A murder mystery party is mostly decided before the doorbell rings. What the host sends, prints and folds in the two days beforehand is what lets a room full of people argue for an evening without anyone, the host included, knowing the answer. For The Hundredth Episode, our printable party game for 8 to 20 players, that preparation is small and exact, and every step in it exists to keep one secret in.
This is the host's side of the week, in order, as a checklist with the reason under each step. The reasons matter more than the steps, because they are what make a host trust a step they would otherwise skip. Why the game hides the answer from its own host, and how the night runs once everyone is in the room, are in Four Killers in One Box, and this guide does not repeat them. This is the procedure, not the pitch.
First: Who Reads What
The game arrives as five files, and the whole method rests on who is allowed to open which one. The start file carries this as a spoiler map. Read it before anything else, because every step below follows from it.
| File | Who reads it |
|---|---|
| Start Here | The host only |
| Character guides | Each player reads their own, and nobody else's. A host who plays reads only theirs |
| Evidence pack | Everyone, at the evidence waves. Safe for the host to read at any time: nothing in it names the killer |
| Host materials: the guide, the 90-minute format and the picker page | The host |
| Host materials: the four sealed cases behind the picker | Printed blind. Packet evidence reaches the players at the waves, sealed cards reach their owners privately, and the host sorts without reading faces |
| The solution page | Nobody, until the reveal |
Two Days Ahead: Cast, Then Send
1. Cast from the top of the list
Characters 1 to 8 are required, and the mystery is fully solvable at eight. Characters 9 to 20 join in number order: cast 9 before 10, 10 before 11, and so on.
Why: the order is built so that nobody ever refers to an uncast character by name, which makes any stopping point between 8 and 20 a clean one. The guides are written to be played by anyone; characters 9 to 20 are written without pronouns about themselves and each other. The host guide's own advice is the right one: "Cast for enthusiasm, not appearance."
2. Send each player their own guide, privately
For phone play, send each person exactly one file from the phone pack: their own. For paper, hand each person their own pages from the print pack. Never the whole folder, and never to a group chat.
Why: players who have read their guide arrive as their character, and a guide is private by design. Two days is the game's own lead time, and it is a minimum, not a target.
If you are running the 90-minute version, a third thing goes out with the guides. It has its own section below.
Setup: Thirty to Forty Minutes, Once
The host guide puts setup at thirty to forty minutes, done once, before anyone arrives. It is six steps, and the order matters.
3. Print the base materials, and set three stations
The evidence pack prints with the name tags, voting cards and awards. Its nineteen evidence items are identical in every version of the game. Set out three stations on any three surfaces, THE ROOM, THE SYSTEMS and THE PAPER TRAIL, and keep each stack face-down until its wave.
Why: this is the part of the game that never changes, so you can handle it freely. The face-down stacks are the three-hour evening's shape: each one flips at the top of its wave, and the room discovers the night in three steps.
4. Have someone who is not playing pick the number
A partner, a neighbour, anyone. They pick a number from one to four, or roll a die and reroll a 5 or a 6. You look no further than the picker page yourself.
Why: the four spans are unlabelled and identical in length, and nothing on the picker page or in its page numbers hints at what is inside. The only way to learn tonight's answer is to look, so the procedure never asks you to. From here on, this guide says "the page span the picker names" and nothing more specific, for the same reason.
5. Turn off two-sided printing, then print only that span
Do not print, scroll or preview the other three. Each span is complete in itself, and there is nothing after the four spans to go hunting for.
Why: the picker page says it in capitals, and adds: "Many printers print on both sides by default; turn that off before you press Print." The start file gives the reason in one line: "printed on both sides, one sealed card lands on the back of another sheet." It is the one printer default that can undo the design, so the files ask for one-sided printing wherever a host prints: the start file, the setup steps, the picker page, and the first page of the character and evidence packs. We check every shipped file for that instruction, and the files on sale today pass.
6. Fold the solution the moment it leaves the tray
The last page of the span is the solution, and it prints upside-down on purpose. Take it off the tray and fold it in half, text side in, straight away: before you square the stack, before you sort anything. It goes under the centerpiece, or in an envelope taped beneath a chair, and leaves that spot only at the reveal.
Why: the layout means you handle the sheet without ever having its text the right way up in front of you. Folded, nothing private faces out.
7. Fold the eight sealed character cards
Each card folds its top down along its printed line, over the private box. The name printed low on the sheet stays outside. The cards go in your pocket until the blackout.
Why: the name on the outside lets you hand every card to the right person without opening any of them. Never unfold one, including your own if you are playing.
8. Sort the packet's thirteen evidence items by their corner marks
Each packet item carries its wave number in a corner. Slide each one face-down into the matching station stack, without reading faces.
Why: the items are designed to be sorted by that mark alone. The thirteen packet items are the only evidence that differs between the four versions, so they are the pages you most need not to read.
That is the setup. If you are playing a character too, you get your card at the blackout like everyone else, and everything you know is procedure, not solution.
Paper, Printer, and How Much of Each
Every page of every file is US Letter, portrait, with its fonts embedded, and black and white is enough. Every page keeps its ink about half an inch from each edge, well clear of the strip a home printer cannot reach, so a printer loaded with A4 at 100% loses nothing either. The files carry no page labels, which matters more than it sounds: the page numbers you type into a print dialog are the physical pages, so the span the picker names is exactly the span you print.
