Murder mystery party kits for adults

By Jim Markus · Published July 7, 2026

In college, a friend and I wrote a murder mystery set at Villandry, a château in France we'd visited together on a study abroad program. We worked on it for a month and ran it once, on the grass at a park in Tours, for the friends who'd been on that trip with us. We had baguettes, cheese, and wine. I still have a copy in a box somewhere.

What I remember most is watching people I only knew from the program become entirely different people for an afternoon. The characters we handed them came with limitations, and those limitations freed everyone. My friends made choices they'd never have made as themselves, and that's still my favorite part of play.

That night taught me the most important thing I needed to know about murder mystery games. You've got to consider the players first. I've designed and played these games ever since, from one-room parlor larps to events with more than thirty players, and the right kit for your party depends almost entirely on who's coming.

Murder mystery kits sit on a spectrum, from fully scripted to almost nothing at all

The classic boxed kits from the 1980s and 1990s were didactic. They told each player exactly what to say and when. Clues were hidden from everyone until the round that required them. If you've played How to Host a Mystery or Pasta, Passion & Pistols, you know the style.

That design is genuinely clever. It made murder mysteries accessible to a huge audience, including people who'd never touch a tabletop RPG. Hand someone a script and they can't do it wrong.

It's also a real limitation. As a player, I want the freedom to make things up about my character. Invention is what gives me ownership of the role, and ownership is what I try to give the people who play the games I design.

At the far other end sits freeform. I played an unstructured freeform larp at Midwinter Con in Milwaukee that had almost none of the conventions I was used to. It didn't have any character sheets at all. It didn't even have a workshop at the start to build character connections. They gave a setting and we chose a loose role within it. I started as a customer at a noodle shop and ended the game running a campaign to take over the shop as its best employee. I love that style because it's the closest thing to the pretend play you did as a kid. It's also entirely dependent on the players to make their own fun. And for some people that's terrifying. Freeform is a niche. It rewards people who love improv and acting, and it can leave everyone else stranded.

There are tons of new ways to do murder mystery games as an adult. Some have a bunch of structure, like those games I grew up with. Others are invented pretend play (and the mystery part almost always falls flat on these).

Match the kit to the adults who are actually coming

Think about your specific guest list before you buy anything.

If your group is buttoned up, or nobody's done this before, the old boxed style is the safe call. Scripts and staged clue reveals carry people who'd freeze if you asked them to invent. Thirty-year-old design, still doing its job.

If your group plays a weekly RPG, something like D&D or Monster of the Week, they'll want more. Look for a kit with real structure that still lets players invent details about their own characters. That ownership is the difference between reading a part and playing one.

If your group is full of improvisers and actors, consider freeform. It can be enormous, often really silly, fun. Just know what you're signing up for: the game gives you a situation, and the table does the rest.

Whatever you pick, two things matter at every size of game, and I've found this holds from six players to thirty. Players need reasons to interact with each other, and players need personal goals that matter to them. A kit that provides both will carry a mixed room. A kit that provides neither leaves people unsure of what to do, disconnected from the plot, or worst of all, bored.

One more thing to look for, especially if your group is new to this: some games open with a short workshop to build connections between characters before play starts. Others bake those connections in. Either works. Skipping both is how you get six adults standing around a kitchen island holding paper and waiting.

Kits I've actually played and would hand you

I recommend these because I've played them, and they map to different points on the spectrum.

Arsenic and Lies by Karolina Soltys is one of my favorite easy-to-play murder mysteries. The whole game is a deck of cards, and you can run a full mystery in an evening. I've played it more than once, and it was fun each time. It sits comfortably in that middle band: structured enough to guide the night, open enough that players get to be people instead of scripts.

For the traditional experience, the vintage boxed lines still deliver what they always did. How to Host a Mystery has a Star Trek: The Next Generation edition, and Pasta, Passion & Pistols is the classic dinner-party version. These are the fully scripted style I described above. For the right room, that's exactly what you want.

What we make at Autumnal Games

We publish games built around that same idea of ownership. Right now, none of them matches a boxed kit. Not yet. These are the ones we like for murder mystery players. Here's what they are and who they're for.

Crypt Kickers is a free autumn committee larp for 4 to 6 players, and it's the game I'd hand a group that has never larped before, especially around Halloween. It won the Max Gladstone Special Judge's Choice Award at Golden Cobra 2021. The judge wrote that the roles are clear and the rules straightforward, with conflict real enough to create honest friction while the stakes stay light enough for hijinks. He also noted it would work well online with very little prep. It's a PDF. It costs nothing. Start here.

Fortunes: The Tarot Card Storytelling Game is a storytelling game played with a tarot deck, best with 4 to 5 players, though it also plays solo or with fewer. I wrote it and playtested it with story-game devotees and with people who'd never played a story game in their lives, because it had to work for both. Charles Huth did the art, and his work is seen through many of the earliest Autumnal Games projects. This one is available as a hardcover, a zine, and a PDF, with details on the product page.

The Ink & Blood Dueling Society Doesn't Exist is a paperback about a hidden world of writing duelists, which is the world I come from. Writing duels work solo, with two people, or as a public event. The public, secret-society version is my favorite. The book is available online and in stores, including Goblin Market in Chicago and Secret World Books in Highland Park, Illinois. Or ask your local indie bookstore to order it for you. They can.

Buy for the people on your guest list, and give them characters with real reasons to talk to each other. Somewhere in a box, I still have the mystery we wrote for Villandry. One afternoon on the grass in Tours, and I'm still writing about it twenty years later. That's what these games can do.

Jim Markus

Award-winning game designer and publisher at Autumnal Games. Designer of Fortunes: The Tarot Card Storytelling Game and The Ink & Blood Dueling Society, run live at PAX East, PAX South, and PAX Unplugged. Every game on this site is playtested at real tables before release.

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