I Wrote A Nerdy Murder Mystery Thingy for New Years Eve
This year, because I am apparently a huge fucking nerd, and also because the ever-present horror of having to choose what to do on NYE, the most annoying of holidays due to its insidious pressure of having to do something extraordinary, a group of us decided to do a “murder mystery event night thing.” I did the heavy lifting on this one.
In some ways it worked, in some ways it was a cluster-fuck, in all ways it was super weird and fun to create. Here’s kind of what happened!
A week or so before NYE, Katherine (my partner) mentioned wanting to do a murder mystery. Another friend, Sandeep, seconded. I saw a few online templates and instructions, but their stories all sucked. Also, I wanted to tweak it a bit for the specific space we were using. So, I began brainstorming, and Katherine suggested it do with “cults,” but in those 1920s/1930s fashion when California was full of this weird cults. (Say: Aimee Semple McPherson’s Foursquare Church).
The basic outline was this: On NYE, our cult (titled the Fourth House of the Fallen Fractal, because, oh who knows) had a ceremony, someone was going to die during it, the rest of the players would have to figure out who the killer was. I sent out an invite to a bunch of folks, and was pretty strict with people committing yes or no to coming. (Not an easy task for a NYE house party!) Once I got six yeses, I tweaked the number of characters and began to figure out how they’d interact with one another.
The broad outline of the backstory started to take shape: In 1920, Flux and her twin sister, Star, created a cult based on worship of the spiral. (This was incorporated by drawing a bunch of spirals throughout the house; Katherine carved a spiral into a pumpkin.) In 1926, Flux mysteriously died, but rather than Star taking over, Flux’s will handed cult’s leadership to Zion, another member. On this NYE, on the cult’s 10th anniversary, members would give an offering that is “an item from their past they want to forget about.”
(As far as Flux’s “mysterious death” goes, I added that deep backstory in case the game needed to be expanded to accommodate more people; if I had the time to do so that is, which I didn’t. The point would be that I could have two different groups trying to solve two different cases, which would space things out a bit. But since I didn’t deal with it, I mostly ignored Flux’s mysterious death other than a way to “further create the world.”)
The thing started two nights before NYE. I emailed each of the players four notes.
1. REVEAL: This is their backstory, and what they can tell other people.
2. SHARED SECRET: This is what they and one other person know.
3. CONCEAL: This is what they must keep secret.
4. OFFERING: An item from their character’s past. I told them to create their own story about it, if they wanted, but that the item had to be specific. (For instance, I told one person to bring a cigar, and one a dollar bill.)
I also gave them a list of who would be playing what characters, and told them to wear robes, because, cults.
The night went down like this: People started showing at 7:30pm, and — after “hello” hugs, storing food/drink they brought — they were ushered into the living room which had been decorated with streamers and mood lighting. Katherine made era-appropriate cocktails and everyone gathered around the table and had appetizers and drinks. Katherine tried to prod people towards talking about their own backstories — that is, stay in character — and Sandeep made everyone name tags, but mostly it a little bit of “real life” catch up.
[NOTE: Ideally, this was the time when people would stay in character, at least “reveal” information about themselves from the email. It didn’t really work like that. It was probably a failure on my part, since I was having a hard time staying in character, since I don’t really do this sort of RPG thing. So, the whole “SHARED SECRET” part of the night was mostly a bust; this was the only place for that to come out, although it could’ve helped aid the investigation for anyone paying close attention.]
A little after 8pm, I had Sandeep — who was Zion, cult’s current leader — request everyone to come into the dining room, which had been decorated like a “prayer chamber.” It was rad. Here’s a photo:
Sandeep and Katherine made the decorations. I just said “have a table for offerings and spiral designs,” and they went from there. They did an amazing job. It was one of the highlights of the night. They even incorporated a photo of Flux, the cult’s first leader:
In the “chamber,” our cult performed the “offerings.” This was where I wanted the game to officially start. (The drinks/appetizers were an integral part, so people could slowly transition out of their “normal” mindset and enter into the game; once they entered the other room, it should’ve been clear the game had begun.) During the ceremony, I had Katherine/Sandeep come up with “prayer-like stuff” to say (one had the idea to draw spirals on our foreheads, which was awesome), and then have characters come up with a short story about their offering. Everyone did that. One by one, they walked to the altar in a spiral shape (Sandeep/Katherine’s idea), handed the object to me, and I placed it on the altar. In retrospect, this act was important, but no one knew yet.
