The Beginner’s Guide to Murder Mystery Maniacs.
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Details, Details: Turning up the Dial for a Memorable Party
A successful party doesn’t have to mean overspending to impress, but it does mean careful consideration. Does your party have a specific theme, and if so, how should you decorate your venue? Are you going to provide snacks for your guests, and do your snacks complement your theme?
It’s not enough to simply have a venue when it comes to throwing a murder mystery party. Thoughtful parties require attention to details; it’s those little things that show you care about your guests.
Chips and pretzels may be fine for a high school or college party, but basic snacks may underwhelm rather than excite your seasoned partygoers. Guests tend to put in the same amount of enthusiasm in the party that you put in to decorating and organizing, and can make or break your party.
Here are a few helpful hints for crafting a killer party (pun intended):
-The table’s arrangement is just as important as what’s on the table, as a visually appealing arrangement enhances the party theme and encourages your guests to fully engage each other as the game’s characters.
-Themed events like the 1920‘s speakeasy mystery commonly had salty snacks or fruit cocktail topped with powdered sugar depending on the quality of the establishment.
-Kids love finger food, which is why baked french fries are a tasty snack that doesn’t leave a mess when consumed. A french fry bar setup at your party allows your guests to grab a cup of fries and mingle without spills or greasy fingers.
-When in doubt, go with cake pops are a popular food trend that is easy to eat and eye-catching, and are sure to attract your guests to the snack table. Many bakeries sell cake pops in a variety of shapes that can complement your party theme.
-Check out specialty drinks that enhance your party. Gin is a popular choice for the 1920s and modern mobster mysteries, whereas martinis, bourbon drinks and Bailey-flavored beverages are ideal for our casino/spy mysteries.
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Scene Setting: Staging the Perfect Murder
Movies hardly start off with the climax as the beginning, so why should your murder mystery?
Your guests do the majority of the work once the mystery starts, but as the host it’s critical to prepare them for the game by creating the setup before the crime occurs. We include a scenario description that describes what the crime is and the setting, which gives you plenty of room to bring out your inner director.
Think of an improvised scene as a warm-up exercise for your guests, which helps them loosen up, forget about reality and plunge headfirst into their character roles. The type of startup scene depends on your mystery, as our popular Speakeasy Scandal mystery takes place in a dark establishment, whereas our American Icon mystery presents the opportunity for your guests to perform.
As your guests are chatting away (or wrapping up dinner), the blast of a gunshot is a great way to command attention and announce that there’s been a murder. Remember those toy guns in the toy section of the grocery store? Although most places have stopped carrying them, you can still purchase one at novelty toy stores or vintage shops.
Alternatively, a popped balloon works just fine to imitate the gunshot at the start of the game. Once you have everyone’s attention, it’s time to read off the scenario details and begin the investigation.
Good luck, and be sure to take plenty of pictures!
Spicing Up A Story: Content Customization
Our stories are crafted for a wide audience, but what if you want a murder mystery that takes place in your city or mentions a well-known friend (or infamous colleague)?
Rather than settle for what we have, inject your own personal touch into our murder mysteries with the customization option. Changes to existing stories or new ideas are always welcome around the office, and we take pride in making our mysteries a perfect fit for your upcoming party.
Although most of our mysteries are shipped within two business days, customized stories can take a little while longer to produce. We ask that you allow at least 5 business days while our writer monkeys work on your order for the best results.
Unsure of where to start? Take a look at our teen, dinner or corporate parties page at host-a-murder.com to see our current catalog of mysteries. From there, select the story you want to use as the foundation of your party and send us a note for any minor changes.
Significant changes such as the story’s setting, the victim or the weapon of choice requires giving us a call to discuss your idea.
Inquiries sent during the day are answered within minutes (thanks to all of the coffee we consume), while after-work inquiries are answered first thing the following business day.
Host Anxiety: Reducing Your Party Responsibilities
For me, planning a party is anything but fun. From the invitations to the decorations, the stress of getting everything in order is enough to make me not want to do it again. After seeing how complex a themed party can be, we at Murder Mystery Maniacs sought out to make the planning and hosting process as enjoyable as the gameplay itself.
The word “host” carries much weight for first-time mystery players. It typically represents the leader, one who is solely responsible for making everyone’s experience worthwhile, and is also the one to blame if the party falls apart.
While we use “host” to indicate the organizer for the party, we by no means intend to make your party-planning experience stressful in the slightest. In fact, our parties are designed with you in mind by ensuring the planning and organizing process are streamlined for a headache-free event.
