r/MurderMystery

Hosted my first murder mystery dinner last year and it completely took over my brain. Spent weeks trying to find the right format: every kit I found was either too rigid for my group size or required me to assign characters weeks in advance.

Ended up piecing together my own version the night before. It was chaos. People loved it anyway.

Curious if anyone here has hosted one. What worked, what fell apart, how did you handle people dropping out last minute? Specifically trying to figure out if the "everyone gets a secret role" format actually lands or if it just confuses people who aren't into improv.

So I had an idea for a possible murder, and I was wondering if I’m cooking with gas or if this should be scrapped. Also sorry about the massive text wall; this turned out to be bigger than I anticipated.

So for setup, the location is very much like the second game, where it seems to take place at a resort of some sort. At this point there have been two murders already with two trials and, of course, two victories for the protagonist. Which means of course this is going to be a double murder.

So the characters we need to know about are as follows:
The ultimate martial artist (Ryuji)
The Ultimate Performer (Aiko)
The Ultimate Rock Star (Rei)
And the Ultimate hunter (Daichi).

Lastly, for a bit of context, Ryuji and Aiko are actually siblings. Their childhood is full of ups and downs, with the former being resentful of the latter due to their parents treating her like the star child and giving her all the attention. They also worked to turn Aiko on her brother, claiming he hates her, and while Ryuji is resentful, he still loves his sister. Unfortunately, everyone just believes he hates her anyway.

So I’ll put this in the format of a closing argument just to aid in explanation.

Act 1: Ryuji was walking back to his room when he overheard Rei and Daichi discussing how they were going to commit their murder; he listened in only to find out they were planning on killing Aiko. He knew he couldn’t say anything since his sister wouldn’t believe him and he couldn’t take them out first for fear of getting himself or his sister killed via trial. So he hatched his own plan to counter her assassins.

Act 2: Early in the morning he enters his sister’s room before she can wake up, and using a cloth with chloroform, he forces her to stay asleep and takes her to his room. There he first strips both of their clothes before dressing her up as him and vice versa while also styling his hair to look like hers and vice versa (they are near identical twins, with the only things separating the two being voice, clothes, and hairstyle). He straps his posture corrector to her back under her shirt to make it look like she’s meditating (which he often does, and since he’s known to be conscious while meditating, nobody would question it or disturb him). Finally, he hooks up a small canister of sleeping gas over her nose to keep her asleep most of the day but makes sure it’s under her shirt so, from the door, nobody can tell. With his preparations complete, he leaves his tablet with her and takes hers before heading out.

Act 3: Ryuji walks around pretending to be Aiko, even using a fake falsetto voice to keep up his act. Around the late afternoon they play at the waterpark; everyone is using the mounted water guns to splash each other, and Daichi goes to a specific gun, which, after the giant water bucket splashes everyone (their signal was planned ahead of time). Rei who is in the pump room boosts the water pressure for Daichi’s gun. Daichi shoots Aiko (actually Ryuji), which pushes him and makes him fall off the platform onto the ground. While everyone is crowding Ryuji, Rei tweaks the valves in the pump room to cover their tracks but unfortunately leaves the security key in the lock by mistake. Ryuji, having known about this part of their plan, braced for impact with the ground and thus is mostly fine but has his arm injured, head bleeding, and is taken to the hospital. Someone goes to Ryuji’s room and sees Ryuji meditating (actually Aiko is still asleep) and tells them Aiko is in the hospital before leaving (they believe Ryuji heard them).

Act 4: Aiko (actually Ryuji) gets their head bandaged up before being placed in a hospital bed with most of them leaving him to get some rest. After Ryuji knows everyone left and is fully knowing about his assassin's plan B, he gets up and starts making preparations. First he grabs a crowbar from the supply closet and places it under his sheets. Second, he sets a tripwire attached to his door so when it’s opened, it causes a lamp to be turned on, pointing at the ceiling. To most, it would seem pointless, but to him, it helps him know when his assailants enter the room. Finally, third, he grabs the notepad and writes a heartfelt note to his sister detailing how he knew this was all going to happen and simply telling her he loves her. Once he finishes writing it, he places it under his mattress, planning to retrieve it after everything is dealt with. With everything in place, he climbs back into bed and pretends to sleep, awaiting his assailants.

