Thieves' World ed. by Robert Asprin

The ultimate prize of the heist is enough coins to fill two saddlebags – silver coins, not gold, which would be too noticeable. The amount of money isn’t given, but the bags are heavy enough to slightly slow the main character, who is specifically described as having bulging calf muscles and biceps. It’s also mentioned that it’s more money than an elite king’s guard will ever earn. I’m guessing it’s at most 100 pounds of silver coins – in 3e+ D&D terms, that’s worth 500 GP. This is enough money to murder or risk your own life for, even if you’re one of the highest-level characters in the city. (Of course, for picaresque characters, copper is enough to murder for.)

A picaresque campaign has to be on the silver standard, at the highest. Anyone throwing gold around is either a mark, or a con man pretending to be a mark. And that might not be real gold anyway. Remember that in literature, whenever anyone gets a gold coin, they bite it. There must be a reason for that. At least a quarter of gold is probably counterfeit.

The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters

The height of the vault, the solid stone of the pillars and walls, took up the sound of Brother Anselm’s voice, and made of it a disembodied magic, high in the air.

Take this effect and make it into an actual magic effect in a dungeon. In a vaulting chamber, a disembodied male voice is singing in an unknown language. What could be causing this effect?

It could be that the chamber is the crypt of a holy paladin. The voice is that of an angel, sent by a god to mourn at the paladin’s tomb for 1000 years.

Or it could be the ringing of a magical bell that tolls with a human tongue. If the PCs investigate, they will find that the song of the bell can be imbued in their weapons and implements. The weapons will sing in harmony until the song fades in 5 minutes. During this time, all attacks do extra sonic damage.

The fact that it’s a male voice is, I think, important towards keeping the PCs investigating with an open mind. There are so many female “gotcha” monsters in D&D that any woman, or woman’s voice, encountered in the dungeon will make PCs certain that they’re about to be charmed, or petrified, or bodyswapped, or vargouilled, or bansheed, or consumed by spiders, or something.

The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker

The Jewel of Seven Stars is a locked-room mystery, which is a mystery genre which requires a little extra work in D&D. It’s not enough that all the doors and windows be locked from the inside. At the very least, the room must be warded against teleportation, entry via other planes, and insubstantial creatures passing through walls. Alarm should also be used, to ward against invisible assassins. Without any of these countermeasures, the question becomes not “how could this happen?” but “which well-known trick was used?”

Given these minimum requirements, the only interesting locked-room murder victim is a paranoid high-level spellcaster (or someone – possibly royalty – who can hire one).

The Jewel of Seven Stars is much less well known than Dracula, but it is still a magical fantasy, so the same rules apply. The victim is basically a paranoid high-level spellcaster (steeped in the arcane mysteries of Egyptian mummies). He’s set up his own defensive magic, but he’s been stabbed anyway – in a way that cannot be self-inflicted.

Off the top of my head, here are some fantasy locked-room mystery solutions:

• The victim is the recipient of a voodoo-doll-style curse where they can be hurt remotely.
• One of the trinkets in the room is a hostile Figurine of Wondrous Power.
• Stabbed or bludgeoned by an animate piece of furniture.
• The murderer was admitted by the unsuspecting victim. After the crime, the murderer re-locked the door and re-set the wards, shrunk to the size of a flea, and is STILL IN THE ROOM oh my god Sarah is in there now
• The murderer is a snowman, who melted. (ALWAYS be suspicious of an unexplained puddle of water. ICE IS ALWAYS INVOLVED)

Another interesting things from the cities of the West African forest: archaeological evidence from one city shows that there were altars built right at the side of their paved roads. That made me think of this:

Lovecraft's fountain

This is a fountain in Providence, RI, H. P. Lovecraft’s home town and where I lived as a teenager. Local legend has it that if you drink from this fountain, you will return to Providence – and that Lovecraft drank of it before he went to New York, which is why he is buried in Providence.
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What struck me about the cities of the West African forest is the archaeological evidence of their religious sacrifices. First, there were sacrifices of wild, not domesticated, animals (animal type unspecified). I’m more familiar with European sacrificial traditions where domesticated animals like oxen are sacrificed.

African Civilizations by Graham Connah

Human Sacrifice

Human sacrifice was practiced in some West African forest civilizations:
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