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Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery Game - Case Solved - Tejas did it the fastest!

AnonymousDeac said:
Well done, tejas. And thanks for running this, dv7. Assuming you had to manually type everything up that's a lot of work.
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No worries.

Yeah, but since most people do the same locations, I could then just copy/paste into PMs.

The bitch was the opening and solution pages. May just take a picture of those for next time.



Speaking of... any interest in another case next week?

I might play along as it is a case I haven't played before.
 
deacvision7 said:
No worries.

Yeah, but since most people do the same locations, I could then just copy/paste into PMs.

The bitch was the opening and solution pages. May just take a picture of those for next time.



Speaking of... any interest in another case next week?

I might play along as it is a case I haven't played before.
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Im interested. These are fun

And yeah save yourself some work and take pictures if needed
 
helps my typing skills for when i need to write reports.... but it did get old in a hurry
 
My thought process when I did this case a few months ago...

1a) The Old Bailey -- Clearly it wasn't Stillwater that committed the crime, otherwise... it wouldn't be a case to try and solve, so let's go talk to the accused suspect to see what he can say on the matter.
- learned about the letter from Sir Alfred to come to the house at 930
- learned about the shout
- Stillwater protested his innocence
- broken glass in Sir Alfred's study (ended up not mattering, but I remember thinking it was important)

1b) Sommerset House - never costs a turn so figure it couldn't hurt
- Saw that Sir Alfred had lots of money to give out and everybody was getting a fair shake
- But nobody was getting a crazy amount which could make them want to commit a murder
- Greed for money was then dropped as a possible motive in my mind

2) Sipton Tea Company - We learned from Mrs. Sipton that Sir Alfred had withdrawn himself from the day-to-day runnings of the business, but that didn't mean he was totally detached.
- clue about a great chunk of product (40%) being sold to an American firm but with no record of the sale, hinted at the books being cooked
- Thomson confirmed as the boss of STC

3) St. Bart's - I just wanted to check to see if Jasper Meeks saw anything in the cause of death that was strange. I didn't expect to get what I got out of the visit
- cause of death was the stabbing, but Sir Alfred was near death anyway
- would may not have been lethal if he wasn't an old man in such a frail condition already

4) Dr. Agar - once I heard about the physical condition of the dead Sir Alfred, I looked back at the case intro and found his physician
- the doctor confirmed that Sir Alfred only had days or weeks to live and that everyone knew it -- so this wasn't a murder for anything in the will, otherwise just sit on it
- learned that Sir Alfred couldn't yell -- blowing up Stillwater's story about SA yelling "murderer!" when he entered the room, so somebody else had to be present

5) Mr. and Mrs. Thomson's room - my worst visit, personally, just a bunch of misdirection towards Stillwater from Mrs. Thomson. Did hear Mr. Thomson's alibi from him directly, however.

6) Thomson children's room - clue that brought it all together
- Older boy saw his dead right after the scream, blowing up Roger Thomson's alibi
- nanny seemed clueless


Once I knew that the older Roger Thomson lied about his alibi, then I knew he had *something* to do with the murder. So thought about what a motive could be and went back to the unexplained funds from Sipton Tea Company. Figured embezzlement and we have a motive and why Roger couldn't wait for Alfred to just die of natural causes.

I whiffed on the bonus questions and just saw the newspaper article. Hard to solve that one without knowing the questions ahead of time, but tejas got a decent clue at the Raven & Rat so he could make an educated guess.
 
This was a blast, DV7, thanks for typing everything and moderating. I had a ton of fun chatting with my sister between our work commitments about our decisions. I'd definitely recommend playing with a partner, if it is possible!

Initially, I didn't realize we could visit characters that didn't have addresses by their names, so Dr. Agar was not on our list. That would have helped early. Honestly, both of us theorized the correct solution after only a single visit, St. Barts, because the plot tracks relatively closely on another very famous detective story. So we spent most of our time trying to confirm and complicate our guess -- when the solution was pretty simple. Seems like Nonny fell into this trap too, trying to imagine a much more intricate set of motivations than the ultimate solution turned out to have. Questions like "How did the Thomson children figure in the case" also implied to me a much greater role. Fortunately, we'd gotten the hang of it by the end.

I think we'll be much better off next game knowing how things work. Also, the better strategy appears to do some random investigations to try to investigate the possibilities for bonus questions, since you're only losing 5 points per turn.

I can also see the path that the game mechanics imagine you to take: scene of the crime (study) > office > children's room. We gained a round by skipping straight to the office, but were led slightly astray by our visit to Hofstadter.
 
When you play in person, you don't see the Essential Questions until after you feel like you can solve the case.

I thought it might help, but I could see how that could complicate things as people are investigating.
 
A couple of red herrings for us:

1) all the Salvation Army stuff, like Nonny said, seemed really important. Felt like obvious misdirection once we learned the mechanics
2) Dummy Stillwater's glasses were clearly not broken after being tacked to the floor by the cops. That seemed suspicious.
3) The disheveled office and torn-out calendar page: implied that either the murderer had learned about the solicitor meeting while ransacking the office (then why hadn't Sir Albert noticed) or that the office-searcher had been trying to erase some appointment from Friday, the day of the murder. Still not certain what that was.
4) I realize Holmes' solution is just to rate the difficulty of the case (number of turns) and reveal the most efficient path, but how did Holmes' possibly figure out about the impending change in the will without the clue about the solicitor's appointment? Also, lol, my sister pointed out that Holmes admits he was in study -- should have been an extra investigation!

We also tried to visit the nanny early on, but she didn't have a response because she was in the kids' room. An awareness of this kind of stuff will be helpful going forward.
 
deacvision7 said:
When you play in person, you don't see the Essential Questions until after you feel like you can solve the case.

