Host a Murder Mystery Dinner at Home Using Your Chosen Game

The short answer

When you host a murder mystery dinner at home, the game you bought or downloaded is your script. Your job is not to write the mystery. Your job is to coordinate it. That means assigning characters, getting guests prepared before they arrive, readying the printed or boxed materials, fitting the meal around the game's rounds, releasing clues only when the instructions say to, and running the accusations and reveal as written.

Most of the planning effort happens before the doorbell rings. Once you have read your game's host instructions and matched the roles to confirmed guests, the evening largely runs itself.

What changes depending on your game

Murder mystery games are not interchangeable, so check these points in your game's instructions before you plan anything else. They determine how much work falls on you and how flexible the evening can be.

• How many roles are required, and which ones are optional or can be cut
• Whether the host also plays a character or acts only as a facilitator
• Whether the game is a boxed set or a download you must print yourself
• How and when evidence or clues are released, and who releases them
• What to do if a guest cancels, such as a stated replacement or omission procedure
• Whether you are permitted to copy or share the materials with guests

Sellers describe their games differently. Murder Mystery Store's guidance for first-time hosts uses character descriptions to assign roles and sends invitations with costume information beforehand. Downloads require printing preparation, and in its boxed scripted games the host releases evidence and checks that each round's questions have been completed before moving on. Another game may hand those duties to a narrator or to the players themselves. Follow whatever yours specifies.

Before the party: roles, invitations and materials

Start by confirming who is actually coming, then assign characters to match. In a published account of hosting a Print-and-Play game, Lisa Aspeling describes the preparation as confirming attendance against the character list, telling guests about dress and catering arrangements, and reviewing the game's elements and when each prop is meant to be released.

Send each guest their character material and any costume suggestions well before the party, and ask them to confirm they have accepted the role. A guest who arrives without having read their character brief can stall an early round.

The illustrative preparation ledger below is one way to track all of this in a single place. Fill in one row per item.

If you want to play along without knowing the answer, read only the material the game designates for the host. Keep later evidence and the solution sealed until the instructions call for them.

Fitting the meal around the rounds

The hardest part of a murder mystery dinner is that you are running a game and serving food at the same time. Plan the meal around the game's round breaks rather than the other way around. If releasing clues and serving a course would collide, arrange a helper to handle one of them.

A private round worksheet like the illustrative one below helps. Copy only the stage names from your instructions into it, not the script text, so it works as a coordination sheet you can glance at mid-party.

Running the evening

The Murder Mystery Co. describes the general flow of its parties as an introduction, an investigation, accusations and the revelation. That is a useful mental model, but your game's instructions determine the actual stages and what the host does in each one.

As a hypothetical example, and only if your chosen game allows this order, an evening might run like this:

• Arrivals and a quick check that everyone knows their role
• Rules briefing
• First clue round
• Meal interval
• Remaining clue rounds
• Accusations
• The reveal, read or performed as the game directs

Throughout, release evidence only at its specified cue. Holding a clue back too long or handing it out early can unravel the mystery. If your game asks the host to confirm that each round's questions have been answered before continuing, do that check before moving on.

If a guest cancels

Check your game's absence procedure as soon as you assign roles, not on the day. Some characters are essential to the plot and some can be dropped. If a confirmed guest cancels, use the replacement or omission method the game specifies rather than improvising, because an unplanned change can remove a clue the solution depends on.