92nd ♫ | the quietness, profoundly consuming silence

[mytarget]

The Murder Game Meme



You know the script. You wake up in a place you've never seen before, with a whole bunch of complete strangers and there's a mysterious voice or a mascot or what have you ready to let you know how things are going to work around here.

The rules are simple: You're trapped here, with no hope of release or rescue. You've been provided with all the basic necessities you need to live comfortably, and all you have to do is settle down and live out the rest of your days here in peace. But if you can't do that -- if you're really so desperate to escape that you'll do anything -- then there's one teeny tiny thing you have to do first.

All you have to do is kill somebody.

But it's not quite that simple. Every death will be followed by a period of investigation, followed by a trial in which the survivors will attempt to solve the mystery and out the culprit. If the survivors guess correctly and out the culprit, the killer is executed and life goes on. But if the survivors guess wrong, then the culprit is free as a bird and everyone else is executed.

Even with the promise of freedom, can you really bring yourself to kill so many other people?

tl;dr: it's a murdergame meme. TIME TO HAVE A BIG OL' MURDERGAME BLAST.


Settings

1. High School A classic! Doesn't matter if you're too old or too young to be in high school -- you've been enrolled and the only way for you to graduate is to kill a fellow student. But hey, the faculties are nice!
2. Tropical Island Weren't you just hankering for a nice tropical vacation? No? Too bad! You're going to have a nice sunny vacation at the beach and if you don't like it, just kill someone and go home. Simple!
3. Prison It doesn't matter if you don't remember committing any crime; you've been tried and found guilty of something or other and now you can go ahead and rot away in jail. If you ever want to see the sunlight again, better put that criminal mind to good use and get rid of your inmates.
4. Mall A huge mall stuffed full of stores, places to eat and all the regular amenities like deadbolted doors and the threat of death. It's like Black Friday but even worse because you can't leave and all the rest of the shoppers might actually kill you for real this time.
5. City Holy shit, you've got the run of a whole city this time around! Maybe with all this room to keep out of each other's way, you'll be able to make sure no one starts killing people. But probably not.
6. Cruise Boat YOU'RE ON A BOAT, MOTHERFUCKER. The accommodation is all five star, even if there's no one around to act as wait staff. The only snag is that you still have this whole murder thing hanging over your head – but on the plus side, they have those little drinks with the umbrellas in, so...
7. Space Station THE FINAL FRONTIER... Maybe you're familiar with space stations like this or maybe all this future tech is fascinating to you. Not like it matters either way, of course, because you won't be getting out of here unless you lay down a murder on someone.
8. Wildcard! None of the above scratch your murder itch? Go wild and come up with your own setting!



Downtime

1. Excuse Me, Who Are You? You've just woken up in this weird place and you have no idea what's going on. But hey -- maybe this stranger's more informed than you. Or maybe you can put your heads together and investigate what's going on.
2. Social Link Go! Well, if you're going to be stuck in here for however long, you might as well get to know the people stuck in here with you. You've got plenty of rooms to explore together and there's enough to do to keep you occupied. How do you plan on passing time without killing each other?
3. Vending Machine Woes Somewhere in this place there's a mysterious vending machine that spits out all manner of bizarre items and occasionally dispenses items that belong to you and the other people trapped here. You've got a fat stack of tokens and nothing to lose.
4. The Corners of My Mind So as it turns out, your lovely hosts have been fiddling with your memories. Maybe you're just discovering this now or maybe you've had a particularly upsetting memory regain you're dealing with.
4. Wildcard! GO WILD AND BE FREE (or as free as you can be here, anyways)



PUTTING THE MURDER IN MURDER GAME

1. Motive Your mysterious overseer has decided there's not nearly enough murder going on and so they've ~helpfully~ given you a little push to do the deed. Maybe one of your loved ones is in danger, maybe they're offering more money than you could ever dream of or they're threatening to reveal your deepest darkest secrets. Whatever is it, would you kill for it?
2. Murder WELL APPARENTLY, YES. Are you a killer or are you being killed? Either way, someone's not walking away from this alive.
3. Body Discovery Rise and shine, murdergame! It's a brand new day and someone's dead. Better get investigating!
4. Trial You know how this one goes. Line up all your evidence and sniff out the killer -- or sit there and sweat and hope no one works out you're the murderer. Will they go down with a confession or put up a fight?
5. Afterparty You've survived another trial, but more of your friends have died. Even without the executions, trials are a stressful enough affair. It's time to destress and lick your wounds and support each other.
6. Mastermind It's the end. It's time to uncover all the mysteries behind this murder game -- and find out just who trapped you here. Are they really an unconnected party, or is the mastermind someone among you...?
7. Freedom Just as it says -- you're finally free, but at what cost? Have those you love been returned to you, or are you still reduced to just those who made it to the end? Are you on your own, or is anyone here to help you? And more importantly, how the hell are you going to get home?
8. Wildcard YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO


OPTIONAL FUN

Lots of murdergames have in-universe public profiles for other characters to get the skinny on yours. If you'd like to fill one out to post with your toplevel, peep at the code below!

