Every murder mystery party has to answer one question before its first clue: why does this happen tonight, with these people, in this room? A party can start without an answer. A body at dinner is enough to begin a game. But a premise that answers it gives every guest a reason to be in the room, and a reason to be uneasy about being there, and the evening opens on a story instead of a body.
The Cold Ledger games answer it the same way each time: an old death, reopened by a true-crime podcast, brought back to the place it happened, years later. The first pair did it with a theater. The second does it with a lake house: Accident, Drink Involved, out Friday, October 16, and The Tenth Winter, out Monday, October 19. Here is the idea in three parts, for anyone planning or writing a party mystery of their own: pressure from outside the room, a place with a history, and a different question for each death. It covers the premise and nothing past it: no killer, and no answer.
1. Something Outside the Room Makes It Tonight
A good reason for tonight is one nobody at the party controls, because nobody there can call it off. In the Cold Ledger games that is The Cold Ledger, a true-crime podcast, and its research is the frame of the case-file games. A podcast's research folder is a place where a police report, an insurance file and a forensic re-examination can sit side by side, with the years redacted (here is why).
In The Tenth Winter, the company holds its tenth year-end party while the show is halfway through a two-part episode on the co-founder who died ten winters ago, and its researcher has been calling everyone who was at the company's first year-end party. The party was always going to happen. The podcast is what makes this one different.
The Hundredth Episode uses the same engine, and there the outside event is the party itself: the show tapes its hundredth episode live, in the theater where its case began. For your own party, anything that arrives from outside can do the same work: a reporter's deadline, an anniversary, a reunion everyone was invited to. The test is whether it puts pressure on every guest, not only on the victim.
2. Set the Party Where the Old Death Happened
The Tenth Winter is the tenth year-end party the company has held, and it is held at the founder's lake house again, beside the same frozen lake where the co-founder went through the ice ten winters before. There was no party the winter after he died, which is why the tenth falls ten winters on. Setting the night there lets the place carry the history: once the guests know what happened on that lake, the house and the lake keep reminding them, and the podcast is asking about them.
The first pair made the same choice, and its bundle says it in five words: same theater, fifteen years apart. For your own mystery, set the story's party where the old event happened, or somewhere the guests connect with it. Your real venue only has to stand in for it.
3. Two Deaths Can Ask Two Different Questions
The old death and the new one are ten winters apart, and they ask different kinds of question, which is why they are two games and not one long one. Accident, Drink Involved reopens a ruling: one or two detectives work through the podcast's whole research file on it, at their own pace, in 60 to 90 minutes. The Tenth Winter is about the night itself: 8 to 20 people work it out together, in one evening, at the party.
A file suits a question you settle by reading closely, alone or with one other person. A party suits a question a room argues out loud. When a story has two deaths in it, it is worth asking whether they want the same form at all.
Where the Story Starts
The story starts in the file. Accident, Drink Involved can be played on its own, and its story continues at the company's tenth year-end party, in The Tenth Winter. The Tenth Winter can be played without the case file. If you mean to play both, play the case file first.
Accident, Drink Involved comes out on Friday, October 16, for one or two players, regularly $6.99, printable or digital. The Tenth Winter follows on Monday, October 19, for 8 to 20 players, regularly $34.99, printable or digital. Monday's article has what each one is.
Three Questions for Your Own Premise
- What puts pressure on tonight from outside the room? An investigation, a deadline, an anniversary: something every guest has a reason to care about.
- Where did the old trouble happen, and can the story's party be set there? Your real venue only has to stand in for it.
- Does each death ask its own question? If two deaths ask the same one, ask what the second adds. If they ask different ones, each may want its own form.
While You Wait
The first pair is out now: The Orpheum File, the cold case for one or two, and The Hundredth Episode, the party for 8 to 20, printable or played on phones.
See the First Pair