After all six objects were on the altar, I had Sandeep tell everyone to close their eyes and “say OM or something.” They did, during which I — not so sneakily — crept out of the room to perform small changes. I had to plant three clues in the living room — I couldn’t before previous because people were gathered there first for appetizers/drinks, unlike other clues around the house, which I spent the day planting — change lighting, and grab intro envelopes. After a few minutes — with them hilariously still doing an extended “OM” in the other room — I started screaming “Help!” Come to my voice everyone! Come on now!” At first, they all went upstairs, so I screamed “No! Downstairs! My voice is downstairs!” They realized what they were doing was wrong and came downstairs. They found me sprawled “dead” with an envelope that said “Avenge Me” on it.
Inside was a haiku:
(My character’s name was George, by the way.)
This led to my first inking that things might not go as planned. See: Another thing I did while everyone was “OMing” was place five envelopes with the characters’ names around the room. I thought they’d see my body first, read the haiku, then look for their envelopes. But many found their envelopes first and started reading those before investigating my body. So, either my haiku was pointless, or I should’ve hidden their envelopes somewhere that was hinted at in the haiku, or it was just two ways to get to the same ending. Anyways.
The rules told them they had to find out
1. WHO KILLED ME?
2. WHY?
3. WITH WHAT?
To do so, they’d need to consult clues that have been hidden throughout the house. They looked like this:
Each initial envelope had a specific clue as to where that character could find their next clue, each one at a different part of the house. This was so they’d leave me alone in the living room (I had to plant a few more clues and “change characters” into the MYSTERY MAN who’d help answer questions — a design cheat where I could assist/steer if the night wasn’t going as planned; this thing had never been, like, game tested before) and so they’d separate during their investigation. I didn’t want people grouping up, but to experience it mostly alone.
Also, each of these “first clues” hinted something about another character they didn’t already know. I didn’t want their first clue being something they already knew (i.e., if they were an undercover agent, I didn’t want their first clue to be the dossier of a secret undercover agent, which, you know, would be them.)
After their “first clue,” they were instructed to leave clues where they found them so others could see them. Each clue was an excerpt of some written document pertaining to the story. Like, here is Star’s diary where she talked about seeing Flux (the original cult leader, remember) choking to death and not helping her:
Here’s news about the search for an heiress to a cigar fortune:
Here are pamphlets from a competing cult. Here’s one:
As you can see, I also placed a number at the bottom (i.e., “2/13” or “6/13”) to let the players keep track of which clues they found, and which they didn’t, if they wanted to be completists about it. I don’t think anyone was. I didn’t mention it ahead of time, forcing the players to gather that themselves, which probably led to it not being used.
Players were instructed to go in rooms that weren’t already, to keep things more singular and, ideally, creepier. I’d turned off the lights in the house (I put tape on most light switches to keep from being turned on) and given everyone flashlights. Also, while they were investigating, I was downstairs playing various vinyl records of old artists. The Ink Spots, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, anything that sounded old or had a crackle. Also, I added a strobe light towards one of the clues, because, why the hell not:
There were 13 clues in all, and another 5 “fake” clues that were scattered. Unlike the 13 “actual” clues, players could move these if they wanted in order to “throw off other players.” These fake clues were intended to add a layer of gamesmanship between players, but didn’t add much at all!
The most intricate clue was in the attic, which asked players to piece together a photo that had writing in the back. Here it is:
Another quirk: the instructions warned the that The Murderer was still out there, looking to do some murdering! If The Murderer gave them an ACE card, they were the next victim, and would be done playing the game! Because, see, The Murderer was kind of playing a different game than everyone else.
