Debbie Townsend sent us her A Heroic Death photos which she hosted for a Christmas family gathering in a Welsh manor.
She used both the adults and the children’s version of A Heroic Death and writes, “It was a fantastic evening’s entertainment, some really competitive players. Children loved being involved too. No-one guessed who the murderer was. Thank you so much!”
Click here to learn more about A Heroic Death.
A Heroic Death is also available in German as Ein heldenhafter Tod.
Sönke Busch of Lympselon Krimi Events recently used Mord in der Flüsterkneipe (the German translation of A Speakeasy Murder) recently raised over €3,000 for the Weisser Ring (White Ring) charity that supports crime victims in Germany.
Sönke writes:
“We bring complete strangers with different backgrounds, pasts, political and worldly views, sexual identification and lifestyles to the same table and stand for cosmopolitanism and tolerance with our Krimi Dinners.
“Since in every Krimi Dinner a person comes to harm and during the dinner the whole thing is seen from a playful point of view and laughed about and is also the reason for the merry get-together, we want to remind you that reality is different.
“Victims of violence and other crimes have experiences that we do not wish on anyone. These experiences are sometimes difficult to deal with and inflict not only psychological but also material damage on the victim and their relatives.
“This year, as in the last four years, we would like to remind people of the reality and do something good. That is why we are again organizing a crime dinner for a good cause. We have chosen the Weisser Ring E.V as a donation target and would like to support their work. The full-time and volunteer helpers there do great work. The volunteers sacrifice their free time to help others in explosive life situations. I was there myself and talked to the local association in Mainz to find out about their work. In a nice conversation, all my questions were answered and I have a good feeling about the work of the Weisser Ring.
“This year we collected 3000 Euros for Weisser Ring by auctioning and raffling donated games, crime dinners and other things.”
Mord in der Flüsterkneipe is available from our partner at Die Besten Familienspiele.
And Drame à Chicago is the French translation of A Speakeasy Murder, available at FranceMurder.
Click here to learn more about A Speakeasy Murder.
A Speakeasy Murder is also available in French (as Drame à Chicago) and German (as Mord in der Flüsterkneipe)
Mark R recently wrote to tell us about Kumospace. In Mark’s words…
We did Reunion with Death back in 2020 using Zoom. The game was great, but Zoom is a bit clunky since the host must admit people to rooms.
I just bought Death in Venice. I’ll use a different service this time: Kumospace. I haven’t used it yet (other than to play around in it), but I believe it could be the ideal tool for hosting online.
Your video feed (about a 1″ square) is placed in a room that you can move around in. At all times, it has a large circle drawn around it (you see only your circle). This indicates the area that you can hear and be heard. So, rather than use different channels or breakout rooms, everybody roams around the same room as they were really there (but you can create multiple rooms if you wish). The proximity-based volume makes things like private conversations and eavesdropping possible.
The site offers some pre-made rooms, or you can create your own to fit the game theme using their drag and drop furniture, accessories, etc. You can also upload custom images. If you want to keep it simple, just pick something like the pre-made living room.
The host has broadcast capability, so when announcements need to be made, the host just goes into broadcast mode and all players can hear. All you have to do is login and create a space (it’s just a name and a URL). Then you share your space’s URL. The learning curve for using it is practically non-existent.
It’s free for up to 30 people in a room and runs in a browser window. As a test, I went into a room and walked away. Eight hours later, I came back, and the session had not timed out. I also googled kumospace time limit, and got no hits, so I don’t think there is a limit.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
After his party, Mark then told us how it went.
We hosted/played Death in Venice yesterday using Kumospace. We opted for the in-person setting (all of us confined to the Casanova’s saloon rather than to individual rooms). We had a great time, and at the end, everybody said they preferred Kumospace over Zoom.
It played very much like an in-person game with no need to have a “platform host” to manage breakout rooms.
The broadcast feature was great for announcements. I cut/pasted announcements into the chat box for all to read. The only problem we ran into there was with the two long “solution” announcements–apparently, there’s a character limit for the chat box. Both of those were too long, but that was easily worked around.
