[Thought Exercise] CR-driven murder investigation

[Paul B]

So in our current game, it's been revealed that an NPC had gone missing and is presumed dead, and at least two PCs and one NPC are all likely murder suspects. Now...this revelation came by way of someone rewriting their Beliefs and *pow* there's an as-yet-undisclosed murder driving his actions now.

While this is unbelievably cool on the part of the player, I'm faced with several options.

The first option is, the GM figures out "what really happened" and lets the players pull apart the clues and whatnot. This is very traditional and is probably what I'll end up doing.

Second option is, the players cooperatively figure out if it really was one of them, they drop back into character-brain mode, and pretend the investigator's player doesn't "know" whodunit. I like this for the coop aspect. I also like it because the players can be aboveboard about what the upcoming conflicts are "about", and it all becomes very film noir. Rather than getting a straight answer out of someone about their guilt/innocence, now the conflict is about whether you respect the confessor, for example. Stuff like that. Requires a VERY high level of self-awareness and genre-awareness during play.

Third and most intriguing option, to me, and the source of the subject line, is to leave the murder unsolved. Nobody knows who actually did it. The truth is uncovered in the course of play via BW's underlying conflict resolution philosophy.

I believe BW can handle this, but I want to get under the hood of the mechanics for a bit.

We know Wises and other skills can introduce new truths to the game's fiction via the Intent we set for the roll (or the consequences of failure) and how we frame the conflict. However, I believe there's a barrier between the Wise-roller and a fellow PC. The PC's player is assumed to have primacy over his character's fundamental truths. IE I don't get to roll "gay-wise" to out your character, or whatever.

Can that primacy be comfortably pushed back without breaking the game? Can you in fact "investigate" a murder by using Intent and skill rolls to introduce facts about suspects, even if they are other players' characters?

On a related note: In a prior game there was another murder investigation. In that case, another PC made an Investigative Logic roll, failed it, and ended up chasing down another PC, believing that PC was the guilty party. Now...my understanding of the limits of Intent at the time was that the Investigative Logic roll's failure could leave the PC believing another PC was guilty, but could not retroactively place the PC at the scene of the crime.

Thoughts? I have an intuitive answer but I want to hear some other input first.

p.

[Dave Lucas]

I think I would go with the "trad" option.

But failure is king.

[ThoughtBubble]

I would love to go with option 3. However, if I've learned anything with my group, I'd need to have a potential murderer and scenario prepared just in case. We're still working on figuring out that they can contribute more than simple actions.

[ChrisG]

I don't see any reason you couldn't use Wises and other player authoring to collaborate on "finding" the murderer, even to the point of making up things about someone else's character, as long as everyone was into it and agreed to some ground rules (ie not contradicting my BITRs or "X and Y concepts are inviolate").

OTOH, Paka used something called the Darth Vader Ballot Box (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=225060) in one of his games. All the players (I'm including the GM here) agreed that at some point in their story arc, one of the PCs would turn to the dark side and end up as the Big Bad for the rest of the PCs to defeat. Any time a player spent Artha, he got to put a vote into the Ballot Box as to who would turn evil.

In Paka's case, the player whose PC turned evil became an NPC and the player burned up a new character. In your case, you could just use the ballot box idea, provided that all the players are on board with the fact that *any* of them might end up an honest to god murderer. You also need to agree when the reveal will happen, so people know when to start burning artha left and right and get their votes in.

If you go to the Actual Play index on rpg.net (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=256026) and search for Burning Wheel, you'll find some of Paka's notes on his games.

[Mel White]

Third and most intriguing option, to me, and the source of the subject line, is to leave the murder unsolved. Nobody knows who actually did it. The truth is uncovered in the course of play via BW's underlying conflict resolution philosophy.
...
We know Wises and other skills can introduce new truths to the game's fiction via the Intent we set for the roll (or the consequences of failure) and how we frame the conflict...

Can that primacy be comfortably pushed back without breaking the game? Can you in fact "investigate" a murder by using Intent and skill rolls to introduce facts about suspects, even if they are other players' characters?

p.

I like this third option but I recognize it could be difficult to execute. I think if the players all agree that wises and skills can be used to create facts about PCs especially as related to the crime. That might even be a lot of fun. PC Investigator uses 'murder-wise' to determine the murderer was a short, left-handed woman with a limp, just like PC Suspect...but PC Suspect Contacts the retired judge with whom she was with at the time of the crime. Fail the contacting roll and the judge refuses to come forward--he doesn't want his wife to know...or whatever. The game might end up revolving around the murder for a while until it is resolved, but that's fair enough.

I've toyed with an adventure of this type myself. The difference is that at start, each character has a Belief that provides a motive for wanting the victim dead...and the memory of having committed the murder. I know there is a movie along these lines (I can't remember the title), where the victim is stabbed multiple times at night, while sleeping in a dark room; each attacker thinks he or she is the murderer, but it turns out the victim died in his sleep before the first stabbing...or something like that. Meanwhile, during play, each PC wants to 'prove' their innocence and prove the guilt of someone else.

