Jared Bredeson’s Under the Big Top party
“We ran Under the Big Top as an end-of-year party for our staff. Only one of the group had every done a murder mystery party before, but everyone came in costume and really committed to their characters. A few were surprised by the amount of information in the character packets at first, but once they had 15 minutes to digest it all and figured out how to follow the ‘suggested first steps’ prompts, everyone absolutely dove in to their characters and goals. There were marriages, divorces, re-marriages, secret plots to frame other characters, items being stolen left right and centre, you name it. We couldn’t get people to quiet down at the end to actually hear the final solution because they were having too much fun sharing all their own secrets and plot points.
“As the host I was kept pretty busy answering questions and letting characters bounce their theories and ideas off of me. For the missing characters not in the game I let players send ‘telegrams’ through me and I would write a little message on paper and give them a ‘response’ 5–10 minutes later. I even had one player asking me to send a telegram to a CSI lab to run fingerprint and blood samples, so I had fun creating some extra ad-libbed messages about their strange requests. All that to say, thankfully I had a 2nd helper to hand out snacks, make popcorn, and refill drinks as the game progressed.
“We had some kids’ gym parachutes we used as colourful wall hangings, put on a Spotify circus playlist and used a lot of fairy lights and balloons to set the circus vibe.
“Love how intricate and free-form these murder mysteries are and how they create a lot of room for drama that players can dive in to- yet it’s incredibly easy to set up and run as the host by following all the steps and check-lists in the info packet. Thank you!”
Jared Bredeson, United Kingdom
