Having said all that:
This just in: read all about it!
Blaise Penhaligan has been found brutally murdered - can you solve the mystery that surrounds his death?
What is this?
This is a complete neighbourhood for you to play. It is based around the idea of a typical murder mystery from the Golden Age of murder mysteries and thus it has elements lifted from Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and all the rest I could think of (now you know my bedtime reading). I have included practically every whodunnit character cliche I could think of. This is why I wanted to build the neighbourhood in the first place. I wanted to see if I could write a COMPLETE mystery story with a murder, background, motives, character and detectable solution. I am quite pleased with the result, it is not perfect but I have achieved the goal I set myself.
So the neighbourhood encapsulates the first part of a murder mystery story. You have characters, their backgrounds, their histories, loves, jealousies, rivalries and life problems. You can find out how they came to be here in Polgannon and where they might be going. Though where they actually go is up to you since what we have here is effectively the first half of a murder mystery. Blaise Penhaligan is dead but no-one knows who killed him (except me, of course). The idea is, you can find the answer to that by playing out the sim's lives and finding the solution. I would say ...
There are two approaches to playing it:
1. you can play it like any other downloadable storied neighbourhood: get to know the sims resident here and play out their lives. Make your own mind up how Blaise Penhaligan came to meet his fate and let life go on from there. I hope you would find it interesting and enjoyable.
OR
2. you can set out to solve the mystery. Because, you see, there is one.
Or both, maybe.
Solving the Mystery
If you decide you want to play detective, you can attempt to solve the mystery - Blaise Penhaligan has been murdered and one of the residents of Polgannon did it. That's your starting point. There is a solution - it's just not obvious what it is and if you want to know, you'll have to work to find it (I bet someone gets it in 5 minutes). There is information and clues scattered all over the place. You will need to explore family stories and pictures, sim memories, sim bios, the neighbourhood story and more. I'm thinking you will probably need to take notes (see the documentation section in the comments for 'help' here). There are motives galore for bumping off the odious Blaise and more alibis than you can shake a stick at. And there is evidence - lots of it - though sometimes this is not clear. It's up to you to work out what information you can trust and what information is a load of old Cornish pasty. The point is though, which alibi doesn't hold up? Who was it who snuck up to Polgannon stone circle at Halloween and stabbed Blaise Penhaligan squarely right between the shoulder blades?
Information sources and 'reading' the story
If you want to play it this way, I would suggest starting with DI Ruan Roscarrock* who is a policemen investigating the case. He is staying temporarily in one of the apartments called Boathouse Lets - they are normally meant to be rented out to holiday-makers. Incidentally, there is a holiday-maker living in the next door apartment (Margaret James) who is so intrigued by the local mystery that she has decided to investigate the crime herself. DI Roscarrock has important information in his family story - his story consists of statements from all the residents of Polgannon about what they were doing on the afternoon Blaise was murdered and I'd suggest it's a good idea to find out what everybody said as your starting point (the pictures tell you who it is making the statement). Margaret has also been doing some investigating locally and has been writing to her friend back in London about it (it's in epistolary form). So her family story also has some interesting and useful information. Beyond those two, you will also find a statement by Constable Warne in the Warne family story.
Apart from these there are also various other sources of information. In particular there are items in the family stories that I have called 'gossip'. These are meant to be the inhabitants of Polgannon talking to each other after the murder and can be distinguished by the fact that they have face icons in the pictures (example below). The face icon on the left is the person speaking and the face icon picture on the right is the person being spoken to (you will always find the gossip panel in their family story). Gossip panels are always at the end of the family stories while the beginning of the story will have a brief history of the family in chronological order (as you normally would if you use this feature). There is some information in the family lot descriptions about each sim's background. Finally, in the sim's individual bios you will find a series of 'thoughts' (rather than a personal bio) - these are recent thoughts which have passed through that particular sim's head. Does anyone betray themselves?
Quite a lot of the information at any given point is incomplete and you will have to hunt elsewhere to find the rest of it. Some people might not like this sort of thing. However, please bear in mind that what I set out to do was write a story using the game. If you don't like all the information, feel free to delete it and adapt the neighbourhood to suit your preferences.
That's my guidance. After this, you're on your own.
It is three days since Blaise was murdered when the neighbourhood opens: a wet Friday 3rd November. It's 6am and everyone is just starting their day. (Polgannon is set up to play rotationally but you don't have to do this).
* I may have gone a little overboard with the Cornish names. Just a little.
