Game of Crowns: Medieval Murder Mystery Party Game

I ran this for a New Year’s Eve party with 25 people, ages 13-70 – plus 3 younger ones with reduced involvement. Overall, this was a neat concept and my guests enjoyed it for the most part. Participants that are familiar with Game of Thrones were very thrown off due to so many similarities, yet not being the same story – at first this was a good feature, but by the time I handed out round two slips, this was becoming a detrimental feature as people were confusing the game’s plot with things they knew about Game of Thrones. Participants that are unfamiliar with Game of Thrones had a much easier time investing in the game’s plot and following various threads. As someone who has been a game master of many types of games, I found this to NOT be a simple ‘print and go’ murder mystery; I spent at least 20 hours over the week leading up to the party working on various things to make this more consumable.

Pros:
Characters have a nice brief framework of who they are to help players get into the spirit of the character.
There is a lot of content with nuanced connections between the characters.

Cons:
Imbalance of Male and Female characters. I love that the story is female centric, but the imbalance made this extremely challenging to run for a group that happened to be equal ratio.
No replay value: There is only 1 solution. Despite all the setup and numerous characters with motives, this is not a random draw for the murderer, but a set character that is the murderer.
Printable documents are too compacted. Using the provided PDF and just printing, resulted in small compact text on each slip of paper that is handed to players. This made even the youngest players congregate where lighting was brightest, but also resulted in the 40+ crowd digging out reading glasses or asking to borrow others.
Some of the more stylized fonts in the PDF to not print properly.
The names: I get that many of the names are trying to play off similar sounding names of characters from Game of Throes, but I feel like some of them make for overly complex pronunciation that proved to be a distraction for players.

Suggestions:
The map should be turned to fill the page landscape style (instead of oriented in portrait at the top of the page).
A fillable PDF with linked fields would be so much more helpful here; let me type in player’s names on a character list at the top, then the rest of the document inserts that player’s name in parentheses with the character name throughout the rest of the document.
Better yet, make it a Word DOC with fillable linked fields (for the above) so that I can also edit the font size.
Random draw for who the murderer is. Or even, if you wanted to keep it female centric, only female characters can end up as the murderer.
Based on other games I’ve run, I’d rate this as a 7 or 8 out of 10 on the complexity scale (versus the 5 out of 10 it currently shows).

Conclusion:
Knowing what I know, I wouldn’t buy it again for my situation. It’s not bad, but it’s not good enough to spend $100 on it. I feel like a smaller group where only the base package is needed probably works decently; but the expansions add too much to the cost, confusion, and setup.

This was our second time using a murder mystery from this site. I'd say in terms of level of difficulty in solving the crime this was on the average to easy side. It is possible to solve this one with just a little focus on the clues. It was not terrible complicated. The sheet provided to help take notes and solve the crime is very helpful.

But generally I don't love the way the clues are written in the third person. It makes it really difficult to read and then translate into first person when you are in the moment. It had many of us tripping up through out the night which spoils the flow for those of us really getting into character.

Also name tags should be on separate pages in standard name tag sticker size format so we can print them out easily. The name tags provided were not easy to print on sticker paper as they were not any standard format.

Also I was short one female and I sent an email to customer service asking if there was a character that I could easily switch to male without knowing who the killer was, and they just directed me to their FAQ on the site so customer service is actually useless. So you are on your own once you purchase. Don't expect any help from them. The instructions provided are very detailed though and will take some time to read through. In the end I was able to set up the whole party without knowing who the victim or the killer was so I could participate.

The victim reveal was loads of fun though and everyone really did have a good time! :)

I wasn’t originally aware that this was basically Game of Thrones but with all different character names. The main issue with the game is the complexity. There is so much information to take in about your and other characters that no one is really able to understand who they are or their associations to other characters.

I also don’t feel there was a real mystery aspect to the game. Everyone had a motive, but there was no way to really understand why someone would have done it more than anyone else. So, ultimately it was a guessing game.

I appreciate the care and instructions in the packet. If you have a group that is willing to dress up and commit, you will still have a blast. But, i think there are better murder mystery kits out there that are more original and easier to follow.

First time being involved in a murder mystery party. I hosted 20 friends and we all had a BLAST. 10/10 would recommend or 5/5 in this case. It took us 3 hours to complete and we could have speeded it up or added bonus activities to slow it down. Everyone was engaged. We had a few people that preferred it to be assigned characters so they played detectives and pirates (to support one of the King’s roles). Everyone was asking when the next party will be. We will definitely host again through this site.

A few details for those who wonder about game play. Clue cards are distributed at the beginning of 3 rounds. The game gives information for each character to tell to others and specific instruction to tell specific characters information. It would be super helpful to wear name tags, have the characters introduce themselves and get into their family grouping. There is not a script or narrater. The information is a lot at first, but the clues are reiterated so you do t miss anything important. The host will be able to play the game without knowing who the victim or murderer are if that is what they wish. Also, the murder happens during the game, which was really fun. The victim is able to continue to play and try to solve their murder as a ghost, but ours just walked around and heckled everyone after their murder.

Interesting to play. Difficult to set up without seeing details, so had to ask someone to set up for me. A lot of complicated people and place names, so took quite a bit of time to get into it, even for those who have watched the TV show. 3/10 got the murderer correct.