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"Sönke Busch of Lympselon Krimi Events recently used Mord in der Flüsterkneipe (the German translation of A Speakeasy Murder) to raise over €3,000 for the Weisser Ring (White Ring) charity that supports crime victims in Germany. Click here to read more."
Sönke Busch, Germany
"We played A Speakeasy Murder at our nudist park, which gave members a chance to dress up for a change. Ha! Well-done start to finish! The killer turned out to be one of our residents who is on the autism spectrum, and believe it or not, NOBODY figured out who it was! And everyone had a BLAST! Repeat customer for sure."
Stuart Antrim, United States
"Last night, we hosted a party with A Speakeasy Murder for our 20th anniversary and we had the BEST time. We have friend groups that don't all know each other and this was the perfect way for people to mingle with people they don't know. Everyone got into character and did a great job. Because this was my first time hosting a game like this and it was so large, I had two friends help me cohost and we divided up the tasks. All in all, it was a great time. Thank you!"
Dina Mancini, United States
"We had a blast with A Speakeasy Murder! We played it on New Year's Eve 2019 to kick off the 20s, and I think we picked the best way to spend it! Because most of the guests were planning on being there until midnight, we should have let the mystery go on a little longer, as most of the guests were being very cautious with their actions (this being everyone's first Freeform Games mystery). But it still turned out very well, and almost everyone expressed interest in doing another one!
the guests had a lot of fun pulling their costumes together! And they really enjoyed each carrying their own secrets. It was so fun to watch them comparing their secrets at the end, and each in turn being scandalized by their friends' secrets. I followed the advice I found in Freeform Games' casting tips, and tried to cast guests who were already friends as the closest associates in the game, and so we had some lovely rivalries between the singers!
It was an extra boon that we had guests who were interested in performing – Lola killed her song 'Whatever Lola Wants Lola Gets' at the beginning, and Sugar gave her a run for her money with 'At Last My Love Has Come Along', in which she danced with Linguini. It was amazing to see how the guests played their characters! Of the 23 guests, Benny and Velma stood out as the most hammy (especially together), and at one point Velma even fake-slapped Benny for revealing her past in front of Tillie and Pickles! It was a hoot to watch!
It was also amusing that early on, Kit revealed his true nature to Mayor Trelawney, and the Mayor was quite game to try and work together to decipher the mysterious map, through unscrupulous means. I think the most successful characters were the ones who took the freeform nature of the mystery to heart, and were coming up with creative ways to bargain with other characters. All in all, this mystery was absolutely brilliant, and we are eager to play more Freeform Games!"
Christina Gass, United States
"A Speakeasy Murder review and suggestions:
What an incredible game! By far the best murder mystery I've ever hosted – this is so perfect for my group of friends who are big board gamers or LARPers. Everybody had plenty to do so it was a really engaging night! Nobody ended up correctly guessing the murderer, who did an awesome job with their role and everybody else was so shady.
In the other murder mysteries I've done I think it would have been pretty disappointing if nobody could figure out the murderer correctly, but given that there was so much else to do and people had other goaIs to accomplish, nobody minded that they couldn't figure it out.
I had 15 players (supposed to have 16 but one backed out day of so I didn't have Tillie but I did have Reno) and I think that as just one host, that's all I could manage. Any more people and I would have needed another host. My night was the perfect amount of busy for me, I always had things to do, but nobody was waiting for me to help do anything.
There are a few things I would change if I did it over again, but this is pretty nitpicking, overall I wouldn't change much because it was such an awesome game.
I would start officer Pilkington off with an item that would help him restrain people to arrest them – like handcuffs. Constraining people was pretty hard so I might do something to make that easier. Or I might give players suggestions on how to be creative with that to begin with because they had a hard time. That's more player error though.
I would add in more rules for how ghosts work. I decided on the fly that since they could still talk to people that they could share information up to 10 minutes before their death. That way if the murderer wanted to hide the body, they couldn't just tell everyone who murdered them. I also had them just discreetly write ghost on their name badge. That way people talking to them may or may not realize they're just a ghost. This worked well enough, but without having more detailed rules it was a little clunky. Our ghosts still had a fantastic time continuing to play so I'm really glad that was a mechanic.
