Equipment. Weapons Cards

Transcription

1 It s Murder... A murder mystery game set in Paris in 1850 based on Edgar Allen Poe s Murder in the Rue Morgue. The game features two friends who, although partners in a business of personal property estate appraisal, often find themselves in the middle of a crime scene. Auguste Lapin is a former chemist whose wife, Marie, was murdered. The police never arrested the perpetrator, and the case remains unsolved. This murder was a crucial event in Lapin s life. His inability to come to terms with his emotions surrounding Marie s murder led him to transfer them onto two other murder victims, Madame L Espagnol and her daughter Florinda. Throughout his condition of living, Lapin uses L Espagnol as a surrogate for his conflicting emotions and desires. This confusion leads to a depression, from which he has never fully recovered. He sometimes drinks and uses snuff, so he expiates his guilt by solving the murders of poor lonely women that appear his way. Madame and her daughter are routinely contacted in seances to help determine the identity of the murderer. However, they don t always have an answer. Lapin s partner, known only as Papillon, dropped out of school and joined the Foreign Legion, from which he escaped while on duty. Also into karmic phenomena and communing with spirits, Papillon was engaged in minor crimes, such as housebreaking, and was often homeless. After serving some time in jail and suffering a bout of dysentery, during which he developed an ulcer in his stomach the size of a fist, Papillon stopped drinking and began working as a courier. He and Lapin write mystery books that do not sell. Bu it is their secret love for the supernatural brings them together as they discover their shared love for communicating with the dead and a an inclination toward inquisitiveness. Forced to reassess their lives, the two men hope their newfound friendship will lead to story ideas and resolving unsolved murders. But while Lapin and Papillon don t think of themselves as sleuths, they are just as interested in appraising a phony diamond as dealing with a dead body. Mysteries have a habit of following them around. The fact that they are inconspicuous personal property appraisers means that they overhear secrets regarding a person s disposal of valuables when they die that lead them to rectify someone s last will and testament and also solve the crime and capture the criminal. Their Chateau, or apartment building, have short-lease tenants who are in constant flux, leading to a variety of characters and numerous murders within it.

2 Equipment 2 The game's equipment consists of a board which shows the rooms of a former French Chateau which has been converted into six smaller apartment suites. Each apartment has two to three tenants and four to nine rooms. There s a separate map of the city. The Chateau apartment and the corridors have passages linking them, playing bits, props or cards representing murder weapons (knife, club, wire, etc.), two six-sided dice, a set of cards describing the rooms (scene of the crime) and representing valuables, the suspects and weapons, along with Solution Cards envelopes which contain one card of each. There s also a Note pad for keeping notes during the game. Seance cards determine the spirit source contacted and what is being communicated usually in terms of murder clues. The four players selected at random reorient Monsieur Lapin or Papillon and a variety of people. If they re the central characters, they re engaged in the appraisal of valuables described in the cards. The value of each object is determined by the roll of the dice multiplied by At the end of the game these are added up and counted as points for the players. In the digital version of the game, the specters can actually use various magical spells. For example, a spell could be uttered to pull a knife from an enemy's hands and bring it to you through the air, and another spell could ignite fires and/or saw doors and other obstacles which block the player, seemingly negating the need for a fire axe. Forensic tools can be used as a detection device and collection tools can be used to swipe across weapons and collect samples. Weapons Cards * Knife. * Revolver * Candlestick or club * Rope or wire * Monkey wrench * Poison * Physical violence * Fright and flight

3 3 Handicaps (lose turns) * Booze * Insomnia * Fatigue * Depression * Specter * Poltergeist * Health problems * Temptations (objects, money or people) Seance cards * Spirit of Madame L Espagnol * Spirit of Florinda * Marie s ghost (Monsieur Lapin s murdered wife) * An imp (trick him into saying his name backwards) * A bad influence * The ghost of the guillotined past * Bad connection * Real Spirits (Scotch and Gyn) * The spirit of Edgar Allen Poe himself Depending on who is speaking from beyond the grave cards. Resulting in a possible peek at the weapons card. Seance Results Cards (The cards may be ambigrams or may simply read Trick or Treat. * The murderer is close by * The murderer is a woman * It was a suicide * The murderer is a man * You re the murderer * It was an accident * The butler did it * I did it

4 Suspect Cards 4 * A jealous gendarme * Greedy cousin * Disloyal lover * The lawyer * The banker * The wicked step mother * A beast * Debt collector * Unpaid employee * Angry neighbor * Monsieur Lapin * Papillon Location * The bathtub * The Livingroom * The bakery * The Hallway * The street * The bedroom * The elevator * The kitchen * The museum * The park Rules There are six board which fit together with various locations, including the seance board and the map. At the beginning of play, three cards one suspect, one weapon, and one location card are chosen at random and put inside three separate envelopes, so they remain secret. These cards represent the facts of the case. The remainder of the cards are distributed among the players. Players roll the dice and move along the board spaces accordingly, entering rooms in order to make suggestions from that room.

5 5 The aim is to deduce the details of the murder. There are many possibilities twelve different suspects, eight possible murder weapons and ten different possible locations, leaving the players with 960 possibilities. In addition to the eight handicaps and the nine seance apparitions. Players can guess the identity, location and mode of murder. But the other players must then disprove the guess, if they can. A murder guess is disproved by showing a card containing one of the suggestion components (for example, the rope) to the player making the guess, as this proves that the card cannot be in the envelope. Showing the card to the suggesting player is done in secret so the other players may not see which card is being used to disprove the suggestion. Once a guess has been disproved, the player's turn ends and moves onto the next player. The player's guess only gets disproved once. So though several players may hold cards disproving the guess, only the first one will show the suggesting player his or her card. A player may only make a guess when his or her piece is in a room and the suggestion can only be for that room. The seance cards The seance cards whether the player receives a good experience or a bad experience. The experience is decided by which card they choose at random. If they choose the card that says 'Trick' they receive a bad experience and if they choose the card that says 'Treat' they receive a good experience. The player can play a card with an ambigram and move to that on the board(s). An ambigram is a word play or eye twister of unique symmetrical deign that manages to squeeze two different readings into the same set of curves and may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation. The words may be the same or different from the original words. Once a player has sufficiently narrowed the solution, that player can make an accusation. The accusing player checks the validity of the accusation by checking the cards, keeping them concealed from other players. If he has made an incorrect accusation, he plays no further part in the game except to reveal cards secretly to one of the remaining players when required to do so in order to disprove guesses. If a player makes a correct accusation, the solution cards are shown to the other players and the game ends.

6 6 It is possible for a player to be using the piece representing the murderer. This does not affect the game play; the object of the game is still to be the first to make the correct accusation. Strategy Various strategies allow players to maximize their opportunities to make guess on who the murderer is and therefore gain the advantage of accumulating information faster.