Krauss having something to do with the letter would skewer with the narration quite a bit, I imagine. Why so much inner theorizing and surprise for something you’re responsible for? Kruass’ narration is trustworthy. If I simply lied about his surprise regarding the crimes, there’s not much point to it, is there?
Not to mention the headache regarding the accomplice definition and the inevitable attempts and getting out of them. Plus, there is only one culprit - and the culprit must be the one responsible for the letter trick.
Still, I’ll let you have this red. It’s something I believed I’d established anyway.
Krauss read exactly what was written on the letter, he didn’t even misread a single character on it.
Genji set up some strings when placing the letter. Then he wrote down stuff as it happened. Finally he used the string and his ninja butler skills to switch out the letter.
The sealed envelope placed by Genji was empty, and it had a thin hole at the bottom that would allow a letter to be slipped inside. Genji tampered with someone’s food and set up a trap at the doorway of the dining room that caused Shannon’s cart to break. There was no need for Genji to guess what would happen because he was present for the events or he eavesdropped while he was out of the room and simply added everything to his letter. At some point during the night, either while he was collecting the plates or served food, he slipped the letter inside the envelope while nobody was paying attention to him.
The hole couldn’t exactly have been tiny - the letter was folded to fit the envelope. The only hole it could’ve reasonably fit through would’ve been one through which the entire letter could’ve been slid into the envelope. It goes without saying but, Krauss would’ve immediately noticed had such a hole existed.
Furthermore, the person that dealt the food was Shannon. At the time of the toast and the subsequent reading of the letter, the plates had not yet been picked up.
And even then, Genji trying to tamper with the letter at that point would’ve most likely been seen by Krauss because he would’ve been in that marked area when picking the plates up no?
And even then, I imagine Genji would’ve had some trouble casually sliding a letter into an empty envelope that was being pressed down by a statuette.
Hey man it’s string tricks can’t be too picky or things just get cruel.
But fine, I’ll give you a detailed other theory instead.
It’s the logical consequence of taking everything at face value.
The letter wasn’t pre-written, nor was it switched out. Well, maybe the easy-to-guess parts were pre-written (using methods described in previous theories. This is to explain the remaining problematic ones.)
Kinzo gives Genji the letter with instructions where to place it. This is very important, of course.
Because now Kinzo can go to a room right above the dining room where there’s a secret hole in the ceiling. From there he does the only logical thing, he stalks his entire family and writes down whatever happens into the letter.
"But wait! " you exclaim! "How the heck can he write on the letter? It’s in an envelope on the table, right!? It’s all useless! "
S i m p l e
e n o u g h.
That’s the easy part.
He uses a laser pointer through a hole in the ceiling. The letter is written on thermal paper - its color changes to black if heated up.
That’s right, an invisible pen of infinite length! It’s a fine business, but this is Kinzo. He’s a trained soldier with steady aim. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what happened!
I do have to wonder, though, how Kinzo would’ve been able to fill in the details he would’ve needed to. The letter was folded in the evelope and the statuette was covering a large majority of it. I can perhaps see him being able to write in Battler’s game since it was at the end of a page, but what about something like Maria’s dish? How could he have caused that to happen? If he didn’t, the statuette would’ve made it pretty difficult to write it in.
And it doesn’t explain how Kinzo, the person who would’ve been responsible for the letter trick, would’ve been able to kill Natsuhi and Jessica given that he was
y’know
ded
Still, I do admire the creativity, so I will bless you with this red: There are no holes in the dining room ceiling.
Hmm. The number was random, and there was no way to predict it. Since this gameboard invokes Bernkastel’s name, I thought perhaps this could be a miracle fragment, one out of quadrillion, in which Battler would’ve simply guessed in advance that Krauss will pick Leon as his number of choice. However, a red states that guessing the number is impossible, so I guess that’s a bust. So, the letter must’ve changed after Krauss had chosen his number. Since the letter was inside a sealed envelope, editing it remotely seems highly improbable.
How about this? Battler had prepared a mechanism on the table in advance. He had cut the center of the table in a way that allows a piece of it to be removed and re-inserted. During the speech, from under the table, he opened the hole in the table, removed the original letter, and placed his substitution letter under the statue.
