Same Murder Mystery in English, French and German

Murder to Order publishes fourteen scenarios in English: seven murder mystery kits for 6 to 12 players and seven detective case files for 2 to 6. The same fourteen exist in French at meurtresurmesure.fr and in German at mordnachmass.de. Three sites, one catalog, and the same construction in each language: a host guide with the introduction to read aloud and the run of the rounds, one character sheet per player, clues organized by round, secret ballots for the final accusation and the solution for the host only. What stays identical is what matters for a mixed table. The plot is the same story in each language. The rounds fall in the same order. The clues carry the same information, so a guest holding a French clue and a guest holding the English one know the same fact. A group split by language can therefore investigate the same crime together, which is the whole point of the arrangement. The seven murder mystery kits listed here, from a gothic manor to a night train and a Venetian ball, are the ones you will find on both sister sites.

Buying a kit here gives you the English PDF, and nothing else. The French and German editions are sold on their own sites, each priced in its own currency, and one purchase never unlocks another. A host who wants the same story in two languages buys it twice, once per site. There is no bundle across languages and no download of a second language from this site. The English prices are in US dollars: $39 for a kit of 6 to 8 players, $49 for 9 to 10, $59 for 11 to 12, and $39 for a detective case file. Payment goes through Stripe and the PDF is generated and emailed within seconds; nothing is shipped. A digital file delivered instantly cannot be refunded once it has been sent, except where the law requires it, so decide the language before checkout rather than after. The question to settle is which language the people at the table read most comfortably, and the next section is a way to settle it.

Start with the host. The host reads the introduction aloud, hands out clues, answers for the characters not in play and reads the solution. The host guide should be in the language the host reads without effort. Then look at the guests: the character sheets are private reading, done alone and often days ahead, so a guest who reads a second language slowly copes with a sheet in it; a guest who does not read it at all cannot play from it. Three tables, three answers. A table where everyone reads English, even as a second language, plays the English edition, with the adjustments in Murder Mystery Party With Guests Who Are Not Native English Speakers. A French-speaking table, in Quebec, Brussels or Lyon, plays the French edition. A German-speaking table, in Vienna or Zurich as much as in Hamburg, plays the German one. A table split down the middle is the case the next section covers. For an expat house or an international office in Europe, where English is the working language, the reasoning is laid out in Murder Party Printable in Europe: Play in English.

A family where the grandparents read French and the cousins read English can run one story with both, provided the host buys both editions. The host reads the introduction and the bridging passages in the language the majority follows, and the character sheets are handed out by reader: the French sheet of a character to the guest who reads French, the English sheet of another character to the guest who reads English. Each character keeps one language for their sheet, and any clue the host hands to that guest comes from the same file, so nobody switches mid-round. Before the evening, lay the two files side by side and check that the character you plan to hand out in French matches the one in English, and that the clue for round two in one file corresponds to the clue for round two in the other. Do that once, with a pencil, and the game runs without anyone noticing there are two files on the table. The solution is read in the majority language and summarized in the other in a sentence or two. It is for the host only in both editions, so print it once and keep it out of sight. The simpler version of the same idea is two tables, one per language, playing the same scenario in the same house and comparing verdicts at the end. It costs the same two purchases and needs two hosts.

The PDF is not editable, in any of the three languages. Names, places and dates cannot be changed inside the file, so a French edition keeps its characters as written, and so does the English one. If you had hoped to swap a character's name for a guest's, that is not something a kit can do; what can be added around the kit, from extra props to your own invitation, is described in Customizing a Printable Murder Mystery Kit: What You Can Change and What You Cannot. The route to real first names is the custom scenario, written from scratch around your group: $219 for up to 15 players, $279 for up to 25, with a detailed outline submitted for approval, a print-ready PDF within 72 working hours after the brief is confirmed, unlimited revisions within the agreed brief and a QR-code mystery mini-site included. The custom murder mystery page has the details. It is a different product from the kits, priced for the writing, and it does not change the rule for the fourteen catalog scenarios: what is printed is what you get, in English, French or German.

Buy both editions, one per site, and save both PDFs with the language in the file name. Print the host guide in the host's language and read it once, start to finish. Print each character sheet in the language of the guest who will play it, never both. Write the language on the front of each character's envelope next to the name. Hand a guest only clues printed in the language of their sheet. Print the ballots in the majority language and let guests write their accusation in either. Print the solution once, in the host's language, and keep it out of sight. The detective case files follow the same logic with one difference: there is no host, the whole group reads the same documents, and so the whole table should read one language. Buy the edition that language belongs to, at $39 for 2 to 6 players, and keep the other for another evening. The seven cases are on the detective case files page. For how a kit works from checkout to reprint, in whichever language you play it, the printable murder mystery kit page is the place to start.