2002 party
Theme: Chat-room Murder Mystery
Location: Our New Apartment
Costume: Vampire Victim
(to compliment Nosferatu)
The idea:
The frame story was thus: Gwen Rossdale, a high school senior, has apparently been murdered by someone she met in an online chat-room. She was found in the back of a coffee shop with her head bashed in. It’s up to the guests to figure out who killed Gwen. Our friends were asked to portray different characters from the story, most of whom were members of the chat room, including Gwen’s best friend, another girl from their school, a child molester, Gwen’s boyfriend, and a drunk witness who was the last person known to see Gwen alive.
We created a website that was supposed to mimic an angst-y teen online chat room. I wanted to give the room a name that was appropriately gothic sounding, so I called it The Rose Room after William Blake’s poem ‘O rose, thou art sick.’ (Strangely enough, I completely forgot that was what I had named the chat-room when I created this site a year later). I sent out a party evite and created the chat-room 4 weeks prior to the party, and updated The Rose Room once a week with new conversations. Party guests were supposed to check each week for clues.
At the party, we divided the apartment into four different locations: the living room was the ‘police station’ and I was supposedly an undercover cop. This had the fewest decorations and served as the main party area. I had a timeline posted of the last week or so of Gwen’s life and printed out transcripts from The Rose Room chat-room. This is where we all met to solve the murder.
The guest bedroom was Gwen’s bedroom and included her diary with some entries that indicated she had been fighting with her best friend. I think we also put a laptop in here with the chat-room set as the home page.
The dining room was the coffee shop where Gwen was found dead. We named this place the Cyber ! (pronounced cyber not) Café. We had some deserts in here and a small table and chairs to suggest a café. This room also had a lot of Halloween decorations. We taped out the outline of a dead body on the floor. My sister portrayed Gwen, which involved her having to lie in the outline for a few minutes while one of our other guests yelled about “a dead girl on the floor.” ‘Twas hilarious.
Our kitchen was set-up like the bar next door to the Cyber ! Café. This joint was called The Bar Next Door. I had run out of creativity by this point. We turned off all the lights in the kitchen and strung Halloween lights and lit candles. Of course, all of the alcohol and mixers were in here.
During the questioning-at-the-police-station section of the party, our guests who were portraying characters were all given something to say which offered clues to Who Killed Gwen. I had written out general suggestions for everyone, and a couple of our guests got very into their roles. Dear Mikey, who played our drunk witness Barry Fleye, (yes, like ‘bar fly’), executed his spiel complete with hiccups and slurred speech, much to everyone’s delight. At the end of the questioning everyone voted on whom they thought the killer was, and why they did it. After the votes were tallied, the real killer jumped up and confessed. I think we gave a prize to whoever guessed correctly, and then distributed other goodies to anyone who played a character, and finally gave more prizes to everyone else. Prizes were things like Halloween erasers, stamps and inkpads, candy corn, and other cheap little Halloween novelties.
By the way, her best friend did it.
What we learned:
1) Give people something to do right away. We had thought people would want about an hour to party and look over ‘evidence’ before the game officially started. Instead, people just stood around wondering what to do. This wasn’t too awkward, but still we should have planned for things starting more or less right away.
2) KISS. I am still learning this. Some people ignored my red herrings, which was both expected and fine. One guest actually tried to follow-up on every single clue, thus devoting a lot of time and energy to the game. So if I ever do this again I’ll pare it down even more for the sake of the guests.
3) You never know how people will react to being a character. They probably don’t even know themselves. Remember to offer them a lot of help and support so that they understand exactly what to communicate. Write everything down for them. It’s difficult to balance giving someone instructions and giving them leeway, but better to err on the side of instructions.
Feedback:
This party went well, and we received compliments on the decorating. Those who got into their roles seemed to have a lot of fun. I don’t think we’ll do a murder mystery again (not for awhile anyway) just because I don’t think they tend to work as well as other parties. I do think some people appreciated the alternate world we tried to create, and it was lots of fun playing around on the web. But in the end I think more fun comes out of laughing at the silliness of the game, rather than getting in to the story and enjoying it.