Next year I want to do a completely different play by mail game. In the past I've run political and military Matrix Games. Starting in EGG 25 I will run a role play MG. I have a hankering to run a murder mystery game. RPG's PLAY BY MAIL Play by mail role play games is not a new idea. I've read about "Call of Cuthulu" PBMs in the Lone Warrior for years. I suspect that there are also a lot of fantasy RPGs going on as well. What is new about my game is not the game itself but how the game is run. Isn't that always the story with MGs? I've run mystery RPGs for about ten years. I don't use any particular set of rules or stick to any one genre. Face to face mystery games have always struck me as being exercises in story telling. As referee I've gotten to get full use of my acting ability. I always act out the questioning sessions, since that is where the real fun is. Naturally some people lie to the players. I love doing this! It is so fun to tell the players two diametrically opposing stories. They then have to figure out who is lying. That's where the acting comes in. Signs of nervousness. speaking unduly fast, being overly insistent on a certain point are all ways to telegraph that some one is lying. This Is a great way to run a face to face game for 2 to 4 players. It is a utter bust If attempted through the mail. My guess is that may PBMs, role play or otherwise, use roughly the same system for resolving conflicts. Namely the written report. I ran a PBM set in Prussia in 1240AD, in which the players represented groups of Teutonic Knights, Poles, and Prussian pagans. The players sent me orders about what they wanted to do in the next turn, and I sent them back a report on what happened. This literally was story telling, since I made up what sounded like a good come back to their orders. But it was a lot of work. All the responsibility of making things happen in the game was laid on me. It got a little old so I eventually ended the game. I suspect that other referees have similar experiences. Some of the commercial PBMs appear to use a board game like system to keep track of all the variables in the world. They too write reports, but I suspect they lack the story telling flavor of smaller private games. But again the primary responsibility for making the game happen still with the referee. Head ache city! I once heard of a shared story telling group that somehow wrote Star Trek stories through the mail, but I have no idea how that worked. My guess is that there was again one person somewhere taking on 90% of the work in the game making it happen. From past writings you all know that I feel MGs are easier. I wouldn't say they are better though. For the referee who wants to have god like control of his or her game, MGs would not be "good." I don't plan to abandon doing acted out RPGs/Story telling games, in favor of MGs, for face to face games. Still, I am certain that MGs bring very useful virtues to the referee of a PBM RPG. The referee, needs only to write up the scenario briefing, and then coordinate the processing of the arguments the players send In. Since the players make the actions of the game via their arguments, the referee is spared the onerous task of keeping the game "fun" for all those demanding players. in a way this is nice. Because it means that the referee doesn't know "who done it" anymore than the players do. Thus running a RPG MG PBM will be like reading a mystery story. The referee gets to find out what happens by reading the reports just like the players! A big change from the all powerful GM who knows all and only walks the players through the game like a parent walks a child through the grocery story. The format on running a RPG MG is just like running a political or military MG. in fact I plan to use the political matrix from "The French Revolution", supplemented by a short action adventure matrix, to run next years game. The only difference is that the players are trying to solve a mystery rather than fight a campaign. The two are not really that dissimilar when one thinks about it. Both are exercises in problem solving. MGs are just another way to go about resolving conflicts (or coming up with solutions, as we say in mediation). I think that it will be fun. I hope that you will be able to play. MYSTERY GAMES Mysteries more than any other genre of role playing are literary in nature. Ever since Edgar Allen Poe wrote the first detective stories a 150 years ago, mystery stories have been associated with the written word. Like everyone else I've watched my share of Sherlock Holmes movies, and been a avid fan of the PBS series "Mystery" but behind each video treat stands an author. Say Sherlock Holmes and people automatically also think of Arthur Conan Doyle. The same is true of Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christi, and Lord Peter Whimsy and Dorothy Sayers. As such the mystery game more than any other RPG is best suited to be a PBM. In my four years of studying criminal justice and police administration I learned that solving crimes has very little to do with actual police work. In fact my job as a psycho therapist (member of the Thought Police) involves much more work in investigation, than is possible for law enforcement officers to do. I respect what the police do do though. Their job is more to maintain order than it is to capture Professor Moriarty! And they do a good job. If