What to do when a guest cancels at your murder mystery party

First find out whether the night leans on their character. If it does not, pull their cards and carry on. If it does, you play the part yourself. Either way the mystery still solves, and nothing has to be rewritten at the door.

That is the short answer. It works because the question was settled before the kit was written, not on the night.

Why one empty chair matters

A dinner party can lose a guest and nobody but the cook notices. A murder mystery is different. Every guest holds cards, and the cards depend on one another.

One guest’s card clears another guest. One guest’s secret is the reason a third one lied. Take a person out of the room and their cards go with them. If one of those cards was the only thing that cleared an innocent suspect, the table can no longer solve it.

Here is one from our sample kit, set in a speakeasy in 1926. In round three the cigarette girl’s card puts her in the coat check alcove with the torch singer and the former head bartender when it happened. That one card clears three people. If she is not at the table, somebody still has to say it.

This is why the alibis in a kit always agree with each other. If one card says two or three people were together, each of their cards says so too. No single envelope is the only place a fact lives, unless the character has been marked as one the night cannot do without.

So the answer to a cancellation depends on which character has gone, and what they were carrying.

Two kinds of character

Every Nightcapers kit marks each character as one of two kinds.

• A character who can be dropped. Take them and their cards out, and the mystery still solves. The murderer can still be found, and every innocent can still be cleared.
• A character the night leans on. Their cards carry something nobody else’s do. They have to be in the room.

We check this before any character is written. It is not a guess made at the door with a drink in your hand.

The host guide has the list. It names every character and says which kind they are.

If the character can be dropped

Pull their envelopes, all three rounds of them. The guide tells you which cards to pull and which lines to skip when you read aloud.

Take their name tag off the table. Set one place fewer. That is all of it.

Keep the envelopes sealed and out of sight until the night is over. If the guest turns up after all, they can still play.

The other guests will not feel a gap, because there is none. Nobody’s card points at an empty chair.

If the night leans on them

Then you play them. The guide names which booklet to pick up and how to run both parts.

This is less work than it sounds. You are not learning lines. A booklet is eight short pages, and a clue card is forty to sixty words. When the round opens, you open the absent guest’s card as well as your own and say what it says.

If a friend can take the empty seat at the last minute, that works too. Hand them the envelope. The character is already written, and nobody at the table has read it.

When they cancel makes a difference

Before you pay, nothing is fixed. You can change any answer, and that includes the guest list. Take the person off and carry on.

After the kit is written, the rule is the same whether they cancel a week out or from the driveway. Drop the character or play the character. The kit is not rewritten around the new headcount.

Every kit does come with one free rewrite. It is the same guests and the same answers with a new mystery, for a host who wanted a different story. It is not the tool for a cancellation, and you do not need it for one.

The guest who never answered

A guest who has not replied is a cancellation that has not happened yet. Characters go out one week before the party to every guest who has not said no, so the week-out mark is when you find out who is missing.

The host guide’s page for that week says what to do about them. Ask once more, directly, and then decide. It is kinder to the rest of the table to plan for the empty chair than to hope.

A week out, in order

• Count the people who have not said no. They are the ones whose characters have gone out.
• Look up everyone else in the host guide’s list of characters.
• For each one who can be dropped, set their envelopes aside. Do not throw them away. People change their minds.
• For each one the night leans on, read their booklet. If you end up playing them, you will be glad you did.
• Print for the table you have. The first file in the kit says how many copies of each piece to make.

Late arrivals and early exits

A guest who is late is not a guest who cancelled. Keep their envelopes by the door. The body is found fifteen minutes in, and round one opens five minutes after that, so somebody who arrives half an hour late has missed one reading and nothing else. Hand them the first card and let the table fill them in. The table will be glad to.

The times in the guide are a rhythm, not a deadline. If you know somebody is on the way, hold the lights for ten minutes.

A guest who has to leave before the reveal should fill in a ballot before they go. Tell them the answer in the morning.

On the night

Say it once, at the door, in character if you can manage it. Then leave it alone. The body is found fifteen minutes in, and after that nobody is thinking about who did not come.

We had eight suspects at our own party, on a tour bus in 1969. At a table of eight one missing person is an eighth of the room. It is worth knowing the plan before the doorbell goes.

At our October party, the guest who cancelled that week held a part the whole night leaned on. I moved another guest into it, invited someone new for the open seat, and nothing had to be rewritten. You can read how that night went here.

What a box cannot do

A boxed kit is written once, before anyone knows who is coming. It cannot know which of your friends will have a sick child on the day.

Ours is written for your headcount, anywhere from six to twelve, so you start the night with no spare parts and nobody doubling up. The only changes are the ones your guests make.

It is written after you tell us who is at the table. The cancellation plan is part of the mystery, and it is checked along with everything else.

The short version

• Look up the character in the host guide’s list.
• If they can be dropped, pull their envelopes and skip the lines the guide marks.
• If the night leans on them, play the part yourself, or hand the envelope to whoever takes the seat.
• Do not rewrite anything. You do not need to.

Answer nine questions about your guests and you see your whole cast before you pay. The plan for an empty chair comes with it.