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The Locked Room Murder Mystery Game is a tabletop storytelling game for one or more players inspired by Golden Age murder mystery detective novels.

Create a cast of characters gathered in one place. Fill their lives with tension and secrets.

Join our great detective as they solve the mysterious murder of one of our characters found in a locked room.

Play out the investigation until the true culprit is determined, and reveal the truth hidden among the clues and suspects in the detective’s journal.

This game is fully GMless and requires no prep to play. As you play, you'll come up with the characters and details and how they interact, and the game mechanics will determine who dies and who is culpable when the time is right.

Updated 10 days ago
StatusReleased
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(13 total ratings)
Authoradambell
Tagscolumbo, Detective, GM-Less, murder-mystery, storygame, Tabletop role-playing game, whodunnit

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In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.80 USD. You will get access to the following files:

The Locked Room Murder Mystery Game (Ashcan Release File).pdf 15 MB
Playsheet.pdf 41 kB

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(+1)

I played this last night and had a great time. Played with two and this really worked well. The instructions are good, but a few more examples would really help - especially for the investigation phase where it’s not totally clear about how the investigator moves.

Anyways overall this is a giant success and really got me thinking about what other genres could be played in this format. Horror would work really well, though you might want to make it a bit more lethal.


Some things I think I’d house rule in - 

throw in the jokers and use those to trigger flashbacks, 

add an epilog at the end and have players take turns picking up a suspect card and giving a 1-2 sentence ‘what happened to them’ summary of their future after the murder. Also a good way to clean up the game!

And some suggestions for the kickstarter: 

1 have a couple of setting suggestions that are a bit flushed out as scenarios - you could use the plots of famous books eg, you’re all on a luxurious island and everyone has been summoned here under mysterious circumstances, including the investigator, etc . Just something to give people a bit of a sense of place.

2 add some rules for other genres (eg horror, etc)


Thsnks for the great game!

(3 edits) (+1)

Played this game for the first time last night, and had a great time! We were only able to get through the first journal phase due to time, but we're hoping to come back to it in a few weeks. There were a couple of points we stumbled over while playing — some of which are answered in other comments here — so I rounded up some feedback from my play group in case it's helpful for future editions:

  • First off, love that this game is formatted to be read through as we played. It made the game very easy to bring to the table without having to do a bunch of reading ahead or facilitating.
  • Some of the killer's movement rules could be more explicitly spelled out:
    • It moves diagonally (not clear if you don't know chess)
    • It does not move onto Suspect squares that have not been filled out/added (unless you want to add a Suspect?)
      • Note: we were playing in Google Slides, so I made a grid of text boxes as shown on page 6, akin to the Worksheet
      • Including a diagram of an in-progress journal would help; all current visualizations depict a complete grid
    • Mini movement diagram like the one for the Sleuth would be helpful
  • What should happen when the killer moves onto a Suspect with no open adjacent spots? That is, all the Clues and Suspects around that Suspect have been filled out.
    • We skipped the Chapter and drew again, unless The Pieces [Were] in Place.
  • Optional random tables/oracles would help Suspect creation go faster, e.g., names, commendable qualities, abhorrent qualities
    • Could use 6-Q cards for additional details
  • Some example Chapter titles would be helpful; wasn't sure how to title these differently than just whatever the Clue is (this might become more clear in the second part of the game?)
  • Loved word choice of "commendable" and "abhorrent" qualities, very evocative
  • Defining the abhorrent quality made clues flow naturally once we had Suspects established, great mechanic
  • Only got through the first Journal phase, but had a good time and the note-taking of the game means we can pick it back up later

Hope this is helpful! Thank you for creating this game!

so when you add clues, you don't have to strictly stick to the 5 by 5 grid so that even corners suspects can have more clues?

(+1)

You can expand as far as you want. Most games you'll end up in the neighborhood of 5x5 so that's why the setup instructions ask you to leave at least that much space, but it's by no means a mandate.

(+1)

ohhh, okay it makes sense having played, but it wasn't as clear in the text. I also missed the part about how "blank spaces" don't count for movement till I read the other comment on this page. So generally the "journal" shape is created only as you add things to it, and you just always have to alternate clue and suspect. I think I got it.

Little confused regarding some of the rules. For example, what do I do during the introduction phase if the killer lands on a blank suspect card? Add a new suspect? Some clarification on stuff like this would be great.

Hi, thanks for checking the game out!

If you're using notecards (as opposed to the worksheet), you'll only add notecards to the journal once you create the suspects, so you shouldn't have any blank ones in there for the killer to be bouncing around in.

If you're playing in worksheet mode (which is much less developed at this stage), I've done it both ways. Usually I will just pretend like the blank squares aren't real and keep the killer in the populated section of the journal. But there was one moment in a solo playtest where I used that situation as an opportunity to add new suspects and spice up my story.

(+1)

Another question; when placing clues, is it important for the characters you want to interact to be within close proximity so the clue can connect them? I feel like that could lead to some confusion. Like, a clue about a conversation between suspects on opposite sides of the board would have little relevance to the suspects adjacent to either of the original suspects. But I suppose the fun comes from trying to decide how that conversation is related to the supposedly 'irrelevant' suspects.

Basically, each suspect has up to four clues that they can be connected to--specifically connected in a way that will lead to the murder being solved. When that connection is made, you put an answer token between the suspect & clue. You're not connecting suspect and suspect, so any number of other characters can show up and interact in these scenes. 

Keep in mind that you get to choose how these answers are generated, so can set a scene with anyone in it as long as it leads to a convincing connection between the chosen suspect and clue. The suspect in question doesn't even need to be in the new scene! You touched on that with the last part of your comment; it can be a lot of fun to pull relevance out of what looks like obscurity.