Naturally, some other mechanism X prepared in advance by tampering with the table would also do the trick, it doesn’t have to be a removable piece of the table. Which is why, if the rules didn’t directly forbid me from doing so, I’d ask you to repeat in red that the table was not tampered with in any way before the dinner. I wonder why you’ve chosen to include that rule? Repetition requests allow for players to rule out approaches that involve many variations of the same basic idea without having to actually go through the trouble of writing down those variations. It’s a method for sparing time by bypassing approaches that the witch side doesn’t consider worth delving into. Sure, people will probably misuse it by making repetition requests that would only essentially amount to free information without any idea behind it, but you’re always free to deny those requests as you see fit. It doesn’t take long to write “I refuse.”
The repetition game that existed in Umineko was prominent because of how arguably open-ended some of the locked rooms would’ve been without making certain guarantees about them, due to the lack of information about them given in the actual narrative for understandable reasons. I generally try and rule out most of the basic options in the narrative itself, and rule out the need for repetitions necessary to establish that an impossible crime really is seemingly an impossible crime. So in those respects, the repetition game should not be necessary. (Of course, when I miss something, it’s usually in one of the first few theories suggested, so it gets taken out rather quickly.)
Next are the repetitions designed to rule out variations, as you’ve suggested. I generally go out of my way to make my reds rule out most if not all of the main aspects of a theory when responding in the first place, hopefully doing that in the process. If after that the player tries a variation that I didn’t realize could circumvent the red, I try and hammer it in. I don’t like being deceptive and haggle you over a minute detail - the point is always that you understand the concept and the mechanics of the crime. Once I’ve seen the charade is broken, as I’ve said, I concede. But a theory must be formed, and it must be done given the constrictions of the narrative and the previously given red.
Which brings us to the information fishing point.
It just happens too often.
And generally it’s not even the player’s fault! When options seem few and far between, it’s easy to just want to confirm the culprit’s actions that you believe must be the case given the red, but then hit a dead end under that assumption, so you turn to confirming once and for all to know where to focus.
It also doesn’t help once the players start getting a bit frustrated. If I, for example, refuse something because I, for whatever reason, just see no point in repeating or think the narrative can sufficiently answer the question, the player if low on options, will probably start throwing (arguably ludicrous and far-fetched) theories until I back down and am forced to repeat it. If nothing else in part because I want to get the game back on track. Yet, once that happens, the same thing carries over for any future repetitions.
I don’t consider it a terribly awful rule to have, in any case. If they want me to deny a certain point of entry, they first must propose a workable theory that doesn’t fight against the narrative or what’s been previously established. If they can’t, then what’s the point of repeating?
So, for example, in your own theory, I could ask you this:
Battler’s plan for a hole in the table relied on Genji putting the letter where he did. But what guarantee would’ve Battler had for that happening? Given that it was an instruction Kinzo seemingly gave only to Genji, you can’t really claim that Shannon could’ve just told him. Or, I could question how Battler’s arm could’ve been able to reach the place where the letter was put on the table. After all, when you put your hand below the table, you can generally only go a little beyond your elbow without looking bizarre and suspicious. And I don’t recall Battler ever conveniently dropping a fork…
…Yet, given the fact that this is the second time a hole in the table has been suggested, instead of keeping you off-track and leaving room for more attacks on this front, I’ll indulge you. The table features no secret compartments, coverable holes, secret mechanisms within it, or anything of the sort - it is a perfectly ordinary dining room table.
Fair enough. If the narrative and the game master’s style support the decision to bar repeat requests, there’s no problem whatsoever. In fact, I rather like that you’ve made a point to avoid wordplay and such, and the current ruleset works perfectly for such a game.
So, no tricks involving tampering with the table, then. Upon a cursory glance, I couldn’t find this information from the narrative, so I’d like to ask for clarification. Is there a tablecloth on the table? Having a tablecloth might possibly open up some tricks involving sliding things under it.
No tablecloth. I actually think I put in a line where I had Krauss mentioned how polished up the table was or something. (Which would’ve been a weird thing to say if a tablecloth had been on there.)
Oh, good point. I do recall such a line being there.
Hmm. If any specific tool was used to manipulate the letter, I’d imagine it would’ve been mentioned in the narrative, but when I was reading the part about the dinner, I didn’t spot any mentions of objects that could’ve been used for some trick. Krauss did step over something sharp, but I would assume it was what was used to break the wheel of the cart in the desired place. Whatever Krauss stepped on probably can’t be anything too large, or otherwise he would’ve paid more attention to it.
Even if Battler would’ve somehow intercepted the letter before Genji placed it on the table, it seems difficult to set up any system that would allow him to somehow swap the letter from under the statuette. Speaking of the statuette, I’d like to know if the statuette is so small that it rested entirely on top of the letter, or if it was big enough to be partially on the table, with only the longer edge of the letter protruding from under it.
