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Forum » Poirot Murder Mystery - Forum Game (Discussion)

Poirot Murder Mystery - Forum Game (Discussion)

Murska 14 years ago
Poirot Murder Mystery - The Oriental Express

EDIT: Since I've decided to hold this game in this thread, the credits are here:

Freshmeat for inventing the game. Yeah, that's it.


The rules of the game:

You have been invited as a guest to Count Pjotr Mitoslev's private mansion along with a few other people. You've all first gathered together in Moscow, from where you've boarded a train with the good Count to the destination. The journey would take ten days all together, but worry not! The train is luxurious and each of you have your own rooms with anything you could ever want.

But disaster strikes: The count is murdered on the second night, and one of the guests, the famous Hercule Poirot, is also poisoned. He lives, but feels too ill to play an active part on the investigation. For this reason, he calls upon the assistance of the guests, one of whom must be a murderer. Everyone agrees to help...

The following seven people are the guests and potential murderers:
•Duke James Woodworth (62 years old): a retired army general who served in the Boer War.
•Tom Lorraine (28 years old): an adventurous explorer
•Jack Snyder (24 years old): an arrogant gambler and playboy
•George Edwards (41 years old): the obligatory butler
•Patrick Morris (35 years old): an aloof scientist skilled in the field of chemistry
•Carrie Jones (42 years old): an actress of mild renown
•Elisabeth Forsyth (51 years old): a reserved lady and successful novelist

They all have a potential reason to want the Count dead. You can choose which character you want to be. Those who don't will be randomly assigned one. The murderer will be determined randomly. Every character has his or her own set of certain characteristics (shoe size, pipe or cigarette smoker, etc.). These are also entirely randomized and are key to figuring out who the murderer is.

The game is divided in two phases, day and night phase.

Day phase:
During the day, players can search a murder site for clues. They must publicly specify which murder site they’re investigating (there may be multiple ones) and for what kind of clues they’re looking.

They can:
•look for footprints (small-sized, medium-sized, large-sized or bigfoot-sized)
•look for fingerprints (small-sized, medium-sized, large-sized or bigfoot-sized)
•look for hair strands (brown, black, blonde or red)
•look for minor clues (cigarette ashes, pipe ashes, coat buttons or shoelaces)
•determine the cause of death (stabbed, shot, strangled or poisoned)
•determine the motive (greed, revenge, passion or fear (silencing someone))
The trick obviously lies in figuring out the characteristics of the other passengers and comparing it to the evidence you've gathered (without being fooled by the murderer's efforts in either instance, of course!)

An example of what the characteristics of a person might be is detailed below. None of these necessarily mean anything until you compare it to the evidence of the murder site.


You are Patrick Morris and are innocent of the crime committed. You must try to find out who the murderer amongst the other passengers is.

Your feet are bigfoot-sized.
Your fingerprints are medium-sized.
You have brown hair.
Your shoes are missing shoelaces.
You have a gun in your room.
You wanted the Count dead because you were in dire need of money.


-- On murdering people --
Keep in mind that for some clue types there may be no clues to be found at all. Whenever a murder is committed, the murderer will usually (and unintentionally) leave a few clues behind. Which clues he or she will leave behind are determined randomly, but will always correspond with the murderer’s persona (someone with brown hair can’t leave a blonde strand of hair behind. The murderer can plant fake evidence afterwards, however.
Whenever the murderer commits a murder, he can choose to pay specific attention not to leave one specific type of clue behind. If the murderer commits a murder yet chooses to be careful not to leave any footprints behind, then there won’t be any footprints, even if one of the random clues he’ll leave behind comes up as ‘footprints’.

Before the game starts, the murderer can choose to leave behind one false clue. Once the game is underway, he'll be informed which clues he has left behind (unlike the other passengers, he will recognize these immediately when he revisits the murder site, as they are his own).

Example:

After killing the Count with a garrote to silence him, you immediately see the mistakes you've made when you return to the crime scene. You've left behind a small-sized footprint, the cause of death is obviously strangulation and the missing coat button the Count tore off when you killed him is lying in a corner of the room. You must now try to hamper the passenger's investigations to make sure that they don't find these clues and thus get on your trail.