We did run into a few minor glitches with cameras/mics. However, these were easily remedied by exiting/re-entering, which can be done in a matter of seconds.
I’m guessing that Discord might do as well, but from playing with it a bit, it seems more complicated – at least for setting up.
I highly recommend Kumospace.
Based on Mark’s recommendations, I though I’d see how easy it is to set up a space in Kumospace.
And it’s ridiculously easy. A couple of seconds to sign up, then you create a space. You’re presented with a standard layout that you can then customize—the tools are very intuitive and it took me about ten minutes to create the layout at the top of this blog.
(My biggest challenge in using Kumospace was finding the chat box that Mark mentions – it’s at the bottom right of the screen…)
All I need to do now is try it out!
Kumospace isn’t the only virtual space out there. We talked about Gather Town a while back, and I’m also aware of Bramble (free version limited to 10 participants) and Wonder (currently completely free).
If you try Kumospace or any of the alternatives, let us know how they work!
One of our customers recently wrote to us asking which games have combat in them.
(I’m not sure if they were looking for games that had combat, or games without combat. Not that it matters.)
We realised we hadn’t made it easy for our customers to work out which games have combat and which ones don’t, so we have added icons (from game-icons.net) to our choosing a game page to make that clear.
Includes rules for combat.
Includes rules for the use of poison.
Uses superpowers instead of our usual combat and poison rules.
No combat, no poison. No combat, no poison.
One character will die during the game, and will be replaced with a new character for that guest.
The host can either play one of the characters or can just be the host, as they prefer.
Written by Peaky Games, and only recommended for people who have hosted one of our murder mystery games before.
We also have our standard rules (combat, poisoning, pickpocket, capturing and arrest) which anyone can use—either for their own games, or to add to a game that doesn’t normally use those rules.
But how do you do that?
To explain, I’m going to show how I might add combat to Murder on the Istanbul Express (which is set aboard a luxury train where fighting would normally be forbidden).
The easiest thing I could do is simply have the rules in my back pocket should they be needed. The game includes items that could be used as a weapon, and if one player decides that their character really must attack another, I would use our rules to adjudicate that (rather than forbid it).
I would also provide a first aid kit as an item on the train (perhaps in the kitchen).
But I wouldn’t advertise this in advance—I’d just use the combat rules if they were needed.
The next option is to announce that the fighting rules will be used during the game briefing, but don’t introduce new abilities or items (except the first aid kit mentioned above). Simply identify which of the existing items could be used as a weapon, and let the game commence.
Use common sense when working out which items could be used as a weapon—and be prepared for players to improvise.
Finally, I would embrace combat and announce that not only that the fighting rules will be used, but I’d give out suitable abilities and possibly even weapons.
But who to give them to?
I would give all of these a weapon of some sort, and an ability from the list in our Combat Rules.
And to balance everything, I would give other characters either an extra ability (from those used in the game) or a first aid kit (for doctors or anyone who might reasonably have access to one).
I would also share the combat rules with everyone as part of their character packs.
For me, though, I probably wouldn’t add combat to a game that doesn’t already have it.
I know our games without combat work fine without it, and adding combat can create unnecessary complexity that it doesn’t need.
We were recently asked how we would add around 20 additional characters to Hollywood Lies. That’s a lot, and as we’ve already talked about that for Casino Fatale, I thought I’d explain what I would do for Hollywood Lies.
Hollywood Lies starts with 32 characters, and there are two additional characters. So an additional 20 characters means you could run Hollywood Lies for 54 guests! You’re going to want at least one more host for that! (And this applies to Christmas Lies and Halloween Lies as well.)
As I mentioned in the earlier post, I wouldn’t write detailed characters (with secrets and bespoke goals) for these extra 20—that would be a significant amount of work. So these would be more minor characters, mainly focussed on solving the murder and making movies.
I’d give each character:
I would make sure that each of the new characters had two or three good friends they could support (hence the goal). Ideally, you would cast real-life friends in these roles.
I’d also give them abilities (based on the existing ones) and money to make sure there’s still enough money in the game for all the movies to be made.
