Has anyone ever organised or been involved in a Murder Mystery Dinner?
I’m not taking about the professional ones with paid actors playing the main roles, I mean the private dinner party for a laugh type ones where you get a booklet and you play a character yourself. (Like these)
A group of us are planning this for New Years Eve (rather than the usual crowd into a pub, get pished then wander the streets steamin’ New Year)
Anyone any advise to offer - anecdotes, funny stories and experiences to share?
Okay, thanks. I had heard that before from others.
We are putting quite a bit of thought to the guest list, to ensure we get a good mix of people, but also that they are all ‘up-for-it’ as it were.
Think that’s definitely an important point.
Did you stay in character all night, or just over dinner? How does the game actully work? Does it run all night?
Aro,
We used to do them all the time. In fact, the hostess sent out invites (they come with the set, I think, or she photocopied our character cards) and we dressed the part.
We were our characters from the moment we arrived at the dinner and played all the way through. If you do a traditional meal (starter, soup, main meal, salad, dessert, drinks) it works out perfectly. If I’m not mistaken, they even offer suggestions in the box about what dishes to serve when.
Another thing is that you shouldn’t rush it. It’s tempting to just jump along from one thing to another, but that sort of ruins it. Besides, it’s much more fun to find out who the killer is when everyone is pissed!
A friend of mine does these. She gave a Mystery Tea Party for my birthday a few years ago. No murder–the mystery involved a stolen diamond. Our setting was the 1930s, and the story was about an heiress who had a fiance, a sponging best friend (this was my character!), a stepmother, a maid, and an old schoolteacher, all with Dark Secrets and all with good reasons for taking the diamond.
My friend wrote the outline for the mystery herself, tailoring the characters to the people who attended the party. The Mystery-in-a-Box sets tend to have 8 characters, equally divided between men and women, and there were only 6 of us, 5 women. (I have played box mysteries, but you do need to have the correct number of people to make them work well.) Other than that, we used the Mystery-in-a-Box format, doling out clues between courses.
The party lasted about 3 hours. We all wore '30s-style clothing and everyone stayed in character for the most part throughout the afternoon–although some of us were better actors than others. As a matter of fact, that’s how I missed figuring out who did steal the diamond: the person playing the thief was terrible even at reading aloud from the script, never mind improvising lines, so most of her important clues got lost in a muddle. I was certain the maid was guilty; as the best actor in the bunch, she was the most successful at behaving suspiciously. Oh, well. It was a lot of fun anyway.
I’ve been to two. One I organized, the other was done by a friend. I think the one I held was pretty good – I did the meal and the settings, and had all the clues posted on a board. The one my friend did didn’t come off so welkl, I think, because it was a Star Trek one – no one wants any of the Star Trek guys to be the Bad Guy, so the mystery was hopelessly convoluted.
I’ve been to one “professional” mystery. The mystery was OK, but the food was unspeakably awful.
From personal experience never start a Murder Mystery Weekend with a scavenger hunt (ending in a pub) followed by cocktails from 5 til 7. This tends to mean that the drinks served with the meal push people who have drunk a lot into a state of inebriation (and this was after the person in drag had slipped over and sat down in the sea - we just laughed and laughed).
It’s quite hard to get a coherent answer from someone who is singing the Queen of the Night’s aria (Magic Flute) to the words “Kiss my arse, I come from Leeds”.
Add to that their attempts to run along the clifftop after the meal whilst others ran after them hoping to stop a disaster. We won’t mention the cheating during the strip pontoon later on though…
We eventually had to stop and continue the game the next day (still in character, but not in costume). So, to summarize, they are great fun if you can get everyone in a costume and in character, and keep the drinking down until the murder has been solved.
The other parties I’ve been to were less boozy, which is a pity since I was in drag for one of them.
I must admit that i’d go with the staying at least vaguely in character thing.
Of the couple i’ve been to, the only one that really rocked was one where we did exactly that - plus the proper dinner that Anahita mentioned above.
I’d definitely recommend the dressing up thing as well.
In the one i enjoyed most i played a heroic RAF war hero - who had done some rather unheroic things (such as smuggling and sorting officers out with “friendly” women.)
I’ve attended one and hosted one. As long as everybody really plays along (and some shy, unlikely people surprised me as being the most convincing characters) you’ll have a blast.
I served party food, and we had plenty to drink.
My one piece of advice is get started early. It’s going to take about 3 hours. We started at 10pm (after eating and chit chatting) and some people were yawning by 1.
I just remembered! I sent the murder mystery I hosted to Tequila Mockingbird during one of the White Elephant things. There’s no reason to keep a mystery around once you’ve figured it out.
Oh, they’re really fun. We’ve had about 3 murder mystery nights. Everyone comes dressed up and we cook for hours food that fits the scenario.
The ones we get (I’ve forgotten the brand) even come with a tape to listen to before you start from the detective (or whoever) who assigns you the case.
It does take a long time. For the first few I put out little notebooks for people to write clues on but they weren’t really used.
I’ve participated in about 15 or so, and written 2 of them myself. They’re quite popular with my group of friends.
It’s definitely important to get people who are into the idea. People who will dress up, and people who will be a little outrageous in playing their roles. Sometimes I’d invite a shy person or a person who was just a killjoy. It would ruin the mood.
I think they’re more fun if you cook (instead of just ordering pizza and beer), but I never went by the menus provided. I always made something easy to serve to a large group, like lasagna.
I don’t have that many memorable anecdotes, but we always had a lot of laughs. Most of the best ones came when we got people to cross-dress for their parts (male parts to women, female parts to men). If you have people who really get into their roles, this is generally HILARIOUS.
BTW, if you want suggestions for which one to buy, I’ve done most of the boxed ones and can tell you which were the duds and which were the really good intrigues without ruining the plots for you.
The Decipher “How to Host a Murder” ones are the best of the lot.
Maiming of the Shrew: good
Tragical Mystery Tour: okay
Watersdown Affair: a bore
Grapes of Frath: one of the better ones
Last Train From Paris: excellent intrigue
Archaeologically Speaking, It’s the Pits: a classic (one of the first ones, IIRC, but story-wise not so great)
Chicago Caper: one of my favorites
Hoo Hung Woo: also good
Class of '54: okay
Power and Greede: pretty good, not one of the best
The Duke’s Descent: another bore
Roman Ruins: very good
The Good, the Bad, and the Guilty: laff riot
The Wall Street Scandal: actually haven’t done this one
I’ve done others (from the other company advertised on that page you linked to) but they weren’t that great.
Here’s one scenario. Each person invited takes a character and plays that person for the night, over the meal and drinks.
The rest I’m guessing, but I think as each course is served, further information is read out or ‘leaked’ by each character, giving clues and information which will eventually lead to someone being unmasked as the murderer.
Even the murderer doesn’t know they did it until the end to avoid too large a clue being given by mistake.
And everyone gets drunk, then lives happily ever after.
Yeah I gathered that much. I’m wondering about the actual process.
For example, do people just ad lib based on a profile they have? Is there a specific script? If there is a script, why not just get several copies of the script of any play and just read them?
