I’d love to hear your ideas for a sub-plot in my latest adventure.
Basically the players are on a diplomatic mission to Freeport, which is used as a neutral venue by several neighbouring power groups.
There is a lighthouse to help shipping reach Freeport past treacherous reefs and rocks.
What I’d like is to have either or both of these ideas described:
combine D+D with CSI, by having the lighthouse keeper murdered and the party investigating forensic clues to establish what happened
combine D+D with a detective mystery, by having the lighthouse keeper murdered in a locked room and the party investigating to establish how it happened
Here’s some background if it would help…the power groups are:
the Empire, a powerful military country based across a sea channel from Freeport
Naugrimshire, a country of gnome illusionists, thieves and fighters
Ocean Barbarians, who patrol the coast and spurn magic in favour of might
Pirates, who operate from ocean islands
a shapechanging evil being who has killed or captured the Druids of Tsarinan forest
I’ve been roleplaying with the same group for decades (and we still use Edition 1 :eek: ). However, if you’re not familiar with this do feel free to come up with a plot anyway and I’ll translate it into the mixture of mediaeval technology and magic that my group uses.
I don’t know anything about 1st edition, but how do resurrect spells and speak with dead spells affect your world? Murder mysteries are notoriously difficult to run in D&D, because there are so many spells that can keep the dead from being dead or let you communicate with them anyway.
My group will have access to ‘Raise Dead’ and ‘Speak with Dead’ spells.
(It would be very expensive, but they could come up with a ‘Speak with Walls’ too…)
You could circumvent the first two of these by removing the lighthouse keeper’s head. :eek:
It doesn’t have to be a complicated plot, but I think it will provide a pleasant element to the milieu…
Depending on the level there are to many spells that break mysteries. Divination spells and speak with dead can go a long way towards the investigation and players hate it when the DM comes up with silly reasons for them not to work. Oh, you want subplots though.
Why not have a love interest be responsible for the death of the lightkeeper? The lightkeeper deserved to be killed, for what reason I leave to you, and the players have to choose between turning the killer in or keeping quiet. That might be neat.
The party approaches Freeport by boat, along the cost guarded by the lighthouse. A storm brews up unexpectedly, and the party has to make a herculean effort to survive, since the lighthouse is out.
The party can make their way to the lighthouse, and while there they get to explore. They discover the headless corpse of the keeper, and a careful study of the body give clues to the identity of the killer. (Don’t forget the spell Stone Tell- it’s a first-edition druid spell, I think.)
Other clues in the lighthouse point to strange occurences over the last few days- weird behavior by local fauna, freak storms, local boats and people disappearing.
The clues will point to a nearby lair of a druid, who is fighting against the encroaching egde of civilization. the lighhouse is new, but sited on a holy Driud site, and the druid wants the owners of the lighthouse to leave.
Is the house operated by the Empire or locally? This could factor in to the story.
You might want the Evil Power to be responsible for the attacks, and that the being is making the attacks seem like a Druid is responsible, but it’s his way of enlisting others to do his dirty work in bringing the Druids down.
I would have an accomplce of the Evil be the one directing things locally; the party can have a good epic “boss battle” without ending the storyline. The party can earn clues to the overall story by solving this mystery.
I’m not too familiar with the “rules” of magic in this universe, but the thought of trying to circumvent magical investigation into the crime gives me a couple of ideas…
Could you rig the murder to look like it was magical, or by a magician/sorcerer, but really be completely mundane? Say, the lighthouse keeper is found in his living quarters in the tower, horribly charred, along with most of the contents of the room. However, the fire didn’t spread to the rest of the lighthouse, and with no obvious source of ignition. However…on the remains of the fellow’s desk, where he habitually opened his mail, was a just-opened package, the inside of which seems to be fireproof, unlike the rest of the outside wrapping, which is burned—save for one corner, apparently folded over on itself when the victim opened the box, which miraculously shielded a bit of the return address from the flames. The package seems to have come from—I dunno, whoever you want to frame for the crime. A magic-user, probably. Maybe there’s some traces of magical residue from the package, to boot. It looks like someone sent the lighthouse keeper a magic “letter bomb”—which explains why the light went out the night of his death, resulting in the wrecking of an important trade or diplomatic mission
from a power that’s now mighty ticked, and out for blood/political concessions from the guilty party.
However, it’s a trick, it wasn’t a magical fireball at all: the killers actually used a version of Archimedes’ “Burning Mirror” to focus and reflect light from the lighthouse back into the window of the lighthouse keeper, right at the time of evening he always opened his mail—like the fake “bomb” package they’d sent him. The package was rigged to look suspicious enough to anyone investigating the death—asbestos lining, return address from a known gnome mage terrorist front, seemingly noteworthy magical residue that was really just the sorcerous equivilant of scratch paper, or the remains of a simple “make corner of envelope fold over return address when opened” spell.
For another twist, you might have the base of the mirror used in the attack be the ship that ended up sinking—maybe someone’s investigating/plundering the wreck, and finds out that it was carrying a bunch of highly polished bronze shields in addition or in lieu of it’s normal cargo. So, either the side who lost that ship either set up the attack on themselves to make an enemy look guilty, or a third party is trying to stir up troubles between two other parties for their own advantage.
It’s true that having ‘Speak with Dead’ and ‘Raise Dead’ affect an investigation dramatically. And I certainly will not use silly reasons to stop my players using them (removing the victim’s head is one sensible way around).
I like your sub-plot idea - as the background is diplomatic, I might make the murderer an important negotiator, and if the party arrest him, it wrecks the trade negotiations. (To help with the adventure background, my player’s characters are aligned good and should arrest the culprit).
