Creating a Murder Mystery Weekend Problem I: Caring About Characters (SPOILER FREE)

So I’m planning a murder mystery weekend this May.

Before I say anything about it, let me note: there is nothing in this blog entry that will spoil the game for any of the players or give anyone an unfair advantage. So feel free to keep reading no matter who you are.

Whenever I mention that I’m planning a murder mystery weekend, people get really excited and ask me all about it. So I thought my process might be of interest and decided to put together a blog series on how I tackle challenges that arise during my planning. I identified many of these issues from playing the kind of murder mysteries that you can buy in boxes, remembering what did and didn’t work. There are a lot of problems that I’m trying to fix and a lot of positive experiences I’m trying to re-create.

Right now, I’m in the middle of working out rules and clues (because there’s a treasure hunt as well as a murder mystery going on). I have a solid idea of what I’m going to put together, but I need to refine everything because too many of the participants are computer scientists who will exploit any loopholes (er, I mean… I love you guys!).

Basic plan: I rented a 5-bedroom vacation house here in Toronto from Thursday to Sunday of the week in question, and I have fourteen fantastic friends who’ve chipped in to help pay for the house, food, and other necessary supplies*. In return, I’m going to give them each a character to play in this murder mystery. They will stay overnight at the house from Friday to Sunday. While working to solve a trail of clues that lead to a treasure, they will also have to figure out which of them is the murderer and avoid getting “killed” by each other.

First challenge: making players care about their characters

In all the murder mysteries I’ve played, each player gets to assume the role of a character in the plot of the mystery. However, most of the time, people don’t get into character in murder mysteries except for the superficial. Based on my play experience, I think that’s for two reasons: a) most murder mysteries provide way too much detailed information about a character so that even if a player wants to act like the character, he or she can’t; and b) except for the murderer, most of the time, there’s no reason for the player to want the things his or her character wants.

For example, in a lot of boxed murder mysteries, each player gets a little booklet that has a separate page for each phase of the game. It usually tells you that there’s information you want to find out from another character and information you have to tell the other players if they ask. But there’s no incentive to keep information secret from the other players, even if it’s information that the character would want to keep secret (e.g. he’s an illegal immigrant! she re-wrote someone’s will!). Often, the players end up going around the table and taking turns reading off their information-to-tell every round. Even those who want to inhabit their characters are stymied because it’s difficult to go all out when you don’t know what the next page of your booklet might tell you about yourself — you don’t want to risk contradicting the plot of the game.

To avoid that, first of all, I wanted to give players ownership of their characters. So I’m providing only a basic description (e.g. “you’re a professional football star”) and a secret (e.g. “despite being engaged, you’re secretly already married to [another character]!”) allowing each player to fill in the blanks if he or she wants to, to the extent that the character descriptions will be gender-neutral. This will let players choose how far they want to inhabit their characters and leave them free to make up any details they want.

Second and most importantly, I wanted to motivate the players to hide their character’s secrets. (Hey, this is a murder mystery: everyone has to have a good secret in order to act suspiciously!)  To that end, I’ve hashed out a game mechanic where other players can steal your win if they know your character’s secret. I will hide one piece of evidence for each character somewhere in the house (and this will make sense in the plot of the mystery, but further explanation is definitely a spoiler). Each piece of evidence will be an Encyclopedia-Brown-style clue that prove that character’s secret.

For instance (a bad example because I’m saving the good ones for the real game!), the player playing the character Pat Smith might be the only person in the house who wears size-five shoes. (And I can know this when designing the clues because I know the players personally.) During the game, players might learn of a burglary that took place at a carpenter’s shop where the perpetrator left footprints in the sawdust. In the house, you might find a size-five shoe with sawdust in the treads. If you put two and two together, you can use that shoe as evidence to accuse Pat Smith of robbing the carpenter’s shop.

To make this work as a game mechanic, if you get the final treasure, another player can steal it (and the win) from you by accusing you of your secret and providing the evidence that supports it. So, it’s worth going to any in-game lengths to make sure that nobody else knows and can prove your secret. Because the evidence is Encyclopedia-Brown style, it’s also important to make sure nobody knows your secret even if they can’t prove it, because knowing someone else’s secret will help players figure out which evidence applies to whom and why.

I also like the way this system means that as in real life, players are free to share their character’s secret with other players whom they trust, but the success of this strategy will depend entirely on that other player’s trustworthiness. Because there are no repercussions to stealing the win from someone else, I hope it will be tempting to backstab in the final minutes.

I still need to decide how to institute a “no touchbacks” rule with this mechanic: obviously, I don’t want the game to end with two players repeatedly stealing the win back and forth because each knows and can prove the other’s character’s secret. But overall, I’m happy with the way I’ve solved this problem and think this will be an immersive experience for everyone.

* The house reached maximum accommodation limit long before I could open the invitation to everyone I know. But if you’re interested and I know you, there is a waiting list. Contact me for more information.