LET JUSTICE BE DONE
A downloadable Mystery TTRPG
LET JUSTICE BE DONE...
The bungalow was locked from the inside with no sign of false entry. Every one of the other guests, each as cruel and greedy as the victim himself, have unbreakable alibis. And the notorious fashion designer is, to all appearances, the victim of suicide.
But the police know it can’t be that simple. So they do what they always do: They call you, the famed consulting detectives, to find what they missed.
Within moments of investigating the scene, you can conclude, with confidence, that there was no foul play. It was a simple suicide and nobody is responsible for his death but the man himself.
What you have now… is an opportunity. If you play this right, if you gather the right clues, ask the right questions, and plant the right evidence, you could end the night not with one cruel millionaire dealt with, but seven. The only question is… can you get away with it?
...THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL
Let Justice Be Done is a one-shot murder mystery game inspired by Brindlewood Bay, Eat The Reich, and Blades in the Dark. In it, you play ingenius Consultant Detectives who use their skills of deduction to discover (and invent) Clues to frame the wealthy for crimes they absolutely didn't commit.
But be careful: If your suspects start to figure out exactly what you're up to, you could find yourself in a world of trouble that they absolutely will not let you escape...
FEATURES
- Beat The Rich: Want the satisfaction of taking down rich billionaires who never seem to suffer any consequences in our world? Well now you can with two original mysteries featuring thinly-veiled versions of Elon Musk and the Murdoch family!
- Fast Character Creation: Make fun and eccentric consultant detectives reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, Jane Marple, or Benoir Blanc in a few short moments, ready to be unleashed on unsuspecting oligarchs.
- Make Your Own Solution: Sure, there's real things that happened, but this game is about players creating their own solution to the mystery
- Ideal For One-Shots: Designed to last a single session, starting slow and building up rapidly, making it perfect for any murder mystery party you might throw!
- No Cops: With the rules as written, you absolutely cannot play cops, who are All Bastards! This game isn't about how good cops are at solving crimes, but about the failures of the justice system and how to manipulate it to make your own justice.
- No Combat: This game is a rare example of a TTRPG without HP or armor or weapon damage. You just investigate crimes and solve them with a well-presented case. You can do fistfights or shootouts, but I imagine that'd just complicate things.
INSPIRATIONS
- The Wire
- Succession
- Glass Onion
- Cluedo
- Brindlewood Bay
- Eat The Reich
- Blades in the Dark
PRESS
- Hendrik ten Napel wrote a blog post about the game in relation to the Carved from Brindlewood genre, asking, "How does it feel to solve a mystery in a roleplaying game that doesn't come with an answer?"
CREDITS
Writing, Design, Layout, & Art by Mynar Lenahan.
Cover art based upon Conference At Night by Edward Hopper.
Status | Released |
Category | Physical game |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (10 total ratings) |
Author | Mynar Lenahan |
Tags | brindlewood, consultant-detective, Detective, Forged in the Dark, murder, Mystery, Tabletop role-playing game |
Purchase
In order to download this Mystery TTRPG you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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Got this as part of the Palestine charity bundle. I ran it for two of my friends and it was my first time DMing (or playing any TTRPG) ever.
We had a great time! Overall I think it's a really easy game to pick up and play. The mechanics are easy to understand and I think there's a lot more collaboration to be wrung out of coming up with a theory of the crime that implicates persons of your choice rather than trying to solve a predetermined mystery.
Some notes about the game we played for other players:
- The cases included with the game were really easy to modify, which I did. I replaced some of the clues with ones that implicated an outsider as the murderer to encourage my players to fabricate. They didn't, but they did figure out how to use those clues in an unexpected way.
- We played pretty fast and loose with whether traits applied, and allowed one detective to gain dice from the other's traits. That might be against the rules, but it was fun! Might not be feasible with a bigger group though.
- Suspicion is completely optional as the game is currently written. If we play again or I had a bigger group I think it might be fun to experiment with making it more of a problem for them, but I also thinking keeping it optional lets the game be casual and lets the characters really focus on the catharsis of fucking up bad people.
- I modified clues on the fly but even so my players often needed clarification on whether certain facts were clues or not, since they were incorporating details from the setting that I was improvising on the fly into their theory of the crime. (For example, I described the police commissioner's terrible Ikea furniture and that became their motive for why he'd committed a crime, and they wanted to count that as a clue.) We were playing virtually, so I ended up just pasting all the clues they'd found into a shared document so they knew what they had.
Overall we had a great time and I felt like it was a great game to run as a complete novice! Definitely plan to play again.
That sounds delightful! I'm glad you had such a fun time with it, especially with it being your first time playing a TTRPG! So congratulations!
And honestly, my policy with changing rules on the fly is that you should absolutely feel free. TTRPGs are a collaboration, after all, so when running it at a table with friends, its really your game as much as it is mine. That said, these are some really interesting modifications and I'm glad you commented so that future players can take inspiration!
I love how you've distilled the Brindlewood moves and mystery system, swapped in my fave dice rolls (d6 pools from BitD), and made something so evocative and cathartic. It'll probably be fun to mix LJBD back into Brindlewood Bay and get some grandmas pinning murders on rich people!
Thank you so much! Actually, to do some unrepentant self-promo, I did actually write an unofficial Brindlewood Bay mystery, The Mavens Stop A Presidential Assassination, in which the Mavens can decide the future of America by how they solve the mystery.
But also, the trick is that you can ALWAYS just frame terrible people in your TTRPGs...