Except for the fact you’re in a community where 99% of the members will be all too quick to deny that “fact” 
Willing suspension of disbelief!
I already know all the murders in the original are all possible to explain without magic, it basically tells you so at several points. That doesn’t make them any less compelling, because it works as part of the story and setting.
I could just be boring and drop everything but the hardest of SciFi for being unrealistic, but I’d rather just accept that maybe, in this work’s world, what isn’t possible in mine is just a wave of a wand away.
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I think the most interesting way to do it would be for the game master - you - to literally take the role of Game Master Beatrice and mostly control the pace of the game yourself. As in, you are free to ignore (Episode 4 Minor spoilers) blue statements until the end of the game (where at last you MUST deny them), and the players can ask you to repeat statements in red and you can opt to comply or refuse freely. With that we can add the restriction that every player can only make 1-2 blue statements about every twilight and still move the story forward, and not have it end immediately when one locked room is pierced. And yes I think multiple twilights it the way to go.
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I had an idea about two years ago for a really complex gameboard. I would basically use the entire structure of Umineko with completely different setting and story. It’s own mystery, it’s own (general Umineko spoilers) metaworld characters, it’s own catbox. I had an idea of introducing more mechanics gradually just like Umineko did, but giving different abilities to different players. Red and blue would still be a thing, as would the detective’s authority, but there would be more roles beyond that. Players would PM me if they thought they knew the answer, and if they got it right I would give them a golden truth that they could use at a climactic moment, one that would show they knew the truth but not give it away to the other players. I would then have them GM a game just like Battler did to show how well they understood the story. I would follow up with something similar to an episode 7, except I might reveal the whole truth, I’m not sure yet. I might have an episode 8 equivalent if it feels like there are other threads that still need to be cleared up or if people just want some cool action
The problem is actually coming up with a suitable mystery and cast takes a lot of effort so it never progressed beyond a simple concept.
This is how I would write a gameboard! In my mind, the plan is for the player to eventually corner the game master by claiming a statement in blue that they can’t deny. The game master should create a winnable game, to show compassion for their player, but also a difficult game, to show respect. And the player should respect the game master by not spamming in blue and only making logical deductions, not wild guesses. After all, by setting the gameboard, the game master is already admitting defeat. The player must understand this. Rules like Knox’s 10 could potentially be confirmed to hold true by the game master, if they state it in red, giving the player a set of tools to work with.
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I meant like, if you’re browsing the fantasy section of the bookstore, you won’t be surprised if a witch in the story blows up a mountain or something, while IRL you’d be quite terrified. It’s all about the reader’s:
…as the magical loli says. We only feel a mystery is truly “magical” (i.e. we only feel wonder and awe at it) if we both believe the story is real (the mystery is solvable), but we have no idea how. We’ve honestly exhausted every logical possibility we can imagine, so it seems impossible. But it’s also supposed to be real, not fantasy.
That’s when we begin to grasp that elusive sense of wonder that’s so awesome to encounter in Umineko, if you couldn’t solve the locked rooms the first go-around. Beatrice continued to push the idea of the witch being responsible, and as you found yourself unable to reply, her words became almost mystical. Is it magic? It’s supposed to be mystery! It’s supposed to be solvable! Then why can’t I solve it? It seems impossible! But the witch…!
And so on. That’s why a “sufficiently hard locked room” would be necessary.
Yeah…forgot about that. Maybe we’ll just go with the Ep. Two format with no Blue Truth and just people reasoning and saying “Repeat this!” and Beatrice weaving a web of Red Truth around him.
That might work well. Part of me, for the “full Umineko experience,” wants to make sure that it seems impossible at first, but we also don’t want to waste time. I think that would be a good idea.
I had thought about something like that, but then I realized I could just work on my own book at that point, haha. Admitted, it wouldn’t be using the exact structure of Umineko and stuff, but if it’s going to be an original setting, story, characters, and mystery, I’d honestly rather just focus on my current work in progress.
Right. The locked room can be difficult, but creating the cast and setting usually takes more time. Or, at least, more effort in actually writing them.
I’ve considered that, but since I’m thinking more Episode Two-ish (to let more players who haven’t finished Umineko play), I’ll probably exclude those.
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I dig that so far, all these gameboards have been forum games. But I was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a live gameboard? Something that we can play over Discord. There’s lots of apps for playing board games online that we could use for this kind of thing as well. But if we wanted to make our own mystery gameboard, then that kind of thing could be done live over voice too.
Imagine a red truth showdown broadcast live to the internet. It’ll be the new esport!
