Proof You CAN Have a Murder Mystery Plot in a Solo Journaling RPG

I had no intentions of ever writing a devlog, to tell you the truth. I originally published my solo RPGs exclusively on Etsy, which doesn't allow for anything like a devlog. But this game demands one.

I started creating "Orion Dead" after impulsively joining the Poetry Inspired TTRPG Jam (which will also be my first jam!). I was never drawn to poetry, and I never seek it out, but the idea of building a game around a poem piqued my retellings-loving brain's interest.

Because I don't have much experience reading poetry, I spent a lot of timing skimming the Greek mythology topic on Poets.org until I found this poem by Hilda Doolittle, which details Artemis's grief upon discovering her hunting companion Orion's corpse. Well, I thought, sign me the hell up! I'm a Scorpio, and that myth is the tale of how the Scorpius constellation came to be, so what better poem to inspire me?

And then I realized my best idea was a murder mystery type of game, and I seriously considered backing out of the jam. Now that I knew this poem existed and I had the concept in mind, it was the only one I wanted to pursue for this game, but I had no idea how I was going to create a murder mystery solving system with clue gathering and suspect questioning and all that jazz. I create all my games to be used with one die (a d6, though my first-ever game uses a d12) and one standard deck of playing cards to keep things accessible for new players. How am I gonna cram all that in there without losing any of the complexity I crave in mysteries? How do I create unreliable witnesses and suspects? How do I ensure twist endings are possible and still surprising to the player without a DM/GM?

Well, friends, I cracked it!

On the first of my two 22-hour train rides I took in June while traveling to visit family, I made the decision to narrow the scope of the game from three suspects (which was already a tall order because there aren't that many variations of this myth) to two. Initially, I was reluctant to do this because having only two suspects felt like a weaker mystery, but I figured if it was in the cards (ha!) for me to have another suspect, the way to do that would hit me eventually. I assigned each suspect a card suit—one hearts, the other diamonds—and decided one of the other suits—clubs—would be an indication that the previous card (or the next, if it was the first card pulled) was a lie in some way. Players would stack hearts and diamonds, add up the values, and the bigger number would win.

Well, okay, but then what about spades? Well. Spades kinda look like arrow tips. (I'm not kidding—that was literally the thought process.) Spades can be interactions with the other hunters!

And jokers? I thought at first the joker would signify the arrival Hermes like it does in my Calypso game, but it eventually melted and morphed into a twist ending, one of six decided by a roll of the die.

When I wasn't socializing, the days between train rides consisted of tweaking my clue stacking and subtracting mechanics to make sure the game was balanced. What this ended up meaning was taking cards from the playing deck—first the face cards of clubs to make sure not every clue or piece of information was being contradicted, and then removing one of the two jokers to prevent every game from ending early. I also played with how many rounds of play felt right and what kinds of prompts I wanted each of the cards to represent.

Ultimately, I'm super pleased with the mechanics now, and I've moved on to creating the game file! Woo!

Orion Dead: A Murder Mystery Solo RPG will be available on July 7, 2025. I publish a new solo journaling RPG on the seventh of every month, so follow me to make sure you're notified when I release a new game!