Learning some lessons about Party Sizes

 I mentioned that I was working on a second murder mystery party for the Steampunk Society. And then I dropped off the face of the earth because it turns out working a full time job and writing a murder mystery party for 18 people takes up all my time management skills. But I hosted the event on Saturday so now things are slowing down a bit.

The event was... well, chaotic. I shouldn't call it a failure because the players had a good time, but things were a lot messier than my previous mystery party. All in all, it was a good learning experience. I'm glad that editing my first mystery party has been taking so long because this second party taught me some valuable lessons that will improve the first one. 

Still, it's always disappointing when something you plan doesn't go as planned. As I've mentioned before, I struggle with that perfectionistic streak that makes me want to get things right the first time. To make a perfect experience for the readers or players, so there won't be any need for anyone to give me feedback on how to improve. And as I've said before, that's just not a reasonable thing to want. Good stories (and games) don't just materialize by magic; they start out as chaotic messes that get better with time and editing and feedback and work. 

So. Yeah. A learning experience. I was a little over ambitious on my second event: I wanted everything to be bigger and better, to live up to all the praise I'd received the year before. But in retrospect I made a lot of things too complicated in that attempt. When it comes time to edit my second game, I'm going to have to do a lot to simplify it down. But I'm not even going to worry about that until the first game is done and ready to sell: I still have to see if I can actually pull off making some money off of this venture, if I can make something good enough that people are willing to invest their money as well as their time. 

And, yeah, there were some valuable lessons for editing my first party that came out of Saturday's game. For instance, I mentioned there were 18 players? Last year's game had 13 players. And the test run I did a few months ago had only 5 (or more accurately 4, because I was supposed to be playing but couldn't manage to do that and lead the game at the same time. So I was more like an NPC). And it is incredible how different those three group sizes are. Which is very valuable information for me to have as a person who is trying to create these games professionally. This one is a topic that deserves to be it's own blog post, but I'm going to give a couple of pointers I've learned about party size this last weekend. Of course, this is coming from my current level of experience; there may be some nuances that I will only learn as I continue to gain experience.

But here's what I've learned about smaller murder mystery parties (less than 10 players) vs bigger murder mystery parties (more than 10 players)

• Bigger parties spend a lot more time talking (because there are a lot more people to talk to and to try to get to know). Smaller parties spend a lot less time talking (because they run out of things to discuss and people to meet sooner)
• Smaller parties tend to be more interested in solving puzzles or coded messages than big parties (but all puzzles should definitely be play tested in advance, regardless)
• Bigger parties benefit from being divided into small groups
• Bigger parties are louder; it takes more work to make sure everyone hears important announcements
• The bigger the party, the more simple the mystery needs to be. Bigger parties mean more distractions, means it's harder for people to keep track of the clues and follow the plot
• Smaller parties seem to do better at tasks like puzzles and searching for hidden clues: larger parties seem to do better at allowing for sub plots and character secrets
• The bigger the party. the more you need "support staff" or other people who can help keep the game on track
• The bigger the party, the more people will struggle to remember all the character names. You can help this a bit with good name tags (and the bigger the writing the better with those), but facilitating introductions can do a lot to help players find each other
• Bigger games benefit from more structure and clearer instructions. Smaller games can afford to be a little more flexible
• No matter the group size, a scripted or structured introduction will do a lot to help kick things off and start breaking the ice

Will I do another murder mystery party for the Utah Steampunk Society next year? I haven't decided yet. Haha, and of course that's assuming they'll still want another party after this one was so much rougher than the first. But writing these is a lot of fun, even if it can be stressful or discouraging at times. And I have a lot more ideas for parties I can write. But for right now, it's time to focus on applying these lessons to the game in progress. "Death in the Skies" is going to be better for any problems that exist in Death at the Races. 

And when will "Death in the Skies" be done and ready to go? Well, obviously not yet. I'm afraid I keep making predictions and deadlines for myself then breezing right past them. So for now I guess I'll avoid any broken promises by just saying--I'm trying to prioritize getting it done right over getting it done fast. So, I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I have had some writing successes in the past couple of months. A flash fiction (less than 1,000 words) fantasy story of mine was recently published on the Sudden Flash website, where you can read it for free! I also had a poem I wrote accepted to the Inkpot Literary Journal. That's pretty exciting for me since it's been about ten years since I last published a short story. So even if these successes or small, they feel like progress towards a dream I've held dear for a very long time. Hopefully I'll have more to share soon. 

🫶Jen