Murder mystery

[amysun]

I recently wrote and ran a "murder mystery" game for my husband's birthday. The theme was Agatha Christie, and I wrote the whole thing from scratch - 25 roles worth, plus a role for me and two roles for my husband. We actually only had 22 players as three people dropped out after I had already written the parts, and the size was just about

Comments

[skerrington]

It was fantastic!

[amysun]

Thanks! I loved your hair-do so much! And your selection of music was spot-on! :)

[skerrington]

Hee hee...Thanks!

[swan_tower]

I totally know what you mean. My notions of leverage grew directly out of running Memento and the Parliament of the Apocalypse; I think it's because in a game you aren't in direct control of character actions, so you end up having to think in terms of forces that can compel the characters into motion. Which ends up being a productive way of thinking for fiction, too.

As for people getting into character -- I am, at this point, convinced that one-shots do well when they enact a specific genre, and do especially well when the players have congruent understandings of the genre. This might, now that I think about it, be related to my realization that I find flash stories the easiest to pull off when they riff on folklore; starting with a shared frame of reference means you can get where you're going more efficiently. So your strong understanding of the genre, and the general familiarity of the classic murder mystery style, probably had a lot to do with it.

[amysun]

Oh yes, that's a very good point about leverage! It's so interesting to watch it play out in a live setting as well.

Yay trope! I know I found getting into the character of Lady Margaret to be almost ridiculously easy, especially compared to normal. I tried out a few phrases ahead of time and made sure I had a cane, but otherwise it was very little effort.

[anonymous]

Sorry I missed it. From what I heard, it was a smashing success!

-Kirstin