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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Here’s the thing: some people simply don’t act rationally (especially after being stabbed or stabbing or whatever) and some people enjoy the thrill of the risk of being caught. It’s realistic for humans to act completely irrationally sometimes and something like that can easily become a part of a murder mystery. The question is: are we expected to completely sideline irrational human behavior and have rational reasons for everything?
Or do we simply not require of the challengers to solve the ‘whydunnit’ if irrational behavior is involved?
Or do we include it as part of a mystery so long as enough hints are presented?
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Personally I think being stabbed and pretending everything is fine for a long time and dying from the injury afterwards is far too much. Maybe the “whydunnit” should be optional if one thinks there’s not enough hints to it, but I like chance, unpredictable events, and even a few erratic behaviours, if well used they can add some flavour to the game. The borderline between over-complicated solutions and nonsense solutions is probably very thin.
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Of course, you can’t expect people to act 100% logically. I was more referring to the actions that, for example, the culprit would’ve needed to have had a plan for before setting it all in motion. They might not go for the most logical thing, of course. What matters above all here, really, is when it comes to the important stuff that almost needs to be planned out to a degree or needs a rational mind, there really is some reason behind it. Even if it’s something completely out of left field, as long as you have like, something in the narrative pointing to it or suggesting it, it should be okay. In my example (by the way, this was years ago at this point), there was no real narrative and there was nothing in it that made any sort of sense whatsoever. Hence, it was bad.
Going back on our original subject, though - as for a “whydunnit” in a broad sense of the word (as in, why did the culprit kill everyone; not why they took certain actions while pulling off their murder plan), I generally don’t ask for a pure whydunnit in my gameboards, no. Not because I don’t think the player will get it - but because the player’s imagination is probably far better than mine in that regard and can come up with a million of reasons as to why someone went off the deep end and committed murder. I’m always surprised how people can pick up the most insignificant throwaway line I put in to build mood and build a story around it. It’s great… but also means getting the whydunnit is difficult. And if it’s the last thing standing, it just becomes a guessing game, making it pointless.
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Trollboard idea:
A game with a single culprit defined as ‘the one who kills’, but all of the victims are actually faking their deaths so nobody is the culprit. All reds referring to the culprit like ‘the culprit locked the door’ which translates to ‘nobody locked the door’.
I’d never do something like this but I thought it was entertaining so wanted to share.
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Seems a little illogical.
If nobody is actually dead, and if there is actually no culprit, how would you be able to use the word culprit in red? That is a clear violation of the red. I mean, sounds like a fun idea, but you wouldn’t be able to say something like ‘the culprit locked the door’ in red as there is actually no culprit. You could do it with regular white text, of course, but you wouldn’t be able to directly lie using red.
‘Nobody is the culprit.’ Without a guarantee a culprit even physically exists, it’ll work. It’s like that riddle: “What is it that’s stronger than God, worse than the devil, poor people have it, and rich people want it.” The culprit is merely a variable in this case. If it equates to zero, it doesn’t matter what you add it to, the result remains the same.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s bullshit and one could only probably get away with it in this context of a game with specific rules and definitions, twisted even more than usual.
Good point.
Now, I want to see some shitty memes.