I attended a 'Host a Murder Mystery' dinner many years ago where it turned out, I was the murderer! I was so surprised! That was the flaw of the mystery, I think, in that I didn't know I was guilty. One thing to try would be to have each PC write out their 'confession'--why, where, when, and how they murdered the victim (including the PC searching for the murderer) and including all currently known facts (like the victim was stabbed). Those confessions create a body of facts the GM could use to help adjudicate -wises or skill rolls.
I'm looking forward to hearing how this turns out!
Mel

[luke]

Now...my understanding of the limits of Intent at the time was that the Investigative Logic roll's failure could leave the PC believing another PC was guilty, but could not retroactively place the PC at the scene of the crime.

This is true in Burning Wheel and Burning Empires. Facts can be introduced, but you cannot contravene any of the conventions or truths established in your game to date. "Facts" are nearly always introduced from "off screen." No "Poof, it's true!" magic.

-L

[Paul B]

Okay, so what if, say, placing a PC at the scene of the crime does not contravene established facts? As in, the player does not have hard-coded facts backing up his character's location -- or the impossibility of the character being at the scene of the crime. And how would the PC defend himself in this case? Would he have to -wise facts about his as-yet-undisclosed history? Weird!

I'm trying to suss out the line, if there is one, between facts entered into the shared game fiction and "facts" that exist only as a player's perception of his character. His authority, IOW.

I know in one of your BE examples you talk about Circling up a PCFON's daughter, ICHASHITF!ing her, and hulling her. The "fact" about the daughter isn't part of the player's concept, but you clearly thought introducing that fact was fair game. And having a daughter didn't contravene established fact. Presumably that takes an agreement among the players that that sort of thing is cool. And what's good for the goose is good for the gander, eh?

p.

[luke]

The player of a character is really the final arbiter of this stuff. Players are largely the sole determinants of their character's history. So one player could try to establish a fact about your past, and you could simply say, "No, I wasn't/didn't/wouldn't." Fact established, move on.

If the player's cool with it, go for it. But BW really isn't built for this type of play. PCs are sacrosanct.

-L

Circles, BTW is fair game.

[Judd]

In a game I played, once we were trying to get in touch with this Bishop but we couldn't pull together the dice for our Circles test.

So, we did a Circles test to find the prostitute the Bishop meets on a weekly basis and ambushed him there. The Bishop being a sinner wasn't in the cards before then but the GM thought it was cool.

Hope that helps or is informative.

[Paul B]

Was the Bishop a PC or an NPC?

If the Bishop had been a PC, would it have been fair game to make it true that someone's character frequented prostitutes?

p.

[luke]

Bishop was an NPC. Which does change the situation some, since the GM has his mighty YES power.

If he was a PC, see my answer above. It can be suggested, but essentially a player has veto power over that kind of stuff in Burning Wheel. It's just assumed* that the player is in control of those kind of facts.

-L

*Like in a "this is a traditional roleplaying game in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons" kind of assumption.

[Judd]

Was the Bishop a PC or an NPC?

If the Bishop had been a PC, would it have been fair game to make it true that someone's character frequented prostitutes?

p.

Bishop was an NPC. I wouldn't have tried that kinda shit with a PC unless the player had made the Bishop's sinning explicit at the table.

[Paul B]

Bishop was an NPC. I wouldn't have tried that kinda shit with a PC unless the player had made the Bishop's sinning explicit at the table.

Yeah...this is pretty much confirming my instinctive answer. My sense is that the making-it-true stuff can happen anywhere and at any time except to other player characters.

One of the most functional bits of Burning Empires, for me, is having three defined GMFONs. They're fair game to pull this stuff on, the players have no problem engaging them in hardcore conflicts, it sets up a nice us-versus-them tempo to the game. Much, much harder to bridge the limitations of the social contract among your fellow players without explicit instructions/permission to do so.

That said, I'm definitely gonna bring up the possibility that one of the characters themselves is the murderer, and let the players decide yea or nay.

p.

[Fuseboy]

So in our current game, it's been revealed that an NPC had gone missing and is presumed dead, and at least two PCs and one NPC are all likely murder suspects.

While this is unbelievably cool on the part of the player, I'm faced with several options.

...

Third and most intriguing option, to me, and the source of the subject line, is to leave the murder unsolved. Nobody knows who actually did it. The truth is uncovered in the course of play via BW's underlying conflict resolution philosophy.

Our Burning Gdinsk game is in a similar situation, but it's very central to the story. (The players are trying to save their comatose crime-lord boss Kursk after a failed assassination, and they don't know who did it.)

I have a "what really happened" worked out, but I've got this continual temptation to bury that and let it emerge through wises instead - mostly because I don't like the way that "WRH" grates against the aims of the rest of the mechanics: BW is so receptive to where players want to take the story, it's easy for the game to meander away from the hidden facts.