This just in: read all about it!
Blaise Penhaligan has been found brutally murdered - can you solve the mystery that surrounds his death?
What is this?
This is a complete neighbourhood for you to play. It is based around the idea of a typical murder mystery from the Golden Age of murder mysteries and thus it has elements lifted from Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and all the rest I could think of (now you know my bedtime reading). I have included practically every whodunnit character cliche I could think of. This is why I wanted to build the neighbourhood in the first place. I wanted to see if I could write a COMPLETE mystery story with a murder, background, motives, character and detectable solution. I am quite pleased with the result, it is not perfect but I have achieved the goal I set myself.
So the neighbourhood encapsulates the first part of a murder mystery story. You have characters, their backgrounds, their histories, loves, jealousies, rivalries and life problems. You can find out how they came to be here in Polgannon and where they might be going. Though where they actually go is up to you since what we have here is effectively the first half of a murder mystery. Blaise Penhaligan is dead but no-one knows who killed him (except me, of course). The idea is, you can find the answer to that by playing out the sim's lives and finding the solution. I would say ...
There are two approaches to playing it:
1. you can play it like any other downloadable storied neighbourhood: get to know the sims resident here and play out their lives. Make your own mind up how Blaise Penhaligan came to meet his fate and let life go on from there. I hope you would find it interesting and enjoyable.
OR
2. you can set out to solve the mystery. Because, you see, there is one.
Or both, maybe.
Solving the Mystery
If you decide you want to play detective, you can attempt to solve the mystery - Blaise Penhaligan has been murdered and one of the residents of Polgannon did it. That's your starting point. There is a solution - it's just not obvious what it is and if you want to know, you'll have to work to find it (I bet someone gets it in 5 minutes). There is information and clues scattered all over the place. You will need to explore family stories and pictures, sim memories, sim bios, the neighbourhood story and more. I'm thinking you will probably need to take notes (see the documentation section in the comments for 'help' here). There are motives galore for bumping off the odious Blaise and more alibis than you can shake a stick at. And there is evidence - lots of it - though sometimes this is not clear. It's up to you to work out what information you can trust and what information is a load of old Cornish pasty. The point is though, which alibi doesn't hold up? Who was it who snuck up to Polgannon stone circle at Halloween and stabbed Blaise Penhaligan squarely right between the shoulder blades?
Information sources and 'reading' the story
If you want to play it this way, I would suggest starting with DI Ruan Roscarrock* who is a policemen investigating the case. He is staying temporarily in one of the apartments called Boathouse Lets - they are normally meant to be rented out to holiday-makers. Incidentally, there is a holiday-maker living in the next door apartment (Margaret James) who is so intrigued by the local mystery that she has decided to investigate the crime herself. DI Roscarrock has important information in his family story - his story consists of statements from all the residents of Polgannon about what they were doing on the afternoon Blaise was murdered and I'd suggest it's a good idea to find out what everybody said as your starting point (the pictures tell you who it is making the statement). Margaret has also been doing some investigating locally and has been writing to her friend back in London about it (it's in epistolary form). So her family story also has some interesting and useful information. Beyond those two, you will also find a statement by Constable Warne in the Warne family story.
Apart from these there are also various other sources of information. In particular there are items in the family stories that I have called 'gossip'. These are meant to be the inhabitants of Polgannon talking to each other after the murder and can be distinguished by the fact that they have face icons in the pictures (example below). The face icon on the left is the person speaking and the face icon picture on the right is the person being spoken to (you will always find the gossip panel in their family story). Gossip panels are always at the end of the family stories while the beginning of the story will have a brief history of the family in chronological order (as you normally would if you use this feature). There is some information in the family lot descriptions about each sim's background. Finally, in the sim's individual bios you will find a series of 'thoughts' (rather than a personal bio) - these are recent thoughts which have passed through that particular sim's head. Does anyone betray themselves?
Quite a lot of the information at any given point is incomplete and you will have to hunt elsewhere to find the rest of it. Some people might not like this sort of thing. However, please bear in mind that what I set out to do was write a story using the game. If you don't like all the information, feel free to delete it and adapt the neighbourhood to suit your preferences.
That's my guidance. After this, you're on your own.
It is three days since Blaise was murdered when the neighbourhood opens: a wet Friday 3rd November. It's 6am and everyone is just starting their day. (Polgannon is set up to play rotationally but you don't have to do this).
* I may have gone a little overboard with the Cornish names. Just a little.
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