On Air, 25:00 | Japanese-Style Murder Mystery for 4-8 Players + Host | Printable PDF | 90-120 min

ON AIR, 25:00 — a Japanese-style murder mystery for 4–8 players and 1 host. 90–120 minutes. Printable PDF.

A late-night listener-mail show that ran for ten years ends tonight. It airs from 24:00 to 26:00 — at this station the late-night hours are written straight through, which is where the title comes from.

At 26:00 exactly, the broadcast ended without incident.

Six minutes later, the producer, Ryoji Kai, was found collapsed in the sub-control room. Fifty-two. He was the one who started this show, ten years ago.

There were five people in the building.

There are records, accurate to the second. The script. The cue sheet. The console log. The door log.

— And every one of them disagrees with the others, slightly.

There is no vote in this game

In most murder mysteries everyone votes at the end to name the killer. Not here.

The station has decided to go back on air, live, with an apology and a statement. Each of the four players holds one script of their own. After the discussion, the table picks one of those four and puts it on the air.

Whatever that script says becomes the official account of what happened.

WHY IT WORKS AS A CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

• Close reading with stakes. Every clue is a document students have to read carefully. Missing one detail changes who they accuse.
• Evidence-based argument. Players make a claim, cite the document it came from, and defend it against the other readings at the table.
• Structured discussion. Fixed phases — reading, discussion, investigation, final discussion, resolution — so the conversation does not drift.
• No preparation beyond printing. The host script is written to be read from the top. No rules to adjudicate, no dice, no components to assemble.

HOW THIS DIFFERS FROM A MURDER MYSTERY PARTY KIT

If you have run a boxed “murder mystery dinner” before, this is a different genre. Please read this before buying.

• The host does not play. They run the game. That is what lets the story hide information the way it does.
• Each player gets a private booklet with a secret only they know, and two goals — one shared with the table, one private.
• The culprit is a player, not the host, with their own goals to pursue.
• Single use. Once a group knows the answer they cannot play it again — but you can run it for new groups as often as you like.

WHAT YOU GET (9 files, 8 of them PDF)

A read-me for everyone, a host script with the full running order and read-aloud text, the evidence set, one private booklet per character, and a plain-text version you can paste into a video call or a shared document.

WHAT YOU NEED

4–8 players plus one host, 90–120 minutes, and either a printer or a shared screen. First-time hosts can run this. Everything prints in black and white on ordinary paper.

LICENSE

Classroom and club use is fine, including running it for as many groups as you like. Streaming and let’s-plays are allowed, monetized or not. Please do not redistribute or resell the files, claim authorship, or post the solution publicly.

HOW THIS WAS MADE

This scenario was written with the assistance of an AI language model (Claude, by Anthropic), then edited, structured, and consistency-checked by a human before release. The plot, characters, clue structure, and all text were reviewed by the maker.

Ai-Q Labs makes murder mysteries in which all the evidence is text — a corrected page proof, a radio log, a weather record. Check out Ai-Q Labs for the rest of the series.