A stormy night murder mystery tabletop RPG inspired by Cluedo and Brindlewood Bay, played without dice or a GM. Uncover secrets, play your suspects, and solve the crime together!
IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE WRENCH is a murder mystery game by Chris Bissette / Loot The Room inspired by pulp thrillers, cosy crime mysteries, and a board game I'm not going to mention the name of just in case. On a dark and stormy night you gather in an old and crumbling mansion for dinner, none of you suspecting that your host is about to be brutally murdered. Now you're all suspects, the local inspector is knocking on the door, and everybody wants to know whodunnit.
Get some friends together, mix up some martinis, and solve a murder.
How To Play
IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE WRENCH requires a group of 3-6 players. Each player is a guest of the mansion hiding their own deep, dark secret - and one of you is the murderer.
The game is dice-less and GM-less, with mechanics heavily inspired by the No Dice No Masters system created by designed by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum in DREAM ASKEW and DREAM APART. Instead of randomly generating characters, players choose from playbooks - character archetypes that give you a set of moves you use to shape the story. You spend and earn tokens to exert influence over the unfolding mystery, creating a push and pull of dramatic tension as the night wears on.
If you'd like to look at an early draft of the game, you can check out the plain text ashcan here. This is the bare bones of the game - the final manuscript contains more playbooks and better instructions for how to actually play, for people unfamiliar with this style of game.
A sample of the layout showing the M. Scarlet playbook
The Mystery
At the beginning of play, none of you will know who the murderer is. You'll explore the mystery together, uncovering clues and motivations as your characters explore the mansion and begin to turn on one another.
The Suspects
Every player chooses a character playbook - The Colonel, M. Scarlet, The Professor, and more. Each playbook gives you a distinct set of moves that reflect who your character is and how they operate under pressure. Answer questions about your character's past during play to unlock new abilities and deepen the web of secrets.
The Investigator
The police may not be coming until morning, but that doesn't mean you're alone. A detective is already on their way to the manor, and when they arrive, the game changes. Every time a player gains a token, the Investigator draws closer to the door. When they finally arrive they enter play and the investigation moves into its final, decisive phase.
The clock is ticking. Can you uncover the truth before the Investigator takes matters into their own hands?
The Accusation
The night ends when someone is ready to make their case. Name the killer, the weapon, and the room, and back it up with the evidence you've uncovered. If the table agrees, the accused reveals the truth. Did they do it? Were they framed? Only then does the full story come to light.
What You Get
IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE WRENCH is being released in both PDF and printed book format. Both contain the rulebook with all the rules you need to play the game.
This campaign aims to pay for layout and editing. As a result of that, the book doesn't exist in its final form yet (though all of the writing is complete). I estimate that the book will be somewhere around 44 pages. It will be printed in full colour in A5 format.
A PDF copy of the book is included with all pledges, as well as single-page black and white digital versions of each of the playbooks for ease of reference and printing.
The Art
I'm drawing on public domain sources for the art in this book, mostly taken from the covers of pulp crime novels of the 1940s and 1950s.
Strange Tales
Talk Of The Town
Detective Story Magazine
There are a few challenges when it comes to this. The first is finding images that are high resolution enough to use in a print product. The second is that many of these images display a particularly narrow view of woman - they're often objectified, highly sexualised, and placed into positions of submission. I'm doing my best to find material that evokes the themes and mood of the game without being actively offensive.
Whatever art ends up in the book, I can promise you that none of it will have been created using generative AI. That's also true of the text of the game.
Stretch Goals
There aren't any stretch goals planned for this campaign, and it's going to stay that way. If things go really well and I overfund then any additional money will be going towards paying off some debts, and contributing to my honeymoon in June.
Timeline
The book is fully written. As soon as this campaign funds I'll send it to my editor, and editing will be complete before the campaign ends. Layout will be done by me, and will follow very quickly.
The PDF is expected to be available for backers in late April. The physical books will take a couple of weeks to print after that point, and then I'll be able to start shipping them out. I'm building a small delay buffer into the timeline to account for any unforeseen problems (including the fact that if this runs into June for some reason I won't be able to do any work in that month, because I'm getting married). At the very latest I expect you to have your physical books by the end of July, but it should be done well in advance of that.
Shipping is not being collected during the campaign. I will handle fulfilment through Loot The Room, sending you a discount code to the store after fulfilment so that you can add the book to your cart and only pay for shipping. I've chosen to do it this way simply because it's faster for everyone, and means that as soon as you pay for shipping I can post your book out rather than having to wait for other people to finalise their orders as with traditional pledge managers.
It's difficult to estimate shipping costs at this point. My best estimate is around £4 for UK backers, and somewhere between £8-15 for international. If you want tracking you'll be able to choose that option, but it does usually cost a little more. International backers will be responsible for handling any customs or VAT for their respective countries. At the time of writing this, books still do not attract tariffs in the USA.
This book is being made by a very small team of just two people.
Chris Bissette is responsible for writing, design, and layout. Chris is an award-winning RPG designer publishing under the name Loot The Room. He's best known for his solo journalling game The Wretched, and has written for Pathfinder 2, Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork, Fallout: The RPG, and loads more. He's one of the co-designers of the Rebellion Unplugged edition of Tunnels & Trolls. Find him on Bluesky @lootttheroom.bsky.social and check out all his work at loottheroom.itch.io.
Ste Thurston is Chris' long-time editor. He has no online presence, and he prefers things that way.