During the day the murderer can, rather than look for clues, remove or plant any type of evidence on a murder site by messaging the narrator (i.e. ‘I plant a small pile of cigar ashes on the murder site of the Count’ or ‘I wipe away my own small-sized footprints on the murder site of Tom Lorraine and make new bigfoot-sized footprints instead’. These changes are permanent. The murderer must be physically present at the location to do so.
That is to say, he can’t mask the real cause of death unless he’s ‘investigating’ the cause of death. By the same token, he also can’t plant a blonde hair strand if he’s supposed to be 'looking for fingerprints'. He must be 'looking for hair strands' to plant a fake hair strand or remove the real hair strand. Other passengers won't notice if you plant fake evidence or remove real evidence, even if they're investigating the exact same thing since it's assumed the murderer will make use of minor distractions to find an opportunity.

At any time during the day, a player can accuse someone of being the murderer. If they are wrong however, the accused and accuser will both be locked up and will thus lose. Therefore, it’s important not to make an accusation until you’re sure you know who the murderer is.


Night phase:

During the night, every passenger can investigate the room of another passenger to find out two characteristics of their choosing about one person. (i.e. ‘I try to find out what kind of fingerprints Bob’s character has and what kind of motive he had for killing Count Mitoslev’).
They can not investigate the rooms of two people to find out one characteristic about each of them.

The murderer has the following options at his disposal:
•He can choose to kill someone who might pose a threat to him. This will open up a second murder site however, and might thus provide the remaining detectives with more clues. Although a second murder can be committed during the first night, at least one full night must pass before the murderer can strike again afterwards.
•He can try to mask one aspect about him, fooling anyone who will investigate his room that night (i.e. plant a red hair or pipe ashes in his own room, rather than his his original blonde hair or cigarette ashes).
•He can try to mask one aspect about someone else, fooling anyone who will investigate his victim’s room that night (i.e. plant a bottle of poison in someone else’s room). These changes are temporary and only last one night.
•Follow a passenger to try and determine who they are investigating and what clues they are looking for.

Both day and night phases last around 48 hours, to give everyone involved the chance to send in their their actions and share information (whether publicly or through private messaging).

Winning the game:
There are three win conditions in the game.

Primary Win:
The primary win goes to the innocent who accuses the murderer first and thus catches him.

Secondary Win:
Secondary win goes to the innocents who survive to the end of the game and join in on the accusation on the murderer.

If you accuse someone but are proven wrong at the end of the day, you will be removed from the game (even if you are the murderer). So be careful who you point at! If you join in on an accusation and are wrong, you will also be removed. If you are accused, wrongly or not, you will be removed from the game unless the accusation is withdrawn before the end of day. Only the accusation with the most votes, or, if it's a tie, the first one to reach the tie, counts.

Passengers can join in on accusations if they so desire. If the person accused is the murderer, then they will earn an victory for both surviving the game and finding the murderer. If whoever is voted to be arrested is later proven to be innocent by the police, both the accusator and whoever joined the bandwagon will lose.

Murderer's Win:
The murderer wins by eluding capture for seven game days. He can also win by eluding capture until only one other passenger remains.

EDIT: MURDERER will not be removed from the game if he accuses someone in the end and the result would lead to his victory.
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MageKing17 14 years ago
Sounds cool. I'm in.
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Grim Reaper 14 years ago
I am commenting on this game!

I am also finding it rather delicious!

DIBS ON GEORGE EDWARDS!!!
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Amarth 14 years ago
Sounds fun, count me in. Am I right to assume that accusations must be public (this thread, I suppose), but nothing else should be? But I guess we are however allowed to share whatever we want, right?

Also, err, what's that about investigating people's hair color and being able to change your own hair color *for one night*? Strange game.

Also, hooray for Belgian detectives, even if they are slightly poisoned.
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Murska 14 years ago
Accusations must be public, yes. Also, what you do every day must be public.

If you're an innocent and investigate, say, the murder site of the Count for hair colour, you have to state that in the thread. If you're the murderer and want to plant a fake hair into the Count's murder site, you have to state that you're investigating the murder site of the Count for hair strands.

