Hi! I''m planning a steampunk murder mystery one-shot / short campaign in Pathfinder, based on the Jack the Ripper case, and it's set in the alternative early 2000s London. Since it's a serial killer type I can't really use the 'traditional' clues. What types of clues do you think would work? And how do you keep the balance, so it's not impossible to figure out, but stays a challenge?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Xanni Leafhelm - Halfling Cleric (Life domain) in Helm's Inquisition
Chaenath Miahana - Elf Warlock (Archfey pact) in Order of Dawn
Well the obvious thing is to have multiple suspects. But don't include the actual killer on the list of suspects, that's how you have a good twist reveal. If I was doing this, I would make 3 suspects and a list of at least 10 characters (including suspects). Obvious people, witnesses, sheriff-types, victims.
Red herrings are good for clues. What I mean by that is include clues that are designed to mislead or that don't actually mean anything. You can't have too many of these obviously, or your players will think you're out to get them lol a good set of clues are some that can lead to multiple characters. Relate to one character in a big way, but also to another in a not so obvious way. An example:
A man is found chopped up. They search the area and find that it was a meat clever. The obvious suspect is a butcher. The not so obvious suspect is the man who uses the butcher's shop as an undercover way to make illegal money. So the clever is a clue which leads to the butcher, but the butcher didn't do it. Later on in the story, they learn that the butcher shop is actually a front for some hitman or something. That can lead them somewhere else.
I ran an entire solo campaign where the PC was a city guard whose main job was solving murder mysteries and other types of criminal investigations, so I have a lot of thoughts on this. I apologize in advance for this post being rather long.
The most invaluable advice I found was the Three-Clue Rule. I highly recommend reading the article, but the basic premise is that for every conclusion you want your players to make, include at least three clues that point to this conclusion. Things that may seem obvious to you will not be obvious to someone who thinks differently about these types of problems. This is key to making sure your PCs are on the right track without making things too difficult for them.
Running a murder mystery for Pathfinder or D&D also presents a couple other problems. Will the PCs have access to divination magic? If so, you need to carefully construct the case so that using zone of truth or divination or something similar doesn't immediately solve the mystery. It's fine to have divination magic provide certain clues, since you're aiming for a more elaborate mystery, but you want to avoid a situation where it voids the mystery altogether. A broader point is whether you want the murders to involve any supernatural elements at all. You should also consider whether your serial killer is using any kind of magic to cover their tracks or facilitate their crimes. Or even whether your murderer is some sort of supernatural creature.
Using the Jack the Ripper case for inspiration may also lead to some other issues. Your players are likely to be familiar with at least some details of this famous case, so I would avoid using it in anything more than the broadest strokes. Anything more specific and you risk a saavy player just looking up the case on Wikipedia and making note of any similarities or worse, using their prior knowledge about Jack the Ripper to jump to erroneous conclusions.
Jack the Ripper is a somewhat problematic choice in terms of thematic content, as the victims were female prostitutes, and the crimes involved gruesome mutilation. You'll want to consider how you're going to handle this, as I know more than a few players who would be put off by this kind of content. I would strongly suggest modifying the nature of the crimes and the victims somewhat in order to sidestep this problem.
As to making the mystery sufficiently difficult to solve, you can take a couple cues from the actual case here and the reasons it so baffled investigators.
Limited forensic science equipment at the time. Not sure how you plan to handle this in an "early 2000's" London. Relates to the point about divination magic above.
Unclear and multiple descriptions of the killer, differing in some respects.
False confessions. Time was wasted investigating people who claimed they were the Ripper.
Conflicts within the police force. The PCs might be independent from the police or city watch, but you can use any city investigators as obstacles.
Red herrings, such as false reports and the false letters submitted to police. The letters are an interesting aspect of the case that I would definitely suggest using in some way.
The setting of the crime. The Ripper's murders occurred in the slums of East End, and the victims were considered second class citizens by some. The PCs will probably be motivated to solve the crime (there were accusations the police at the time were not), but having a similar setting can still present obstacles (unreliable witnesses, problems with other crime, etc).
Related to this point, having additional murders that were not the work of your serial killer or even copycat crimes could further complicate things.
Consider the theory of multiple killers. This could provide an interesting twist.
As to picking a murderer, I'm going to disagree with the poster above. If you want your players to connect to the story, you'll almost certainly need the ultimate culprit to be a character that they have met and interacted with at some point; otherwise, the final conclusion will feel like it came out of left field. Ideally, the murderer is someone they don't believe to be the culprit (or even a suspect) up until the last session. This is a difficult trick to pull off, as your players will automatically suspect the characters that they already know, just by nature of the medium. The way around this is to present your players with a very large number of characters and to present evidence that disqualifies most of them from being the murderer. Only when the players later find some reason this evidence doesn't actually disqualify that person can they then put them on their list of suspects.
If you choose a murderer who is somehow involved in law enforcement or the legal system, you should also consider how they would use their position to scuttle the investigation or actively cover up their crimes.
In a similar vein, be careful about how you roleplay the NPCs. It's very easy to tip off your players by accidentally (or subconsciously) roleplaying a character as untrustworthy. If you do this with your murderer, the jig is up, so make sure the most likely suspects come off as reasonably unimpeachable. Your players are going to metagame for this reason, especially if they think something doesn't add up from an NPC's statements. Let them get caught up in this, but if they really get on the wrong track, you might need to give them an unequivocal reason that someone isn't a suspect (but only if this is actually true).
Related to this: you can have your NPCs be suspicious for many reasons. These types of investigations tend to unearth other secrets that don't necessarily have anything to do with the murderer or their crimes. You can have an NPC do something that makes them seem like a suspect (such as giving an unreliable or false alibi) and then when the PCs investigate, having them discover that it was for another reason entirely such as a personal secret they didn't want getting out or because that NPC was involved in another, unrelated crime.
