What Each Guest Receives: Two Pages, No More

A portrait, a name, a role, an age, and the rules everyone plays by: one played character committed the murder with no accomplice, you know only the facts on your sheet and the documents already opened, a permitted lie never allows inventing a route, a witness, a key or a document, evidence stays shared and intact, and an out-of-character pause is always available. It is readable by anyone. If a public card is left on a chair, nothing is spoiled. The four files are on the murder mystery kits page.

It opens with a warning to read only your own character, then the public face, a line they might say about themselves. Then the facts they alone hold: what they did that evening, what they saw, what they must hide. After that the permitted lie and its exact limits, three useful conversations naming other characters to seek out, and the personal objective with its two required partners. That is the whole of what a player holds, and it is enough for three hours.

The solution, the release schedule, the scoring grid and the reveal. All four live with the host, and three of them are not printed at all: they are on the case file portal, opened with the personal code from the order. The exhibits are not handed out either. They belong to the table, opened act by act and shared, which is why nothing a player holds can be lost by someone reading over a shoulder.

Because a table needs common ground as well as private knowledge. If everything were private, nothing could be checked; if everything were public, there would be no game. The split also protects the culprit. Their private sheet is the same length with the same sections as everyone else's, so nobody can guess from the weight of a page who is hiding a murder. And it lets a host hand out public cards early, even before the evening, keeping the private sheets for the moment people sit down.

Together, folded or in an envelope with the guest's name on it, and then twenty minutes of silent reading before anything starts. That reading time is in the schedule for a reason: a guest who has not read their sheet cannot play it. Deal the packs yourself rather than drawing lots publicly, and give the culprit's pack discreetly to someone comfortable with it. You can also send a guest the two pages of their own character before the evening, which saves time on the night, but never the whole file. The full evening routine is on the printable murder mystery kit page.