Deception: Murder on Quarter to Three Forum Game

How interesting. Thank you.

I agree with whoever earlier in the thread noted that that severe injury as cause of death suggests blunt force trauma (or burning/exploding) rather than something sharp and pointy, poisonous, or suffocating.

With that in mind, the most likely suspects for severe injury (looking at means only):
CraigM: No blunt force items here, but matches and lighter could both suggest burning, which I suppose would be consistent with severe injury.
CFKane: Trophy and Electric Baton are possibilities here.
Rothda: Gunpowder (explosions!) and brick are both reasonably likely.
Soon: Has the stone.
Scott: Steel pipe and wrench.
RichVR: Unarmed.
Snebmi: Candlestick, Machete (if dismemberment is different from blood loss)

For Kitchen, taking into account all items:
CraigM Cleaver, Lighter, Matches
Rothda Cockroach, Powder
RichVR Coffee, invitation (maybe on the fridge?)
Snebmi Peanut, Candlestick (if this is an eat-in kitchen)
Matt Spork, Blender
Lantz Spoiled Food

Based on these, it seems like Craig, Rothda, RichVR, and Snebmi are the most likely killers…

I’ll do my own initial analysis in a bit.

I usually play board games with a bunch of computer programmers, and in their quest to suck all the joy out of life they would note that the game can be broken by using a clearer encoding.

For each player there are (4 x 4) possible murder configurations. There are 11 players.
So there are (4 x 4) * 11 = 176 possible solutions that we need to distinguish between.

The Forensic Investigator can convey information to us by placing bullets down on one of 6 spots on 6 (total) cards. So the FI has 6^6 bits of information to work with. But really, all they need is 6^3 = 216 bits in order to distinguish between all the different possible solutions. They could just place their first 3 bullets in order to form a base-6 number, and then we would translate that number into a particular Clue/Means of murder. It should work 100% of the time, unless the Murderer guesses the Witness correctly by blind luck. So it would work 100% of the time, 88.8% of the time.

Also, I’m not the murderer. That should narrow things down.

That was me:

Cleaver sticks out to me, and steel pipe was the biggest but scott doesn’t have anything to suggest kitchen. I’m suspecting Craig at this point, I think, but I’m nowhere near sure.

Or me, a few posts above. :)

Hey guys, I just realized something. It’s probably a weapon that goes POW! rather than SNICKER-SNACK since Jorn picked Severe Injury instead of Loss of Blood. Someone run with this! Thank me later.

I should have made a better write-up for the process. The Cause of Death card is the same each game, and I choose one of six. I also choose one of the four tiles with locations that are linked upthread. The four scene clue tiles are randomized, and after I have placed all six bullets and we have done the initial presentation round, one of those will be replaced. We do another round of presentations after some open debate, and then another scene clue tile is replaced.

Speaking of scene clues:

Hmmm, conflict suggests some sort of improvised weapon, like a candlestick or a wrench or a brick or something.

Gunpowder would be another interpretation of Conflict.

I agree that all of the general bludgeon things fit too so far.

Which could also just be something you find in a kitchen. Cleaver is fitting well for me right now, because while it’s not quite a bludgeon, I would put it at severe injury rather than bleeding because that’s probably how you would die from that.

Sorry, I didn’t see that until now. I was skimming through the thread as I’ve been busy this weekend.

Yeah, good point. And indeed @CraigM is a suspicious sounding name. How could you trust someone with that name?

Does the M stand for Murderer?

Does Tom work for the TSA now?

Tom is dead. Carry on.

The social relationships one will be interesting considering the victim.

I don’t get the improvised part of that. Given the choices on Incident, it seems like it’d imply a fight or physical violence of any kind.

Not sure if the Social board will help too much as the Location seems to already imply a familiarity between the victim and murderer. It seems to rule out Strangers but any of the others might be in a kitchen together.

Build probably doesn’t matter too much. State of the Scene could help us narrow it down a bit, as Disorderly or Bits/Pieces could point more towards bloodstains or something like a jar of powder breaking all over the place.

Social would lead to more indications of the clue though. Yeah it took me a while to understand how that could help us. But different clues could have value for that. Love letter being an obvious example where social could be of high value.

Build could in general be used to indicate something about the means: a weapon is a bit more likely for a healthy/muscular culprit, while an small/underweight person is less likely to engage in a direct physical attack, preferring to rely on subterfuge.

It’s all a bit academic at the moment though.

If someone wants to cash in their badge and make an accusation, please state so in the thread. We should then pause until that has been resolved. I do believe accusations are rare until after the first presentation.

Here is the next scene clue:

Hm, that doesn’t tell us too much unfortunately. Rules out severe injury by spork, maybe.

EDIT: actually it’s murderer’s build, not victim (durr), so spork is still valid!