Reno's character was a pretty interesting one to have. I think their ability to cleanse the wicked is a bit OP/unrealistic/ruins other people's game play. On the fly I changed it so that if you were converted it just meant that you couldn't choose to drink any more alcohol and did need to try to help Reno, but you didn't necessarily immediately support prohibition: that way, the players who were converted early on could still work on their own goals. I think another way you could change that is to have no conversions before happy hour.
Another thing I would have done was clarify for the players before the start that there may or may not be multiple guns in the game. Apparently a lot of my players thought that if they came across any gun, then that gun was the murder weapon used on Scabface. That was mostly a player error. Another big player error was that Sasha forgot that they could decode the map, they thought they needed Bobby to do it who wasn't in the game. This caused a lot of frustration for everyone chasing the lead and thinking that there were no players in the game that could help them (Lola died right after happy hour so she was out).
I loved the horse race mechanic. Somebody in my game early on picked a random horse to spread a rumor about, and it happened to be the actual winner of the horse race! So everybody wanted to bet on the winner and Sammy ended up not trusting anyone including Stan, since it seemed crazy that everybody could know the winner. That being said, Sammy had a hard time finding time to do anything other than deal with people trying to bet. This was a pretty difficult character to play and my player did a fantastic job – but I would note that you need to give it to somebody very good at multitasking. One way you could change that is by making it so that bets can only be placed at certain times, there could be an announcement for that or it could happen only before happy hour.
I checked in with my players throughout the game to see how they were feeling about the difficulty. If some people were struggling or finding things to easy to the point of making it far less fun for them, I would give them a little guidance, drop or take away helpful items, or change things up.
10/10 would play again!"
Monique Swirsky
"My guests had a blast at A Speakeasy Murder. The costumes were great. We had a full house including Ginger Roberts. I strongly advise allowing plenty of time in advance to pull everything together. You should have at least two doorkeepers (we had three) because they will be very busy. If possible assign someone to be the party photographer because you don't want to miss out on getting picture of people in their 20s finest."
Kelly Wittman, USA
"We had 25 of us down at Fat Stan's Speakeasy for A Speakeasy Murder. It was hysterical and outrageous. We were all blown away with the effort that each of our guests put into their costumes and characters.
People at first were worried about memorizing their characters but after some cocktails and questioning everyone loosened up and had a grand ol' time escaping and planning more debauchery.
Truly one of the greatest nights of my life, a party we will never forget!"
Darah Salmaggi, United States
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Dora's Dress Shop – Onno Hautzager
A Speakeasy Murder – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – awards and prizes – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – character packs – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – décor ideas – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – décor ideas – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – décor ideas – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – décor ideas – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – name badges – Michaela Mrázová
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Christina Gass
A Speakeasy Murder – Sariah Hobby
A Speakeasy Murder – Kelly Wittman
A Speakeasy Murder – Kelly Wittman
A Speakeasy Murder – Kelly Wittman
A Speakeasy Murder – Gangsters and Molls – Kelly Wittman
A Speakeasy Murder – Pistol safe gansters – Kelly Wittman
A Speakeasy Murder – group photo – Laura Dallaston
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
.jpg "A Speakeasy Murder
– Darah Salmaggi")
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Darah Salmaggi
A Speakeasy Murder – Sara Messall, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Sara Messall, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Sara Messall, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Christine Finch, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Christine Finch, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Christine Finch, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Christine Finch, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Christine Finch, USA
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Stefanie Buzan
A Speakeasy Murder – Ozzy Beck
A Speakeasy Murder – Ozzy Beck
A Speakeasy Murder – Ozzy Beck
A Speakeasy Murder – Daniel Kleinman
A Speakeasy Murder – Daniel Kleinman
A Speakeasy Murder – award – Marisa N
If you would like to tell us how your party went, please click here to send us your story. We'll then give you an email address to send pictures to, if you'd like yours to appear here.
