off rather than just planting a murder mystery in some town they may or may not bother to stay in.
>>44623928
Everything is hard to do with D&D, it's clunky and the playerbase goes bananas if they are exposed to anything other than dungeoncrawly, bog-standard fantasy drek.
>>44623640
All the time.
They tend to enjoy convicting the wrong person somehow.
Map out key locations, don't hold their hands, if they're stuck don't help them out of it. If they just up and dump the plot have come back and bite them somehow.
Also, the murderer(s) should never just be lulrandumb npc's. Put some thought into it.
>>44623901
Ask them to help you write one. then if they arent a piece of shit meta gamer have them play through it with their character like their character would and the rest of the party can play through it, and solve a real mystery.
it was a cthulhu one shot when not everyone could make it but we wanted to get together. We all had a good time and no one important died
the most entertaining way to do it is to make the players start suspecting one another
>>44624019
plus the literal Investigator Class
>>44624087
>They tend to enjoy convicting the wrong person somehow.
This, yes.
>The party finds clues that point towards a specific NPC
>The party decides that they like that NPC
>Therefore he can't be murderer
>They conclude that he is being framed by some NPC they don't like
>Go to the murderer and tell him he is being framed and that they will protect him
>>44623640
Do you mean a full campaign, or an adventure? I've always wanted to run something with a bunch of mystery solving guys (although I suppose that's what call of Cthulhu is), but I've always been worried that it'd get messed up. The players need to be onboard with mysteries over combat. Not all groups are
If you have to use D&d, Consider using eberron. There's a good series of adventures featuring a skilled detective who goes wrong who has a swordcane and wants to blow up the mayor. Dungeon 133, 150, then one of the post wizard dungeon magazines. Pretty cool mystery, desu. If you're not obsessed with the d20 system, consider using dogs in the vineyard
Don't overwhelm the players with choices.
Don't be afraid to let them get it super wrong.
"Murder Mystery"
Some weird abortion of like two board games and a tabletop RPG. We all played ourselves, who had been invited (through text message to a single person in the group) to a haunted mansion and we could get like a million each if we stayed the night.
>board game A had tiles for the rooms
>most tiles had some kind of paranormal event that could happen
>we quickly encounter three spooky men in red who are actually sulfur balloons with inhuman strength
>they respawned upon dying at a ouija board
>several players attempted to draw some demonic ward from Supernatural to ward off the beasts
>they have to remember it exactly for it to work
>combat is some horror improv with elements of AD&D
>had to dig through board game B's manual for weapon damage because whatever we had on us was available to take into the mansion and one guy had a van full of swords of various realness
>swords and guns deal about the same damage
>but the guns make the fucking ghosts explode, killing all of us nearby sometimes
>offscreen DM's boyfriend gets possessed by a demon
>gains like double everything, presumably is Satan himself
>the money was real all along, and now Satan has it
>DM's 13 year old son gets kidnapped by Satan, they try to drag him away
>DM gets knocked to like 1 HP trying to save her son from Satan, goes unconscious
>but luckily, a character found a holy spear capable of easily damaging the beasts
>many of us alternate between trying to beat these sulfur fucks who club us in one hit to trying to occasionally stab the shit out of Satan with the holy spear of destiny
>a """""""murder mystery"""""""
>Satan auto-succeeds virtually every roll so the only winning move is to be very far away from him
>interestingly enough however, Satan has adaptability, meaning any three hits with the same weapon will reduce any further damage to 0
>the spear goes to 0
>the guns go to 0
>Satan has a lot of health as you can imagine
>eventually someone punches Satan to death
>>44623721
Damn, I've been lucky.
The one time I worked a murder mystery into a session, the players got super into it. I think they enjoyed the change of pace. I think it helped that it was a "closed room" sort of mystery--the party had gone to a magic academy and the murder happened overnight while they were there, so the investigation was confined to the academy and wasn't particularly free-form.
>>44624238
>a magic academy
Magic isn't real retard.
I've done it once, basically I set up a game of clue and replaced some of the characters with the pc's. I told them that no one is safe, it could have been one of them.
From there I had them do rolls to find clues in rooms or while making accusations. Held encounters within the halls and rooms, then ultimately a confrontation with the perpetrator. What was great was that one guy started to think he had done it so he began running around planting false evidence trying to throw people off his trail but, it wasnt him and he ended up helping the killer inadvertently.
>>44624298
I dislike the idea that the killer doesn't know it was them.
But the only interesting way to make it possible is to have multiple people believe they're the murderer, otherwise people would act retarded as fuck and give it away.
>>44624342
Well the not knowing who it was, was part of the story I was using. The killer had been bewitched, as my players are a group of inquisitors. It added a nice bit of tension to the game because there was the chance one of them had been compromised which could have led to a very interesting off shoot in the game, but it didnt end up going that route.
>>44623640
Word of advice: don't decide whodunit until well into the campaign. Leave enough stuff in quantum-wave state that one poorly timed meeting, or one amazing role doesn't ruin the mystery. Keep enough of the quantum wave collapsed that there's still tension of-course, but most mystery writers will tell you that they don't decide who the murderer was until 3/4 of the way through their first draft, because if you haven't decided who it is, the reader/party can't early-guess it.
Just throw weird clues around, and piece them together yourself. You don't have to have the WHOLE thing planned out, you just have to stay one step ahead of the party.
