Goals:
Murder mystery goals are one of the most important parts of any online or in-person murder mystery game that you’re playing. Depending on which game you’re playing, and which company crafted it, they may be called ambitions, objectives, motivations, or really anything that implies a desire for your in-game character. If you are playing a murder mystery where your character doesn’t have any specific goals, then it’s likely you’ve purchased some form of pre-written party box or murder mystery kit that is nothing more than a scripted stage reading that you get to awkwardly do with your friends. Simply put, if your murder mystery doesn’t have some kind of objective for every individual character then it’s not a very good murder mystery (in our humble opinion).
Do you know what your goals are?
There’s a surprisingly large number of murder mystery games out there that don’t have goals for every individual player. Sometimes these games focus on more of a collaborative type of storytelling, but more often than not this style of game is simply created for people who have no desire to do anything more than regurgitate a plot in the company of friends. At Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries we encourage all of our players to get into their character and become part of the narrative as opposed to some plot-parroting cog within someone else’s story. If you don’t have a goal in the hole, then you clearly don’t have the D’s in your mysteries. Any freeform style murder mysteries without goals simply fall flat in the end.
Murder Mysteries with Multiple Goals:
Over the years, we’ve found it very important to have murder mystery characters with multiple goals. Some other murder mystery groups might only give you one goal for the entire game. While this might be extremely easy to digest, it also leads to the implication that there can be only one winner at the end of the night. At Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries, we do things a little differently. Regardless of which DD game you are playing, there is just no way that you’re going to only have one goal. Just like in real life, what kind of character has only one goal? Do you think detective Johnson only cares about solving the murder? No, he’s concerned about his ex-wife who’s sleeping with some scumbag who’s influencing his son to not play baseball anymore. He’s concerned about the gum on the bottom of the seat on the tram car that he takes to work every morning. What if one morning he forgets and accidentally loads the underside of his fingernail with used gum? Detective Johnson is worried that the sausage sandwich he ate this morning might give him the farts while he’s trying to solve the crime with that handsome new intern. Characters are, and should be, unique and complex. Some other games simply lack this complexity. While Dastardly Deeds games usually won’t go so far as to tell you how your character’s stomach is feeling, it is our goal to create for every character a rich and bold jumping off point that gives you as the player the liberty to create these nuances. The guidelines and the concepts we give for each character are a much stronger starting point to create these intricate stories for yourself. Every character in every Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries game will have an array of goals ranging from complex to mundane. It will always be up to you as the player to determine the importance of these goals and the methods you will utilize to achieve them. Along with multiple goals comes multiple avenues for victory or defeat.
Goals can become exceptionally difficult in a 20 player game…
Who Wins:
The open format style in which all Dastardly Deeds games are crafted means that it can be incredibly difficult to determine who wins. This is intentional. This is real. In life, there’s seldom a clear-cut winner. As every individual character strives to complete their own goals and fulfill their desires, other players’ goals will be roadblocked along the way. The assessment of your goals will create a story that is unique to the way you played your character. The success story or failure that you have incarnated as your character throughout the game is uniquely your own. While there certainly have been clear-cut winners in many of our games and playtests, oftentimes there are no obvious losers (well, unless you get murdered). Again, like in real life, a victory is often a relatively subjective thing. The combination of the character’s prewritten goals in concert with the unique players that you bring to your game assures that every Dastardly Deeds game will be a unique experience.
Get Your Mind Off the Board:
Sometimes people can find it extremely hard to get your mind off the board. In this case, I’m referring to board games. When you’re playing a game like Parcheesi, there’s always a clear-cut victor at the end of the night and everyone else is defeated. In a murder mystery game, there are far more varying shades of gray. Aside from the infinite ways in which every player may interpret their character’s goals, there is also an exponential number of ways that a player can attempt to achieve them. Maybe it is one of your goals to marry a certain character during the game and assure they don’t marry anyone else. By halfway through the game you’ve determined that character wants nothing to do with you and is instead pining after another character. You’ve assumed that they want to marry that other character instead of you. You decide instead of trying to woo them in a lost cause, to start spreading slanderous rumors about the other character that they are courting. By the end of the night, your lies have worked, and the other character ends up getting hauled off to jail. You didn’t achieve your goal of marrying the character you wanted, but you also made sure that they didn’t marry anyone else during the game, since you got their would-be love interest thrown in jail. This is what I mean by shades of gray. While your goal wasn’t necessarily achieved, you got some sweet, sweet vengeance out of it in the long run. The reason freestyle murder mystery games like this are so much fun is that they allow you to create a living and breathing world with your friends, family, and coworkers that is unlike anything anyone else has ever done. While the plot points and goals are the same, the choices and the characterization that everyone represents assures an entirely different outcome every time you play a murder mystery game. At its heart, this is what makes Dastardly Deeds games different from almost any other game you’ve played before. Do yourself a favor and ditch the murder mystery box kits and murder mystery dinner parties and go straight to a game where you get to create the story with your crew. While this may sound daunting to the individual player, just know that in every murder mystery game you’re not working alone to create the story. Every player, along with their unique gameplay style, adds to the flavor and creates a scenario that is unique to your group.
Keep your goals in mind when you’re casting a new film!
It’s time to take your games to the next level and stop thinking two-dimensionally. Get your mind out of the pigeon-toed concept of winners and losers. Ditch the scripted readings from various other murder mystery companies. Understand that sometimes when you’re playing a complex role-playing style game that the outcomes will be much more intricate than a game of Parcheesi. With dozens of unique goals and dozens of intriguing characters, the only limit in a Dastardly Deeds Murder Mystery is the imagination of you and the people you’re playing with.
What are your goals?
