What Is Actually Inside a Printable Murder Mystery Kit, Before You Pay

Murder to Order publishes the full contents of a kit before checkout: the host guide, character sheets with secrets and objectives, evidence to hand out, voting ballots for the accusation, and the solution kept for the host alone. Each product page also states the theme, the real playing time and the player count. A kit covers 6 to 12 players with a single scenario that scales. You pick your player band at checkout and receive exactly the matching number of character sheets: $39 for 6-8 players, $49 for 9-10, $59 for 11-12. That works out at roughly $5 per guest for an evening of two to three hours. Detective case files are a separate family: a cooperative tabletop game in the spirit of an escape room, for 2 to 6 players, at $39, with no role to play and no confrontation between players. The recommended age is 14 and over for both families. The full catalogue is at https://murdertoorder.com/murder-mystery-kits and https://murdertoorder.com/detective-case-files.

How much you print depends first on how many people are playing. A kit holds one sheet per character plus the host guide, the evidence, the ballots and the solution, and the PDF is cut to the band you chose: an evening for eight does not carry the material for twelve characters. We do not advertise a fixed page count, precisely because it changes from one band to the next. More useful to know: nothing forces you to print everything. The host guide and the solution are reading documents and work perfectly well on a screen. What genuinely has to come out of the printer is the character sheets, one per guest, the evidence that circulates during play, and the voting ballots. A detective case file is lighter still: there is no role to play, so no character sheet to print for each player, and a group of 2 to 6 people works on the same material laid out on the table. The printable format is explained at https://murdertoorder.com/printable-murder-mystery-kit.

We cannot show you a sample: there is no free trial version and no demo PDF, and saying so is part of being transparent. What you can check is the structure of the file, five distinct kinds of document that print separately: host guide, character sheets, evidence, voting ballots, solution. It is a standard PDF. It opens on any computer, tablet or phone, with no account to create, no app and no subscription, and it prints just as well at home as at a print shop. Because the solution is a separate document, it cannot end up in the pile you hand to your guests. A practical habit for hosts: read the guide on screen, note which documents get distributed, then print the character sheets once your guest list is confirmed. The files stay with you and can be printed again later for another evening.

Murder to Order does not ship a separate black and white file: you receive one PDF for the player band you chose, and it is your printer's grayscale setting that decides. We would rather write that down than advertise a special edition that does not exist. Most of the evening runs on documents to read and hand out: the host guide, the character sheets with their secrets and objectives, the ballots and the solution. If you print in grayscale to save ink, run one test page first, which is the only way to judge the result on your own printer and your own paper. A simple approach is to keep color for the evidence, the pieces that pass from hand to hand during play, and print everything else in black and white. The file is yours, so you can print it differently for your next evening.

When a difficulty level exists, it is stated: Vanished in Paris is flagged as a beginner level case. For the other scenarios the published signals are the real playing time and the theme, which stay the most concrete indicators. Among the detective case files, The Phantom Affair and Vanished in Paris run 1 hour 30, The Heist of the Century 1 hour 30 to 2 hours, and The Enigma Code, The Cursed Laboratory, Operation Blackout and Winter '74 around 2 hours. Among the kits, The Cursed Manor and The Cursed Island sit at about 2 hours, Murder at the Royal Casino, Crime Aboard the Orient Express, The Masked Ball and The Last Vintage play in 2 to 2 hours 30, and Hollywood Noir needs 2 hours 30 to 3 hours 30, the longest in the catalogue. And if the group gets stuck? All seven detective case files carry a section called Progressive Hints: the instruction is to use the hints in order if you are stuck, then come HINT 1, HINT 2, HINT 3, from the most general to the most specific, with the full solution kept separately, after them. You only open that page if the evening stalls, and it moves the group on without handing over the culprit. Murder mystery kits work the other way round: the host holds the solution and the minute by minute running order, and it is the host who gets things moving again when the table slows down. Every case file has its own page under https://murdertoorder.com/detective-case-files.

Murder to Order sells online only, as printable PDFs: no postal shipping, no physical media, these are not boxes. Payment goes through Stripe, and the PDF is generated and emailed automatically as soon as the payment clears. The practical consequence is that you can buy in the morning and play the same evening, and nothing can be out of stock because nothing is shipped. The files stay with you and can be printed again later with different guests. No account to create, no app, no subscription. The right of withdrawal does not apply to digital content that has already been delivered, and the detail is set out at https://murdertoorder.com/terms. A custom murder mystery follows a different path: $199 for up to 15 players, $259 for up to 25 players, with a detailed outline covering pitch, characters and running order submitted for your approval, then every document delivered as print ready PDFs within 72 business hours of that approval, with unlimited revisions within the scope agreed in the brief and the QR code mystery mini site included in both packages. As long as the writing has not started, meaning up until the outline is sent, a full refund is still possible: https://murdertoorder.com/custom-murder-mystery.