Incomplete Player Knowledge

[ShadowcatX]

So I was thinking of a style of a game where the players are tasked to investigate something, maybe a murder. Only one of the players is the murderer.

The twist is they're not aware OOC that they're the murderer. Has anyone ever done this before?

[zevonian]

I was in some kind of game like that years ago. It could work here. I'm thinking you would want to be very clean in your ad thread that one of the PCs is secretly the murderer, and that anyone who applies might be portraying the culprit.

Maybe you could ask the applicants why they would have a reason to have done it. Reasons sent to the GM via PM before game start.

[orcbane]

I don't know of any RPGs that deal with this, but you might take some clues from the world of board games for how it might be implemented.

One facet that will be important is duration and conclusion. It probably shouldn't be a very lengthy game, otherwise people might lose sight of the fact that they're supposed to be investigating a murder (see Twin Peaks for an example).

There will likely need to be some kind of clock mechanic to add tension. With Clue, the tension is in trying to be the first to solve the mystery. Without that, something else will need to be at stake. Here, you can take a cue from Clue (the movie!) and have *lights-go-out* "another murder!" moments sprinkled throughout. This could be fun but might not make as much sense. A deadline timer would probably do the best for adding a sense of urgency. Maybe it will be impossible to solve the mystery once the train stops and everyone will be able to disembark?

You'd also do well to read the Gumshoe RPG, or at least this Alexandrian article on the topic of the 3-clue rule.


What's the gameplay idea behind not having the guilty character's player not know they're the murderer? In games like Clue, this doesn't matter because players aren't inhabiting the role of their characters, it's just little colorful game pieces that get moved around. In a game like The Resistance, half the fun is in either pretending to not be the spy and the other half is in figuring out who is pretending to not be the spy (and, in both instances, accusing people of being the spy). I'm interested in learning how you plan on taking the incomplete information approach to create a more-fun experience!

[Kayal]

Originally Posted by ShadowcatX

So I was thinking of a style of a game where the players are tasked to investigate something, maybe a murder. Only one of the players is the murderer. The twist is they're not aware OOC that they're the murderer. Has anyone ever done this before?

I have seen this done with Fiasco, but not with a "typical" TTRPG. It's a good idea. I may have to borrow it.