Assigning characters as the host is one of the most important parts of planning for your Dinner Murder Mystery party. Once you have got the proper number of RSVPs, you are ready to assign characters to your friends who are attending. The easiest way to assign the characters is to read the character descriptions and match each character with the guest that you feel suits that particular character the best. There are a couple of rules of thumb for this.
1. Some characters in a Mystery are more outgoing (extroverted) than others. For these, you'll want to pick friends that fall naturally into that kind of role. In the Character Assignment document that we provide with each mystery game, there is a column for Sociability, which describes that character as Average, Outgoing or Very Outgoing. These designations will help you pick friends that fit the characters. For certain roles, the detective for example, you want someone who can take charge and doesn’t mind being the center of attention. So for this role you want someone that is in the “Very Outgoing” category. Our next category is “Outgoing” and this is for someone that is still pretty good at being in front of a crowd and doesn’t mind being in that type of role. For the person that is “Average” this might be someone that you either are not familiar with (a spouse to a friend for example) or someone that is a little more on the shy side.
2. Often couples are invited to Dinner Murder Mystery parties together. Likewise, there are a number of roles that are married (or interested in each other), so you may want to match couples up with these roles... splitting couples up can be fun too.
3. Some hosts wonder if a shy person can participate... our experience is that they can. Since it's really acting in a role, often shy people turn out to be really good at playing a part.
There are a variety of games that we offer here at Dinner Murder Mystery including a 1920's murder mystery party, cowboys set in a western murder mystery, a pirate murder mystery, a London mystery game, a wine mystery game, and a data computer mystery game.