How do you set up a live action breakout room or murder mystery game in a home?

Asked by Yellowdog (12216

) October 24th, 2018

Sometimes these are done in historic homes—its kind of like a live action game of CLUE, where a group of adults tries to solve a mystery (usually a murder) or—in the case of a breakout room, escape from a dungeon (a.k.a. like in the SAW movie series).

Its too late in the season for me to organize one this year, but I have friends who have adequate homes.

A decade ago, I did some really dark Role Playing Games for groups (Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, and also the Role Playing Game “Kult”)—these games went on for several weeks during midwinter. I would like to theme these events this way and possibly feature a dinner and coziness (“Hygge”) and breaking out into a horror mystery theme. Not taking a week but a quiet evening with friends.

I LOVE horror props, haunted houses, and the Steampunk genre. I have access to old houses, churches, and hopefully a retreat center.

So, how would one go about setting up a murder mystery or breakout game or live role playing game in a home?

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2 Answers

I used to set up geocaches and Easter egg hunts that involved puzzles.
Generally, I start at the end point and work my way to the starting point .
Depending upon how long you want it to last you should have between 5–10 problems/puzzles to solve. If there are too many, they must be simple and that gets boring and predicable. Too few and they must be complicated and that gets frustrating.
Use light, darkness, UV, sound, to help find the clues. Make one puzzle tedious; one that requires special equipment they have already found (e.g. UV flashlight), one that takes special knowledge, and a few searching clues. Then throw in a few easy ones for kids. That is a nice mix.
It sounds like fun!

LuckyGuy (43866

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Never seen a good version of this in someone’s home. I did go to several murder mystery dinners at restaurants which were okay. I have done several escape rooms which were good. There was a hotel by my old house that set up a murder mystery that went for a whole weekend and in which you could get “killed” and be out of the game.

seawulf575 (17061

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