Author Topic: Burning Wheel - Murder Mystery convention game  (Read 2286 times)

Offline Totally Guy

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Burning Wheel - Murder Mystery convention game
« on: November 07, 2011, 07:35:39 AM »
I've never done anything like this before but I'm going to run one of those games where the beliefs all point at each other and the conflict between the characters drive play.

It'll be a murder mystery.  Something I've always wanted to enjoy but every mystery I've played seems to have sucked.  This will hopefully not be the case in this game as finding the murderer is not so much the biggest challenge.  It's more about who gets the blame and who gets what they want from the situation.

Lord Black has been killed. His body was found at the base of the stairs of Black Manor

The characters are:
Blanche the maid
Constable Wiggins the church inquisitor
Grimace the extrotionist
Hollyhill the gardener
Lord Percival Black the nephew

One of them did it.  I'll tell you all the beliefs and how it went after the convention.  I don't want to spoil it.

Have you ever run a game around internal conflict?  It looks like it should be easy to run.  Hopefully it should be now the prep is out the way.

Offline Marco0042

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Re: Burning Wheel - Murder Mystery convention game
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2012, 03:25:52 AM »
Anything more or new on this? Sounds interesting to me. I have been turning an idea about in my head to run a BWG game based on city guards ala "Night's Watch" or "Garrett PI".
"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has
to be us."
 - Jerry Garcia

Offline Totally Guy

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Re: Burning Wheel - Murder Mystery convention game
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2012, 04:40:29 PM »
Ok.  I was kind of intimidated because I felt that I screwed up this game a little bit as one player wasn't really all that into it.

The other though I think had a good session.  But I am kind of negative a lot and focus on my failings. (Boo!)

If I was to do it again I'd probably make it clear that the maid did it from the start and trust everyone to build on the game as we has a weird metagame situation where the maid's player kept passing me notes as his primary way of interacting with the game.  I've never GMed a game where a player has passed a note to me and I found it a bit weird and it was still obvious anyway that the maid was up to something.

At this convention I played a game with Meg from the podcast and it was a really amazing game.  It's too bad there's not been a show since.

Blanche the Maid
(click to show/hide)

Constable Percy Wiggins
(click to show/hide)

Grimace the extortionist
(click to show/hide)

Hollyhill the gardener:
(click to show/hide)
 
Lord Percival Black
(click to show/hide)

The will:
(click to show/hide)

The tricks in the will are two technicalities.  The land had probably already been sold to the bandits after the will was written, Lord Black's business was going to be about this matter.  The other technicality is that there are two people called Percy in this scenario so the estate's rightful owner is ambiguous as the will could mean either.  Read the line starting "Third" again.

I've jiggered the beliefs to make it run better if I ever do it again.  And I've created a more comprehensive situation cheat sheet for each player.