He's unlike anybody I have ever encountered.

He moves like a storm -- unpredictable, chaotic, and impossible to pin down. Most people who try to manipulate me are transparent, and easy enough to see through...

But him?

He acts without restraint. Without fear. It makes him both fascinating... and equally dangerous.

But the fact that he wants me to believe that I'm in a position of power gives it all away. He wants me to think I control the situation. But if he wanted me to believe that... then he wasn't even in control to begin with. His methods are unique, I'll give him that... but even the spontaneous becomes predictable when studied enough.

And I will win this game.

____

Trapped within a web of lies and deceit, a group of local authorities and investigators struggle to solve a case of a string of inexplicable murders. Twisting and turning into something more demented, the group learns that the murderer is likely one of their own -- and begin turning on one another in a twisted mind game.

Things turn from bad to worse when they find themselves miraculously locked within the station.

Was this an admittedly unorthodox, yet benign, investigatory technique?
Or will fewer than arrived walk out once the doors open again?

Find out in this game of trust, betrayal, and manipulation.

____

Role ideas (not really requirements)

Actual police officer 💀
Detective
Sheriff (ooh fancy)
Chief of Police (oooh fancy x2)

(I'm aware these are massively simplified and nigh romanticized lists bear with me that's aside the point.)

Other fancy things I think. Could work.
Dispatcher/telecommunicator
Crime analyst +/ Intelligence analyst
Police aid
Evidence custodian
Records clerk

This is a cool idea for a mystery novella or short story, but I suspect this would be very hard to pull off well as a Play by Post roleplay. My experience is that PbP Roleplayers are prone to metagaming, so unless the writer of the culprit could manage to write their character without cluing in the other players that their character is the murderer, then somebody would likely come to the conclusion that that character is the murderer even if their character wouldn't have sufficient evidence to come to that conclusion.

Yeah... always an issue. Metagaming is the very bane of my existence. Doesn't mean I'm not willing to try, somewhat. And probably watch it fall apart. Unfortunately these psychological things are my favourite things to do in terms of roleplay. Why am I like this? Oh well.

I'm interested! Would a private investigator be a good fit for this RP?

@AnakisutoYT

Absolutely!

Yeah... always an issue. Metagaming is the very bane of my existence. Doesn't mean I'm not willing to try, somewhat. And probably watch it fall apart. Unfortunately these psychological things are my favourite things to do in terms of roleplay. Why am I like this? Oh well.

In retrospect, I can see how my post comes across as "Your dream sucks", which is bad, so I apologize for that. Good for you for not letting it get you down. I do think this will be a challenging project, but that doesn't mean it can't, let alone shouldn't, be done. I doubt this type of game has never been done before, but I can say that I haven't seen it done in my 6+ years of online roleplaying. I think there is a case that that uniqueness is very much a justification for pushing through with this concept.

I guess the next thing to consider then is what the appeal of this project will be. In a lot of what your idea appeared to be to me at first glance was a murder mystery, which, as I said in my first post, is a different beast in this type of roleplaying environment than it is in a short story or novella. The primary difference that I believe will potentially cause problems is that of perspective. One of the means by which mystery novels typically maintain the suspense for the reader is by limiting the perspective from which the reader is being exposed to the story is through the point of view of somebody who doesn't know everything that is going on, and therefore as the protagonist is learning information, so is the reader. At least for me, it is this suspense and desire to discover the mystery that makes reading these types of stories appealing.

So going back to collaborative roleplaying and metagaming... In my experience, the nature of participating in the kind of activity we do on this site is that we read what others are writing, and then we feed off of that creative energy to produce our own writing in the worlds that we are more of less creating together. Metagaming is basically an extension of this very activity; writing based off of information that others have posted. Discernment can and should be employed to determine what our given characters should realistically know and be able to observe, but I can see where the line between good participation and metagaming can be hazy.

All of that to say, while one solution to the metagaming potential problem would be to make rules against it, I suspect that, for me anyway, that writing my character as if they don't know who the murderer is even though I personally know who they are might not be as fun for me. I would lack the suspense of striving to figure out who the culprit is and instead I would be struggling to find a balance between writing my character discovering and processing clues and writing my character coming to conclusions that they shouldn't have even though I personally have. As such, in my opinion, I think the game would be most entertaining if there was a way to keep us players in the dark about the identity of the murderer, and perhaps the GM could play the kind of head games with us players that our characters are also experiencing.

I totally understand. That's half of the appeal anyway.

Now you're making me think about it more than I would have otherwise. Thanks for that.

My initial thought would be that a lot of planning would have to be done strictly to PMs for each participant. Like a children's game where one person gets selected while everybody else has their eyes closed.

Whoops! I had a number of typos in that last post. I have updated it for clarity. That's what I get for writing it up on my break and then running out of time.

I'll be interested to see where this goes. I have kind of thrown my name into the hat of two other potential games, but I think I will only have time for one of those (along with the active game I am already committed to). As such, I can't 100% commit to this one, but if the others fall through, I would like to try this one out.

It's alright! As long as I can understand it well enough.

I'll be very happy to have you if you decide you can stick around! :)

Hi, this idea has peeked my interests. I always love a good mystery solving :)

I think the easiest way to "run" a mystery solving roleplay is to have a roleplay where the GM has the role of what a dungeon master has in D&D. He's in control of the setting, enviroment and NPC's while the players try to uncover the mystery through interacting with the enviroment. So the culprit will be an NPC and the players will have to figure out which NPC it from a large group of NPC suspects. The player characters should be able to slowly uncover the puzzle by talking with NPCs, finding clues through specialists tasks (a coroner determining the time of death, CSI finding finger prints, stuff like that). Every clue should lead to the next and some are specificly designed to throw the players off-track. Eventually the players should be able to piece the puzzle together and find out who has done it.

The biggest challenge with solving mysteries is always that it relies on how the players think. What might be an obvious solution for the GM might be something the players never think about or a clue presented in broad daylight might be totally missed.

So in a game where you as a GM want to actively kill off people while the players actively investigate the murders at the same time you'd proberbly want to have those murders happen off-screen and the players simply finding the body.

I honestly don't see a sort of play by post Among US game work well where one player plays the murderer trying to kill off the others. If you do everything in forum posts you're alrady giving away the mystery and if you have one player DMing people that he's going to kill while at the same time interacting regulary with the others you're proberbly going to run in some timeline issues. Or you get the scenario where one player character is always in the bathroom, getting a coffee or eating donuts on his own when someone gets murdered. Then it's pretty easy to figure out on a meta level who's the culprit.

Anyway. I really dig the idea of getting locked in with a murderer in a police station :)

Honestly. I feel like that idea was obvious to me and I didn't realize it like that until it was worded in that way. Thanks a lot! Glad you're interested. May or may not wait to see if anybody else is interested in this before kicking it off. :)