Printable Murder Mystery for 8 Players

All four kits are written for 6 to 12 players and sold at one price, $29.90, whatever the size of the group. $29.90 split eight ways is about $3.75 a head for an evening of 2 to 3 hours depending on the kit. The PDF is emailed within seconds of paying by card. Nothing is shipped. Inside: the host guide with the introduction to read aloud, the run of the rounds and the guide to adapting the cast, all twelve character sheets of which you print the eight you hand out, the clues organized by round, the secret ballots and the solution for the host only. It is laid out on A4 paper and prints in color or black and white on any home printer; on US Letter, tick fit to page. The printable murder mystery kit page covers the download in detail, and the complete guide to the printable format explains the vocabulary if this is your first kit.

The host guide's section on adapting the game to your number of players is short at eight. The core cast of six is handed out, and so are both roles that join at eight. The roles that join at ten and twelve are left out and stay in the story as guests; the murderer and the key witness are in the core six, so the solution does not change. That is what makes eight the easiest count to host. The murderer and the key witness are in play as always, and every question a player asks has someone at the table to answer it. The host's job is narration, the non-player characters the story needs, the clues between rounds, and time. At six and seven the host fills small gaps; at nine and above the added roles bring more suspects and longer rounds. Eight is the version of the mystery with a full table and very little extra to manage.

Eight is often four couples, and the first casting rule is to separate partners. Give each half of a couple a character with no obvious link to the other half's, and seat them apart, so that nobody spends the night comparing notes with the person they came with. The second rule is to match the sheet to the person. Read the eight sheets before assigning them. Give the two roles with the most to hide to the guests who like being the center of a conversation, and give the roles with concrete facts to deliver to the quieter guests, who play better when they have a job. The culprit's sheet tells that player what to admit and what to deflect, so it can go to a moderate liar; it does not need a performer. Eight friends without couples cast the same way, minus the first rule. If the group includes people who have never met, split those pairs across the table. A printable murder mystery for a couples' night takes the four-couples case further.

Eight is the first count where one table is not enough for the rounds. Seated, eight people become one conversation with two voices. Give them two zones: the dining table for clues, ballots and the introduction, and a second area, a sofa corner or the kitchen island, where two or three people can talk without the whole room listening. Eight splits naturally into two groups of four, and the zones let that happen, but the host should break the groups up once per round. A simple way: at the halfway mark of each round, ask everyone to swap zones. People carry their questions with them and the two halves of the room finally meet. Keep the second zone within earshot of the first. The host has to call the room back together three times, and a zone down a corridor turns each call into a search. Lighting can mark the zones: a lamp on the table, a candle in the corner, the overhead light off.

An eight-player evening runs on a simple clock. Arrivals from 7:30 pm, drinks, sheets read in a corner. 8:00 pm, the introduction read aloud at the table, then round one, about thirty-five minutes. Dinner between round one and round two, at the table, in character or out of it as the group prefers. Round two until about 9:30 pm. Dessert, then round three, then ballots around 10:15 pm and the reveal. Food between rounds rather than during is the rule that matters most at eight. A meal during a round parks everyone in one seat for forty minutes and kills the questioning; a meal between rounds becomes the break where people compare theories out loud, which is half the fun and does no harm to the game. Hand out each round's clues at the table before people scatter, so the host can see every face when they are read. Then release the room to its two zones and start the clock.

Every kit plays well at eight, so choose by the group in front of you. The Cursed Manor: a group that likes gothic atmosphere, about 3 hours. Murder at the Royal Casino: a group that will dress up, 1920s glamour, about 3 hours. Crime Aboard the Orient Express: a group that likes a closed setting where nobody could have left, a night train, about 3 hours. Hollywood Noir: a group that wants a long evening and has played before, a 1950s film set, about 3 hours. The murder mystery kits page has the full description of each. For a first kit at eight, The Cursed Manor is the safest; Hollywood Noir is the one to save for a group that wants the whole evening.

Murder at the Royal Casino is the kit we would put in front of most groups of eight. It is the 1920s, a glamorous casino night that ends in murder, and it runs about 3 hours. The host plays the casino manager, a non-player character with a reason to be everywhere in the room, which suits a host who wants to circulate rather than sit. The setting does the dressing for you. A dinner jacket or a string of beads is a costume, a deck of cards and a bowl of chips are the decoration, and a dining table with the overhead light off is a private gaming room. It is also the kit whose two conversation zones come most naturally: the table is the casino floor, the corner is the bar. At eight, the rounds run a little under the announced time. Start at 8:00 pm and expect the ballot before 10:30 pm.

Print in this order the day before: The host guide, read once with a pen before anything else. Eight character sheets, one envelope each, named on the front. The clues, sorted into three piles by round and clipped. Eight secret ballots, kept with the host guide. The solution, folded and kept apart from everything else. That is the entire kit; it fits in one folder. Color helps the clues that are photographs or documents and does nothing for the character sheets, so print the sheets in black and white and spend the color on the evidence if your printer is slow. When the group grows past eight, the same file follows it. A printable murder mystery for 10 players explains what two more suspects do to the length of the evening.