they. weren't, there would be a whole lot more riots in the US then there have been recently. So, while police work does not show how to run a mystery game it does give some good clues about what it take to make a case in a court of law. First of all a crime must occur. This may sound obvious, but a few years ago a fellow was arrested for practicing medicine in the State of Indiana without a license, and let go. As it turned .out, while It was in the law books that the act was a crime, the law had no criminal punishment! No punishment, no crime! Once a crime has been found to have happened, the police start looking for suspects. To "prove" that a person did the crime the prosecution must show that the person was 1. at the scene of the crime, 2. had the means to carry out the crime, and 3. had a reason to want to carry out the crime. For game purposes, this gives the players three goals to try to accomplish in the course of the game. Find out who was at the scene of the crime (either by people's admission, eye witnesses, physical evidence or circumstantial evidence). Find out who could have physically done the crime. And find out who had a motive to do it. The murderer will of course want to establish an alibis, show that they were too weak to pick up that lead pipe, and of course look innocent! Do you feel your interest being piqued? I do not expect that this will be another only wargamer game. I hope that my wife, who at best tolerates games, will join in. Anyone who has an interest in stories is Invited to join in this free PBM. HOW TO RUN A MYSTERY MG I've put a lot of thought into how to run a RPG MG. My present thinking is somewhat capitalistic in nature, that is to say I want to impose as little forced structure on the game as possible. I've found through a little experimenting that players figure out the best way to solve mysteries if left alone and not told "this turn you must establish a suspect list!" So here is what I think does need to be there. Players still need to send in orders in the form of arguments that they form from matrix elements. Action, Result, 3 Reasons, remains the standard for writing orders. Turn resolution will also stay the same. I will roll dice for each argument. Normal arguments require a 3 or less on 1d6, etc. Arguments that mutually exclude one another roll off until one side wins. The referee needs to write an initial scenario briefing. It should be complete with a description of the characters and setting, a complete description of the crime and criffte scene, and a reason for the detectives to be there. It may help to some how isolate the characters somehow, but I'm not certain this is really necessary. Each turn the game report needs to include: 1. the list of characters, 2. the matrix (political with adventure supplement), 3. the events of the turn, 4. an overview of the event to date in the game, 5. and a reminder that the goal of the game is to find the means motive and opportunity of the murderer. I like these games to have 2 detectives working on the crime. One is good, he gets to make 2 arguments a turn about what happens this turn. The other is bad, he only gets to make one argument about what happens. As an interesting twist, whither a player chooses to argue to the good detective or the bad one, he gets to make one argument for the criminal! In this argument, the players tries to prevent the detectives from solving the crime. He can provide them with red herrings, better suspects than he is, or alibis for himself. The turn report will reflect that these arguments come from the criminal, so that the detectives can have "gut" feelings that Mr. Jones is lying! The poor detective may be in competition with the good detective so he may follow up on the "bad" leads to make an arrest first. That is what always happens in the movies anyway - Holmes to Le Strad "Tut tut, Le Strad, you've arrested the wrong man ... again." The player gets to chose which detective he wishes to make arguments for. I figure most players will want to make arguments for the "good" detective (thus confirming that he Is good). But if a lot of players start making orders for the "poor" detective he may well solve the case first. No matter which detective the player chooses, he always gets to make one argument for the murderer. This is different from nearly all RPGs so I will remind the players of it often during the game. I will not be telling the players what kind of arguments to make or when to make them. If the players have not "found" the murderer by the end of the 6 turn game, then the murderer wins (by getting away). Also, I do not "know" who the murderer Is! The players will find out who the murderer is by the arguments they make. They will establish means, motive and opportunity of a person and arrest him. Does that mean that the arrested person is the murderer? Beat me. Prisons are full of people who are "innocent" -- just ask them! This is a lot like capitalism, since I am asking the players to pursue a goal - find the murderer. A business game could be done by giving players the goal - make a profit. Exactly how to do that is not spelled out. This frees up the players to be inventive and efficient. That is what I always wanted in games anyway. I guess I really am an American (even if I am a Democrat). Back to Experimental Games Group # 23 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com