Murder mystery party hints and tips
This page contains hints and tips for running one of our murder mystery parties.
These murder mystery game hints and tips have been written both by our customers and by us.
Use our contact form or Facebook page to send us your murder mystery party hints and tips.
Our top murder mystery party hints and tips
Planning your murder mystery party: Our suggested approach for planning your party.
Murder mystery games for beginners: Start here if this is your first time hosting a Freeform Games murder mystery game.
Top ten murder mystery party tips from an experienced host: Jollirog shares ten great murder mystery party hints and tips.
Using props: Tips for using props in your murder mystery game.
Golden rules for hosting a murder mystery game: Our golden rules: 1 Is it fun? 2 Will it spoil the game for anyone else? 3 Make it up! 4 Can a player answer this question? 5 Decide outcomes first.
Being the host and playing a character: Here’s our advice if you want to host a game and play a character at the same time.
Tips for preparing your murder mystery party
Organizing murder mystery party materials: Organising murder mystery party materials – tips and ideas from our customers for organising item cards, money, character sheets and so on.
Tips for food at your murder mystery game: Hints and tips about food and drink, including ideas for hosting our games around a sit-down meal.
Casting a murder mystery game: Tips for casting your murder mystery party.
Murder mystery party intivations: Ideas from our customers for creating awesome invitations.
Tips for running your murder mystery party
Late guests: Ideas and tips for dealing with late guests.
Dealing with absent characters: What happens when characters need to interact with a character who isn’t present (due to numbers)?
Getting players to help with hosting: Letting players adjudicate rules such as combat.
Murder mystery endings: Tips for ending your murder mystery party.
Murder mystery prizes: Kelly from Michigan tells us all about the prizes she uses when she hosts one of our murder mystery games.
Post-party feedback: Celebrate your party’s success by asking for feedback and stories afterwards.
Venue tips
Getting the best from your venue: Tips for arranging your room – including room layout and lighting suggestions.
Tips for hosting a 1930s murder mystery party: For 1930s games.
Online murder mystery party tips
Tips for hosting our games online: Here is our advice for hosting our murder mystery games online, using video chat.
Using Discord for online murder mystery games: Our guide to setting up your own Discord server for an online murder mystery game.
Tips about adding characters
Our games come with at least one free extra character in case you have an extra guest. (See here for our extra characters.) If you want to write your own, these are our tips.
How to write an additional character: Tips for adding additional characters.
Twins: Adding an extra player to your murder mystery party by casting the same character twice and calling them twins.
Adding lots of characters: Expanding our games for lots of additional guests – using Casino Fatale as an example.
Adding 20 players to Hollywood Lies: And here’s how we would add lots of extra players to Hollywood Lies.
Adding characters to Court in the Act: Answering a customer question.
Advanced tips
These are more advanced tips – many from our customers who like to go crazy!
Alternative rules
Alternative rules: Some ideas for real-world alternative mechanics to our rules.
Reporting the news: Optional rules for reporter characters.
Investigating pickpocket crimes: Some rules for investigating pickpocket crimes.
Rewarding great play: An idea for rewarding players for coming up with great ideas and costumes.
Alternative pickpocket rules: using stickers instead of our normal pickpocket rules.
Not for the faint of heart!
These are ideas that we’ve not thoroughly tested but you might want to try in your murder mystery party.
Playing two characters: It’s possible to play two characters at once in one of our games. Here’s how Steve did it.
Ideas for different combat systems: Alternative combat systems from our customers.
Playing without abilities: Here’s an idea for playing our games without using abilities.
Overnight murder mystery games: Here’s an idea for playing one of our games (Way out West in this case) overnight.
Keeping Score: We don’t have a system for letting players keep score, but if we did it would look like this…
Customising our murder mystery games: Our games aren’t always perfectly suited to your needs – this is how you can customise them.
Creating a crowd out of unused characters: A thought experiment for experienced hosts – give a few players several characters to play.
Tips for specific games
The Spy Who Killed Me
Adding Skype and Cryptography: An amazing story from a host who used Skype to create a controller for each spy.
Pirate parties
Pirate Party Tips: Tips for Davy Jones Locker and A Dead Man’s Chest.
Share your murder mystery game hints and tips
Use our contact form or Facebook page to send us your murder mystery party hints and tips.