>>44624588
>be a bad DM
Don't do this op
>>44623640
I ran a horror murder mystery session with extremely dangerous traps or encounters to steer the players in the right direction, one of my players left midway through the encounter because he's not a fan of horror and it was too unnerving for him but the rest made it through, even if their characters didn't, they wanted to know the results. It was a lot of fun but also a lot of work on my end. Shortly after a friend ran a more free form murder mystery campaign rather than a session and it did not turn out well.
>>44624588
>most mystery writers will tell you that
Most mystery writers are certifiable hacks.
>>44624262
<Good>
>>44624588
You're so wrong that I hate you
http://theangrygm.com/ask-angry-building-a-mystery/
>>44624742
Worst detective ever.
The detective cannot be the murderer, useless jackass of a witch's self-insert.
>>44624742
She only used the duct tape with the swimsuit, please post the real picture.
>>44625036
This better?
She isn't shown with the swimsuit outside of the fighting game however
>>44625281
She looks like she's cooking up trouble!
We had one where we had to prevent a murder at the opening of our new tavern, we knew the target and had to stop him from being killed but without him realising else our tavern get bad rep.
Long story short we done everything by the book and would have got him out alive but we didn't account for the target being an inquisitive fuck and sneaking off on his own.
>>44623640
My wife and I went to a murder weekend once. All the staff stayed in character, and we had to solve a murder.
The food was great, the mystery sucked, the acting sucked, the props sucked.
To do a good murder mystery you need the right balance of clues vs insight. And that balance varies from player to player.
Player 1, is clever and can make some good logic jumps
Player 2 is a good player, but overlooks the obvious
Player 3 wants to examine every piece of possible evidence like its a CSI show
Balance the mystery for them... Its a task. Too easy and its stupid. Too hard and it gets boring.
>>44623640
A Murder Mystery freeform roleplay was how I managed to convince some of my friends to try D&D and the like.
We return to it every once in a while, but here is a hint: Don't try to do a murder mystery game with a lot of rules. They are something that should be based off of logical deduction, not dice rolls. Trying to run a murder mystery in D&D just results in infuriating situations where the players know something via logic that the characters don't because they didn't roll well enough or something.
The only murder mystery in the campaigns I run is how to murder not who murdered.
>>44623640
>Any tips for someone wanting to do this?
Make sure nobody has Speak With Dead, or Detect Evil. Most people ping as true neutral, but something like murder will stain a soul so that it will ping Evil.
>>44627415
>professional assassins don't know how to get around speak with dead
>>44627528
The killer in murder mysteries, I've found, is rarely a professional assassin.
>>44623640
Tried it, once.
It ended up with the players torturing a suspect into signing a false confession, murdering her on the basis of said phony confession, and confused as to why I changed all of their alignments to evil.
>>44624185
unrelated person about try to run an eberron campaign, thanks for the tip I'll check that out!
>>44623640
I'm currently running a game that takes place in a Victorian fantasy setting where the players are employees of a private security/investigation firm owned by a noble family, kind of like a turn of the century Blackwater/Pinkerton organization with magic and intelligent clockwork soldiers. Each of them have a troubled past or previous failure which has made them desperate to prove themselves and get some recognition along with a better position in the company. They've started out at the bottom, running terrible jobs and babysitting arrogant VIPs, but their first adventure has them watching over an aged noble spinster and her daughter who got pulled into a spree of murders and are protecting them.
As it turns out, the stumbled on the fact that the old woman had been directing the murderer the whole time and her own daughter was supposed to be the next victim, but the players saved her and brought the old hag and her proxy puppet to justice.
Worked out very well and the players seem to enjoy it.
>>44628189
I'm actually working this adventure series into it;
>>44624185
>>44628189
>Victorian fantasy setting
Stopped reading there
>>44628416
fag
>>44628449
>muh classy gentlemen with top hats and moustaches
>muh oppressed poor people
>muh trains and steam technology
Imperialism and international politics are about the only interesting thing from the victorian era.
>>44628552
Eh. some of the music was alright.
>>44628552
>>44628595
You don't have to stop liking it.
I'm just telling you what you like is shit.
>>44628635
That's entirely subjective though.
>>44623640
I'll be playing in one soon, as a private detective, ex-police.
But the thing is, I have no fucking idea how they actually do their work. My only points of reference are a few detective novels and other related media shit. Could someone tell me how they solve their cases?
>>44628729
>>44627337
Wtf is a " murder weekend" anon?
Like a detective larp?
>>44628729
Go watch The Wire or a season of Criminal Minds.
>>44623640
Not exactly a direct murder mystery, but in the last campaign I ran one of the party members wanted to run lycanthropy as a secret from the other party members so I decided to make that a fun thing where every now and then the werewolf PC unwillingly transforms after failing a 25 Will save, then goes about just rip and tearing everything while I controlled him until he makes a 30 Will save to regain control and revert back to normal.
Here is a list of things I made him do:
>Destroy 8 of the 10 heavy artillery that the party would've used to guard a city from a dragon attack
>Devour an entire rural village that the party was staying at, including the girl that the de-facto leader was trying to romancecucked
>Single-handedly kill the vampire lord the party was trying to slay before turning on the party
>Be directly responsible for 2 PC deaths, making them reroll
>All the while having the party encounter him as a recurring boss fight
They knew out of character what was happening after the village thing, but none of those chucklefucks could naturally piece it together in-game until near the end.
>>44628416
You seem upset.
Sorry I don't run Tolkien-esque fantasy.
>>44629492
well that just sounds shitty