Alternatively the murderer claims diplomatic immunity…
Firstly I can arrange some ‘diplomatic’ reason why the shapeshifter wants to implicate the gnomes and secondly the gnomes have illusionary abilities.
I can picture the interrogation…
Players: We have eye-witness evidence that you murdered the lighthouse keeper.
Gnome: Eye-witnesses can be mistaken.
Players: How many bearded gnomes with red hair, green eyes and a limp are there in Freeport?!
Gnome: I can prove I’m an illusionist. Why wouldn’t I use the ‘Change Self’ spell to disguise myself?
Players: Perhaps it’s a cunning double bluff…
Well it needs work, but I enjoy expanding on this sort of stuff!
I certainly want the party to go sailing (the leading pirate chiefs have trasure islands to raid + explore), and I can start the lighthouse subplot on their way back from one such trip.
‘Stone Tell’ is indeed 1st edition - I called it ‘Speak with Walls’ in an earlier post as that’s the likeliest use of it.
The lighhouse keeper would have to have done some pretty severe environmental damage for any Druid to kill him. Perhaps the evil shapeshifter (or a gnome illusionist) impersonated the keeper in fornt of a Druid…
I hadn’t decided who mans the lighthouse. The Empire certaily has the financial clout to build it.
Freeport used to be part of a nobleman’s estate, but he died intestate (and it’s convenient for all local powers to have a neutral base for trade and other negotiations). The nobleman could have built it, and perhaps all powers fund it through an agreed tax, since it benefits them all. (Of course this tax could be a subject of a dispute!)
‘You might want the Evil Power to be responsible for the attacks, and that the being is making the attacks seem like a Druid is responsible, but it’s his way of enlisting others to do his dirty work in bringing the Druids down.
I would have an accomplce of the Evil be the one directing things locally; the party can have a good epic “boss battle” without ending the storyline. The party can earn clues to the overall story by solving this mystery.’
The players use magic themselves, so will undoubtedly go straight to a magical explanation (The spells ‘Fireball’, ‘Fire Trap’ or even ‘Explosive Runes’ could be used to kill the lighthouse keeper in a locked room.)
Instead there’s a physical solution …
It’s not clear if Archimedes did actually defend Syracuse with his Burning Mirror, but I’m sure I can manage something (e.g. the Empire makes loads of polished shields and sets fire to a barrel of oil in the lighthouse).
Archimedes also didn’t live in a world with shapeshifters and gnome thieve’s guilds. A little creative licence can go a long way when the straight science can’t.
Best locked-room murder mystery I ever did in D&D.
Lighthouse keeper is given a candle by the murderer.
Candle contains Othur. Read the DMG section on poisons, for ‘Burnt Othur Fumes’.
Lighthouse Keeper has no idea what caused his death. Candle burns down, obliterating direct evidence - though tests on the body might reveal a toxin. Murderer isn’t even present at the time of death.
I’ve got an odd imagination and little D&D experience, so take this suggestion as you will:
The lighthouse keeper knew something he shouldn’t. Maybe something he learned on the job, maybe something before he became a keeper. Someone doesn’t want him to blab or wants to know what it is. However, they’re evil, so they also see the advantages to taking out the lighthouse. Therefore, when your group enters the lighthouse, they find his headless body…but not dead. Someone has simply stolen his head. It’s alive, but not nearby. They have to find his head and get it back to his body to find out what’s going on.
I’m a long-time DM, and this immediately leapt out at me.
Make the barbarians the owners of the lighthouse. Maybe they didn’t build it — they might have seized it or something, at some point in the past — but they definitely have to have a sizeable stake in the investigation.
Why? Because they have no wizards of their own, you can’t prove to them that Stone Tell is telling the truth. For all the barbarians know, it’s the spell ventriloquism or something, or audible glamer, and it’s just some guy in the next room throwing his voice to say, “It’s him what done it, that’s the gnome what croaked Lester.”
Sure, the party can can cast spells eight ways to Sunday, speaking with the dead, with walls, casting spells to detect lies . . . but because they have to show concrete, incontrovertible, non-magical evidence to the barbarians, spells won’t be enough. Spells would only lead the party in the direction where such evidence could be found.
I’m not saying your barbarians must disbelieve in magic, just that they don’t have any way of telling the difference between a real spell that tells the real divination and a fake spell that just sounds like divination. Because the barbarians are smart enough to know they can’t tell the difference, they reject magical proof as being too easily misrepresented.
Then one of the other factions can step forward (to confuse things) and accuse the party of casting phantasmal force instead of a real spell: see, the party is trying to manipulate this diplomatic process!
I know what you mean , but I like the challenge of sticking to science apart from the magical exceptions in the rulebooks.
The main reason for this is that our group take it in turn to referee, so we need consistency.
I could combine the use of poison with the disappearance of the Druids - who are the only class that can cast ‘Detect Poison’. So the party have to find a Druid to prove the murder method…
Under our rules, the stolen head would be dead, but that’s no problem. :eek:
To find the head, the party can use ‘Locate Object’.
If the party find the head, they can cast ‘Speak with Dead’ on it.
If they reunite the body parts, they can cast ‘Raise Dead’.
You know it’s pretty difficult to prove anything about yourself on a message board.
But I can happily testify that poster Fish is a long-term DM with a fine grasp of the game.
I love this whole concept!
The party can use their magic abilities to find who did what.
But then the sceptical Barbarians demand non-magical proof.
So then the party have to track down the culprits and provide mundane forensic / legal evidence.
it’s like having two dungeons for the price of one!
