My Murder Mystery

Murder mystery games aren't new; they're a well-established sub-genre of deduction game but most are designed to be played specifically as dinner party games and many can be a faff to organise. Emanuele Briano has distilled the now traditional dinner party game into a deduction party game that takes much less preparation.

Shown here on Board's Eye View is My Murder Mystery: The Final Protocol but the other title so far in the series, My Murder Mystery: A Dead Monkey works in a similar way but obviously with different mysteries to solve. Both are published by Horrible Guild. If players write their answers on a sheet of paper rather than directly on their objective cards, the games can be re-set so that they can be played by another group of players but you can't replay The Final Protocol or A Dead Monkey with the same players because they'll already know the secrets to be uncovered. We've avoided giving away any Spoilers in our Board's Eye View review; the cards you can see in our 360 are those that are available to all the players at the start of a game of My Murder Mystery: The Final Protocol.

After a brief introduction, players each take a set of character cards assigning them a particular character and telling them all about that character. One of the players will be told on their cards that they are the murderer, and obviously they don't want to be identified as the murderer by the other players. All of the players will have background information, some of which may or may not be pertinent to the murder but much will be concerned with parallel sub-plots. Players will each have their own secret objectives concerned not just with the murder but also with weaselling out or concealing specific secrets.

The game is played over just five rounds and there are eight location cards displayed, so there will be locations players don't get to inspect. The lead player for the round chooses a location to investigate and flips that location card. The details on the back of the card are read aloud so become public information but the card is also likely to award the lead player a numbered 'Top Secret' card which contains further information. Finally, the lead player chooses the lead player for the next round.

Players all have two action tokens that can each be spent once over the course of the entire game. You can spend one to veto the lead player's choice of location or to veto their choice of next lead. You can also spend a token to take a Top Secret card from another player. If a lead player's choice is vetoed, their second choice cannot be. If a Top Secret card is taken from you, you will no longer have access to it - so you'll need to try to remember what it told you.

After five rounds, players write down their answers to the questions on their individual objectives and they all point to the player that should be eliminated. The player who attracts the most votes is eliminated, regardless of whether or not they are the murderer. There's a revelation phase where the murderer and all the secrets are revealed and, aside from the eliminated player, players score for their successful objectives.

Tho' there will be winners and losers in My Murder Mystery, you'll find it's not so much the scoring that counts as the memorable playing experience that you'll still be talking about days after you've packed this two-hour game away. The game takes 5-7 players. There are adjustments that are made if you're playing with five or six players but you won't want to go into those unless and until that situation arises because reducing the player count below its full complement of seven inevitably identifies one or two characters who are unlikely to be the murderer. We've a suspicion too that playing with fewer than seven players could slightly unbalance other players' secrets and objectives, so our recommendation is to try to play with a full complement of seven players. You're in for a great experience - particularly if players roleplay their assigned characters...

#MyMurderMystery #TheFinalProtocol #FinalProtocol #ADeadMonkey #DeadMonkey #murdermystery #deduction #partygame #roleplay #RPG #bluffing #hiddenroles #HorribleGuild