Superb Decorations and Costumes
Hosting a Pirate Murder Mystery - Other Helpful Ideas
For her birthday, Doris ran our Pirates Plunder and Murder game with 14 players. Doris says:
"We had a blast and loved the mystery! Your mystery was really a lot of fun and I liked how your characters actually had lines and scenes to follow. I’ve done some before where you just have to make up stuff to say and question people. It is much easier for people to have a part to follow."
It took about 3 hours to play but that was with long breaks. About 4 or 5 people guessed whodunnit."
Doris says "I used a lot of Halloween decorations that I already had and bought a few pirate things to add along with your printouts."
The painted black pallets in the background make a superb backdrop for the party entrance. Doris draped a black sheet over this and then put torn creepy cloth to represent fish netting. She gave this a spooky feel by adding fairy lights behind the netting.
Note the white creepy cloth painted red to represent blood stains - very effective. Note also the ghost mask with an empty Halloween costume floating to the floor.
Hall decorations with guests. This photo shows the balloons to one side and the pirate skull and crossbones flag to the other:
This photo also shows the pirate balloon mixed with the other balloons (left), the skeleton with the red and black robes (center) and the skull and crossbones flag over the door. A great party entrance!
In the main party space, Doris effectively mixed Halloween and pirate decorations. We love the way the pirate bunting and balloons work together at the top and how the netting drapes down at the sides with more pirate balloons. And the Halloween skeleton is given a buccaneer feel with the simple addition of a pirate hat and sword.
In the group photo above, the costumes all look superb - so much so that I could take a good guess at the the character role just by looking at the costume!
A close-up of the netting, skeletons and pirate balloon:
For the dining room, Doris cleverly had a Halloween outfit suspended over a tattered black sheet; the black curtains to either side represented sails. She also used a superb pirate ship wall backdrop. (For copyright reasons, we have slightly modified this.) Note the treasure chest on the black creepy cloth: a nice touch!
Lady Dorothy and Admiral. Both costumes really are fantastic and capture the period feel of the mystery perfectly:
Tempest, Cutthroat Kat and Ruthless Ragin' Redd. Tempest's costume perfectly captures the mix of mystic and menace with the skull necklace and jewel across her forehead. Cutthroat Kat and Redd make great use of costumes, props, scars and bandanas:
Doris says: "I wanted the food to be easy. We sat around a few tables to eat and for most of the game but did the food buffet style.
"We started with drinks and appetizers. Appetizers were meat and cheese tray. Cheese sticks with treasure maps drawn on them. Also had meatballs, shrimp cocktail, devilled eggs, chips and salsa and queso dip.
"We had pizza delivered between the second and third round I believe. It was for my birthday so we did a dessert course before the final round and had birthday cake.
"We had a tavern area with rum punch and several varieties of other rum."