With more characters, ability uses will be scarce. So to counter this, I would give everyone five blank “Tear this up instead of marking an ability use” cards.
I would change the making movie rules slightly to ensure that everyone can make a movie.
Hollywood Lies starts with five producers and movie teams of 5-8 people. I would increase the team size to 8-10 and add a sixth producer—so theoretically, we could have up to 60 people making movies.
Six producers gives us flexibility, although it does mean the party will last longer as there will be another movie to show off. (With an additional 20 characters, the party will take longer than usual because it will take the players longer to find the people they need to talk to.)
I would also create assistants to help the original characters. In particular, an assistant for each producer and the detective.
I would also copy some of the existing character types (similar to the new producer I mentioned above).
These would be new agents, another Hollywood reporter and maybe an amateur detective.
So here are my 20 additional characters:
And if I needed even more, I’d increase the number of actors/screenwriters/directors.
Would you be interested if we produced an additional 20 characters for Hollywood Lies? (And Halloween Lies and Christmas Lies.) Let us know in the comments below.
We have received a great story from Rosie about her Way out West Zoom party.
I ran Way out West via zoom for a group of old school friends last weekend and it was so much fun! The players said it was one of the best evenings they’ve had all year.
I wrote one extra character. My husband played it and said it worked really well- in fact he got quite a few murder accusations (is that a mark of success?!)
(I wrote the character so that it could be played by male or female as I’ve noticed there seem to be fewer female parts in the murder mysteries I’ve seen- but then saw you’d given the stable hand a name already so he is Pete.)
Zoom worked pretty well as a medium, I only have the basic account so we had to restart the call every 40 minutes which wasn’t as annoying as it sounded as the game broke fairly neatly into 40 min chunks. A word of advice to others to check out their breakout room settings- they need to tick the box to allow players to exit breakout rooms themselves!
Thanks for a lovely evening.
You can now download Rose’s extra character, stable hand Jay Sidwell, with the other extra characters in the same place you download the main files.
Her note about gender balance is interesting – we try to be even in the genders across our games and include a good number of genderless characters to keep things flexible, obviously we can always do better.
In fact originally her character, the stable hand, was male. That’s because the stable hand, Pete, is mentioned once in Way out West – they’re the poor soul who finds Zeke’s body. So we’ve changed Pete to Jay and made them genderless.
Way out West now has three extra characters, and you can see the full list of extra character for all our games here.
In an earlier post Kelly from Michigan told us about the prizes she awards when she hosts one of our murder mystery games.
The Reality is Murder
She then told us about another thing she does – mass murder!
“We usually have a mass murder after the game is over. I let anyone who wants to kill anyone else if they win at RPS, it doesn’t matter if they have a weapon or not. I don’t think anyone realizes that it doesn’t count, it is more about fun and settling scores. One person feels it is his duty to kill all the bad guys, even if he played a bad guy.
“It keeps people busy while we finish adding up the scores for the awards.”
Let us know if you give that a try!
Lord and Lady Westing’s Will is one of our more challenging murder mystery games to run online. The game is set in an English country house with numerous private bedrooms to sneak into.
Our rules for searching the rooms involve talking to the host (because you probably don’t have an English country house of your own to run the game in).
Online this can become complicated.
Online locations
One problem we have had in creating locations using Zoom or Discord is that when players want to do something in that location (such as hide an item), they move themselves to that location to do that. After all, that’s what they’d do in real life.
But we want them to interact with the host, so that the host knows what’s going on. And the host may be somewhere else.
Ryan, one of our customers, ran Lord and Lady Westing’s Will using Discord and here’s his story about he set up and used locations.
Ryan’s story
Ryan discussed with us his ideas, and one that caught our attention was this:
“I realized that in Discord, I can make certain channels visible and accessible only to certain roles in the channel, so I was planning to have all the upstairs private rooms hidden to everyone except to me, and then create a small channel called “Stairs”.
“If I saw anyone go into the “Stairs” room, I’d go in and ask them which room they’d want to access, and then move them myself into the channel corresponding to that room (which again they normally can’t see, but once I move them into it they can see it). That way no one else could see them in the channel, it would just seem like they had disappeared for the time being.”
