Hollywood Lies

by Michelle
(Texas)

Today I purchased and am planning to do the Hollywood Lies mystery with 28 women so I have a few questions. I have read thru all of the documentation and still a little confused.

1) Do some of the characters have to be male in this mystery? If not, how do I change them? I know I can change the add on characters but it doesn't say anything about the main list.

2) I'm not sure I'm interested in having them do the movie portion - mainly because I'm not sure I'm understanding what the purpose of that is or how it plays into the main plot. Do the producers solicit people for their movies? Is that their goal per say? I am really not understanding this portion of the mystery so any help you can provide would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help and I'm really excited about doing this with the ladies.

My response:

#1 As written, four of the Hollywood Lies characters are male. The full list is on page nine of the instructions file. If you have a female-only group of players then the best thing you can do is find four of your group who are happy to cross-dress for the party. (Click here for tips on playing the opposite sex.)

Now, you could rewrite those characters to be female characters, but that affects quite a few plots that would also have to be amended - and unpicking it is likely to be quite a bit of work. But if you feel up to it, Freeform Games will let you have the MS Word files if you drop them an email. (Do that via their website!)

2 As for the movies, they're simply a lot of fun. To be honest, the solving-the-murder aspect of the game is not the main thrust of the Hollywood Lies, and I've found that a lot of people enjoy the movie-making bit just as much fun.

In terms of the producers, not only are they soliciting for their movies, but a lot of the other characters are looking to get their script made, or be signed up as actors, and so on. So it's very two-sided as the actors/writers need to decide which movie they want to be a part of and the producers need to make sure they have the right people for their movie.

Because producing movies takes up quite a bit of time, the producers don't have many other goals.

If you're not sure about the movies, you can tone them down - you certainly don't have to "act out" the movies if you don't want to.

What I suggest you do is print out the movie-making rules and show them to one of the people you're planning to invite. (Or a close friend - or a co-host if you're using one.) See what they think - and if they think it sounds like fun, then go for it!

If you have any other questions, please use the comments form below!

Click here to learn more about Hollywood Lies.