Homicide - The Truth of the Matter

Gabe Babbett. Our two detectives, Evan Stacy and Jeff Long, were finally sitting across the interrogation-room table from their primary suspect. They know quite a bit about Babbett already; felony record, parole violation, lied on his job application, fingerprints on the murder weapon, witnessed fighting with Marin, ID'd trying to sell the stolen documents. In short, he's screwed.

Homicide - Remote Control

Last time, we had a pretty good lock on the events surrounding our two murders. We still have some loose ends to tie up though. Let's get to it!

Homicide - The Devil's in the Details

Our prime suspect Gabe Babbett, is looking more and more like our man. When we left he was in custody in Chicago, and his truck had been impounded. We have a witness reporting he was involved in an altercation with our two murder victims near the site of a theft, and testimony indicating he was trying to sell stolen property on his trip to Delaware. We'll flash forward a bit, and allow some forensics work to get done in the background. The two things we're most interested in are the crime scene at the church and Babbett's truck. Specifically we're looking for fingerprints at the former, and blood evidence at the latter.

Homicide - Sins Discovered

When we left our investigators, they had just finished up their interrogations of Albert Burns and Rose Marie Orr, the roommates of our murder victim, Scott Marin. Both had alibis for the night of the murder, and our primary suspect, Gabe Babbett, is looking better and better. Evan and Jeff's next move was to head over to Michelle Allen's place of work, a local religious center, and poke into the stolen property that seems to be the core motive for these murders.

Homicide - Motives

Last session our detectives had pretty well wrapped up the two murders they were faced with, with all evidence pointing to Gabe Babbett, our parole-violating ex-con. Based on Kevin Woods's interrogation, we think the following is a reasonable scenario:

• Michelle Allen, our second victim, steals something from her place of employment, a religious organization associated with the college campus.
• Scott Marin, our first victim, either discovers or was involved in the theft, leading to some sort of confrontation or conflict with Allen.
• Gabe Babbett, our main suspect, becomes involved, either as a way to fence the item, as protection against Marin, or in some other capacity.
• Babbett steals the item from Allen, involving Kevin Woods in the theft. Babbett also steals Allen's handgun, the murder weapon.
• Things go south and Allen, Marin, and Babbett are involved in some sort of confrontation in Allen's car.
• Babbett shoots them both, then dumps Marin's body in his old apartment and Allen's body in hers.
• For reasons unknown Babbett gets Woods to steal rental records from the apartment office, perhaps to slow the identification of Marin and his roommates?
• Babbett takes off for Delaware to arrange the sale of the stolen item and to put some distance between the crime scene and himself, violating his parole in the process.

Homicide - Pursuit of Justice

After a bit of clean up last session, it's time to move forward. When we left, we had pretty strong suspicions that Gabe Babbett is our murderer. His prints are on the gun, he knew both victims, and he's apparently on the run. We've issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of murder, and alerted the State Police in Delaware and surrounding jurisdictions. Since we can't just run off to Delaware, let's chase some leads here.

Homicide - Loose Ends

I'm starting to feel like this game has gotten a bit sloppy, so I'm going to do some bookkeeping and clean up and organize things a bit. There are a bunch of open threads, some of which may be irrelevant or easily closed off, and I want to be sure the main summary page is up to date.

Homicide - Long Time, No Body

It's been a while since we've checked in on our detectives. I blame Diablo 3. Let's dive back in and get things moving!

When we left, Detectives Stacy and Long had just found Michelle Allen dead in her own apartment; an unexpected twist, since the pair were beginning to suspect she was was Scott Marin's murderer. The fact that she's dead doesn't mean she isn't, but a dead murderer isn't very satisfying. We'll press on.

Homicide - Search Warrant

When we left our detectives, Evan and Jeff, they'd just gotten a preliminary report from the on-site forensics. I had planned to leave the scene and pursue one of the many leads floating around out there, but now I've decided to push ahead with the last bit of physical evidence here, searching the apartment of one of our suspects, Michelle Allen. We've already done the work to get a warrant for this, so in the interests of speeding the plot, I'm going to declare we've gotten it and are ready to go in, with Mike Lewis, the property manager, providing access.

Homicide - Where Were We?

Last session our planned scene, checking in with the forensics teams to find out what they'd discovered, was interrupted by a little scuffle when the suspected rental office thief fled the scene. He'd been hiding in the crawl space beneath the offices, and a uniformed officer flushed him out. Let's go back to our main scene and see how things go.