Lastly, remember that discovering the identity of the murderer is not the final scene of your mystery. Catching the murderer and bringing them to justice is. If your murderer is discovered but escapes at the last moment, forcing the PCs to give chase, this can add some additional drama and can lead to an exciting final confrontation.
Hi! I''m planning a steampunk murder mystery one-shot / short campaign in Pathfinder, based on the Jack the Ripper case, and it's set in the alternative early 2000s London. Since it's a serial killer type I can't really use the 'traditional' clues. What types of clues do you think would work? And how do you keep the balance, so it's not impossible to figure out, but stays a challenge?
Xanni Leafhelm - Halfling Cleric (Life domain) in Helm's Inquisition
Chaenath Miahana - Elf Warlock (Archfey pact) in Order of Dawn
Well the obvious thing is to have multiple suspects. But don't include the actual killer on the list of suspects, that's how you have a good twist reveal. If I was doing this, I would make 3 suspects and a list of at least 10 characters (including suspects). Obvious people, witnesses, sheriff-types, victims.
Red herrings are good for clues. What I mean by that is include clues that are designed to mislead or that don't actually mean anything. You can't have too many of these obviously, or your players will think you're out to get them lol a good set of clues are some that can lead to multiple characters. Relate to one character in a big way, but also to another in a not so obvious way. An example:
A man is found chopped up. They search the area and find that it was a meat clever. The obvious suspect is a butcher. The not so obvious suspect is the man who uses the butcher's shop as an undercover way to make illegal money. So the clever is a clue which leads to the butcher, but the butcher didn't do it. Later on in the story, they learn that the butcher shop is actually a front for some hitman or something. That can lead them somewhere else.
Published Subclasses
I ran an entire solo campaign where the PC was a city guard whose main job was solving murder mysteries and other types of criminal investigations, so I have a lot of thoughts on this. I apologize in advance for this post being rather long.
The most invaluable advice I found was the Three-Clue Rule. I highly recommend reading the article, but the basic premise is that for every conclusion you want your players to make, include at least three clues that point to this conclusion. Things that may seem obvious to you will not be obvious to someone who thinks differently about these types of problems. This is key to making sure your PCs are on the right track without making things too difficult for them.
Running a murder mystery for Pathfinder or D&D also presents a couple other problems. Will the PCs have access to divination magic? If so, you need to carefully construct the case so that using zone of truth or divination or something similar doesn't immediately solve the mystery. It's fine to have divination magic provide certain clues, since you're aiming for a more elaborate mystery, but you want to avoid a situation where it voids the mystery altogether. A broader point is whether you want the murders to involve any supernatural elements at all. You should also consider whether your serial killer is using any kind of magic to cover their tracks or facilitate their crimes. Or even whether your murderer is some sort of supernatural creature.
Using the Jack the Ripper case for inspiration may also lead to some other issues. Your players are likely to be familiar with at least some details of this famous case, so I would avoid using it in anything more than the broadest strokes. Anything more specific and you risk a saavy player just looking up the case on Wikipedia and making note of any similarities or worse, using their prior knowledge about Jack the Ripper to jump to erroneous conclusions.
Jack the Ripper is a somewhat problematic choice in terms of thematic content, as the victims were female prostitutes, and the crimes involved gruesome mutilation. You'll want to consider how you're going to handle this, as I know more than a few players who would be put off by this kind of content. I would strongly suggest modifying the nature of the crimes and the victims somewhat in order to sidestep this problem.
As to making the mystery sufficiently difficult to solve, you can take a couple cues from the actual case here and the reasons it so baffled investigators.
As to picking a murderer, I'm going to disagree with the poster above. If you want your players to connect to the story, you'll almost certainly need the ultimate culprit to be a character that they have met and interacted with at some point; otherwise, the final conclusion will feel like it came out of left field. Ideally, the murderer is someone they don't believe to be the culprit (or even a suspect) up until the last session. This is a difficult trick to pull off, as your players will automatically suspect the characters that they already know, just by nature of the medium. The way around this is to present your players with a very large number of characters and to present evidence that disqualifies most of them from being the murderer. Only when the players later find some reason this evidence doesn't actually disqualify that person can they then put them on their list of suspects.
If you choose a murderer who is somehow involved in law enforcement or the legal system, you should also consider how they would use their position to scuttle the investigation or actively cover up their crimes.
In a similar vein, be careful about how you roleplay the NPCs. It's very easy to tip off your players by accidentally (or subconsciously) roleplaying a character as untrustworthy. If you do this with your murderer, the jig is up, so make sure the most likely suspects come off as reasonably unimpeachable. Your players are going to metagame for this reason, especially if they think something doesn't add up from an NPC's statements. Let them get caught up in this, but if they really get on the wrong track, you might need to give them an unequivocal reason that someone isn't a suspect (but only if this is actually true).
Related to this: you can have your NPCs be suspicious for many reasons. These types of investigations tend to unearth other secrets that don't necessarily have anything to do with the murderer or their crimes. You can have an NPC do something that makes them seem like a suspect (such as giving an unreliable or false alibi) and then when the PCs investigate, having them discover that it was for another reason entirely such as a personal secret they didn't want getting out or because that NPC was involved in another, unrelated crime.
Lastly, remember that discovering the identity of the murderer is not the final scene of your mystery. Catching the murderer and bringing them to justice is. If your murderer is discovered but escapes at the last moment, forcing the PCs to give chase, this can add some additional drama and can lead to an exciting final confrontation.