Can You Reprint a Murder Mystery Kit for Another Group?

The file you receive after payment is yours to print again. That is the plain answer, and it is written into the terms of sale: a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to download, print and use the kit for your own private, non-commercial games, as many times as you like, for as many private parties as you like. Nothing in it expires, nothing counts your prints, and there is no second fee for a second evening. In practice that means a kit bought for a birthday in March can be printed again for a different set of friends in October, and again the year after. The PDF is generated once, emailed within seconds of payment, and stays on your computer. Save it in two places, because the file is the license: a new group needs a new print, not a new purchase. The rest of this guide is the small print, in plain words, and the practical side of a second evening: which tier the file is cut to, why the group should change and the scenario should not, and how to rotate the seven kits over a year of parties without repeating one.

Four words carry the license. Personal: it belongs to the person who bought the kit. Non-exclusive: other people can buy the same kit, which is how a shop works. Non-transferable: you cannot pass the license to someone else, so the file is not something you hand on to a friend once you have played it. And private, non-commercial: the games you run with it are for your own circle, with no ticket sold and no fee charged. Inside those four words, the freedom is wide. Print the kit for six friends in spring and for twelve at a cabin weekend in December, as long as nobody pays to attend. Host it at home or in a rented house. Print it in color one year and in black and white the next. Print a spare set because the first one got wine on it. Print the character sheets twice because a guest lost theirs. All of that is one purchase. The full text is short and worth reading once on the terms of sale page, but nothing in it will surprise a host who is simply playing with friends.

The forbidden list is just as plain. Sharing the file: not with the guests, not with a friend who wants to host their own, not in a group thread, not on a shared drive. Reselling it. Publishing it, uploading it or redistributing it anywhere, in whole or in part. Using it for a paid event, where guests buy a ticket. Commercial hosting, where a business runs the game as a service. Public performances. Each of those takes the kit outside your own private games, which is the line the license draws. The one people ask about most is the friend who wants to host. The answer is that the file stays with you, and the friend buys their own copy, in the same way that you did. If you would rather make that a present, the guide to how to gift a printable murder mystery explains how to do it without forwarding your PDF. Commercial use is not closed, only separate: commercial licenses exist on request for a business that wants to run the games for paying guests. Write to us and describe the use. For a private host, none of that applies, and reprinting for your own next party needs no permission at all.

The PDF is built for the player tier you chose at checkout: 6 to 8, 9 to 10 or 11 to 12 players. Inside that tier, the section of the host guide on adapting the game to your number of players covers every count, so a file bought for 6 to 8 works for six, seven or eight guests on any evening. Reprinting for a new group at the same tier is therefore a matter of printing the same pages again and making new envelopes. A new group that is larger than the tier is different. The file does not contain the sheets for a ninth player, because it was cut to your original count, and that is explained in why your murder mystery PDF is cut to your group size. Count the new group before you plan the evening, and if it has grown past the tier, plan around the tier you have or look at the next one. When you reprint, print everything again: sheets, clues, ballots, and the host guide if your first copy is annotated. Old envelopes with crossed-out names look tired; a fresh set costs a few cents. Keep your old solution envelope sealed and use a new one, so nothing from the first evening leaks into the second.

A murder mystery is played once per person. Anyone who sat at the table knows who did it, how and why, and no amount of time between parties resets that. So the rule for reprinting is simple: same scenario, different people. A kit bought for your college friends can be reprinted for your neighbors, your family, your partner's colleagues, a cabin weekend, but not for the same college friends, who would spend the evening pretending not to remember. Overlap of one or two guests is manageable if you plan for it. Give a returning guest a suspect role that is not the culprit and ask them to keep the ending to themselves; the fun of playing a character is still there even when you know the answer. More than a couple of returning guests and the evening deflates, and the right move is a different kit. The logic runs the other way too. If the group is the one thing you want to keep, the same friends every season, then it is the scenario that has to change each time, which is what the next section is about.

Seven kits is enough for a regular host to run a different evening every couple of months for more than a year without repeating one. The Cursed Manor and The Cursed Island run about 2 hours, which suits a weeknight. Murder at the Royal Casino, Crime Aboard the Orient Express, The Masked Ball and The Last Vintage run 2 to 2.5 hours. Hollywood Noir, at 2.5 to 3.5 hours, is the one for a long Saturday. Settings range from a gothic manor to a 1920s casino, a night train, a 1950s film set, castaways and pirates, Venice in 1520 and a Saint-Emilion vineyard in October 1985, so the costumes change with the season as well. Each kit you buy joins the others on your computer and stays reprintable, so a host who plays with two or three different circles ends up with a small library that serves all of them: the manor for the neighbors this month, the train for the family at Thanksgiving, the casino for the friends who like to dress up. All seven, with their tiers and run times, are on the murder mystery kits page. Below six guests, the same logic applies to the detective case files, which are cooperative and played once per group too, and above twelve the custom scenario is written around one specific group by design.

The PDF is the license, so treat it like one. Save it in two places the day it arrives: the computer you downloaded it on and a second location, a backup drive or your own cloud storage. Name the file clearly, with the kit and the tier, so that in a year you can tell the 6 to 8 file from a later 9 to 10 purchase. Keep the purchase email too. What safe does not mean is shared. A file in your own cloud storage is fine; a file in a folder shared with your guests is a breach of the license and, more practically, a spoiled game. If a guest asks for the PDF after a great evening because they want to host it themselves, the answer is the gifting guide, not a forward. With the file safe and the license understood, a second evening costs paper and envelopes. Pick the next group, print, assemble, and run it from the host guide exactly as you did the first time. The format, the tiers and the seven kits are all laid out on the printable murder mystery kit page.