The Eulogy, 15:00 | Japanese-Style Murder Mystery for 4-8 Players + Host | Printable PDF | 90-120 min

THE EULOGY, 15:00 — a Japanese-style murder mystery for 4–8 players and 1 host. 90–120 minutes. Printable PDF.

The back room of a funeral hall. The service begins at three. It is 13:20 now.

The dead man is Takashi Sugito, sixty-eight, third-generation owner of a letterpress print shop that has stood in this town for ninety years. Three days ago a cabinet of type came down on him in his own workshop. The bracket on the top shelf had been loose for six months. It is being written up as an accident.

Then, after the wake last night, a draft of a eulogy was found in his desk.

A eulogy for his own funeral, for somebody else to read out. He set it in type and printed it himself, ten days before he died.

The line where the reader’s name goes is blank.

There are four of you in that room. The wife, the second son, the apprentice, and a bookseller from the town. One hour and forty minutes.

There is no vote in this game

In most murder mysteries everyone votes at the end to name the killer. Not here. Here you choose who stands up at 15:12 and reads it.

• Each of you writes one name on a slip of paper
• You may write your own name
• You may write “nobody reads it”
• Whoever is named most often reads. On a tie, the chief mourner decides

Write “nobody reads it” and the eulogy goes into the coffin and is burned with him. That is not a failure. It is one of the proper endings.

Two of you want to read it, for reasons neither can say out loud. One of you wants it burned. One of you is quietly pushing somebody else forward, and that is the most conspicuous position at the table.

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.