A while I worked with some help from MJ and Graeme on an intro situation for a world. You find yourself entombed in a pyramid with four others who are explorers, but seem to have been locked in here to die by their compatriots outside.
List of Persona:
Outside:
1. Lady Ellen--daughter of rich industrialist, American divorce'
2. Helmt Von Grandorf--Prussian, Heidelberg duellist, brilliant analyst
3. Professor Carehaven--Deputy Director of Antiquities, contacts with the Aegyptian government, drunk, past his glory days
4. Mark Allen--pushy American, engineer, hard-fisted
Inside:
1. Rich, 'the last cowboy' (its 1910), hopeless romantic, good with a gun, tough, manly, laconic, good observer of people
2. Lenny, fast-talker, stowaway, card cheat, from Brooklyn, Rich's pal on trip despite the differences, armed, and streetwise
3. Pastor Charles, Pentecostal, has Gifts of the Spirit (this is a new bit I'm adding, raising the magic bias, and trying to work out some magic...including Sign Gifts.)
4. Pietro Vacuzzi is Italian, and one of the world's great opera tenors.
The general idea is three of the four outside met, recognized kindred spirits, and decided to loot the place, and murder the 'inside'. But one of the inside is a traitor and was used to lure the three others inside. The object is to steal the Golden Seal of Arunthet (this being the Pyramid of Arunthet) which supposedly has the map to the Gateway to Mu, the fabled lost land.
The criminals trapped the inside, and left them there.
Version Alpha: Lenny is a lapdog to Lady Ellen. He'll do anything she asks. And when she asks him to help murder his chums, and she'll rescue him afterwards, and then they can be married...he's all for it. The Professor in this case is the innocent outsider who is needed to get the stuff over the border. He's been told the others left, and they had to close the pyramid to save it from bandits. But he insists on waiting a week jsut to be sure the others don't show up....which vastly irritates the murderers, but they play dumb and play along.
I'm not sure I shouldn't have every Version be about a different guy who has been influenced by the evil Lady Ellen. I could do that, and do the alternate as below,I suppose.
Rich would be the Idealist who believes in True Romance despite the evidence of his eyes that Ellen is not worthy of such trust.
Charles would be a desperately lonely man who needs a wife, and feels he's been promised by God one this year, and the year is nearly gone...and so he ignores what he knows, and what he knows to be God's will, and trys to force the universe into the way he wants it....he's suffering a nervous breakdown as a result.
Pietro is not in love with Lady Ellen, but he's convinced she loves him. It is to be expected. After all, he is The Pietro. Woman in his audiences swoon after his oratorios...Unfortunatley for this self-obsessed singer, Lady Ellen doesn't have any real love in her heart for anyone but herself.
Version Beta: The Pastor is the judas goat. He's concerned for the souls of the three would-be murderers. He saw a vision in which knives fell in the dark, and forestalled it by volunteering to take the three others in. He's has faith that his last sermon in letter form that he left in his tent will be found, and that it will convict the would-be murderers of their sin, and they will repent. If they don't he feels he bought a little time, and its better this way. Lady Ellen is the innocent party this time. She's not being killed because 1)she's clueless 2) she's rich and will finance most of the expedition back to Europe 3)She's a socially connected woman--a Lady. The Law is very hard on people who kill female aristocrats.
Version Gamma: Rich is the judas goat this time. He thinks that Professor Carehaven and him share the same view--this site should never have been disturbed. There is a curse on the site. Besides, its the ancient world, and its better for it to be Mysterious. Rich thinks something like this in all versions. He's discussed it with Prof. Carehaven who politely listened, and that made Rich think he agreed. And Rich is near death. He's got a tumor that makes him occasionally go from his relatively reasonable self to stark, staring nutters. In the grip of one of these fits, Carehaven suggested he close the pyramid on all those whou would not understand. Rich did, and now he has amnesia about what he did, but he has an occasional ghost of a memory, and if another fit can be provoked he'd remember. Of course, he'd probably be a murderous lunatic armed with a pistol...but you can't have everything.
In this version, Helmt Von Grandorf is innocent. He's too logical to buy into this nonsense, and he's way too dangerous with his sword and duelling pistol to try to kill. Plus his code of aristocratic honor would forbid him doing something so base and cowardly.
Version Delta: In this version Pietro is the judas goat. The rather sharp Helmt Von Grandorf noticed him rarely practising and figured out Pietro's bluff...he hasn't lost his muse (in this scenario), he's lost his voice. Grandorf threatens to expose the truth unless Pietro does him a little favor....a favor which will incidentally make Pietro wildly wealthy so he can retire without anyone ever knowing his shame as Pietro shares in the loot. Pietro is not totally stupid, and wonders what would keep Grandorf from leaving him. And then he has the 'brilliant' idea of taking one of Grandorf's pistols which no one ever has. Because then Grandorf will be forced to come back and release Pietro to get the incriminating pistol...the only thing the not so bright Pietro hasn't figured out is that Grandorf plans to return to get his pistol after everyone is dead. In this version, Mark Allen is the innocent. The others think of him as a no-class American who works with his hands, and so didn't bother to talk to him. If they had, they would have run into his fists anyways.
It sounds like a good set-up.
I think the next step is to work out the facts of each of the four scenarios in a sequential way--step by step what happened--and from this to determine what clues are available which distinguish one scenario from another. Equally important in this process is recognizing what clues will be the same between multiple scenarios and what facts will be consistent altogether. E.g., you always have the same four people in the tomb and the same four outside. There will be other details which are the same no matter who is guilty and who is innocent, but there will also be some details which are the same if either of two people is the Judas Goat or whenever one individual on the outside is guilty. Those have to be sorted for the referee, who will need to know how to play it for each fact set, so that the clues come out naturally in play and not as if they are a printed puzzle handed to the player to solve.
--M. J. Young