See: I told one person they were The Murderer in their character’s envelope. (So, during the “ceremony” no one knew, well, really anything at all about how the game would be constructed.) I then gave them instructions to go into the offering chamber to (1) look under a chair for an envelope with more instructions; (2) take away their offering from the table, because that was the murder weapon. (SPOILER: My character, George, was murdered by ricin that was found on a cigar, which was one of the character’s offerings! There are many holes with this explanation, I know, but, also, shut up, I made this up in about 72 hours, so.) So, if anyone noticed that small detail missing — which was not likely, since they were used to seeing “clues” as being envelopes — they’d know who the murderer was.
(The other non-envelope clue was that I put a DVD case of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man where George’s body was “found,” to indicate he wasn’t meant to die. More on this in a second. The important thing is, only two people got this clue, and both were with assists from me.)
In the Murderer’s under-the-chair envelope, I revealed information about their own motive for killing, revealing that they HAD KILLED THE WRONG PERSON (uh-oh!) but also that they had (uh-oh!) gotten hit with some narratively-convenient amnesia and forgot who they wanted to kill, and why. Their night’s mystery/scavenger hunt, then, would be about solving THAT mystery. Who did they mean to kill, and why?
The Murderer was then instructed to go to specific locations in the house to read clues that were specifically for them. I accomplished this by putting a series of “DO NOT ENTER” signs throughout the house, a common thing to expect when there are rooms that guests can’t go into because, you know, we have real life roommates and all. BUT I explicitly told the murderer to ignore some of those signs.
My favorite design quirk in this respect was the attic clue. I wanted everyone to experience it, but wanted to stagger entry. I accomplished this by putting up a “DO NOT ENTER” sign there, told The Murderer they could ignore that, and then put a “ENTER IF YOU DARE” sign in The Murderer’s clue. They were then instructed to change signs, allowing other players now entry into the attic. I also spelled out A T T I C in red letters in the five “fake” clues, to point people in that direction:
After The Murderer figured out who they were supposed to kill and why, and also brought me three different playing cards — I put one in each of their clues, so they’d be forced to find all three before coming to me with their guess — I’d give them an ACE card they could use to murder the person they intended. This late entry of the ACE was meant to allow the Intended Target to play a good portion of the game before becoming the next victim, but also to make everyone suspicious from the get-go.
Some of that design worked, some of it didn’t.
First, I should have made The Murderer’s scavenger hunt at least four clues deeper, because they got to their envelopes way too quickly. Secondly, I wanted them to find the other clues scattered about and solve that part of the mystery, but that was expecting too much. That wasn’t their goal, after all. And, later, when I did finally relinquish the ACE, it was when the game was winding down, everyone gathered in the living room piecing together their clues. Oh, now’s a good time to show off one of the player’s notes they took while trying to solve the mystery:
Back to the flaw of the Murderer/Intended Victim’s ACE game. The Murderer couldn’t really murder someone in front of everyone and get away with it. They had to do it secretly, in one of the rooms. And by the time I have the ACE, the Intended Victim was with everyone else. So, there was never a “second victim” during the night, which I was hoping would give the game a second wind. It didn’t.
In any case, after an hour or so, when everyone was getting tired with the investigation, I gave everyone a 10-minute warning to get one last look at clues. After, I gathered everyone and they told me who they thought did it, why, with what. Some got it exactly right, some not. I revealed the answers, answered questions, and spent time on a postmortem about what worked/what didn’t. One clue was only found by one person, and one clue found by only two!
Then, we all drank and danced and got super high — which, probably, we should’ve done sooner — and said hello 2016'd! I also nearly blew off a chunk of my face when a bottle rocket went off in my hand. What a weird fucking night!
Here are some more photos, if you’re into this kind of silly thing:
Someone give me a wedgie or something, dear lord.