A FAMILY FRIENDLY MURDER MYSTERY GAME - MERRYMURDER.COM

  MURDER AT THE NORTH POLE 

TABLE TOP VERSION - COMPONENTS

The table top version of "Murder at the North Pole" is a specially written version of the full party game that can be played by 7 to 12 players.

All players will be allocated to one of seven teams (Team A, Team B, Team C, Team D, Team E, Team F and Team G).  Each team will therefore either have one or two members.  Each team is responsible for voicing the parts of certain characters.  Namely:

       ♦  Team A will be voicing Long Beard, Christmas Land's Chief Engineer
       ♦  Team B will be voicing Father Christmas and Blitzen Reindeer
       ♦  Team C will be voicing Mrs Christmas and Postman Knox
       ♦  Team D will be voicing Rudolph Reindeer and Eskimo Nelly
       ♦  Team E will be voicing Tubby Reindeer and Bluddengutz the Polar Bear
       ♦  Team F will be voicing Frosty the Killer Snowman and a Mystery Character who turns up during the game
       ♦  Team G will be voicing Big Nose the Intelligent Elf and Waggly Ears the Even More Intelligent Elf, Long Beard's Assistants

Rather than have to listen for cues before revealing information, each item in a round is numbered.  Items are performed in numerical order by the appropriate character.  For instance the table top at the beginning of Round 2 will look as follows:

		TEAM A				TEAM F
	Round 2 Flow Chart	Long Beard Booklet 31, 38	Radio Broadcast Script 16	Turkish Delight Script 33		Frosty Suspect Card 5, 7, 35	Radio Broadcast Script 16
	Father Christmas Suspect Card 21, 23, 25					Mrs Christmas Suspect Card 2, 4, 24
T E A M B	Blitzen Suspect Card 14, 17					Postman Knox Suspect Card 9, 29, 34		T E A M C
	Radio Broadcast Script 16					Radio Broadcast Script 16
T E A M G	1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 12,17, 19, 22, 26, 28, 30, 36	Rudolph Suspect Card 11, 13	Eskimo Nelly Suspect Card 39		Turkish Delight Script 33	Tubby Suspect Card 20, 32	Bluddengutz Suspect Card 15, 27, 37
		TEAM D				TEAM E

So Team G would read out the first Investigation Question (1), causing Mrs Christmas to give a response (2).  This promotes a further question (3) which also results in Clue 1 being revealed.  The clue provokes a reaction from Mrs Christmas (4) and a subsequent response from Frosty (5).  And so on through to Eskimo Nelly concluding the round (39).  By this time the Four Clue Objects and Two Christmas Letters in the centre of the table will have been revealed.  (The other items in the centre of the table were clues discovered in Round 1).

A round flowchart is also provided, allowing the party host to keep track of who is to speak at each point.  The Long Beard Character Booklet contains the instructions for laying out the components for each round, has a summary to be read aloud at the end of each round, and also contains the denouement speech with which the killer is unmasked.

The two sides of Father Christmas's Round 2 Suspect Character Card are shown below, so you can see how the numbers on the back of each card correspond with the statements to be read aloud on the front.

After Round 4 each character has a "Protest of Innocence" to read aloud.  Then it is time for everyone to decide who killed the Ice Sculptor before Long Beard reveals all in a dramatic denouement speech.  Finally the player who has been voicing the murderer will read aloud the confession, explaining fully why they committed their crime.

The game should take about three to three and a half hours to play.

©2010 - Tim Morrell