Act 5A: Later in the evening there is a bonfire where a few people, including the protagonist, are talking around a campfire; this will be relevant later. As this goes on, Daichi and Rei make their way to Aiko (actually Ryuji) in the hospital room. As they go, all the lights are out, leaving the hospital dim. Upon entering, the lamp tripwire goes off, but they don’t think much of it, as they think Aiko (actually Ryuji) is still asleep. Daichi pulls out the Bowie knife he keeps in his room and readies to stab; Ryuji immediately springs up, kicking him down, and fights Rei and Daichi at the same time using the crowbar. During the fight he knocks the Bowie knife out of Daichi’s hand and kicks it away, while Rei scrabbles to retrieve it, Ryuji gets a clean whack at Daichi’s skull, killing him instantly. Ryuji stands in shock and fear, dropping his crowbar. He wasn’t actually trying to kill either of them, just incapacitate them and make them fear confrontation with Aiko like they do him, and now, self-defense or not, he just committed murder, and now either he or his sister will die. Before he can react, Rei grabs the Bowie knife and stabs straight into his kidney; with this action, Ryuji (whom Rei still thinks is Aiko) knows his fate is sealed and decides to make the most of it. Ryuji quickly pulls the knife out of his kidney and slashes Rei across the chest, leaving a shallow slash mark across Rei’s chest, not enough to kill but enough to make him bleed and cut his shirt. He then uses all the energy he has left to pull Rei’s shirt off, leaving himself completely open for a frightened and enraged Rei to shove him out the window, where he falls from the 5th floor all the way to the ground, killing him. (Even if Ryuji committed the first murder, that end is officially irrelevant since Ryuji was killed.) Meaning now Rei is the black end since he’s the only killer still alive.

Act 5B: The sleeping gas keeping Aiko asleep finally wears off, and she wakes up looking like Ryuji. She doesn’t know why she’s dressed like this, but she decides to pretend to be Ryuji to take advantage of his status. She goes over to the bonfire and chats with the others there (she can copy her brother’s voice due to her impressive vocal range); they all end up talking about how they wish the killing game would end, and the protagonist ends up thanking Ryuji (actually Aiko) for how he helped him in the last trial and how his meditation has helped them keep their minds clear. Aiko listens and nods along, seeing her brother as less hostile than she thought. As they talk, they suddenly hear a loud splat from nearby, and Aiko and the protagonist go investigate, only to find Aiko's (actually Ryuji’s) dead body on the ground, holding a bloody shirt in one hand. Aiko is silently mortified, and now fearing for her own life, she decides to keep pretending to be Ryuji so nobody will try to kill her. The others from the bonfire come quickly and find the body, causing the murder alarm to go off.

