Arsenic & Lies review

Arsenic & Lies is a replayable murder-mystery larp written by Karolina Soltys for 5-12 players that takes three hours to play.

Arsenic & Lies is set in a grand house at a New Year’s Eve party on 31 December 1919. A new decade is about to start – but not for everyone!

I played in Arsenic & Lies recently, so this is a review combined with my experience. The game is played in three parts.

Character creation

First, we created our characters. Each player drew a relationship and secret (discarding and redrawing if they didn’t like them). Then we choose a character from the 44 available – I chose the war hero, Lt. Joe Middleton.

We introduced our characters, then worked out who would work well with our relationships. (I was married, so I checked with one of the other players that they would be okay playing my wife.) Then, we discussed our secrets with another player.

Ideally, at this point, your character needs to be someone with enough in their backstory that they would be willing to commit murder.

We still didn’t know who the killer was – this was decided randomly next. Each player drew a “news” card, one of which says, “You are the killer!” (It wasn’t me.)

Act 1

Act 1 takes place in the final hour of 1919. During act 1, we roleplayed our characters, meeting other characters and learning more about each other.

During this act, each player must visit the portrait gallery (the cards used to select the characters). The portrait gallery is set aside so visitors cannot be easily seen. While there, the murderer places a poison bottle token under their victim. (Everyone else just looks at the cards and pretends to act suspiciously.)

At the stroke of midnight, a toast is raised to the new decade – and the murder victim dies, horribly.

Act 2

There is now a short break. The body is moved out of the way, and the victim takes on a new character: an unexpected guest. (The guest has been decided earlier, during character creation.) They take a new relationship and secret card, have short conversations with the relevant players to establish those relationships, and then it’s back to play.

As the clock strikes one, the players decide who they will hand over to the police.

Now, I had no idea who the murderer was. But I had determined that one player in particular was a nasty piece of work and certainly had the character enough to be the murderer. As I had already told several people about that person, it was easy to convince everyone to hand him over to the police.

But he hadn’t committed the murder, and so the murderer got away with it!

Overall

Arsenic & Lies worked really well. It creates a lot of game from a single deck of cards, and I can imagine playing it again fairly soon. We had a dedicated host for the game, but I don’t think you need one. Having played it once, I’d be happy to host and play Arsenic & Lies simultaneously.

Arsenic & Lies is available to purchase as either a deck of cards or a print-and-play pdf here.

Oh, Karolina Soltys, the author, also wrote A Purrfect Murder.