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That would be the best eSport. Tune in for locked rooms and murder mysteries! Was it magic? Is our challenger incompetent? Find out tonight at ~~~~~~~
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Lot of potential options. There’s the Umineko Online thread, and there’s always stuff like Roll20 for a RPG-ish thing.
If you can build a working concept idea it might be fun to trial it out.
I’m still interested in trying that Class Trial styled idea you had too.
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That would be really neat if we held it live on Discord voice, though that would require all the participants to have mics. It’d also be challenging, but I think it would be a really fascinating way to try this out; /r/danganroleplay did something similar (just on reddit text posts instead of Discord live; 22 Class Trials so far) and they love them! Though we’d need the investigation itself to happen on a forum thread, I suppose, prior to it.
I’m up for it, though I don’t have anything prepared atm.
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Here we are, haha.
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1 YEAR LATER!!!
I really had no idea this even existed. Either way, it makes me sad how creators usually ignore the “whydunnit”, even if it’s tough to write it’s still an important part of the mystery, in my opinion.
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now this is a story all about how
i was in the discord chat and got told to move it to the forum
and i’d like to take a minute
to sit right here
im gonna tell you how this fresh prince of bel air rhyme fell apart
Anyways. As I was saying, whydunnit is usually bonus for me. There usually should be at least an explanation for all of the actions taken in the author’s head. What I failed to learn when I was starting out when making mysteries is that there should always be some reason behind human actions. Even if it’s something as simple as “they were confused”. I think a lot of people, especially when coming straight out of Umineko, end up thinking more along the of the EP8 locked room battle (EP8 spoilers) - where the trick lies more in the wordplay, instead of a story behind it.
EDIT: Mind you, wordplay isn’t all bad. Hell, it’s not bad at all. But it’s important to not take it to a ridiculous extreme to the point where, if real human beings were in that situations, their actions would make no sense.
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I’ve only ever written one gameboard (didn’t post it here yet), and I also made the ‘why’ optional. But I do agree that ‘whydunnit’ is an important part of a mystery.
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Yes, good to know at least there will be a reason for the characters’ actions. It’d be better if you blurred the EP8 thingy, though.
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Admittedly, the motive behind all the murders really could just be something as simple as “they were psychotic”. What truly counts is the “why” in terms of “why did they go with this plan? why this set of actions?”
For example, you could have a mystery where the solution to a wordplay is “the killer left the room, then came back in, then locked it, then unlocked it, then left”. But the question becomes - why do that? Why take that course of action? Because while TECHNICALLY, it doesn’t break any of the red and it is correct, does it make sense to do something like that?
If, say, all the characters went into a room, and the solution was “there was a massive hole in the door through which the culprit got in, but the door was locked, as stated in red” - why would have the characters in the story locked the door, then? Why hide there?
etc. etc.
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The killer was forced to return to the room to avoid being spotted by someone in the hallway, he locked the room to maintain a consistency to “all the doors are locked”, after the people in the hallway left, the culprit once again unlocked the door and finally left the room.
I can do nothing about a massive hole in the door, I agree it’s way too much to have people lock it when that doesn’t change a thing. Unless it was something they couldn’t know about.
I was just giving it as an example, of course. As long as the author has justification, it’s fine. I’d still avoid putting something like that in my gameboard, simply because such specific actions coupled with red could mislead players and just make it more of a guessing game than fun.
But yeah, point is - having a “why” for human actions is something that genuinely made my mysteries better, I think. I wouldn’t say I’m great or even terribly good at them, but it’s made the process more fun for me - both in terms of writing and discussing it with the players. It’s a fantastic lesson, and I was fortunate enough to have someone point me in the right direction and tell me straight-up “no human being would DO this”.
I think the mystery I got told that went something like…
A person getting stabbed early in the evening, but pretending as if everything was fine for hours, with a bleeding wound. They then went on to kill another person, constructing a locked room, and then dying of their injuries (it was something like that, I’m pretty sure). Obviously, the question that was asked of me was - “why in god’s name did they not tell anyone about the wound and proceed to socialize with the person that gave them a fatal stab wound”. (The story was pretty bare-bones, so there wasn’t really any character explanation to be provided here, either - and what was known about the characters didn’t really give a good explanation either.)
I like to think I’ve improved by quite a bit since then, but… guess we’ll see.
I’m a bit lost. Why would the victim socialize with the person who gave them the stab wound?
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Exactly.
That was the problem. I was too focused back then on making a wordplay puzzle of red than actually crafting a mystery. I completely failed to understand the difference between the two.
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