Below are some valuable tips for keeping things in order while maintaining your sanity:
Invite your party guests at least 2 weeks ahead of time. People are busy, which means you’ll need to make sure you have enough attendees at the murder mystery to make the game enjoyable. An invitation sent early is proper host etiquette, and gives your attendees enough time to pull together a costume.
Prepare for a few cancellations. While ideally everyone you invite decides to show up, there inevitably be one or two people who can’t make it to your party. Our critical character card (included in your mystery party kit) informs you of the mandatory characters for the game, which gives you a little wiggle room in case you need to remove a character.
Pick up decorations for your themed party a week before the date of the party. Waiting until the day before or the day of the party is sure to cause unnecessary anxiety. Your decorations don’t have to elaborate, but they do have to be relevant to the party’s theme to enhance the overall experience of the game.
Relax the day before the event. The day before the event is your day, which means all party-planning should be taken care of. The only thing required from you is the setup for the day or night of the party, which can wait until the day of the party.Trust us, you’ll be a lot less stressed (not to mention agreeable) when there is nothing left to do in preparation for the party.
Remember to enjoy yourself at the party. Part of being the host is having a good time, as the party guests feed off of the energy you bring to the party. This is a murder mystery party, not the Presidential Inaugural Ball.
Host Survival: How to Prepare for Last-Minute Guests
You can prepare for your murder mystery party until every detail is perfected, but there will always be that guest who decides to crash your party. As the host, your job is to make sure everyone in the game has a character rather than stand in the background. Thankfully, you can reduce stress by ordering an additional character or two if you are unsure of the total guest count.
Your host account on the Murder Mystery Maniacs site includes the option to add more characters if necessary, which shoots an email to us to deliver the character information as soon as possible. For parties less than 2 days away, we can email a printable PDF of the character information to you rather than ship it.
Otherwise, you can call us to manually add the new characters to an existing order. Added characters are commonly called “secondary characters,” as they are involved in the game but aren’t critical to solving the mystery.
Oh, and don’t worry about ordering additional notepad or pencils to give your last-minute guests. We include one notepad, pencil, and name tag in your murder mystery kit in case a situation like this happens.
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Wrapping Up the Investigation
Your party started off with a bang and your guests began hunting for clues, but over the course of the game the conversation shifts from the mystery to sports, a television show or weekend plans. What happened?
They had too much time to interview each other.
Each party guest plays the character assigned to him or her, and acts as a detective to sniff out clues from other guests. Every interview reveals information about a possible suspect, and requires your guest to use his or her analytical skills to determine who committed the crime. The notepads provided by us include several blank pages to easily write down the motive, opportunity or weapon of every character in the game.
The number of guests is a good indicator for figuring out how long your party should last. Small parties of 8 to 12 people means guests should interview for no longer than 6 to 7 minutes. Any longer, and your guests may start straying away from the interrogation.
For larger parties, think of our murder mystery games as a speed-dating event gone awry. The goal of your guests is to try to interview everyone before time is up, and that timeframe is established when you inform your party attendees of the game’s rules.
As the host, you don’t just sit back and nosh on appetizers while the game plays out. You’ll need to occasionally walk around and eavesdrop on conversations while guests interview each other. That’s not to say you have to hover, as that would be creepy, but pretending to be occupied with something near the guests keeps you from being a distraction and ensures they are still on-topic.
Announce to your guests that they’ll need to wrap up any interviews they are currently having, and to asses their information in the notepads. The suspected murderer page is the last page of the notepad for guessing the murderer, as well as the three witnesses to the motive, weapon and opportunity.
Party attendees also vote on the best actor and best detective using the voting sheets in the notepad. Once the murderer is revealed, book ‘em and pass out the game’s awards!
Jumping the Gun
It’s natural to want to open a surprise, whether it’s a birthday gift or an envelope that contains important information about your role in a murder mystery. But opening it too soon ruins the surprise more often than not. As the host, it’s crucial to reign in your party-hosting eagerness and resist the urge to pass out those character information cards.
The info cards are stapled shut for two reasons: we want your guests to be surprised when they open the cards, and we don’t want your guests talking about their characters prior to the game.
Sure, you’re probably saying, “It’s ok, Billy won’t blab about his character and ruin the game.” Nine times out of ten, Billy gets excited because it turns out he’s the murderer and starts telling anyone who’ll listen to him. By the time it’s the day of the party, half of the guests already know who committed the crime, why he did it and how.
