Murder, Most Random!

Halloween brings to mind ghost and goblins, yes, but also creepy or imposing Victorian mansions, and thus, MURDER!

The next time you need to generate a random murder for characters to solve, or perhaps explain the origin of the ghost they are busting, these random tables might come in handy …

WHERE? (d30)

1. Attic
2. Ballroom
3. Bathroom
4. Bedroom (upstairs)
5. Billiard Room
6. Buttery
7. Cellar / Undercroft
8. Dining Room / Eating Room
9. Drawing Room / Parlour
10. Dressing Room
11. Fainting Room (nudge nudge)
12. Gentleman’s Room
13. Great Chamber
14. Hall / Great Hall
15. Housekeeper’s Room
16. Kitchen
17. Larder
18. Library
19. Long Gallery
20. Lumber Room
21. Master Bedroom
22. Pantry / Butler’s Pantry
23. Picture Gallery
24. Scullery
25. Servant’s Quarters
26. Smoking Room
27. Solar / Solarium / Sunroom / Conservatory
28. Store Room
29. Study
30. Wine Cellar

WHO? (d30)

Note: This table can be used to generate the victim and the murderer, as well as the wrongly accused

1. Baronet / Lord
2. Lady of the House
3. Blustering Industrialist
4. Arrogant Playboy
5. Bold Explorer
6. Virile Sportsman
7. Member of Parliament
8. Spoiled Son/Daughter
9. Imperious Son/Daughter
10. Dowager Aunt
11. Doddering Uncle
12. Brainy Professor
13. Idiot Nephew
14. Sly Courtesan
15. Impassioned Suffragette
16. Intellectual Son/Daughter
17. Silly Son/Daughter
18. The Butler
19. Kitchen Maid / Scullery Maid
20. Cook
21. Valet
22. Driver / Chauffeur
23. Companion
24. Lady’s Maid
25. Nanny / Governess
26. Tutor
27. Chambermaid
28. Page / Houseman / Footman
29. Gamekeeper / Master of Hounds
30. Master of Horse

WHAT? (d8)

1. Poison (Arsenic, Curare)
2. Shot (revolver)
3. Stabbed or Slashed (knife, dagger, razor blade, something more archaic)
4. Bludgeoned (candlestick, wrench, statuette)
5. Strangled (rope, scarf, bare hands)
6. Electrocuted (where available)
7. Suffocated (or gassed)
8. Drowned

WHY? (d8)

1. Jealousy
2. Envy
3. Greed
4. Boredom
5. Ambition
6. Revenge
7. For the cause!
8. Because of the voices!

So, what is Chief Inspector Macintosh up against this week?

Doddering old Dr. Rolston has been found murdered in the fainting room! Egad! He appears to have been poisoned, and the most likely suspect is the very intellectual daughter of the family, Felicity, who had been conducting a bit of research into poisons. But why?

If Macintosh is smart, he'll discover that the true murderer was the footman, Joseph, who did it out of jealousy - he envied those "hysteria treatments" the doctor had been giving to the scullery maid, Eliza, so he put a little extra kick in the old man's brandy, and when next the two met in fainting room, the good doctor expired!

Inspirational Nonsense = Victorian Post-Apocalyptic RPG

I was checking out Yesterday's Papers today and they had several scans from American comic weeklies - essentially illustrated newspapers. This particular image caught my eye:

A nice mash-up of Victoriana and Medieval armor and weapons. Perhaps we're looking at a Victorian Post-Apocalypse in New York City - Escape from New York meets Gangs of New York meets The Age of Innocence (Lord, now I sound like a Hollywood producer pitching a movie).

What would be the foundation of a Victorian Apocalypse? Perhaps an early ice age? Or better yet - an invasion from Mars (i.e. H.G. Wells' martians from War of the Worlds)! Yes - I can see it now. The Invaders come, deliver terrible destruction, and then mostly die off, leaving the world in tatters. Food supplies are choked off by the Martian weed (the same stuff they lived on on Barsoom until the coming of the Invaders to that planet and the final destruction of the native Barsoomian civilizations), and now people live like barbarians amid the shattered remnants of the Gilded Age.

Imagine - Steam-driven privateers in NY harbor, gang leaders and Tammany Hall fight over control of the buroughs and seek out the canisters of Black Smoke left by the Invaders, occultists (from demon summoning Golden Dawn-ers to golem-making esoteric rabbis to your run-of-the-mill fortune tellers) as powers behind the throne, people mutated by the Martian weaponry and the strange radiations they brought with them (since it's the 19th century, maybe we'll call them freaks instead of mutants), Tesla cobbling together wonders from scavenged Martian technology (this could be an era where the surviving Victorians go straight from steam to atomic power - locomotives to the space age in one giant leap), etc.

I could also profile such heroes of the age as cowboy Teddy Roosevelt, adventuress Nellie Bly and inventor Nicola Tesla (and Lord, what kind of secret empire would Edison control?).

I'll slate this project for a late 2013 release. Should be fun!