I thought it might help, but I could see how that could complicate things as people are investigating.
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Ah, gotcha. I think your impulse was the correct one. In the end, it only cost us one investigation -- we wouldn't have gone to the Thomson's parents' room at all (though that did ultimately confirm that Roger was lying, though it did open new suspicions into Penelope, who we'd never heard of before).
 
The broken glass from the veranda door should have been important because its position on the inside or outside of the door frame would reveal whether the murderer broke in the door or out of the door. The narrative implies that it is on the outside, on the veranda, since Stillwater was tackled out. Since Sir Albert supposedly left it open for Stillwater, I'm not sure how it was broken at all. But at that point we didn't know that the study connected to the office which connected to the children's room.

Also, another red herring: Hofstadter says he's basically the only one who can read Sir Albert's writing, so it made Stillwater's claims about the letter more questionable. That didn't end up mattering.
 
deacvision7 said:
Once I knew that the older Roger Thomson lied about his alibi, then I knew he had *something* to do with the murder. So thought about what a motive could be and went back to the unexplained funds from Sipton Tea Company. Figured embezzlement and we have a motive and why Roger couldn't wait for Alfred to just die of natural causes.

I whiffed on the bonus questions and just saw the newspaper article. Hard to solve that one without knowing the questions ahead of time, but tejas got a decent clue at the Raven & Rat so he could make an educated guess.
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Ah, so you, like Holmes, never even knew about the solicitor's appointment and the exigency of Roger behavior. That makes sense. Though I wasn't entirely comfortable speculating about that until I had the info. Seems like players have to balance jumping to conclusions with waiting too long.

So the bonus questions are never available until after you finish? I'd never have thought to visit any of the places that would provide that info because they are totally disconnected from the case at hand.
 
wakephan09 said:
The broken glass from the veranda door should have been important because its position on the inside or outside of the door frame would reveal whether the murderer broke in the door or out of the door. The narrative implies that it is on the outside, on the veranda, since Stillwater was tackled out. Since Sir Albert supposedly left it open for Stillwater, I'm not sure how it was broken at all. But at that point we didn't know that the study connected to the office which connected to the children's room.

Also, another red herring: Hofstadter says he's basically the only one who can read Sir Albert's writing, so it made Stillwater's claims about the letter more questionable. That didn't end up mattering.
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Disagree! I hadn't seen that clue before but it was a hint that Sir Alfred couldn't have written the letter to Stillwater inviting him to the house and somebody else must have written it instead. Just doubled down on how Roger Thomson got Stillwater into the room to frame him for the murder.

I think you were the only one that saw that clue though.
 
wakephan09 said:
Ah, so you, like Holmes, never even knew about the solicitor's appointment and the exigency of Roger behavior. That makes sense. Though I wasn't entirely comfortable speculating about that until I had the info. Seems like players have to balance jumping to conclusions with waiting too long.

So the bonus questions are never available until after you finish? I'd never have thought to visit any of the places that would provide that info because they are totally disconnected from the case at hand.
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When you play in person you dont know ANY of the questions as you are going from clue point to clue point -- I mean, you can *guess* what will be the main questions, based on the case itself, but don't know for sure until you decide you are ready to solve the case.

The bonus questions are really just there to help you build points back up since you probably won't solve the main case as quickly as Holmes. 50 bonus points is worth 10 extra clue locations.
 
deacvision7 said:
When you play in person, you don't see the Essential Questions until after you feel like you can solve the case.

I thought it might help, but I could see how that could complicate things as people are investigating.
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Agree with wakephan's commentary. Definitely would have a better feel for things the second time around. Tried to complicate things too much when in reality, best path was the most obvious (not to mention 3 of Holmes' 4 stops were in the initial Hint for recommended places).

And I think it'd potentially improve the game if you didn't get the Essential Questions until after you stated you were done searching and ready to solve.
 
deacvision7 said:
When you play in person you dont know ANY of the questions as you are going from clue point to clue point -- I mean, you can *guess* what will be the main questions, based on the case itself, but don't know for sure until you decide you are ready to solve the case.

The bonus questions are really just there to help you build points back up since you probably won't solve the main case as quickly as Holmes. 50 bonus points is worth 10 extra clue locations.
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"50 bonus points is worth 10 extra clue locations."

This is big. If you have any doubt about your case, 100% worthwhile to continue exploring.

Also - are the bonus questions always about a separate case? Meaning do they always have to do with illegal activity that we/Holmes is uncovering?
 
AnonymousDeac said:
(not to mention 3 of Holmes' 4 stops were in the initial Hint for recommended places).
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ooh, this is a good point. We figured those hints were supposed to be obvious starting points, not the only essential stops.
 
deacvision7 said:
Disagree! I hadn't seen that clue before but it was a hint that Sir Alfred couldn't have written the letter to Stillwater inviting him to the house and somebody else must have written it instead. Just doubled down on how Roger Thomson got Stillwater into the room to frame him for the murder.

I think you were the only one that saw that clue though.
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Ah, nevermind. That's definitely what we concluded too.
 
wakephan09 said:
The broken glass from the veranda door should have been important because its position on the inside or outside of the door frame would reveal whether the murderer broke in the door or out of the door. The narrative implies that it is on the outside, on the veranda, since Stillwater was tackled out. Since Sir Albert supposedly left it open for Stillwater, I'm not sure how it was broken at all. But at that point we didn't know that the study connected to the office which connected to the children's room.

Also, another red herring: Hofstadter says he's basically the only one who can read Sir Albert's writing, so it made Stillwater's claims about the letter more questionable. That didn't end up mattering.
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The broken glass puzzled me too, but I ultimately decided not to worry too much about it
 
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