Printable Murder Mystery Troubleshooting: 12 Fixes

The email has not arrived. The PDF is generated and emailed within seconds of payment, so if it is not in your inbox after a few minutes, look in the spam folder first; that is where it usually is. Next, check the address you typed at checkout for a typo, because the file went to the address exactly as written. If both come up empty, write to contact@murdertoorder.com with the address you used and the time of payment. The rules for what happens after payment, including what can and cannot be refunded, are set out in After You Pay: Delivery, Support and Revisions on a Printable Murder Mystery. The PDF will not open. Update the PDF reader on the device you are using, or open the file in a different one: a browser opens a PDF on its own, and most phones open one without any extra app. If the download was interrupted, the file may be incomplete; download it again from the email. If the file opens on one device and not on another, the file is fine and the reader is the problem. If it opens nowhere, write to us with the device and the reader you tried.

The printer clips the margins. The PDF is laid out on A4, and on US Letter paper the bottom of the page is lost unless you tick "fit to page" in the print dialog. Tick it, and the page shrinks by about six percent with nothing cut. On A4 paper nothing should be clipped at all, so check that the printer is not set to a smaller size or to a custom scale. The exact figures are in Murder Mystery PDF: US Letter or A4?. A drink spills on a sheet. Reprint the page. The file is yours to print as many times as you like for your own private games, so the character sheet, the clue or the ballot that got soaked is one print job away, and the license does not count copies. Keep the PDF on a phone during the party for exactly this reason. If the printer is not in the house, a photo of the wet page read aloud by the host gets the game to the next round.

A guest cancels. The host guide says which roles are optional: the core six are always handed out, then the guide names which roles join at eight, ten and twelve. A role not handed out stays in the story as a guest, and the host answers briefly for it if a clue mentions it. So the fix is to leave that role in the story and play on with one fewer at the table. The step-by-step is in Guest Cancels: Saving Your Murder Mystery, and why the file is built for your tier in the first place is in Why Your Murder Mystery PDF Is Cut to Your Group Size. The culprit cancels. The murderer is always present in the story, so this role cannot be left out. Reassign it before the game: the culprit's sheet goes to a guest whose own role is one the guide lists as optional at your count, and that optional role stays in the story. The sheet tells the new culprit what happened and what to admit or deflect, so a last-minute culprit is not lost. Never let the host take the role: the host reads the solution.

A player reads the solution. Only the host holds it, so this usually means the solution was printed into the wrong envelope or left on the printer tray. If a guest has seen it, that guest becomes the host's assistant: they play their role but do not vote, and they say so at the ballot. The game holds, because the other guests still have to work it out. To prevent it, print the solution last, separately, and put it straight into the host's folder; never print the kit in one run and sort it later in a hurry. A guest arrives late. Hand them a witness role: a character from the guide that is not in play at your count, or, if every role is taken, a witness of your own who "saw something" that the host feeds them from a clue already in play. They join at the start of the next round with a sheet they have had two minutes to read. Do not restart the round for them, and do not re-read the introduction to the whole room; a two-sentence recap from the host in the kitchen does it.

The group solves it by round two. Finish anyway. An early guess is usually a hunch without proof, and the remaining rounds are where the motive and the method come out; the reveal still lands because the ballots ask for reasons, not just a name. Do not confirm or deny anything as host, and do not skip clues to shorten the evening: hand out round three as written and move the ballot up by ten minutes if the table is restless. What to say when someone announces the culprit out loud in round one is in When a Guest Guesses the Murderer Early. Nobody talks. The host names two characters with unfinished business and sends them to talk: "you two have not spoken about the will yet." Every character sheet carries what the person wants and what they hide, so any two of them have something to argue about, and one prompt from the host starts the room. Then walk a clue over to the quietest guest and say who it concerns. The techniques for a room of guests who will not act are in a murder mystery party without acting, for shy guests.

The game runs long. Cut the round, not the reveal. If round two is still going at the time round three should start, call time, hand out the round three clues at once and give that round fifteen minutes instead of thirty. Never trim the accusations or the solution: they are the part everyone came for, and they take about thirty minutes done properly. The run times on the product pages, about 2 hours for The Cursed Manor and up to 3.5 hours for Hollywood Noir, assume a host who keeps time, and Murder Mystery Pacing and Run Time shows where the minutes go. Guests cannot hear the host. Gather everyone for the passages. The introduction, the bridging text between rounds and the solution are read aloud, and read from the kitchen doorway over music they reach half the room. Turn the music off, call everyone to one place, wait for silence, then read. It costs two minutes each time and saves the confusion of a table that missed the sentence with the clue in it. If the party is large, twelve players in two rooms, read each passage twice, once per room, rather than shouting. Everything the file contains, and how it is built for your player count, is on the printable murder mystery kit page, and the run time of each of the seven murder mystery kits is on its own page.