For the three-hour evening, the host guide puts the print at 48 sheets for one table: the case packet and the evidence pack. If your players take their guides on paper rather than on their phones, add each cast player's own pages from the print pack. For the 90-minute version, the evidence pack travels by phone, so the print is the packet, 22 sheets per table, plus the three sheets of voting cards and awards from the evidence pack.
Choose the Evening: Three Hours or Ninety Minutes
The three-hour evening is the one the game is built around: arrival and mingling (30 minutes), the blackout and the on-the-record round (25 minutes), three evidence waves of 25 to 30 minutes each, then accusations and the reveal (30 minutes). The discovery is built in. The room learns the building one stack at a time, and the arrival hour is when everyone settles into character.
The ninety-minute version is for an evening with a fixed end time: in the host guide's words, "a work event, a lunch block, a meeting room you lose at the hour." Nothing is cut. All thirty-two documents are still in play, and the solution reads exactly as printed. "What changes is when people read, not what they read."
The one move that makes it fit
Send the evidence pack to every player two days early, with their guide, and call it required. It is safe to hand out because its nineteen items are identical in all four versions: it cannot tell anyone who did it, including you. The thirteen items that separate the four versions live only in the packet you print on the night. For the players it is about twenty minutes of reading, under three thousand words.
The host guide suggests the email itself: "This is the case file the marshal released. Read it before you come. It is the same in every version of this game, so it tells you nothing about who did it. You will still be surprised."
Use the word required. This is the one way the format fails: a player who skips the homework never sees the pages the night's evidence is written against. "A table that reads will convict."
On the night, the setup is the same as above with one change: the thirteen packet items go into two piles by their corner marks, a pile of two and a pile of eleven, instead of three stations. Then the clock:
| Clock | Block | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | Frame the night, then the blackout: one real minute in the dark | 6 |
| 0:06 | Sealed cards out; a silent, private read | 4 |
| 0:10 | On the record: every character, in number order, reads their printed statement | 11 |
| 0:21 | The systems: the pile of two, read aloud to the room | 7 |
| 0:28 | The paper trail: the pile of eleven, dealt across the table and traded | 28 |
| 0:56 | Press conference: one public claim each, no replies | 7 |
| 1:03 | Accusations, then the secret vote | 11 |
| 1:14 | The reveal, read top to bottom | 10 |
| 1:24 | Awards, and the minutes you will have needed somewhere | 6 |
Four rules keep it on time, and they are worth saying to the room before you start. Statements are read as printed, and then the reader stops. The paper trail is dealt, not stacked, across as many different players as you have: a stack on a table is a queue, and a dealt document turns its holder into a source the room has to go and ask. Nobody holds a document longer than two minutes once trading opens. And you keep the clock out loud, calling the halfway mark of the paper trail and the two-minute warning.
At 15 players or more, two characters are already the busiest people in the room, because several other characters' objectives point straight at them. Give those two no document, and deal the eleven around them. Tell the room as you deal, in the guide's words: "Your three objectives start now. Work them while you read."
At 16 or more, you can run two complete games instead of one large one. Each table starts its own cast at character 1, and each needs one person, playing too, to keep the clock and read the reveal. Have your non-player pick two different numbers, or roll twice and reroll any 5, 6 or repeat: two tables on the same span share an answer, and whichever finishes first spoils the other. Do it because two competing tables is more fun, not to save time. Splitting buys back only about twelve minutes, and it costs a second packet.
What the short version trades away
The arrival hour: people arrive and the lights go out. The discovery: reading a case file at home is not the same as watching a stack flip over. The three-act shape: one long evidence block replaces the escalation. Depth: ninety minutes with a full table is a puzzle race in costume, and a good one, but the quiet character moments belong to the long version. If your group likes it, the long version is sitting in the same files, with three cases you have not opened.
If Something Goes Wrong
A card opened early, or the wrong span printed, does not ruin anything: three other versions exist. Re-run the picker on the remaining numbers another night, and tonight, whoever saw something plays hardest at not showing it. If a player has to leave partway through, their character "went to the lobby to check on the ticketholders", and the game carries on, because the evidence is printed, not performed. And if the room stalls, flip the next wave early. The host guide's line on that is the best single piece of hosting advice in the box: "Evidence restarts arguments better than hints do."
The Smaller Case Prints the Same Way
The Orpheum File is the quiet evening: one or two detectives, sixty to ninety minutes, no host. It prints on US Letter, one-sided "so each hint stays on its own sheet", and black and white is fine, or you can play it entirely on screen in any PDF reader. And if you want to try the house style before planning anything, The 90-Second Case is free and runs in the browser: four exhibits, three statements, one lie, and ninety seconds.
The Hundredth Episode is sold here, where a download page opens right after checkout and the same link arrives by email, and on Etsy. Everything in this guide comes from the host pages of the files themselves, which are written to be safe for any eyes.
The short version
Two days ahead: cast from character 1 up, and send each player their own guide, privately. For ninety minutes, send the evidence pack too, and call it required. Thirty minutes ahead: print the base materials and set three face-down stations; have a non-player pick the number; turn off two-sided printing and print only that span; fold the solution the moment it lands; fold the eight cards with their names outside; sort the thirteen packet items by corner mark without reading them. Then choose: three hours with the discovery built in, or ninety minutes with the homework sent ahead, knowing it trades the arrival hour, the flipping stacks and the three-act build for a fixed end time.