Murder Parties (Jan 2017)

In September 2019 we revived the January 2017 Murder Parties Bundle featuring open-ended live-action roleplaying party games of mystery and detection from Freeform Games. Invite your guests to an evening of food, drink, and investigation of a murder. One guest did the crime — but who? With no predetermined script, these party games put you and six to 32 friends in the heart of the action.

These Freeform Games titles are different from How to Host a Murder and its many imitators. Your guests won’t get rigid scripts with pre-set clues they must reveal (say) every 15 minutes. Instead, in advance of the party, you provide each guest a character profile with goals, contacts, and secrets, not unlike a conventional tabletop RPG. At the gathering, you all decide who to talk to, trust, or betray. In four hours or so, will the murderer be discovered? You won’t know until the party’s over.

With settings from Hawaii to Golden Age Hollywood to the Wild West, these .PDF kits include step-by-step instructions for the host, quick-start hints for guests, illustrated item cards, reference sheets, and much more. Many games provide versions for kids, extra “emergency characters” in case someone brings a friend, and other thoughtful touches.

If you’re not familiar with the murder-mystery party genre, see the July 2007 Escapist article “Murder Parties.” Check out Freeform’s free introductory ten-guest Way Out West game.

As with the original run, this revival included four party games in its Smaller Groups Collection (6-14 players, total retail value $120) as DRM-free .PDFs:

• A Will to Murder (6-9 players): In 1930s Britain, a wealthy family feuds over the last will of their murdered patriarch.
• Lei’d to Rest (6-12 players): A luau gone bad at a Hawaiian beach resort.
• A Heroic Death (8-12 players): The Superheroic Justice Doom Squad has to save the world, but first they must escape their volcano headquarters.
• Way Out West (10-14 players): The party’s on at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Cactus Gulch, 1884.

Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bigger Groups Collection with four more complete games (retail value $150) for soirees of up to 30+ players:

• Davy Jones’ Locker (10-15 players): In Tortuga, 1785, Caribbean pirates aim for the big haul — or the keelhaul.
• Spellbound (13-17 players): At the Tremaine School of Magic, students must investigate a memory-loss mystery while also taking final exams.
• Arabian Nights (18-24 players): An hour after the Sultan announces his daughter’s betrothal to handsome Prince Ala ‘ad-Din, the young prince is found dead in the marketplace.
• Hollywood Lies (16-32 players): At the post-award party for Dazzled to Death, film stars and producers wheel and deal despite the sad death of the award-winning star.

Note: Many Freeform Games party games have Standard and Extended versions; Extended versions support more guests. The games in this offer are all Standard versions. And be aware, you print out all the guest handouts before the party. For the larger games you’ll be printing a lot of pages.

Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this offer’s designated charity, Human Rights Watch.