How do you Role Play a Murder Investigation?

Hello folks, I need your help. I have seen a trend in the three Campaigns I play in a series of "Murder Investigations". What I am seeking is a step by step procedure for success.

We hav under taken a Murder Investigation to discover the TRUTH of the old the Executive Vice President of a AA Corp.

We actually need to find evidence and witnesses to testify.

How do YOU run a MURDER INVESTIGATION?

Step by Step if you please or really good links.

Thanks

QM

depends on how you want to do it. if you want realism, the GM will have to determine the details of the crime scene and let you puzzle things out on your own--determine the model of the weapon from ballistic evidence, dust for fingerprints, etcetera. if you want some realism but not too much, just roll your Crime Scene Investigation skill, and the GM will tell you what you've learned based on successes. if you want to investigate it action movie-style, all you have to do is pick up the one glaring piece of obvious evidence at the crime scene that the cops missed, follow it to the shady contact or beautiful woman, and wait for the ninjas to appear.

Well, depends on how long since the victem died or was attacked.

How professional were the perps?

Did they have access to the sterilize spell?

Did they use it on every square inch?

Did they touch anything for any length of time, like lean against a wall?

Did the perps lay flase trails?

Do the perps match the ethnicity of the general staff or maintenance crew (as janitors largely are completely replaced by drones, where the repair/service crews doubled to maintain them)?

Those are some of the things the GM needs to know
The players should make several perception tests for observation in detail, I'd do it for each piece of the "grid" involved. Make pertinent evidence 3 successes or higher, start with a TN of 4 and modify based on size and obvisousness. (a snake scale on the floor will be wierd, unless it's in the reptile house at the zoo).

You as the GM should decide what clues are in what space in the grid, you should know the basic schedule for the cleaning drones, you should know if the guy that replaced the light bulb in 3-c last night has exema. Don't be afraid of red herrings, they make these investigations more fun, just don't over use them. if 4 out of 5 pieces of "evidence" turn into red-herrings, the players will stop looking for them. but one or two can provide a platform for jokes, revelations about the victem, or an opportunity to branch into new fields of study.

Players should be encouraged to take really diverse knowledge skills, the only ones that need to be exceptioanlyl high are a biotech background, psychology/behavioral science, ballistics and forensics. But the CSI type games allow those strange skills no one ever seems to grow to really shine, like Pistol knowledge or herpatology.

From a players perspective I am assuming? I think by far the most important thing to keep in mind is characterization. How a group of Lone Star street cops wil pursue an investigation may be the same in basic technique as a gutterscum street punks, the tone will be vastly different.

It's important to remember a few basic things here:

The Chain of Evidence is a crucial point for any legal investigations. The definition:

Having been involved in the prosecution end of a number of murder investigations, I'd offer the following.

A police murder investigation is a long, long, long process. It is not something where you go to the crime scene, find the Secret Clue™ which leads you to the Shady Character ™ that leads you to a shoot out with the murderer in an abandoned amusement park. It involves scores, even hundreds of police speaking to every conceivable person in the entire suburb, spending hours and days at a crime scene photographing, collating, cataloguing, categorising, and then transporting car loads of things to a lab that takes more than a sixty-minute CSI episode to sort out the forensics (try nine to twelve months, if you're lucky). It involves days of evidence gathering, speaking to witnesses, leaning on people, and finally the arrest which is followed by about two years of court appearances, hearings, applications and finally a two-week trial.

Believe me when I say that this is a boring process which is absolutely no fun to roleplay.

Bearing that in mind the above, as a GM you need to streamline the investigation and amp up the exiting bits. The advantages that shadowrunners have over a police investigation is the absence of legal hassles, for example beating the crap out of someone who just isn't telling you what you want to know. They also have the added advantage of people of a shady nature being more likely to speak to them because, not to put too fine a point on it, they aren't cops.

As a player, the usual way to handle it is this. Establish who was in the area at the time (ie who had access). In that list, start with the people who have the most motive. Lean on them. Leaning on them might not be a matter of grabbing them off the street, putting them in a room with a bright light in their eyes and buying up on plastic hoses, bitumen and drop sheets. It might be phoning them up and saying (in a deep accusatory voice) "I know what you did" and then watching them, including monitoring all outgoing calls when they phone the accomplice and panic, and seeing what they give you.

Your GM is either going to let you do the movie thing where you go to the crime scene and spot the earring hidden under the sofa or the tiny spot of wax on the doorframe, or s/he's not. Personally, as a GM, if a player doesn't have a Forensics or similar skill they're probably out of luck, but it depends on who is running your game. If you get to muck around in the crime scene then do the obvious things like photographing it first, checking for prints, checking entry and egress points (including recording whether they were locked), checking for any signs of people being there and checking therein for forensics like DNA on the rims of cups or cigarette buts, and snoop on everything you can find (messages on phones, harddrives on computers). Find any obvious reasons why the guy might be dead (like signs of a drug bust gone wrong).

From there it's really about contacts and your ability to beat information out of people.

If you give us more info on the circumstances we can probably help more. It's all pretty much guess work without that.

If you want to sacrifice a bit of reality and learn the value of good pacing, watch a few episodes of "Law & Order."

I love that show....

Aw, layin' on the Law & Order hate.

I actually don't mind that show, but that show and CSI could take place on mars with underwear models that prance around in lingire and would be about as realistic.

Ok, seriously, Law & Order doesn't deserve to be tossed in with CSI. That's just sick.

About a year ago I posted a campaign profile for a Law & Order inspired campaign that dealt with the Magical Investigation squad. You may find it if you do a search.

We only got one adventure into it when I moved (again), but there is a discussion of the Law Enforcement groups in the newest SOTA book. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (stupid grad school), but it may have some info to help in what you're trying to do.

From a role-playing perspective, you should definitely go with a film-noir type plot. From a GM preperation angle, you need to develop good characters, then
1) walk them through what's happened during and since the incident being investigated.
2) write down just what they know in point form, then what they THINK they know
3) write down their motives ie: what pc's need to do to get them to talk
4) write down where and how they can be found.

A staple of classic mysteries is to present the investigator with the necessary, key clue early on in the story, but they must learn more about the secrets of the people involved in order to put that clue into context.
70's and 80's Batman comics actually used this technique a lot.

"She's my sister AND my daughter!!!!"

You think that my method would take too long?

Scenario:
Shadowrunner comes home one day to find his roommate shot dead. The perp was lucky and left almost no physical evidence behind (at least none that can be analyzed with our hero's resources.)
The guy across the hall, Jay happened to be looking out the spy-hole when it happened, and knows that Dennis, the orc in suite 12, was the shooter. Jay is drek scared of Dennis, though, but broke and badly needing dental surgery.

So the runner starts asking around the apartment:
"Hey Jay, you hear any gunshots this morning."
"Oh, man." says Jay "Keep me out of this."
Aha thinks the runner. "Hey Jay, that tooth looks like it hurts, tell me what you know and I'll pay your dental bill for you."
Jay is not too smart. "Forget it man, Dennis'll knock out all my teeth if.... oops."
"Dennis who? The orc in 12?"
So the runner knocks on door 12. Dennis's girlfriend answers. He just knocked her up and dumped her, so she hates him and wants to see him suffer.
"Hey Cheryl." Says the runner, "where's Dennis?"
"That Bastard comes in here about noon, said he just shot someone and he's gonna hide out for a bit. He usually hides out at his mother's. Shoot him once for me, okay."
Runner goes to Dennis Mom's and shoots him, saying something clever like "I don't need evidence, I have a gun."

1 karma, next run, please

Edit: yeah, I know it doesn't fit QM's campaign specifically.