GM'ing a political/murder mystery

>>52770284
Dat invisible elf.

>>52770284
A steampunk style safe that holds a mcgruffin, that will not open until (x) time.
A storm
A bridge that's out.....or a boat that doesn't arrive back until (x)
A reward from someone to NOT leave until (x) is solved

>>52770284
Someone is murdered?
A rich dude offers the players (insane amount of cash), to make sure that he isn't implicated

>>52770412
Aye. I haven't thought about any story reasons yet but probably the groom or one of his friends will be murdered. The remaining guests are for [bullshit reason] isolated inside the winery and can't leave for a few days. The murders will continue over the following days until there are only a handful of guests left. There will probably be tries to attack the PC's if they collect to much attention. They will follow wrong clues and have to solve the murder piece by piece. Since they're going to play as rather rich guests and nobles too, money will not be sufficient to keep them there.

>>52770284
I like making mystery scenarios.
The basic thing you need to do to prepare one is be very consistent with the way things are. You should write it from the moment the murderer decides they'll murder someone, up to the moment where the players start playing. And you should even prepare stuff that the murderer will or might do depending on player's actions.
What I'm saying is, the clues should be tight and logical. The players should be able to deduce the murder with reason, not because you hand specific "big" clues to them. For the clues to be logical, you need to think of them in a logical way, and let the player re-fit them together.

I usually start with a timeline (divided in days/hours, depending on the scale of the mystery). Then, from that, I get individual "scenes" (I'm still talking about things that took place before the players start investigating), and in those scenes, I try to think of specific things that could tip the players off.
Like maybe the murderer rode a horse to the victim's house? Then someone might have heard a whinny at an improbable hour.
Maybe the murderer tried to clean the scene of murder? Then the cleaning maid might remember some of her stuff disappearing.

Also don't hesitate to LOAD the scenes with this kind of details. Small clues are hard to put together if you're not the one writing the story. Even if it seems obvious to you, it won't be to your players. They need enough to be able to reconstruct a picture from disjointed fragments.

>>52772145
>You should write it from the moment the murderer decides they'll murder someone,

I think that's the point where i really struggle at the moment. Giving the murderers character enough depth to be logical and believable in its motive. Do you have anything specific I could use as inspiration?

>>52772453
Maybe on of the families involved in the marriage bankrupt the murderer causing his wife and children to starve to death or not get medicine they needed. It's his desire to see the culprit suffer, watching his entire family dying painfully. Maybe the murderer even leaves the patriarch/matriarch alive

>>52770284
Play GUMSHOE or something that isn't D&D

>>52772145
A mystery scene is a lot like a "room" in a dungeon. Frankly, they map into similar graphs.

>>52772623
Who is talking about D&D?

>>52772453
Accidental murder might be better than cold-blooded murder if you have trouble finding a motive. Maybe they tried to intimidate the victim and something went wrong. Maybe its the victim that started it, and they were just defending themselves.

That said, if you're going with serial killings, I'd say the best motive is revenge. I don't really see any other reason why someone would go out of their way to murder as many people when the chance they'll be found out increases with the number of murders committed. Maybe they just hate that specific family. Maybe they're some bastard who was disowned when all the others could live grand lives.
Or it's an inheritance issue.
Or maybe they're trying to hide *a* specific murder among them all, and all the others are only there to make the motive less obvious.

For specific inspiration, well... read murder mystery novels. Agatha Christie, for example.