Which RPGs feature murder mysteries adventures? I am not talking of CoC and other games featuring the fantastic prominently, nor spy games and the like. I'm talking Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple types of adventures/mysteries.

Quote from: Benoist;692831Which RPGs feature murder mysteries adventures? I am not talking of CoC and other games featuring the fantastic prominently, nor spy games and the like. I'm talking Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple types of adventures/mysteries.

So I have run muder mysteries in D&D, Amber, CoC, James Bond, Daredevils, Paranoia and of course I ran a company that put on murder mysteries for paying punters at hotels for 16 years.

You can run a MM with any system but you need to have the game set up so that it remains a mystery. in D&D a false reading from a deivce or a false diviner, in a supers game somehting that can't be finxed with the powers of the PCs from the get go.

As for systems where MM is a default play style , harder I think. I used Daredevils for these sorts of games a fair bit back in the day.

I've a number of non-mythos murder plots in CoC... but they were solved more along the lines of Raymond Chandler than Agatha Christie.
The English drawing room stuff seems a lot harder to pull off.

The obvious one seems to be Gangbusters.

While I think there was a good deal of action in them, it was partly about investigating crimes.

Traveller had a couple murder mysteries, I think. Murder on Arcturus Station anyway.

Quote from: Benoist;692831Which RPGs feature murder mysteries adventures? I am not talking of CoC and other games featuring the fantastic prominently, nor spy games and the like. I'm talking Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple types of adventures/mysteries.

Found this free game on a google search but never played it: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?cPath=1460&products_id=19713&it=1

If you speak Italian there is something called Holmes and Co which seems to be what you are looking for: http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/46833/holmes-co

The best to reatment if traditional mysteries I seen in RPGs is GURPS Mysteries. And much of it is System neutral. It not give the usual overview, for GURPS, of the mystery genre but the issues amd specific of running them in an Tabletop RPG.

http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0301

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;692885Found this free game on a google search but never played it: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?cPath=1460&products_id=19713&it=1

This is decent.  It's basically a historical fiction version of Castles & Crusades by Simon Washbourne.  It gives classes and such for running Cadfael style games but is light on advice and structure for running mysteries.

Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes represents itself as suitable for this kind of game. But apart from being a serviceable rules-light pulp/modern ruleset, it only has a few pages of advice on how to run a murder mystery, so the GM would have to be inventive. Certainly there are no meta-mechanics or rules support for mysteries.

Just use CoC without mythos?

I'm thinking the rule system doesn't matter very much. There's no magic (probably). Sanity loss is not a big deal. So any game system will do that focuses on skills: BRP, D20 Modern, GURPS, etc. They question is, who has written murder mystery scenarios -- and the answer is: Loads of people. All those mystery novels at the library, half the TV shows on every night. There are plots abounding in just about any setting you can think of.

Another question is how do you make it an interesting game without having to shove the players in the right direction? And how do you emulate skills that the player really doesn't have? (Sense Motive, Deduction, etc.) I've done this by passing pre-written notes to players at certain times based on their rolls. Basically you want to have a puzzle they could solve on their own when they have all the clues, but a series of tasks to accomplish to get the clues: Find a place by following a set of cryptic directions, chase someone down (car chases are great fun in games), etc. You could put a time factor in as well. Basically it doesn't matter how long it takes to find out who poisoned Aunt Agatha, but if someone kidnapped Cousin Ruth and put her in a box, she's running out of air while you struggle to determine the exact height of the beech tree in the old cemetery.

Quote from: Benoist;692831Which RPGs feature murder mysteries adventures?

AD&D?

It's been decades since I read it, but IIRC, L2 - The Assassin's Knot had strong murder mystery themes.

Traveller does mysteries well. Many of its adventures are based around some mystery which must be solved and the discovery of hidden knowledge is a cornerstone of the game.

Quote from: estar;692894The best to reatment if traditional mysteries I seen in RPGs is GURPS Mysteries. And much of it is System neutral. It not give the usual overview, for GURPS, of the mystery genre but the issues amd specific of running them in an Tabletop RPG.

http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0301

I read this book; I thought it was very good.

As well as the Mysteries fourth edition by Gurps.

Most games can support Murder Mysteries, the hardest thing to do is to get the setting right.

Gnomemurdered has a classic murder-mystery scenario called "murder, she gnomed".

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