Murder Mystery Details

These are the details of the plot of a murder mystery party. If you want to know more about the party in general read the last post. I have the details hidden unless you click on the continue so that I don’t have a gigantic post.

Murder Mystery Party

Yesterday I had a murder mystery party for my homeschool group and some of my friends.

The Plot

The scientist Professor Infrared has invented a serum designed to give people superhuman powers. Now that the serum is complete he has hosted a party at which he will exhibit the invention. Once all the guests have arrived they are ushered into the lab by the Professor’s assistant Miss Mint. However, when they arrive they find the professor dead. Furthermore, any of the guests would have had the opportunity to sneak away and kill him.

Each player was given a envelope which contained their character’s backstory and their items. The backstory explained why they had come, and what their goals were. The items were cards with a name written on them and a description of what they could be used for. A few were weapon cards, which could be used to kill other characters. To avoid a lot of chasing people around with weapons the way to kill a player was just to show it to them. This was only allowed if they were the only other player in the room.

I had also hidden several clues around the room to the mystery which could be picked up.

The party went well, and the players successfully solved the mystery, but there were a few problems. The main problem was that half the players were killed during the course of the game. It was so bad that I had to have the dead players solve the mystery themselves in another room. In fact the living players wouldn’t have been able to solve the mystery if there wasn’t a character who had a card that let him talk to ghosts.

Another problem was with the item cards. Most player’s item cards were fine, but item cards found on the table were immediately snatched, even if they had no purpose in the game. From a roleplaying point of view this doesn’t make a lot of sense, because when people go to a party where someone has been murdered they would not decide to start grabbing the lab equipment off the table.

Despite this it was still fun and the players solved the mystery.

More detailed information about the character’s backstories and the clues will be in the next blog post.

Keys on Wall

This is one wall of my room which I hung keys from as decoration. I don’t remember where I got them all from, but I do know that not all of them are real keys. The black handled car keys are from an advertisement in the newspaper where you get a car key to scrape off the coating and see if you won. The silver one with four loops in the bottom right is from Girl Scouts. As far as I know the other ones are real, but I have no idea what they are for.

My favorite one is the silver one with three loops in the top left. I like it because I don’t have any other keys that are even similar to it, and because it reminds me of the handle of a wind up toy. My second favorite is the tiny one in the top middle. I like it because it is just so small, and because it looks like it must open something exciting like a treasure chest. My least favorite are the fake car keys.

Cave Scenery

This is a picture that I drew a long time ago and I was thinking of using for scenery in a webcomic. I won’t be using it any more, but I do like the picture. I don’t usually draw scenery or backgrounds, because once you’ve drawn the interesting bits you still have to draw everything else. I am also not very good at perspective. I think I did a pretty good job on this one though.

It is a cavern, with pillars of dirt supporting the roof. The pillars themselves are supported by metal beams, with streetlamps attached. I had meant the floor to be metal as well, with the pillars in between. I don’t remember why I didn’t. The path is supposed to look like bits of sheet metal that were roughly hammered together. I’m not sure it does though. I think I did a good job of making the ceiling merge with the walls, but still have a ceiling. As I said earlier, I rarely draw backgrounds, but I never draw ceilings, so I am glad it turned out okay.

Time Mage

Here is a picture of a wizard who can time travel.  I was listening to the soundtrack for the musical Camelot and started thinking about how Merlin is supposed to live backwards in time. That never made a lot of sense because he doesn’t talk backwards or anything like that. What made more sense to me would be that he could time travel, so I drew a time traveling wizard. She doesn’t really look like a traditional wizard, but wizards often don’t.

Freaky Hand Guy Sketch

 Yesterday I was at the Wichita Maker Faire because my brother was exhibiting his board game. While I was there I spent some time sketching in my notebook because I had nothing better to do. Here is my drawing. I don’t know if he is scared because he is growing spikes and claws, or if he is doing that because something scared him. You can decide for yourself.

At first all I wanted to do was draw a guy with big ears, don’t ask me why. Then once I had drawn him he looked like a sidekick or some character who gets killed or held hostage that  I thought it would be cool to give him some sort of powerful and scary looking attribute. I started by giving him wings, but I erased them because they were too small. I also didn’t think wings were scary looking enough. I was going to put them back once I gave him a gigantic clawed hand, but it just didn’t look right.