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Wicked Lies & Alibis

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Whodunit roleplaying in the age of Art Deco.2015 Judges Spotlight Award Winner

You are the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

The world is changing; a great economic depression wipes out the life savings of rich and poor alike.

But the party goes on for the wealthy and well heeled, determined to ignore the impending financial crisis and dance long into the night.

Now a brutal murder threatens to shatter this world of privilege, influence and power.

One of your own is dead, and a Great Detective has been summoned to solve the case.  Yes, you had a motive, and perhaps even the means and opportunity to commit the murder, but you’re certainly not the only one... 

Clear your name and uncover the real killer, before it’s too late!

Gameplay

Players generate characters at the table from a selection of cards, developing a cast of complex characters who all have a motive to kill the victim. They then play through several establishing scenes in the lead-up to a murder. The remainder of the game is played as a series of structured flashback rounds where each player, in turn, assumes a degree of narrative control to frame a flashback which incriminates another character.

The Game Master has a dual role, both as facilitator of scenes, and as the Great Detective, a Non-Player Character summoned to solve the murder, who summarises the evidence revealed by the characters, and reveals the motives of the characters one-by-one before finally disclosing the identity of the murderer.

This game allows you to recreate murder mystery stories in the finest tradition of the golden-age of detective fiction.  It’s also a perfect low-prep, one-shot, filler for that session where you are missing a key player, or when you want to try something different between regular games.

Inside this volume you’ll find:

  • Simple card-based mechanics that deliver a complete murder mystery experience in a single session of play. The unique approach to character creation supported by structured opening scenes is perfect for RPG beginners and veterans alike, allowing simple concepts to rapidly develop into complex characters who will weave a web of wicked lies and alibis.
  • Detailed facilitation notes containing advice and suggestions to support the GM in running the game.
  • Nine pre-generated murder mysteries detailing the identity of murder victims and the means of their demise, as well as suggestions for the Great Detectives who might solve the case.
  • Details about the era of Art Deco with suggestions of how to introduce several key themes to enrich and add to the realism of your game.
  • All the cards needed to play, laid-out and ready to print.

There are three recommended options to purchase Wicked Lies & Alibis and unmask the murderer at your table:

  1. Purchase the full PDF version which contains everything you need to play including high-resolution digital layouts of the cards (above).
  2. If you prefer to read from a printed page then pick the PDF + Softcover B&W Book and receive an attractive 6"x9" book delivered to your door PLUS the full PDF version for no extra cost (above). 
  3. If you want to save time printing and cutting out cards then pick the Card Deck + Core Rules PDF option and receive all 121 UV coated cards, printed in high quality and delivered to your door PLUS the full PDF version.

Winner of a 2015 ENnie Judges Spotlight Award

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Reviews (1)
Discussions (2)
Customer avatar
Tim L August 22, 2020 5:36 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I know this is already a 5 year old game (just bought it as DotD here on the site), but even so... yowzee! The compression on the pdf is absolutely terrible... Artifacting from hell. It looks really bad, and though this is slightly less of a concern for the game manual text itself, but still unfortunate, it's an absolute issue in regards to the print-it-yourself cards at the end of the PDF. If the publisher still monitors this comment section: any chance to get some higher resolution sheets for the cards at least?
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Customer avatar
Dale E August 22, 2020 8:12 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Tim - thanks for the feedback. I've added a high-resolution PDF as well.
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Customer avatar
Ian W August 23, 2020 5:25 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Thank you - for anyone else, the main body of the rules is fine in the low res version, but for the cards and especially the player sheets you definitely want the high res version.

It looks like the original was set up to have embedded low quality JPEGs for those.
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Customer avatar
Tim L August 24, 2020 6:06 am UTC
PURCHASER
Hi Dale, thank you so much for adding the high-res version! Solves a DIYer's issue completely. It's rare to see a publisher/author still care like this after 5 years, so big thumbs up from me here!
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Customer avatar
Dale E August 24, 2020 7:19 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks Ian - when i published this game in 2015 there was a genuine feeling (at least in this part of the world) that people wouldn't want to download a 90MB RPG file - obviously things have changed since then... The game cards and sheets were designed in photoshop as images but obviously they were compressed during the process of creating a 'reduced size' PDF in Acrobat.
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Customer avatar
Dale E August 24, 2020 7:22 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks Tim - I hope the cards serve you well. I still take this game to conventions as an almost zero prep option that seems to work well with almost any crowd (but as the designer I may be a little biased!)
Customer avatar
David S June 13, 2020 2:46 am UTC
I take it this doesn't work in a 1-player, 1-GM situation?
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Customer avatar
Dale E June 13, 2020 7:48 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Sorry no.

As this question has come up before, and I enjoy a design challenge, I'd be interested to hear what a good 1 player game looks like - feel free to email me via imaginaryempiregames [at] gmail [dot] com if you'd like to share some insight.
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Product Information
Electrum seller
Author(s)
Artist(s)
Rule System(s)
Pages
98
ISBN
978-0-473-30240-5
File Size:
94.36 MB
Format
Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
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Original electronic format
These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.
File Last Updated:
August 22, 2020
This title was added to our catalog on March 16, 2015.