Verser arrives in nice house in large bedroom suite.
Attractive female walks in on him, calls him by name. She's somewhat hard-faced. He doesn't know her.
"Oh my, you really are amnesiac." She runs out.
Verser looks around. Sees in glass display case 'World's First Multiverser Quantum Computing Engine'. If he has very high level computer skills, or quantum physics, he can recognize the device as an 'other-dimensional computing system'. One solution to overheating of computer chips while still maintaining density is to have a computer that extends....sideways into parallel dimensions. This enables a supercomputer that makes our best computers look like slugs.
The name of the inventor on the little brass sign is the Verser's name.
In the back bedroom of the multi-room suite is the verser's dop in bed. He's dressed in a very expensive breakfast robe of silk. He's obviously unwell, and unconscious. He has bruises on his throat.
There is a vase broken, and a curtain ripped in the bedroom.
The GM never says it, but the conclusion of the room, and the dop's body should be obvious. Now, you could have the dop be dead, but for reasons of kindness, and to offer a hostage against fortune, I like to keep him alive for now. However, you could go for the straight vengeance story line, and have the verser's dop be dead.
It transpires that the dop is a very wealthy computer guy, not in Bill Gates class, but easily able to afford a seven thousand square foot Victorian mansion on Long Island overlooking the beach. Say he has a 100 million of the local smackeroos....(and not every world should have the same 'almost US dollars'. I think that is done too much which is one reason I like MJ's addition to Future Roma--although I do take the point about making it optional.)
Also, the dop is having a bunch of guests over for the weekened.
And after some conversation with them, and perhaps a few words with the semi-conscious dop...it appears the dop is the Vicious Rich Jerk character from mysteries. You know the guy who messes with everyone, and everyone hates him so everyone at the house has a motive for seeing him murdered.
You may want to stick with that. I'd make it optional just like the "Is he dead or just unconscious?".
However, I'd prefer that his loyal butler made some noise at the door, and startled the would-be murderer, and bad guy fled. And the butler is loyal because the dop is really a good guy...but the dop is requiring the others to mend their ways in order to get access to his cash.
All the others are a vast bunch of flakes, jerks, and scum. And they don't want to mend their ways...they want the dop's money, and for him to shut up about being a 'decent and responsible human being', for example...one of them blowing a 100k at Vegas in one night of poker.
And so when he invited them all the property for 'a little treasure hunt' they all knew it would involve moral lessons, tests of bravery, and all that garbage as well as a lot of sweating, and thinking....but the promised reward of ten million smackeroos was too much to pass up. Except for one person who decided to strangle the dop, and force the info out of him.
When he came back to consciousness the first time, he told his torturer that he had amnesia, and didn't recall.
Now the murder method seems to imply that it was a guy who tried to kill the dop...strangling a man with your bare hands tends to require a man....so that leaves half the crew, the women, as innocent.
But this is a red herring.
He was stabbed in the ball of his foot with a hallucinogenic drug that causes pain while he slept. He was questioned as he woke. But, his answers are going to be distorted by the drug....
And when he is later questioned, thats going to be a problem...he's going to ID his would-be killer poetically.
Now that he's zoned out, the killer has a problem. An autopsy will reveal the drug. The drug will point to her since she is a nurse.
However, she sees the curtain, and its curtain towel-like restraining rope, and rips it free, knocking over the vase in the process of her arm jerking wildly, and giving herself a cut on the foot.
She takes the wide band and wraps it around the dop's neck, and ties it firm to one side of the bed. Then she pulls on the other side, leaning into it.
Noise at the door.
She unwinds the band and tosses it for the far side of the bed. Its a dark wood bed, and the band is dark green. It hangs from the top corner of the headboard inconspicuously.
She flees out another door.
Butler comes in, and sees his master is unwell. Butler is loyal, but perhaps a bit dim. He thinks his master got drunk, and needs to sleep things off. So he leaves him with the cooling tray of food near the bed.
Someone was walking by the outer window, and heard the loudest part of the conversation.
"Amnesiac!" as in part of the sentence.... "I don't know. I'm Amnesiac!" Goes and tells others that the game is afoot, and the host is playing that he is amnesiac as move one of the treasure hunt.
Murderess goes and finds pair of foam sandals of guy, and jabs a small bit of broken vase into the foam of the sole. Leaves it there.
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I wasn't intending to lay this out even this far. I just wanted to lay out the general idea, and leave it there as too much for me. But I've gotten a bit farther than I thought.
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Another idea for Amnesia....the verser wakes with an aching head. He's not where he last remembered he was although he is in the same world.
A female is leaning over him full of concern that he whacked his head. She acts like she knows him. She claims to be his fiance', and that its two years later than it was when he last checked....this would be especially good as a psi botch, and a possible personality alteration during the time of a currently closed memory.
Just what were you up to in the last two years?
One way to deal with this is to have a series of flashbacks, or partially successful uses of retrocognition to find out what you've done.
An aside on the money thing:
Sherwood Forest very specifically gives the old English non-decimal monetary system in the notes, and this is usually followed; since it's not a setting in which a lot of buying and selling is done, that's not a big problem for most referees. If I recall correctly, the Dancing Princess suggests importing that same system there. It might have been used in one of the Second Book of Worlds locales, too, but at the moment it's not springing to mind.
I believe that there is another world published in which money is given in numerical values, but no denomination is mentioned. This might be as yet unpublished Mystery of the Vorgo, though, because I know I use that method there--let the referee call the money what he wants and give it whatever appearance he desires. It's very easy for the indig to say to the verser that she'll pay him "a hundred" for his appearance in the show, without saying a hundred what, and the verser is not likely to ask what.
There are also worlds in which credits are used, and other monetary systems are suggested; we do try to match monetary systems to worlds. It's only when you come to an alternate America (which happens often, probably because of the "close to home" theory) that you get "almost dollars".
It looks like a good murder mystery, but it also looks like there can be only one solution--which makes it less useful as a published world, because once a certain kind of player knows what's happening in the world, he'll play from that knowledge--and it's not an easy thing to ignore what you know. However, I dare say that if you dropped me in Mystery of the Vorgo, or probably dropped you in your Pyramid mystery, you or I would have to play through the game to solve the mystery, because even if you know all the possible solutions you still need to work out the correct one.
--M. J. Young
Thanks.
I'm very tired so I'll be terse.
Got a wild idea.
Need to revamp the Other-dimensional computer...make it a plain scriff computer...which helps maybe explain why the verser arrives....now for the other other dimensional computer....
Once its turned on, it generates a low level telepathic field which extends into alternate dimensions. This field primarily carries emotional information, and the fears of one person translate into visons by the dop of that person...So every one starts having visions of other people at teh Party of Paranoia setting haveing dreams of others in teh Party whacking them.
Now, I did think about having a bunch of murders going on cross dimension, and your question was 'which dimension am I in?"
The other way is to have it be a bunch of unreasonable fears, and this drives everyone to paranoid violence against each other.
One opening for this is to have the PC see the bloody mess when he verses in....And then he finds himself suddenly at a party for them, and all of them are alive...He had a vision as well.
PT
One solution? Half of the guests are female. And I might add a few more tidbits for the players.
One solution? Half of the guests are female.
And half the time it was a man after all, and the needle-puncture is the red herring.
And since its the Pope, we knows he's right.
And this 'wild idea' for a telepathic field is for a totally different murder although a similar garden party type thing.
Me was tired last night.
Eric