Tl;dr
In a nutshell, Mr. Jig has discovered your deepest, darkest secret, and invites you to his pad with some other secretive strangers to chew the fat - and to threaten them with blackmail.
The thing is, Mr. Jig is going to die, and one of you is going to kill him – and only the killer will know who he or she is. Mr. Jig was going to blackmail all of you: and you all had the opportunity, motive, and means.
Can you clear your name of murder without the real murderer turning his or her sights onto you?
How it works:
Public OoC knowledge in this is going to be extremely scarce. There will be three main sources of information; things established in the IC; information I provide in the OoC section; and information I secretly PM to you personally. Apart from these tidbits, you’re going to be on your own.
There will be no public character sheets, and few points at which I give direct guidance on what will happen (though setting up at the beginning may be a little more guided, until Mr. Jig has died). Each of you will PM me a Character Sheet, and indicate in that PM whether or not you would like to be the murderer. Out of the candidates, I will secretly select one and inform them via PM that they are indeed the killer. I will also PM the rest of you to tell you that you are all innocent.
The murderer and I will be in constant communication over the course of the game: obviously, in order to keep their identity secret, the player will not be able to write anything that might incriminate them, so I will do the dirty work for them: rather than explicitly writing what their character does, they will tell me via PM, and I will arrange for clues to be found among the rest of you. It probably sounds a bit bonkers, but trust me: this will work. I’m currently running an RP (Wolf Manor, also in Advanced) in a similar fashion. The only difference here is that one of you guys did it.
Who it’s for:
You probably already know whether or not this game is for you. It’s not like many games on these forums; you’re going to be in the dark and under threat. You won’t know what’s going on at any one time. I will be lying to you. The other players will probably be lying to you. At the same time, the close nature of the RP means we’re all going to be working closely together and constantly and secretly discussing OoC information and probably writing a fair few collaborations.
Because it will take place in a very closed environment with a small cast and no way to add new characters, I really want you to be committed to this if you choose to take part, especially if you want to be the murderer. That and basic writing ability (accurate spelling and grammar) are really my only criteria for accepting people to this. If I get more than six people interested, I will choose according to who I think has the best attitude to this game – ie, who I think will stick around.
Please please please don’t be scared of the Advanced Section. If you’re one of those people who would like to graduate to High Casual or Advanced but have been a bit timid, I would go so far as to say that this might be the perfect game for you: as a GM, I talk a lot to my players and am always open to giving help or advice to people that ask for it. Because there will be a small cast that you’ll be working closely with, there won’t be any risk of ‘losing you in the crowd’ like there might be in a larger game, and things won’t run off without you. The reason this is in Advanced is because of the level of behind-the-scenes stuff and planning that will go into it – it has nothing to do with writing ability or arbitrary length of posts. Don’t be scared of Advanced! If you can log in most days, even if it’s only to say “Hi, I’m still here” and have basic spelling and grammar down, you’re golden.
Questions and Clarifications:
I am completely aware that so far, this IntChk has been sketchy on the details. It’s been much more about how the game will run than what will actually happen, but hopefully you can see why; much of the plot will come from youse, and I’m still working on the more general elements like setting. It will be set either within a few decades of the present day or just in the present day, and will take a lot of cues from cliché murder mysteries.
If you’re raring to go, please note that, until things are set in stone, I’m not giving you a sheet or anything to work with (because I’m not yet sure precisely what information I’m looking for), but you can by all means think about what your character’s dirty secret is or ask me any questions you might have.
Eagle-eyed Eurovision fans among you might spot that Mr. Jig’s faceclaim is the guy that represented Belgium this year.
Sheet:
I really can't accommodate more than six players, so I'm going to choose people based on the sheets they send me, because that seems to be the only fair way. I'm still tweaking things in my mind, so feel free to be perhaps a little more general in the specifics of the sheet than you might otherwise be inclined to be. If you have any questions about the RP that you simply must ask before you broach the sheet, ask away. It would be really really really unbelievably great if I could get all of the sheets in by Friday/Saturday, because we can't really move on until we know who we're moving on with.