My gut feel is that, as was the case with NPC lies (http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5055), BW's mechanics work best if the players know (or helped create) the hidden facts.

Then everyone gets to squirm with delight when a PC circles up the killer, and cluelessly asks for help with the case and spills everything he's learned so far.

If you don't have a WRH, then I think it's probably important that the players know that. That way they can take responsibility for making sure the facts and NPCs they try to wise in fit some kind of coherent, emerging picture.

[luke]

My gut feel is that, as was the case with NPC lies (http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5055), BW's mechanics work best if the players know (or helped create) the hidden facts.

That's really not the point. This isn't some collaborative story tellning game. BW works best because the players can state their intent and uncover information with a single roll (that allows to get help and spend "luck points.")

One roll doesn't solve a mystery. It simply presents the next revelation.

-L

[zipht]

The Deeper question here is how do you conduit a murder investigation when you believe that one of your co-investigators may have done it?

How do you know that they aren't going around trying to cover up their guilt?

Look at this from the players perspective, just how are they going to figure this out?

[Mel White]

The first option is, the GM figures out "what really happened" and lets the players pull apart the clues and whatnot. This is very traditional and is probably what I'll end up doing.

Second option is, the players cooperatively figure out if it really was one of them, they drop back into character-brain mode, and pretend the investigator's player doesn't "know" whodunit. I like this for the coop aspect. I also like it because the players can be aboveboard about what the upcoming conflicts are "about", and it all becomes very film noir. Rather than getting a straight answer out of someone about their guilt/innocence, now the conflict is about whether you respect the confessor, for example. Stuff like that. Requires a VERY high level of self-awareness and genre-awareness during play.

Third and most intriguing option, to me, and the source of the subject line, is to leave the murder unsolved. Nobody knows who actually did it. The truth is uncovered in the course of play via BW's underlying conflict resolution philosophy.
p.

From Paul's first three options...


The Deeper question here is how do you conduit a murder investigation when you believe that one of your co-investigators may have done it?

How do you know that they aren't going around trying to cover up their guilt?

Look at this from the players perspective, just how are they going to figure this out?

...Nick is suggesting a fourth option: one of the PCs is guilty, but the other players don't know it. This is similar to option 1. The backstory is immutable and the adventure becomes a competition between the murderer-PC and the investigator-PCs. At some point, the investigators will begin to be suspicious of the murderer-PC. The situation would likely make for a fun game, with shifting of support among the PCs as the weight of evidence against the guilty PC mounts. At least one difficulty would be in continued play depending on how the murder investigation is resolved.

And, in terms of how the players are going to figure out the mystery, that's probably not so important! They'll figure it out! What's important is for the GM to not be obstructing the investigation in favor of a 'school solution'.

Mel

[zipht]

Mel, got me thinking, why not ask the PC's privately who they think did it. If one of them wants to be the guilty party, have then write down how they did it; make it short, three paragraphs at the most.

Then run with this.

[Paul B]

I like all these ideas. However, under what circumstances is it "okay" for a player to hide information from other players under Burning-style play? This is predominantly a philosophical question.

Maybe I was mistaken, but I had a strong understanding that all the cards are on the table when you're playing a Burning-anything game. Which is the problem with trying to get an immersive investigative experience out of it.

I suppose it's not that far away from the one piece of hidden knowledge I can think of immediately: the GM secretly selects his Maneuver Action during Infection in BE. That doesn't break the game. In fact, it's probably fundamental to its operation.

I guess in the end it's about what you want out of the mystery. If you want a puzzle game, then The Troof has to be known by the GM. If you want noir, where the solving matters less than the journey to get there, then everyone hashes it out at the table and plays honestly once they're back in the cockpit. If you want a manhunt, then the GM secretly works out the mystery with one of the players.

Great conversation, guys. It's been really interesting!

p.

[Mel White]

I like all these ideas. However, under what circumstances is it "okay" for a player to hide information from other players under Burning-style play? This is predominantly a philosophical question.

Maybe I was mistaken, but I had a strong understanding that all the cards are on the table when you're playing a Burning-anything game. Which is the problem with trying to get an immersive investigative experience out of it.



For what it's worth, my first experience playing BW was 'The Inheritance' with Luke as the GM at Ubercon. That scenario is all about players hiding secrets about their character from the other players. It all gets revealed in play...or at least some of it does. I could play that scenario repeatedly and still learn new things every time. But I digress, point is, it's as 'official' as they come I expect, and every player had secrets. If I recall correctly, Luke did mention in his intro that the scenario is a little different in that respect from his normal playing style.

As an aside, Ubercon comes around again next month: 2-4 Nov in Edison NJ. I've submitted 'Quest for the Holy Grail', (sort of an homage to 'the Inheritance' and 'the Sword') for anyone who's interested!

Mel