Murder on Mainstreet is very different from Chris Engle's previous games. It is NOT A WARGAME. Instead it is a game about a murder mystery. Chris has included himself in this game as the newly elected "Sheriff Engel" who must solve a crime in the small midwestern town "Hayesville" in the 1890's. Murder uses the same notions of barriers that other Matrix Games do but since all the action is set in one town, there are no "distance barriers" between locations. Locations are once again shown by location cards. At the start of each move, players get a free move to go anywhere they want. So the police can follow suspects around no mater where they go. Suspicious characters don't like this so they build "anonymity barriers" that protect them from being seen. The main focus of the game is to find clues to the crime. At the start of the game the players and referee know who died but not who killed him. The players find that out by making up clues via arguments. One player takes on the role of the Sheriff, but all the players can make arguments to "find clues". The interesting feature here is that they do not have to have their character find the clue. They can argue that the sheriff finds the clue (even if another player is running the sheriff!) Eventually enough clues are found to pin the murder on one person. That person is then arrested. The game does not end with the arrest. Like the TV show "Law and Order" the action then shifts to the court room. The game includes rules that allow players to hold a trial (in about ten minutes) to determine if the accused is convicted or not. I know of no other game that does this. Murder is billed as a game for women to play. In the example of play, the referee is trying to entice his wife into gaming by playing a Matrix Game. I understand from Chris that he has had good success with getting women to play murder mystery Matrix Games at Gen Con. This is certainly not the normal population who play games. The game comes in a 20 or so page 8 1/2 X 11 photo copied book. It includes all the rules needed to play and has an extensive example of play. The rules section differs from the Spanish Ulcer in that it says it is for spy games, mysteries, sci fi/horror encounters, quests and intrigue games. Quite a big range for 12 pages of rules! Still I see a common threat running through all the Matrix Games I've seen so far. They all use characters, barriers and a way of resolving conflict that well could work in all the games it says it can do. If Chris Engle's rules work as he claim then this is an amazing break through in rules. 12 pages rather than 500. The game costs $10 plus postage. You can order it from Hamster Press at http://www.io.com/~hamster Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #7 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com