In any case, without using something to cover the process, I can’t really think of any way to move a second letter onto the spot on the table without it being too obvious. Options seem pretty limited, though. It was impossible to know Krauss’ number in advance and guessing is not allowed. If the letter was not tampered with while it was on the table, the only possibility is that it was edited while Krauss was reading it. That, however, seems pretty implausible. I could go full Blackrune and say that someone who may or may not be Batter used some remote method such as the aforementioned thermal paper and laser pointer, to write the number 11037 into the letter while Krauss was still reading the first paragraphs, but I assume Krauss didn’t notice anything strange about the number, meaning it was written with the same penmanship as the rest of the letter, suggesting remote writing methods are highly implausible.
Anyhow, I have to go for now. I’ll challenge this again later when I have the time. Which might not be very soon.
Regarding the size of the statuette, I was hoping to get a bit more detail than what was given in the narrative. Them being able to “clearly see it sticking out from underneath [the statuette]” can range anywhere from 1 cm^2 being visible from each corner to half of the letter being visible.
Still, since the size wasn’t specified in more detail in the narrative, it probably means further details on its size are meaningless.
And regarding how obvious it is to spot the letter changing when Krauss is reading it… a word appearing in the middle of a paragraph that you’re not looking at is not something you might pick up on if you were focusing on the words elsewhere.
Didn’t really check if this works with the narration, but… Genji attached string with scotch tape to the underside of the letter. He passed this string through the underside of the entrance and set up the egg timer on the other side of the door. This cause the letter to be pulled towards him slowly enough that nobody noticed it moving.
While events were happening, he filled out another letter in his corner.
Then he substituted the letter outside of everyone’s area of awareness and repeated the procedure the other way around - using a string that he put across the table beforehand and which then went back underneath it and attaches to the timer. When it was in a good place he simply tugged on it so the tape would come off.
The reason the egg timer didn’t get pulled towards the letter instead was because the door prevented it.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel, I’m afraid.
Let’s start with something simple. Genji did not move around the dining room during the dinner scene aside from the instances mentioned directly in the narration. Your theory would’ve required him to at some point reach the end of the table near the entrance to be able to switch the letter. Since I can, however, see the next move of simply having the letter move to the opposite side of the table with the egg timers, let’s just get rid of them altogether with this:
No egg timers, or any similar sort of timed mechanisms, were used in the letter trick. Furthermore, if you try to twist around it by suggesting something that technically wouldn’t be a timed mechanism, I urge you to think about this:
While Krauss did not pay attention to the thing he stepped on, it’s reasonable to assume that what he stepped on was fairly small and unnoticable. However, the object such as an egg timer or any such remote mechanism would’ve been undoubtedly larger, and thus noticed. This applies for pretty much the entire area between the end of the table near the door and the entrance. After all, he would’ve at least knocked it over, no?
Starting with the letter, I suppose.
My initial thought is that George is the culprit, he waited until Shanon poured Krauss’ champagne (therefore moving between them and blocking his view/distracting him) just long enough to make the switch.
My second idea revolved around Shannon taping string to the letter while serving the food and then tugging it into the kitchen, but even assuming the placing of the envelope in relation to the kitchen didn’t make that difficult, replacing the envelope would be really difficult in contrast to removing it.
Third, a string is tied around the table to begin with, running down the length of the table. It’s made of fishing line or some other transparent/thin wire and goes unnoticed. Anyone at the table could do this, but I’ll propose George since the envelope has to travel in front of the least amount of people. He secretly writes the new letter under the table, then shimmies the envelope out from under the statue by tugging on the string clockwise from underneath the table. A knot in the string pushes it, it likely falls to the ground, he may be able to kick it to himself. He then tapes the new envelope to the string, and shimmies it back up. All this happens during the toast when everyone’s distracted, or could possibly work when Krauss is distracted by Shannon or Maria’s food. The weight of the statuette holds itself in place while the envelope is tugged, the whole thing is similar to the trick of removing a tablecloth from a set table.
As for knowing specifically about the letter and its placement, anyone who noticed that Kinzo’s door was open and had access to the ring and envelope for forging should also be able to hide in his room. In such a case, they could hide under the bed when Kinzo gives the instructions, or fake Kinzo’s voice and instruct Genji behind a closed door. George has already been established as a snoop, so it’s not improbable.
" you exclaim! "How the heck can he write on the letter? It’s in an envelope on the table, right!? It’s all useless! 
"
He’s a trained soldier with steady aim. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what happened!