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Tabletop role-playing

Another dream game — Whodunnit

Last night in a dream I was playing an interesting (possibly) RPG. Again it was one of these modern-style restrictive one-off systems, designed solely for whodunnits, for a GM and one or two players. The general idea was that the players (who are detectives along the lines of Poirot etc) advance through various predefined scenes and encounters, gathering information and impressions, and then at the end they are given a multiple-choice sheet in which they have to tick the box of the NPC who they think was the culprit.

In the dream it was quite fun, although I dare say in real life it would be quite hard for the GM to generate scenarios. But that is true of any ‘solving mystery’ type of game, and at least this one, because of the restrictions on what the PCs can do, you know that you don’t have to cover too much ground outside of the main plot.

But really first I should do a proper test of the Haunted House game, as my migraine rather knackered the first one.

7 replies on “Another dream game — Whodunnit”

It’s always hard to tell which days are going to be hectic at the con though – I had a laugh so it was good of you to run it, would be happy to give it another shot some time.

Mm, it does look so from that rather unclear description, but it’s not really much like.

ATFM is a prepless GMless game where (essentially) the players create a murder amongst themselves, and then establish why and who. This game, Whodunnit, is a GMed and prewritten game where the GM creates in advance a mystery that the players investigate. So in that sense it’s modally more like eg. Gumshoe.

The difference is that Whodunnit is very strongly parameterized and plays more like an interactive puzzle than a true RPG. I was thinking it would appeal to players of mystery/investigation/puzzle computer games.

This was a few years back now, but I’ve got some notes about it somewhere on the computer. I’ll see if I can dig them out! (I’m allowed to, now, as I did eventually finish Haunted House 🙂

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