<center><b>Name:</b> NAME | <b>TITLE (Super High School Level, Ultimate, Champion, etc)</b> <b>Age:</b> AGE | <b>Species:</b> SPECIES | <b>Occupation:</b> OCCUPATION <b>Likes:</b> LIKES <b>Dislikes:</b> DISLIKES <b>Traits:</b> A HANDFUL OF NOTABLE TRAITS <b>Trivia:</b> A PIECE OF TRIVIA</ul>

Comments

[favoriteanalyst]

Nah. Just to talk, if you're up for it. Some of the others, they're pretty mad at you, right? [Yeah, no shit, they're pissed as hell, and they have every right to be. But yelling at the virtuadoll about things she might genuinely not understand is not going to make her understand them better.] Do you know why?

[amorevolous]

[ She fidgets a little uncomfortably where she's say, curling in tighter on herself and making a point of not looking up – she doesn't want to meet his gaze. This feels like a trick question, but she's not certain what the trick might be. ]

We almost voted wrong. So we could have died.

[ Whether her lack of acknowledgement as to whose fault that is is on purpose or not is unclear. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

That's right. You changed a lot of minds by vouching for him so hard, too. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means people here are willing to listen to what you have to say.

[...On the other hand:] Maybe not so much after this.

[amorevolous]

That's not my fault.

[ She'd been poking cautiously at the slice of cake with the very tip of a fork but now she gives it a particularly pointed stab, with her voice sharpening to match. ]

He managed to trick everyone else, too. Not just me.

[favoriteanalyst]

I know. That's part of the whole deal, trick people into voting for someone else and get away. But the evidence was really stacking against him. I'm not saying you have to turn with the crowd, but it's okay to look at things with a critical eye.

[He lets her do her stabby thing, sitting back and watching for a long moment.]

It's hard when everything you know is swayed by emotions.

[amorevolous]

[ Leaving the fork impaled in the cake, Lambda finally gives him her fully attention. She's still more or less consumed by the energy of Sulk, but she seems a bit more willing to actually engage in a conversation now. ]

... Things are confusing here.

[ That might be the most open thing she's said... more or less ever. She's not good at focusing on herself and how she feels, especially when it's bad – the humans are supposed to be her focus here, especially when they're all so clearly suffering. But... ]

Virtuadolls are made to... support and uplift humans. We're supposed to make them happy. And everyone seemed so twisted up and upset thinking that he might have done it... so if I could convince them it wasn't true, wouldn't that have made everyone happier?

[favoriteanalyst]

[He leans in at the admission, arms on the table, listening intently. This is progress, and he wants to encourage it.]

For a short time, maybe. Very very briefly. But they still would've had to vote for someone, which would've upset them. And if we voted wrong, there's some pretty bad consequences to that.

What's going to be really hard for you is knowing that you can't make everyone happy all of the time. It's just not possible, and you're gonna burn yourself out real fast trying.

[amorevolous]

But...

[ She goes silent again, but this time she isn't lapsing into a sulk, it seems. Explaining things to the humans here is so difficult – they misunderstand, make leaps of logic she can't follow and now and then, she'll say something that makes them give her a look she doesn't particularly like. She has to pick her words carefully here if she wants to make herself understood. ]

With things as they are now... everyone is miserable anyway. And they're going to keep being miserable, with themselves and with each other. Who knows how long that's going to last? When you think about it like that... it'd be nicer if they could've just been happy and then not had to worry about anything else after that.

[ Even if they'd had to die for it. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

[Time works in strange and at times mysterious ways in the TVA. He has to wonder, then, if time works strangely for an AI, too. If there's truly a difference between seconds and minutes and days and years.]

I think most people would be happier living longer than having genuine happiness for a couple minutes. [He unfolds his arms and talks with his hands.] When someone's given more time, then they can fill their time with more joy, to find the joy in the little things and the big things both. No one's going to be happy all of the time; life doesn't work that way. But working toward a goal, or existing for family, for friends, for hobbies--hell, even a tv show or a book series, or yelling at videos on the internet or something. Those are the joys people get out of their lives that make life worth it. Most people wouldn't see the point of giving up their lives for a brief moment of the kind of joy they might be able to make for themselves in the future.

[amorevolous]

[ To Lambda's credit – if you're generous enough to give her any after the mess this day has been – it does really seem like she's trying to understand. She has her head bowed a little as if the weight of what she'd nearly done and what she'd actually ended up doing is finally starting to settle on her. Even if it's certainly more gentleness than she deserves, it's enough to make her absorb at least a little of what he has to say. ]

If they were all to stay alive longer... even if they're miserable now, there might be more opportunities to be happy in the future...

[ This sounds, for all the world, as though it might be a revelation to her. ]

But all this misery doesn't have anywhere to go, does it? Even if they're happy later, it won't change the fact that everyone's so sad now.