Homicide: Forensics

When we left our detectives, Jeff was checking in with the forensics teams doing their thing at the apartment and the car while Evan was getting the ball rolling on some administrative leads. The net results were:

• A warrant for Michell Allen's apartment is in the works.
• Albert Burns has been picked up by the Indiana State Police at a traffic stop.
• Wanted bulletins are out for Michelle Allen, Gabe Babbett, and Rose Marie Orr as persons of interest in a homicide investigation.
• Babbett's truck has been flagged as a suspicious vehicle.
• Records that will confirm Mom and Dad Marin and Mike Lewis's alibis are being pulled.
• The anonymous call that lead to the body was from a distant pay phone, and the call was recorded. We'll pull that recording too.
• Jeff reports the forensics teams have both pulled important information.

I've also boosted our Chaos level to 7, since things seem to be sprawling a bit.

Homicide: Probable Cause

This is another turn of my ongoing Mythic GM solo game. I've made a couple changes to how I'm tracking this let's play, mostly to keep the turns focused on action rather than filling them with the game context. I've created a single page I'll be using to track the details of the game from the Mythic perspective. You can find the context right here. Note you can also see the posts in this series, in order, on the index page. I update that about once a week, depending on post frequency. Right enough about administration, on to the game.

Homicide: Mommy Knows

The next turn in my ongoing Mythic GM solo game begins as Evan and Jeff wrap up their interview with Mike Lewis, property manager at College Place Apartments (yeah I just made that up, who's going to argue in a solo game?) We were left with two likely courses of action:

• Find out more about the mystery person in the rental office, who popped up as an altered scene element in the last turn.
• With Lewis's permission, look around Michelle Allen's apartment, since she is the owner of the actual murder scene (her car).

The current context looks like this (after a few tweaks post-session):

Homicide: Fill the Blanks

This is another in the series of ongoing posts of my solo RPG using the Mythic GM Emulator, starring Evan Stacy as a police detective investigating a murder. I've started adding the pages to the site index here. I'll try to update each post in the series with links to previous and next posts as I go.

When we left our investigator, he and his partner had just discovered signs of hasty flight in Michelle Allen's apartment. She owns the car that appears to have been the actual murder scene, so her fleeing seems suspicious at best. Here's the current game context, per Mythic GM rules. Things are getting a little more complex so I've added some notes to help track things. I've also split out our detective's personal characters / threads from the main list so we can keep things moving on the investigation when choosing characters at random. Focus!



Chaos: 6
Evan's Personal Characters
Jeff Long, Evan's partner on the force
Evan's Rabbi on the force
Evan's family
Evan's estranged wife
Evan's professional contact

Jeff's Personal Characters
Jeff's relative in trouble

Characters
The victim, an adult male
- Found in a very clean garden apartment
- Dead approximately two days
- The apartment was not the crime scene
The anonymous tipster
The forensics team
The shooter
The rental office staff
Michelle Allen, a person of interest in the murder investigation
- Owner of the damaged SUV found near the crime scene
- Car has blood and a gun in the passenger compartment
- Appears to have been the scene of the actual murder
- Allen's apartment shows signs of a hasty departure

Personal Threads
Jeff has a relative in trouble
Evan is on the road to divorce

Threads
Who killed the victim
Rental records for the murder scene are missing
Who owns the murder weapon
Where is Michelle Allen

Homicide: Who is John Doe?

This is part two of a solo play RPG I'm doing using the Mythic GM Emulator. The first part can be found here.

When we left, our main character Evan Stacy and his partner Jeff Long were just leaving the crime scene, but with no statement of intent as to where they were headed next (the next scene). The game context looked like this:

Chaos: 6
Characters

• Jeff Long, Evan's partner on the force
• Jeff's troubled relative in Indianapolis
• Evan's Rabbi on the force
• Evan's family
• Evan's wife
• Evan's professional contact
• The victim, an adult male
• The anonymous tipster
• The forensics team
• The shooter
• The rental office staff

Threads

• Who killed the victim
• Jeff has a relative in trouble
• Evan is on the road to divorce
• Rental records for the murder scene are missing

You may notice I added three entries, a thread for resolving who actually shot the victim, Jeff's troubled relative, and a character entry for the rental office staff. The first was so obvious I just forgot to write it down. The second I overlooked, and the third wasn't explicitly mentioned, but it was implied by the facts we uncovered last time. I also expanded the forensics team to include all the police at crime scene, Now, on with the show!

Homicide: Life on the Blog

As promised, back to the tabletop for some RPG goodness. I've been toying with the Mythic GM Emulator off and on for several years as a tool for solo play, a mechanic for throwing curve balls at players during play, and as a creative aid for world-building. I've decided to run a solo game here both to demonstrate how Mythic works, and to scratch an itch to play a solo game. This is the setup post.