The four kits
The Cursed Manor and Murder at the Royal Casino are fifty pages. Crime Aboard the Orient Express and Hollywood Noir are fifty-six. The difference is the exhibit count: twenty-four in the first two, thirty in the other two.
All four have the same structure: a cover, a notice, twelve character packs of two pages each, then the exhibits, one per page. The product pages are on the murder mystery kits page.
What you actually print from a kit
Not the cover, which is no use on a table. You print the notice for yourself, the two pages of each character you deal, and all the exhibits.
At six players: twelve character pages plus the exhibits, so thirty-six or forty-two sheets. At eight: sixteen character pages, so forty or forty-six. At twelve: twenty-four character pages, so forty-eight or fifty-four. A ream of two hundred sheets covers about four evenings.
The seven case files, printed whole
A case file is printed in full, because everything is spread on the table from the start. Seventeen pages for The Enigma Code and The Cursed Laboratory. Nineteen for The Winter of '74. Twenty-four for The Heist of the Century. Thirty-one for Vanished in Paris and The Phantom Affair. Thirty-seven for Operation Blackout.
That is much lighter than a kit, which is part of why the cooperative format is easier to run at short notice. The catalogue is on the detective case files page.
Colour or black and white
Colour renders the exhibits better, since they are photographed documents: aged paper, a stamp, faded ink all read more easily. But no deduction in any file depends on a shade.
So black and white is a real economy rather than a compromise. A good middle route is to print the character packs in black and white and the exhibits in colour, because the exhibits are what people read closely and pass around.
What it costs
At home, a few dollars of paper and ink for around forty sheets. A ream of five hundred covers roughly ten evenings.
At a print shop, ask for A4 or Letter single-sided at 100 percent, or fit to page, and say clearly that you want nothing stapled or bound: the character packs have to be separated and dealt. Forty pages in black and white is cheap; in colour, ask the per-page price first, because it varies a lot between shops, and it is worth comparing two. The full evening routine is on the printable murder mystery kit page.
One last thing to ask for at the counter: nothing stapled and nothing bound. A bound file cannot be dealt out two pages at a time, and the private sheets end up circulating together.
Frequently asked questions
Do I print all fifty pages of a kit?+
No. You print the notice, the two pages of each character you deal, and all the exhibits. At eight players that is forty or forty-six sheets depending on the file, instead of fifty or fifty-six.
How long is a detective case file?+
Seventeen to thirty-seven pages: seventeen for The Enigma Code and The Cursed Laboratory, nineteen for The Winter of '74, twenty-four for The Heist of the Century, thirty-one for Vanished in Paris and The Phantom Affair, thirty-seven for Operation Blackout.
Is black and white good enough?+
Yes. Colour renders the photographed documents better, but no deduction in any file depends on a shade. A good compromise is black and white for the character packs and colour for the exhibits.
