The Mystery Machine Is Open for Preorder (and a Body Just Fell on the Table)

Thanks to EOS10: Anomaly testers!

Thanks to everyone who play-tested EOS10: Anomaly! We’re in the final stages of finalizing the game tables and game rules, before the book moves to typesetting. We’ll keep you updated as progress progresses. If you haven’t had the chance to submit your feedback yet, there’s still time. The form is online here: https://tally.so/r/Pdqqae.

The Mystery Machine

The Mystery Machine is a modular toolkit for building the basic structure of a good mystery — and it’s ready for preorder.

We built The Mystery Machine from a structural analysis of some of the most popular and enduring mystery stories, and the elements that repeat throughout them. It isn’t a one-shot approach or a cookie-cutter template. It’s a guide to the building blocks great mysteries have always used, set up so they combine in nearly endless ways. It won’t write the story for you, but it will help you build the skeleton that holds up the story you want to tell. Eight major tables make up the toolkit, and you can choose from each one manually or randomly:

• Meta Structure: the underlying pattern of the crime and the case built on it
• False Surface: the explanation everyone believes until it falls apart
• Emotional Force: the motive that drives the killer and makes the crime make sense
• Setting Archetype: where the story takes place, from locked manors to small towns
• Midpoint Twist: the turn that changes how everything before it is read
• Character Types: the suspects, sleuths, and bystanders
• Red Herrings: the false leads that point readers the wrong way
• Style Variation: the tone, from cozy to noir and everything between

Pick the parts you like. Swap out the ones you don’t. Break them on purpose. The crime is yours to commit... within reason. We don’t condone committing crimes, actually. Be good.

The Dinner Party

Speaking of pre-orders, the first story in the Jane and Levi Mysteries is almost ready, too! Pre-order details coming soon. Here's a short excerpt:

The body fell from high up. It fell from high up right after hors d’oeuvres and just before soup and salads. It fell from high up and crashed onto the table, and everyone — the black market trader, the deposed prince, the assassin turned nurse turned chief of station strategic operations turned dinner party hostess — leapt away, tumbling over chairs and each other in the scramble anyone would expect when a body lands on your plate.
Nobody seemed sure what to do or say. Nobody except Lieutenant Commander Jane Johns. This was her moment. All her past and present lives had merged to prepare her for this one singular event, as if she were built for just this kind of problem: dead body at the dinner party kind.
She stepped forward like it was no big deal and checked for a pulse. Nothing. She took a contemplative step back and regarded the scene. She’d seen her share of dead bodies. She’d been EOS10’s charge nurse for a long while, and sick people die all the time. Healthy people even die when you assassinate them, but she’d been out of that work a while now. A few months, at least. Depends on your definition of assassination, okay? But something about this particular body didn’t sit right with her.

She looked over at Desmond, who stood with his hand over his mouth, eyes locked on the table. Their gazes met, but he gave her nothing, as was his way. The illustrious and vaguely alluring Desmond Dobbs — black market trader, high-end casino magnate, luxury space yacht owner — had accepted her invitation to this particular dinner party this particular evening without particularly mentioning he’d be bringing this particular plus one. Whatever. Jane didn’t care. Desmond wasn’t that attractive. Maybe a little like a model, but she’d had models before. No, Desmond Dobbs was nothing special. A murderer, maybe, seeing as his plus one was now laid out across the dining table like a starter course. But nothing special.

As casually as she could muster — she’d been practicing her casual voice at the Captain’s request, after complaints that she tended to scare the Ensigns in Ops — Jane asked what had happened upstairs. He and his date, Clara, had disappeared to the upper level fifteen minutes earlier, cocktails in hand. Only Dobbs had come back down.

“I know what you are intimating,” he said. “But we had an amicable discussion, and then she said she wanted to be alone for a while, so I left her alone for a while. That is all.”

“Amicable discussion about what? Per se.”

Desmond pursed his lips. “A private matter. Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant Commander, you mean.”

Polyhedron

We’ve built a dice emulator + random table manager (complete with sets of downloadable random tables for both game masters and writers) for the iPhone, and we’re looking for beta testers. If you use an iPhone and are running iOS27, you can join the beta by using this link to download (or open) TestFlight:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/Jx9YApBg

We built this because we needed a good dice roller while we were testing and developing Anomaly (see above). The app lets you build a tray of any dice, from a d4 to a d100 or a custom die. Roll with advantage, keep or drop the highest or lowest dice, or let dice explode. We also built in popular game systems. The app loads the right dice and points out the results, like a strong hit in Powered by the Apocalypse, a critical in Forged in the Dark, a match in Ironsworn, or a natural 20.

The other half of the app lets you download and create your own random tables. We have a set of built-in packs for dungeons, taverns, derelict stations and more... with more coming (Mystery Machine tables, see above again, are built-in!). Roll on a table from its page, or pick an entry yourself when a table is meant to be picked, not rolled. Every roll and choice is saved to a log. Stats shows how the digital dice are behaving, including a fairness check.

What we need most from beta testers is to hear what feels wrong, confusing or missing. Anything counts, from a result that looks off or a screen that’s hard to read to a table pack you wish existed. Use TestFlight’s built-in feedback (take a screenshot, then tap Share Beta Feedback). As always, thank you for helping make this better. We really hope you love it.

That's all for now. Happy Halloween :)