Hi all, I haven't used this forum before, so if this has been covered, please direct me to the thread.

Anyway, I'm trying to get my wife into roleplaying, she likes Star Wars, but isn't a total Star Wars geek. She also likes murder mysteries. So my thought was that a Noir themed murder mystery set in the Edge of the Empire might be the best possible way to introduce her to gaming. The setting with all of it's scum and villainy seems like it would be ripe for a noir story.

My problem is, though I've run games before, I've never done a murder mystery. Most of my games have been more traditional epic heroic struggles, or action adventure. Sure, they've had mystery thrown in, but never as their central theme, and if players figured me out too quickly, that was ok.

Have any of you tried to do a mystery in the EotE setting? If so, could you relate how you set up and controlled the pace of that story. Or, does anyone have any experience running a murder mystery in any setting and have any advice that could be ported into EotE?

There was an episode in the old Order 66 Podcast (Saga Edition) called "Star Noirs" that dealt with this. It's here .

About 55 minutes into the episode is where they dive into the "meat" of the show. They talk about the essentials of running noir. I enjoyed it!

I'm going to check that one out too!

Running a noir-flavor adventure would be one thing, but I imagine running a satisfying murder mystery in an RPG would be a challenge, finding the right way to distribute clues and red herrings so that it's satisfying for the PCs to work out whodunit.

Ever game I have run has been a surprise to me. The players always figure things out or come up with ideas that change everything.

what I would do in your situation is to create the circumstance, the NPCs and some of the clues that I wanted to include. I would make those clues vague enough so that the murderer could be any number of people.

I would make up the details as the story progresed and as the PCs made their choices and made their rolls add new flavor as is appropriate.

If the PCs start to think they figured out who the killer is just change things up a bit. The important part will be to keep a list of all the NPCs who could possibly be the murderer and then mark them off is something comes up which prevents them from being the killer. If there are multiple murders though their could be multiple killers also.

another fun suggestion if you have a decent group and someone who has roll played a lot is let one of the PCs be the murderer. Most players would not jump to the conclusion it was one of them and the "murderer" would help place a lot of misleading clues and conversation so it is not comeing from you.

I hope this helps

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

I found this link very helpful when running a mystery-heavy game set in the modern-day world. Boiled down, the three clue rule is a way to ensure that the players will always get the information they need to solve the mystery and complete the story, as opposed to flubbing dice rolls and missing opportunities.

Thinking of say Castle or Elementary you have a start off clue that leads to a person from whom they discover another clue that takes them to a place where they find some other detail that leaves them to yet another person and so on.

The Order 66 podcast on Episodic adventures would also be a worthwhile listen in this case.

I am thinking you may have to invent some special skills to make the subtlety of this work well, as you want the clue trail to be findable. The red herrings have to be there too, else you will make it all seem to be on rails. Probably map out the clue trail and threw in some dead ends and others that loop back upon previous clues.

Another tangent for you would be to have your wife be the PI for a bounty hunter. So she will be the person tracking them down and he will be the one apprehending them. This may be better if your other players want more action, as the pure detective story may be lacking there.

Apparently "Murder on Arcturus" for Traveller is an excellent murder mystery (haven't tried it yet).

Any Chandler's story can be easily (well, fairly easily) put into SW themes. Oh, and I once tried a "Blade Runner" like scenario on Coruscant - skyscrapers, rain, droids that want to be human on the loose...

For me a murder mystery is basically an adventure about gathering clues. THE POINT of the adventure is to get a clue. In this way it's not unlike adventures for "Trial/Call of Cthulu" games. If you can get your hands on a copy of "Trail of Cthulhu" I recommend reading it, especially fragments about the importance of clues, how to offer them to players etc.

There was a popular adventure written for Saga Edition called "Murder on the Executor." Might be worth Googling.

Oh oh and the last 3 episodes of "Clone Wars" Season 5 is basically a murder mystery (and a tribute to "The Fugitive")

Wow. Thank you all for your quick responses. Looks like I have some research to do.

You can probably also grab some details of an actual noir movie, especially if you find one that's not as well known as something like the Maltese Falcon. There are LOADS of old noir films on Netflix. (Recent favorite of mine is "Scarlet Street" starring Edward G. Robinson, directed by Fritz Lang).

In our sessions so far I've lifted plots or plot elements from Apocalypse Now, The Road to Singapore, Casablanca, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting. Sometimes it's a recognizable homage, sometimes it's just a good idea from an old story that can be re-skinned for a new genre.