We’re always very happy for our games to be used to raise money for charity. While we have commercial licences available for people who want to run our games commercially, if you want to run one for charity, here’s what you have to do: Choose a game. We suggest that you pick one of our larger games such as Murder at Sea, Casino Fatale or...
Our next game, A Speakeasy Slaughter, has reached playtesting. It’s been playtested twice, but we want to test it one more time. When we test our games, we are looking mainly for player feedback (as opposed to feedback from the host, which is what we usually get from our customers). Here are the questions we ask our players: Which character were...
We love it when our customers adapt our games and make them their own. We’ve seen bespoke invitations, badges, items, handouts and character booklets. In fact, I think that anything that could be customised has been customised. Of course, we’re slightly embarrassed that our basic layout isn’t a bit better. But we’re the first to admit that...
When I'm not making murder mystery games for Freeform Games, one of the other things I do is… make other kinds of games. (I may have a bit of a games problem. Although if you acknowledge it, it isn't a problem, isn't that right?) So just lately I've been thinking about card games, particularly small ones that can be played in a family context –...
I’ve just finished the excellent book Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain. In it, Cain outlines the differences between introverts and extroverts and how society (American society in particular) values extroverts over their quieter brethren. Introverts and extroverts enjoying The Karma Club Now, I’m an...
In Sharp and Sensibility, I played the British Prime Minister who, as well as running the country, had to deal with his demanding daughter and her friends. In the UK and Australia, the games became known as “freeforms” whilst in the USA they became known as “theater-style larps”. They are often run at games conventions. Thus Mo and I started...
Here’s an idea that you may wish to include in your game. (Note that if you’ve not played our games before, we suggest that you stick with the basic rules – but if you’re an old hand, go crazy!) Bit Parts: Use a co-host or two to play the “absent” characters as bit-parts or minor roles. The co-host would play all of the “absent” characters, each...
What's in the yellow bottle? While we provide item cards for all the key items in our murder mystery games, you can create a better atmosphere if you replace the cards with real props. There’s an obvious practical reason we use item cards in our downloads as opposed to physical props, but there are other issues with using real props that we’re...
Players scheming in a corner in Venice Last month Mo and I attended the annual Peaky freeform writing weekend along with 27 other like-minded writers and players of freeform roleplaying games. We formed into six groups and over the course of Friday evening and Saturday each group wrote a freeform. On Sunday we played five of them. It’s a...
Our games aren’t always perfectly suited to your exact needs. Perhaps you want to set Casino Fatale in the 1920s, or perhaps you want to change the names of the characters in A Dead Man’s Chest to those of your favourite movie. Or perhaps you want to run Curse of the Pharaoh for children and need to rewrite the inappropriate plots. Some companies...