The Eulogy, 15:00 — Murder Mystery for a Host + 4 Players

THE EULOGY, 15:00
A Japanese-style murder mystery for 1 host and 4 players.
Printable PDF. Instant download. Plays online or in person. 90–120 minutes.

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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.

And the body of it says this:

One of you lied to me.
And I would still like that person to be the one who reads this.

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.

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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.

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What you get

• Read Me First — everyone — 6 pages
• Host Script — host only — 12 pages
• Evidence Set, 12 records — host only — 7 pages
• Booklet 1, Shino Asakura — player 1 — 5 pages
• Booklet 2, Akiko Sugito — player 2 — 5 pages
• Booklet 3, Toru Muroi — player 3 — 5 pages
• Booklet 4, Kei Sugito — player 4 — 5 pages
• Virtual tabletop text — host — TXT

45 pages of PDF plus a paste-ready text file. Page size is A4; it prints on US Letter as well — just pick “Fit to page” in your printer dialog. Nothing to print at all if you play online.

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How it plays

Every piece of evidence in this game is a record — an order of service, a holographic will with eraser marks at the end of one line, a press log with the operator column blank, a pharmacy record where prescribed and collected do not match, a station receipt folded twice, an emergency call log with four minutes in it that nobody wants to explain. There is no artwork to look at and nothing to assemble. It is built to work with text alone, which is also why it plays just as well over voice chat as it does around a table.

One person hosts. The host runs the game and does not solve it — that is standard for Japanese-style murder mystery, and it is what lets the story hold things back the way it does. Every line the host reads aloud is written out, in order, in the Host Script. About 20 minutes of prep.

You do not need to know anything about letterpress printing. Four words are load-bearing and Read Me First explains all four on one page: type, forme, type foundry, and proof. The one that matters is this — a forme is set in mirror image, so it cannot be read until it has been printed. Somebody at this table is going to forget that.

Suggested running order (90–120 minutes): intro 5 / reading 15 / introductions 12 / investigation 8 / discussion 15 / investigation 8 / mid-game reveal 5 / discussion 15 / the choice 12 / solution 15.

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Before you download

• 1 host + 4 players. Five people total. The host does not play
• Single use. Once you know the solution you cannot play it again
• Deals with a death, a funeral, and things a family kept from each other
• No gore or violence is depicted, and nothing in it depicts suicide. The death is an accident
• Digital download — no physical item ships
• English edition. Originally written and published in Japanese

The town, the print shop and the order of service are all invented. No real funeral hall, temple, organisation or person appears in this game. The funeral itself has been simplified so that it plays: no Buddhist school is specified, and sutras, posthumous names and incense etiquette are not covered.

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You may

• Stream it, record it, post let’s-plays — monetized ones included. No permission or notice needed
• Host it for other people, paid or unpaid
• Print and copy it for your own table

Please do not resell or redistribute the files, and please do not post the solution unspoilered.

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Try the series for free first

Last Contact, 04:00 (host + 2) is free. Same engine, same document-only evidence, 60–90 minutes. If it works for your group, the rest will.

• Last Contact, 04:00 — host + 2 — free — a winter ridge, mountain rescue
• The Deadline, 23:00 — host + 3 — a publishing house, the night of the deadline
• The Guest Book, 21:00 — host + 3 — a mountain inn cut off by a landslide
• On Air, 25:00 — host + 4 — a late-night radio show, the last episode
• The Eulogy, 15:00 — host + 4 — this one
• Curtain Up, 19:00 — host + 5 — a sixty-seat theatre, opening night
• The Ballot, 22:00 — host + 6 — an election count, tied
• Terminus, 05:00 — host + 7 — a night sleeper express, her last run
• The Tea Room, 14:00 — 3 only, no host — a Kyoto tea house, no host needed

Pick the one that matches the number of people you have.

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Made by Ai-Q Labs. Written with the assistance of AI tools and checked by a human before release. This work is entirely fiction; no real organisation, incident or person appears in it.