Night actions are private.
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MageKing17 14 years ago
"Grim Reaper" said:
DIBS ON GEORGE EDWARDS!!!
Well, then, I call Patrick Morris. Aloof scientist? I'm so there.

(You'd think his chemistry training would have an in-game effect, like being able to analyze certain things that other people couldn't... oh well.)
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E_net4 14 years ago
The rules are slightly unclear to me right now, but there'll be time to understand them. I had enough time to host a werewolf, so why not playing this game? I'm in, reserving Tom Lorraine.
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Idiota 14 years ago
Jack Snyder is reserved by me.
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Zankman 14 years ago
Sounds fun, I'm in. The explorer if possible.
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Grim Reaper 14 years ago
"Zankman" said:
Sounds fun, I'm in. The explorer if possible.
Is not, Eddy-boy reserved that one already.
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E_net4 14 years ago
This means the game is now full. The only thing I ask is to only start this a few days after WW is finished.
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Murska 14 years ago
Hmm.

Mageking,
Grim Reaper,
Amarth,
Idiota,
E_net4,
Zankman.

I only see six. One slot left.
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E_net4 14 years ago
Well, ouch. My mind thought there were 6 characters.
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Murska 14 years ago
Yeah, we still need one more to start and as the WW-game is ending...
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MageKing17 14 years ago
Are we going to have to hold all conversations in-character?
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Murska 14 years ago
You can talk OOC all you wish, I'd prefer you separating the OOC discussions somehow from IC though.

And private conversations are encouraged. You must weigh the pros and cons of linking up and decide what's the best size of a group to work in, along with deciding on whether or not to impede the progress of your fellow investigators to get the grand prize, while risking the murderer escaping.
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E_net4 14 years ago
Needs moar bump. One more player, pl0x.
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Murska 14 years ago
We don't have enough active people for a seven player game anymore?
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E_net4 14 years ago
Poke them! Poke the community so hard that even the Monkkonen.net database vibrates!

Now seriously, we only need a single player.
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Anonymous1157 14 years ago
You could just drop one. (I'd play, but something horrible will happen and I won't have access to my computers for a month AGAIN because of a series of unfortunate events that started with a misunderstanding. Alternatively, I'll screw the game up, like the time I tried participating in that one big roleplay we once had among the fifteen-ish of us.)
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E_net4 14 years ago
"Anonymous1157" said:
I won't have access to my computers for a month AGAIN
Ouch.
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Murska 14 years ago
But the game is balanced for seven players and I do not have the understanding of the mechanics required for rebalancing since I've never ran it before.

Come on, Anonymous, play it. I'm sure the murderer will kill you on the second night or something.
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MageKing17 14 years ago
I suppose the seventh character could be run as an NPC if need be.

(Also, I'm posting from a PSP while riding a bus. The future is cool!)
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Murska 14 years ago
So... by whom? I can't run a character, I know who the murderer is, and I also know what clues are on each site etc.
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E_net4 14 years ago
I suppose MK is suggesting a bot for doing somewhat random stuff of the game. But coding the AI would take a lot of time.
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NeoGangster 14 years ago
"E_net4" said:
I suppose MK is suggesting a bot for doing somewhat random stuff of the game. But coding the AI would take a lot of time.
make a compo out of it xD
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Murska 14 years ago
"NeoGangster" said:
"E_net4" said:
I suppose MK is suggesting a bot for doing somewhat random stuff of the game. But coding the AI would take a lot of time.
make a compo out of it xD

YOU! Join!
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MageKing17 14 years ago
Come on, Neogangster! It'll be fun!

Or sadistic. But probably fun.
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NeoGangster 14 years ago
Ok I'm in, but let me tell you this, if I'll be the murderer you're all dead... xD
I want to be the actress!!!
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E_net4 14 years ago
Very well! Murska, you may start.
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Murska 14 years ago
All role PMs have been sent and I'm preparing to start the game.
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NeoGangster 14 years ago
Is it allowed to share the information you gather to others?
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Grim Reaper 14 years ago
"NeoGangster" said:
Is it allowed to share the information you gather to others?
Of course it is.
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Forum » Poirot Murder Mystery - Forum Game (Discussion)

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