He then reported back after his party:
“The party turned out great! I had a voice channel for each of the rooms on the ground floor, and then a Quiet Corner that only two people could go into for more secretive discussion.
“I also had the Stairs, which only 1 person could fit into at a time, leading to hidden upstairs rooms (which I would drag the guests into after they told me where to go).
“I was the only host, so it got a bit hectic towards the end of the game and adding someone else to help out with items or moving people around would have been be nice. Besides that, I feel like the private rooms had their ups and downs. It gave a sense of privacy to what you were doing. If lots of people were upstairs, the ones downstairs would notice because half of the people were missing from the voice channels.
“That led to some curious individuals going upstairs to specifically find out who was in what room. At first I was apprehensive because just easily letting a guest find someone who took the time to hide in a bedroom sounded lame for the Guest #1 searching the room, but in the end I winged it and told the Guest #2 that they had to spend some time “looking” for Guest #1 (usually like 3 minutes). That felt fairer, but I feel like there’s a better way I could’ve handled it.
“I’m definitely going to run another game soon. Thanks again for all the advice!”
Small spaces
We like creating small spaces in Discord – it’s something we’ll try in future as well.
If you’ve run a game online, we would love to hear about it.
Kelly in Michigan has tried both Reunion with Death and Death in Venice, and has shared her story (and some great tips) with us.
“Thanks for making the online versions of the games! We tried both of them. I don’t think I am qualified to review Reunion With Death though. The first time around I was going through stuff and made a mess of it. The second time I tried to run it I had Zoom issues, a no-show with an important part that I then was trying to play, and one person left in the middle due to a work crisis… It had nothing to do with the game.
“So, when I saw Death In Venice, I figured we would give it another try.
“We played on Zoom. People would take turns speaking with other players for 5 mins at a time (I set a time limit in the breakout rooms). Since we had an odd number of people, the one left over would hang out with me, take a break, etc.
“I forwarded the information to the person who was making announcements on Facebook. They read it aloud. I also had it on a shared screen. I think this was the first time the announcements were all on schedule.
“We didn’t do our normal awards ceremony, but we did have a rousing debate at the end over who the killer was. It was a good time.
“Our hints
“Let your guests know that the game is a bit faster moving than it would be in real life. They should invest a little more time than usual in getting to know their roles pregame.
“Remind them to have a pen and paper handy to take notes. When we play in real life we always included them with our character packets.
“If players are going into private chats or break out rooms to talk, limit the time they are in there. We found five minutes ideal. It gives them enough time to chat, but it is short enough to keep the game moving. People spoke to different players multiple times if needed.
“Thanks for helping us maintain some level of sanity during these trying times. It has been a soul sucking few months, hopefully things will normalize. Our group can’t wait until we can safely get together and finally play Murder At Sea.”
One of our customers, Kelly from Michigan, has told us of the numerous prizes she uses when she hosts our games. Except where noted, the awards are voted on by the players themselves and tallied at the end of the game.
“We usually try to get all the ballots in by mid-game, but since few obey, we accept them until we have votes tallied. You guys are right, it is a great way to wrap of the evening. People enjoy getting them, and the cost is minimal.”
The Reality is Murder
Kelly does vary the awards depending on the games, but these are the awards that she told us about.
Best Dressed (“We used do best male and best female – now we are gender neutral and do the top three.”)
Best Acting (“Again we use do best male and best female, but we are gender neutral and do the top three.”)
Random Award (The person who added something to make the night more fun.)
Most Outrageous Player
Too nice to be a killer
Slimiest Suspect
Biggest Ham (Chosen by the photographer who they thought was the most fun when taking pictures.)
Best Accent
Biggest Badass (Used in A Speakeasy Murder.)
Best Dancer (“During Lei’d to Rest we had a mid-game hula contest.”)
Staff Awards: The party hosts chose winners for these two. You can use the most number of nominations from the other players across the other awards, or player who got the most points (see Keeping Score), or any other method you want.
Best Newbie
Best in Show!