Murder in TL10 Space Opera

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by scruggsw

I'm somewhat surprised, no mention of the man who just about invented the sci-fi mystery?

Caves of Steel already got a mention upthread.

[Jasonft]

I was going to suggest a couple ways to off someone nearly untraceably if you could get a hack into the life support system of the ship, but then I realized that in *any* locked room mystery death on a spaceship they are going to go over those control systems with an electron microscope. I don't care how good your hacker is, if they look at the computer involved hard enough they will find evidence.

In short, if you want it to be a real mystery to the PCs, don't have the culprit do it by hacking the life support.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

I then I realized that in *any* locked room mystery death on a spaceship they are going to go over those control systems with an electron microscope.

If a "locked room mystery" is defined as "a suspicious death occurring at a time and in a place where no one had access" well then, the best conventional locked room mysteries (John Dickson Carr comes to mind) are ones where the time and/or place have been falsified rather than a sneaky way to get into the locked room.

Everyone looks for the secret way to get into the locked room. It's when you've got them looking at the wrong room at the wrong time that you've really got them flummoxed.

[Jasonft]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If a "locked room mystery" is defined as "a suspicious death occurring at a time and in a place where no one had access" well then, the best conventional locked room mysteries (John Dickson Carr comes to mind) are ones where the time and/or place have been falsified rather than a sneaky way to get into the locked room.

I was thinking more of the scenario where you find a victim in an otherwise secure room on a space vessel of some sort. If you cannot determine how they died or there is any suspicion at all, someone is going to take a hard look at the Life Support to see if it has been tampered with. It's just too critical a system on a ship - in addition to being a possible murder method, if Life Support can or has been tampered with the entire ship is at risk.

Heck, it might even be SOP at that TL to check the Life Support logs at a criminal incident. Sort of like modern day where they automatically check for video records form anywhere that might have had a camera pointed in the right direction.

Depending on how sophisticated the system is, the investigators might find all sorts of useful information... it's not inconceivable that a minute by minute record of CO2 and other gas levels in the room would be kept for a secure facility or a deep space mission paranoid about it's air supply.

[vicky_molokh]

I think the issue has been exposed to some extent in Escape Capsule (or Rescue Module, or Safety Pod, or some such name of the motion picture).

[scruggsw]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Caves of Steel already got a mention upthread.

Sorry, must have missed it.