Thoughts on Brindlewood Bay
We played our second and final session of Brindlewood Bay on Saturday. It didn't really work for us mechanically.
Brindlewood Bay is a "cozy" murder solving roleplaying game. The players take on the roles of retired women who are all members of the Murder Mavens Book Club, a group of mystery book lovers, and amateur sleuths who have already gained some notoriety for solving some local murders. A bit like Murder She Wrote if Jessica Fletcher were actually four women.
Most mystery rpgs are designed such that the facilitator creates the circumstances of the mystery before play begins (victim[s], motive, means, location, clues) and the players come to the table with their characters, expecting to figure out that puzzle. It is a particular experience and not one for everyone because there are a lot of hurdles.
Brindlewood Bay avoids many of these hurdles by having the facilitator NOT create the puzzle, per se, to begin with. While the facilitator can create a mystery for the game, it comes with several pre-made mysteries to get you started which also serve as templates if you want to create your own. The key thing for each of the mysteries, though, is that no-one knows who the killer is when play begins. Instead, the player characters are presented with several suspects and, as clues begin to pile up through play, the players begin to form their own ideas about who committed the crime. Once they've reached a point where they agree who is guilty, the players roll dice to determine if they are correct.
This is where things went sideways for our group because it really didn't feel like they were solving a mystery. They could have picked any of the suspects out of a hat, rolled the dice and, if successful, made that person the culprit. The clues, literally, didn't matter in the fiction of the game, except in so much as they provided the mechanical bonuses necessary to make the successful roll.
Now, I'm not saying Brindlewood Bay is a bad game. I'm saying that it didn't work for me or my players. It could be that I didn't do a very good job running the game. I've been running games a long time but this one works differently than other games I'm more familiar with. It could be that we have a different ideas about mysteries.
From my perspective, it seems that Brindlewood Bay is saying that the players shouldn't have to be detectives and is more interested in playing in the genre. Put another way, it doesn't care whether the players can solve the mystery, it cares that the players want to play at being retired women that solve mysteries and allows them to embody those characters.
ENDNOTES If you would like to contact me for feedback or conversation, you can email me at jadettman@gmail.com.
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