Historical Characters Murder Mystery Party
October 14, 2000
We wanted to have a murder mystery party, but not like the ones you
get in a box. We thought it would be cool to do it in a setting from
history, and Kalée's dad (an historian of science) suggested
the Potsdam conference in July of 1945. Everyone was told to RSVP
with 1. the name of a roughly contemporary historical figure that they
would like to play, 2. two lesser-known facts about that figure, and
3. an idea for a secondary task for the evening, to be randomly
assigned to another character. We then asked Andrew and Josh, who
couldn't make it to the party, to email the character who would be the
murderer and give that character a motive. This way, the hosts would
be able to guess too without knowing the answer. Drew and Josh went
above and beyond, not only coming up with a complex storyline and
motive, but sprinkling email clues liberally among the other guests.
As a result, the party was a blast,
and we can't thank them enough. We're archiving all this information
in hopes that it will be a useful starting point for others who want
to have this party or one like it.
- The Setting and the Murder
- Cast of Characters: These are the names,
descriptions, and lesser known facts emailed to us by the guests.
- Secondary Tasks: Each guest
contributed one of these by email and was assigned another one. We
awarded secondary prizes for correctly guessing other characters'
secondary tasks.
- Schedule of the Party
- Preprandial Accusations: These
accusations, made in front of the assembled group, were drawn randomly
from a hat. Each accuser had to make up a story to explain what they
were doing with the person they were with when they saw the suspicious
activity; each accused character had to make up a story to explain why
the activity was not, in fact, suspicious. The goal was for people to
reveal something about their characters both via accusations and
defenses.
- Clues: These were individually emailed to
the guests by Drew and Josh prior to the party.
- Random Clues: These were randomly
sprinkled among the guests via email by Josh and Drew prior to the
party.
- General Ideas: We had a brainstorming
session afterwards to think of ways to have a party like this without
making your friends stay up until 4am writing clues. The consensus
was that there was really no way to get around that--Drew and Josh's
intricate and well-orchestrated storyline was critical to this party's
success--but we did end up generating a bunch of cool ideas / advice
for homemade murder mystery parties in general.
- Pictures!
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