As murder mystery experts, we know all too well that one person knowing crucial information too early spreads to other guests faster than you can say, “Don’t say anything.”
The only thing you have to do prior to the party is send out those costume idea cards to your guests, which gives each person a morsel of info about the character’s personality. From there, the character information cards are to remain sealed until the day of the party when the game begins.
You and your guests will be thankful that you decided to wait, as what’s a murder mystery without the mystery?
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Printed Vs. Emailed Costume Ideas
Printed costume ideas seem to vanish into the ether when mailed via postal mail, and are just another headache you don’t need when planning a party. As a result, our hard copy costume ideas are on the chopping block, especially as we become less reliant on paper to provide content for our murder mystery games.
In the past, every costume idea was printed on a sheet of paper to help a party guest prepare for his or her character’s outfit prior to gameplay. However, printing out costume ideas requires you to mail the costume card, label the guest’s address on an envelope, and pay for postage. Overall, this put more responsibility on the host than we wanted.
Back in 2010 we decided to save a few trees and reduce customer stress by creating an online character database. This new feature sent an email to your inbox with a list of usernames and passwords for accessing your murder mystery party’s character costume ideas.
The new method took off, and now most of our customers access their character information through our site rather than receiving a physical copy. While there will always be some who prefer a physical copy over its digital counterpart, our goal is to become a little greener in our practices while still maintaining the same high quality of our content.
Costume ideas are easily accessible through the guest section of our host-a-murder.com site, and are continuously updated to ensure your outfit is modern, depending on your selected mystery party.
We are always interested in hearing your thoughts, and welcome feedback on our new changes.
Assigning Character Roles
We’re often asked about how to choose which character to assign to guests, as well as how the game plays out during the interview process. After nearly 10 years of playing the game we have two crucial tips: Match the character’s personality with your guest, and prevent your guests from forming a large group while asking questions.
As a rule, assigning the right character to your guest makes a big difference in how well he or she performs during the game.
Not everyone has a natural talent for performing, which is why it’s important to assign the critical characters to some of the more extroverted guests at your murder mystery party.
The murderer will have to do his best to throw off the other guests during the interview process, and needs to be a master fibber to avoid being discovered. He’ll have to be quick on his feet, and one of the more outgoing guests to keep others from catching on to him.
Critical characters are the “meat and potatoes” of our games, as they know information about the murderer that links him or her to the crime. As they interact during the game, the critical characters may eventually get hot on the trail of the murderer, which inevitably results in the murderer being taken in by the authorities (you, the host).
Furthermore, as game players it’s natural to want to huddle together, share information and figure things out. Resist the urge to band together to suss out the murderer, as this tends to trip up the murderer much faster than expected.
Lastly, don’t forget that you don’t have to share any information you learned from other guests! This is a game, and the goal is to be the one to discover the murderer before the others can figure it out.
Let’s Get This Party Started
The night of the game is when all of the action takes place. Guests arrive in their costumes, receive name tags to get them into character, and count on you to guide them through the game. Whether you choose a sit-down dinner or buffet style of appetizers, you’ll need to start the game off with a bang, literally.
A toy gun (or a balloon) works as the gunshot, which startles your guests and directs their attention to you. After the gunshot, you’ll direct everyone to the scene of the crime, and instruct others to open their character cards.
The character info card contains information about the specific character, including background information and whether the character has a motive, opportunity or weapon tonight. A few clues are also thrown into each character card as a lead for beginning his or her investigation.
Your guests play the role of the assigned character and as a detective, as everyone is trying to discover who has a motive, opportunity and weapon. Only one person in the game has all three, and his/her role is to prevent others from catching him/her.
Once your guests begin the interrogation process, your job as the host is to occasionally walk around and make sure people are asking the right questions rather than talking about their weekend. Remember to take pictures during the game as a personal keepsake.
The duration of the investigation process depends on the number of party attendees, and can last up to 2 hours for large groups. If you notice a number of your guests are no longer interviewing each other, call everyone to you to wrap up the party.
Guests write down who they think the murderer is in their notepads, and give you their guesses. After reading off their guesses, the solution envelope can be opened for the big reveal.
Have your guests vote for the best actor and best dressed, and award the best detective certificate to the guest who accurately determined who the murderer is among everyone.
Be sure to send your party photos to us at info@host-a-murder.com for our photo competition!
