03 / A detective game for a group
AI Murder Mystery.
A detective evening in which every character has secrets and goals, while an AI game master helps the world respond to players.
Why I started it
This is an idea for four to ten people and an evening of roughly two to three hours. Players meet around a table, receive characters and their relationships, and discover a crime. Each has only part of the information, a personal goal and a reason not to tell the whole story at once. Investigation comes from talking to each other, examining clues and questioning people in the game world.
I am less interested in a technology demo where AI can invent forever than in an evening people will discuss days later. That needs a fair mystery. The clues must support an explanation, and the answer should depend on players’ observations and questions rather than a model’s mood.
One rule: the truth exists before play
The culprit, sequence of events, available evidence and each character’s knowledge are fixed in advance. A language model may play an NPC, respond within that character’s knowledge and help pace a scene. It may not change the culprit, invent new evidence or leak a secret the player could not know.
This boundary is about more than reliability. It keeps the game’s promise to the group: the world can respond in surprising ways without moving the solution halfway through an investigation. The first experiment will be one hand-written case for a small group. A phone may provide a private channel for each player, while the shared conversation remains the heart of the game.
- Every player has a role, relationships, goals and secrets
- The truth and timeline are fixed
- AI reacts without rewriting evidence
- The game centres on a group at one table
Current state and next experiment
The project is still at concept and design stage. There is no finished game engine or playable evening yet. The immediate task is to write one case, distribute knowledge between characters and see whether the mystery survives unexpected questions.
What comes next
Prepare a short case for four to six players, run a paper playtest and only then build a minimal browser interface. If the story does not work without an app, an app will not rescue it.
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