The Chateau becomes The Bastille for the weekend!
Murder Mystery Weekends
Agatha Cristie, Poirot and Inspector Clousot live again! The Château, with its many rooms, outbuildings and woodlands is the ideal place to stage a mystery weekend for a number of ‘players’. We can draw on a wealth of spies, crooks, fraudsters and politicians (well?) to create a rich tableau of misdeeds as the basis for your mystery experience.
This is a splendid way to get together with a group of friends for a weekend and enjoy a fun experience.
The whole ‘Murder Mystery’ scene embraces several approaches to managing a Murder Mystery event:
There are two main types of re-packaged games with many variants. They each set out a scenario (Haunted house, gathering of the family, sudden loss of the person who is about to make the big announcement kind of thing). The scenario may also be set in a particular historical time. The game is normally hosted by a facilitator, ideally someone who has a modicum of thespian credentials and therefore can add their personality to the whole. Each person is given a character to create a few days ahead of time so that they can prepare and (preferably) dress the part. They also get various clues, rumours to circulate and bits of strategy to follow during the game. The game may then proceed in stages, with the guests being the actors. The two major variants are that:
a) some are scripted through to a final ‘this is who dunnit’ (although you are encouraged to ad lib a lot) and
b) some set up the scenario, and let it play itself out with much more input from the players, so that the ending is variable, and ‘who dunnit’ emerges by a kind of consensus.
Most of these play games out in one evening, perhaps three hours, maybe with a meal in between. They offer a great deal of fun for very little investment.
Some Great Costumes!
The alternative type of Murder Mystery are then those that employ a small number of actors (one to four max) to play out a scenario amongst the guests. The guests, who essentially start out as observers, then become the detectives. These events can be run in two or three separate stages, i.e., the ‘play’, the questioning and opinion forming, and then the Poirot-style denouement with each guest making accusations and a revealing of the true culprit. This is best done with the first part on one evening, the ‘opinion forming’ over night, and the denoument the following morning before lunch. This makes for a fuller weekend. One such game we have come across actually has a ‘Judge and Jury’ scene at the end. This also means that there is a winner (and thus also a prize can be awarded!).
Finally, there is the matter of scale. For games played in the Chateau on suitably wintery nights, the practical limit is 20 people – less if everyone is staying over night. However, some games can be played outside, in the summer. For this scenario it should be possible to host up to 100 participants (although considerable pre-planning is needed for this scale of event!).
The Plot Being Worked At Over Dinner!
So, what would you like for your Murder Mystery event? Starting with the least cost option and moving up, we can arrange for a pre-designed mystery from a number of well established sources, and offering a range of scenarios (although the ones featuring the big mansion make most sense). At a similar cost but for the more intrepid, we can organise those mysteries that give you a detailed scenario and then, over the allotted time, are designed to resolve themselves, with only a cast of characters and a starting point. Then, there is the event with a cast of actors, and running over an evening and a morning. If it is a really special event, we can custom design your own mystery around a required theme, your friends or business colleagues. Finally, we can create large scale, outdoor events. Time to choose!
Give us a call, we can then discuss your requirements and timings, lopok at likely budgets and then move on from there!
