Who Killed the Family?

Theo Botty, his wife Karen, and their beautiful little girl Siri, have been found brutally slain. It's up to the player characters to figure out who committed these heinous murders and bring them to justice. And it's up the GM to lay out the "Mystery of Who Killed the Family" by using random tables as a starting point.

Art by Frank Godwin

"Who Killed the Family?" is the latest in our Random Murder Mystery post series. Roll 1d8 against the tables below to generate an outline of a mystery adventure. (If you think results are contradictory, you can either re-roll or use the apparent contradiction as a way to deepen the mystery--or perhaps even both. For example, if the family was drowned but found in the backyard, they must either have been killed elsewhere and brought back home, or there is an even greater mystery in the method of their killing to be explored and revealed.)

WHO KILLED THE FAMILY?

Roll 1d8 on each of the following tables.

WHERE WERE THEY FOUND?

1. The Family Room

2. The Kitchen

3. The Backyard

4. The Garden Shed

5. The Campsite

6. The Park

7. The Beach

8. Roll twice on the table, rerolling additional results of 8. 

    The first result is where the bodies were found. The second 

     result is where they were actually killed.

HOW WERE THEY KILLED?

1. Poisoned

2. Shot (roll 1d6 for each family member to see how many times)

3. Throats Slit

4. Garroted

5. Bludgeoned

6. Stabbed (roll 1d6 for each family member to see how many times)

7. Roll three more times on the table, ignoring and re-rolling results of 7. 

    Each member of the family was killed in the way indicated.

8. Roll three more times. For each additional 8 that is rolled, the victim 

     was found barely alive and saved. Re-roll to determine how the victim

     was attacked. The killer will make another attempt at killing the survivor.

WHO KILLED THEM?

1. The Priest

2. The Schoolteacher

3. The Brother-in-Law

4. The Husband's Lover

5. The Wife's Lover

6. The Co-Worker

7. The Neighbor

8. Roll two more times, ignoring and re-rolling additional results of 8. 

    The first roll is the killer while the second roll is an innocent person that 

    he or she has framed for the murders. If the same killer is rolled twice, 

    he or she is a serial killer. An additional family will die every three nights 

    until the player characters put a stop to the carnage.

WHY WERE THEY KILLED?

1-2. Hatred

3. Revenge

4. As a sacrifice to an evil god. (1-4. The god is real. 5-8. The god exists 

    only in the diseased mind of the killer.)

5. As a demonstration to show others to not 1-2. leave the Cult of the Dark 

    One; 3-4. steal from the Melendez Cartel; 5-6. threaten to expose the 

    secret cabal of evil Immortals that are the true power; 7-8. try to expose 

    a ring of pedophiles that consist of very powerful and rich people.

6. To stop the parents from revealing the existence of the Alien Overlords 

     (which 1-4 are real, 5-8 exist only on the murderer's sick mind).

7-8. To end the blackmail the parents were engaging in.

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If you liked this post, you'll love Murder Most Random, a collection of 12 different random murder mystery generators. Click here to get a copy. The more we sell, the more we're encouraged to make more!