Act 6: Rei realizes, terrified, he has to act fast if he wants to get away with this, especially with a witness so close to him. Quickly he grabs the knife that Ryuji dropped after he was shoved and pockets it and grabs multiple rolls of bandages for later. He then takes Daichi’s body and throws it into the hospital’s laundry chute, but Rei hears people coming up the stairs and leaps down the laundry chute, accidentally leaving the crowbar behind. After landing in the laundry room, he pulls Daichi’s body out from the laundry and tosses it into the washing machine along with a bunch of dirty clothes, trying to hide his body. After confirming everyone else is upstairs, he makes a break for it out the front and unfortunately finds the torn shirt is no longer on Aiko's (actually Ryuji’s) body, indicating one of the witnesses pocketed it for evidence. He dashes across the whole park (where this all takes place) till he makes it into the kitchen and loads the dishes along with the Bowie knife and starts the dishwasher to wash the blood and his fingerprints off it. Unfortunately, not only is a Bowie knife along with normal kitchen cutlery already out of place, but in his panic he doesn’t realize he put the knife with the bowls instead of with the other knives and large utensils and cutlery at the top. Finally, he takes a quick shower in his room, washing the rest of the blood off his body, and wraps his chest cut in bandages to stop the bleeding. As he showers, he hears voices coming down the hall, and being unable to dry off in time without raising suspicion, he quickly pulls his pants and a spare shirt on (the shirt covers his bandages), puts on some headphones, plugs them into his electric drums, and begins playing wildly. When some others pound on the door and eventually let themselves in, all they see is Rei playing drums with headphones in, thus giving him an alibi as to why he didn’t hear the murder alarm and why he was wet (drums are physically intense, so he would be sweating).

Now as for the actual trial, it goes down something like this:

So for this trial, Monokuma makes it known from the start that Daichi is also murdered and the case is a double murder but also keeps the secret of Aiko and Ryuji’s swap. They start discussing Daichi’s body and how upon inspection he was killed by a blunt object, which they link to the crowbar. This was also found to definitively have blood matching Daichi and fingerprints matching Ryuji. This unfortunately puts the spotlight on Ryuji (actually Aiko), who says it couldn’t have been them since they discovered Aiko's (actually Ryuji’s) body, but Rei takes advantage and pushes back, stating that Ryuji could have murdered Daichi long before they found Aiko’s body, to which Aiko doesn’t have much of a defense without blowing her cover. The protagonist does bring up how the blood on the ground and in the chute does seem to imply it was rushed, which is very unlike Ryuji, and while it doesn’t take Aiko off the hot seat, it does make her less of a definitive conviction.

With Daichi’s murder seemingly wrapped up, they move on to Aiko’s murder, where it is found that the weapon was the massive fall that landed the killing blow. Rei tries to rush it, saying they can’t figure anything else out, but the protagonist counters, saying there was a stab wound on the body as well, and points out the Bowie knife in the dishwasher. While not definitively the murder weapon, it is the most likely option given its unusual placement in the dishwasher. Another person asks about the key they found in the water pump room lock, to which it’s found Rei’s fingerprints are on it. Rei tries to brush it off, saying it was just trying to do a prank and wasn’t trying to actually hurt anyone. The protagonist pushes further, saying he was dripping wet when they found him after Aiko’s murder. Rei tries to fall back on his alibi, playing drums made him sweaty, but the protagonist brings up how when they found him in his room, he managed to see some water trailing from his bathroom, indicating he was showering before they walked in.

Right now everyone has a strong connection to Ryuji murdering Daichi and a weak connection to Rei murdering Aiko. Someone happens to ask why Ryuji would be inclined to kill anyone, to which one person (the ultimate police officer) declares the truth from their autopsy: that Aiko’s dead body is actually Ryuji’s and right now Ryuji is actually Aiko, catching everyone off guard. Aiko finally restyles her hair and uses her normal voice, confirming the truth and explaining it was for fun at first, but after she saw Ryuji’s body, she kept it up for her own safety.

With this info the rest of the story starts falling into place, with Ryuji using the crowbar for self-defense and determining Daichi attempted to kill him first. Eventually it turns back on Rei, who, flustered and angry, exclaims, "Even if he did do it, they actually haven’t said anything that actually convicts him," but Aiko cuts him off, pulling out the shirt with the massive slash cut on the front, asking if it was his. Rei’s blood runs cold as he declines, but someone comments, saying they saw him in a different shirt after the water park than the one he’s wearing. The protagonist tells Rei to pull off his current shirt, and if he’s innocent, he won’t have the cut. Rei is left stammering in panic as the vote final goes off and it’s confirmed to everyone Rei killed Ryuji.