Hi there,
We've been working on a story-driven hardboiled detective board game for a long while now that pits a single Private Detective up against 3-4 suspects of a crime. The detective travels the board to different locations to uncover clues, evidence, find witnesses/informants, etc.
When the P.I. collects certain evidence or has encounters with certain people he "unlocks" an interview/interrogation with specific suspects. Which is something we've been struggling with for a long time. It's a huge part of the role of the detective and is essential to gaining deeper insights in to the case which could potentially help him solve it. I also thought it would be really fun and different if the players had some sort of verbal interaction with eachother, but somehow make it a gameplay element considering the game is so character-, story-, and theme-heavy.
At first I was thinking of something like the board game equivalent to dialogue trees in an action RPG or something. But couldn't think of a practical way to implement that without getting way too complicated.
Then I thought of trying to make it as simple as possible. Our friend suggested checking out L.A. Noire's interviews again (a tall order, considering that game bored the hell out of me). But it did have a relatively simple interrogation process - Detect the truths & lies, or express doubt. I think there's something there, but just couldn't come up with anything.
One thing we started working on, and sort of liked, but wasn't practical (for reasons we'll explain later) was the use of interrogation cards. The detective player will have a card with a series of questions (not a lot, maybe 5 or so) And the particular suspect will have a card with all the possible answers to each question. The P.I will ask the player a question and the suspect can choose one of the several answers. One may be the truth (as much of it without incriminating himself), one answer may be a dodge, one may be a weak lie, one may be a strong lie, etc. Each answer has a cost, and the suspect spends tokens on the answer. The "better" the answer for the suspect, the higher the cost. (i.e. a strong lie may cost, say 5 tokens, while a dodge may just cost 2. If he is out of tokens, he has to tell the truth)
Players have the fun bit of verbal interaction and getting in to character, and the story continues from there. The detective player decides what to do with the information gotten from the interview. This is a true detective game. The detective must solve the whos, whats, and whys of the case. It's not just, "Okay I collected evidence X, Y, and Z, therefore I win" Instead the detective player interviews witnesses, interrogates suspects (who may or may not be lying) and collects evidence and puts it all together.
The reason why this approach wasn't practical is because each case can play out differently. Depending on pre-game choices, a different party may be guilty. Having different interview cards for each case variant is just not realistic. Though gameplay is pretty straight forward and intuitive, the interview/interrogation element is going to be the most complex part, we just don't want it to be SO complex that it halts the rest of the game.
Any suggestions or ideas?
Thanks!
J & P
In addition, the PI needs to answer 3 questions (the who, why, what). I tend to think of these as Who committed the crime, Why did they commit the crime (motive), and What steps did they take to commit the crime?
That's exactly right.
Not sure what you mean, exactly. Maybe I answered below. But we definitely don't want it to ALWAYS be binary, simply right/wrong, lies/truth. That's boring. We want to be more ambitious. Like every good hard-boiled detective magazine or noir film there's a lot of grey. Instead the detective player makes a choice based on information recieved. It may be between Choice A and Choice B, but not necessarily right or wrong. One path may be more challenging than the other, but it's not necessarily a wrong or bad choice. Which we think is interesting, and allows the player to make his/her own meaningful decisions. Especially if it's between 2 hard choices. (We took a cue from the Walking Dead game here, which is excellent. We come from a Video Game background)
Sort of like the Detective going with his gut.
By comparing the information he recieves with the evidence he's collected. If a suspect or witness says one thing, but the evidence says otherwise, he knows they're lying or not being completely truthful, depending.
For instance let say you're on a case where a fight promoter is murdered and boxer John Smith says, "No way, I wasn't at Frank's that night." But you found a cufflink or a pocket watch or whatever with the initlas J.S. while investigating Frank's place a few game rounds back.
How is the guilty party determined at the start of the game?
We have a "casebook" that has all the included cases/scenarios. So before you set up it'll have a series of questions and answers.
Q1. Who killed the mayor?
A1. Suspect 1 A2. Suspect 2 A3. Suspect 3
Q2. Why? Motive?
A1. Because x A2. Because y A3. Because z
etc.
Something like that. We kind of like the idea, and thought is was the easiest way to do it. What do you think?
Once those are answered, you can start setting up the game by placing locations on the board and building the location decks, etc. The set up is done by the Femme Fatale player, who plays completely differently than the detective and the suspects for a nice bit of asymmetrical gameplay.
Thanks! We really love our concept and think we have some interesting and different ideas (but doesn't everybody? :) ) We sort of rekindled our love of board games over the past couple years. When I found my old copy of HeroQuest and Mutant Chronicles in my parents garage! This whole thing started when we had the idea of "what if you turn the Overloard mechanic from HeroQuest or Descent on its head?" So instead of 1vs. 5 heroes, you have 5vs.1 hero.
Thanks for the help. Looking forward to hearing your ideas!
- J & P