Host kit · 8–12 players · 2.5 hours

Snowbound at Blackpine Lodge: the whole evening.

A free sample: the host guide, the invitation to send, the first prop, and the opening act of the player scripts. Everything else — the other acts, the words you say aloud and the sealed solution — unlocks with the paid kit below.

Back to the kit

Six friends, one manager and a chalet full of fondue. The pass closes on the night the lodge's owner falls from the balcony, and the only footprints in the snow belong to someone who claims to have been in bed since nine. A two-and-a-half-hour kit with a seventies ski-lodge setting and a very good pudding.

Before the night

Print the booklets and a room key card for each guest with their room number on it. The keys become evidence by Act II.
Set the table as a chalet dining room: candles, a fondue pot if you have one, and a ski map pinned to the wall.
Make the snow report and the lodge keys in advance, and chill the white wine in a bucket of actual snow or ice.
Play something from the early seventies quietly under the first act. It dates the room without anyone having to say so.

Running order

6:50 pmApres-ski

Greet guests with a hot drink and their room key. Let them settle, then read the welcome and the owner's announcement.

7:00 pmAct I — Apres-Ski

Take the Act I pages round the table. End the act on the announcement that the lodge is being sold.

7:30 pmFondue

Serve the main course now. This kit runs on one pot and a lot of bread, which is exactly right for the setting.

7:45 pmAct II — The Balcony

Announce the fall, the locked balcony door and the missing pair of skis. Hand out evidence.

8:30 pmAct III — Last Orders

Pour something strong and compare the snow report with each guest's story. Then accuse and solve.

9:00 pmThe last run

Hand the guilty guest the confession card and let the table argue until the fondue goes cold.

Seating

Seat the manager at the head with the keys in front of her, the ski instructor beside the most impressionable guest, the chef nearest the kitchen door, and the guest in the middle where she can hear everything. With more than eight, add 'season regulars' who share a booklet.

If it goes wrong

If the table misses the footprints, ask them to describe the snow under the balcony and wait.
If a guest is left out, give them the job of keeping the snow report and reading it aloud in Act III.
If the evening runs fast, serve pudding early and let the accusation round run long — it always does.

After the night

The room keys go back in the box; the snow report is the prop guests photograph. Wipe the fondue pot before it sets.

Send this

Blackpine Lodge is open for one last weekend. The pass may not stay open with it.

Greta Lindqvist requests the pleasure of your company at Blackpine Lodge for a final weekend before the season ends. Arrive before six; the road closes at seven and does not open again until the plough comes.

Fondue at half past seven, skiing in the morning if the weather allows. The telephone line is down and the radio is unreliable, which some guests find restful.

You are invited as a guest of the lodge. Bring warm clothes, a bad memory for old arguments, and an appetite.

Reply to the lodge by Wednesday. Six rooms, six keys, and the pass closes at seven.

If you send it digitally

Send it as a postcard from a ski resort: a mountain line drawing at the top, the three paragraphs, and 'THE ROAD CLOSES AT SEVEN' in small caps at the foot.

Three physical props carry this story. Each one is buildable in under half an hour with things you probably already have.

Prop 01 · 15 minutes

The annotated snow report

The weather report with one line pencilled in that contradicts a guest's alibi.

What you need

A printed weather report or a typed sheet
A pencil
A clipboard
A red pen

How to make it

Type a snow report: depth, wind, visibility, and the time the pass closed (7.10 pm).
Add a pencilled line at the bottom: 'balcony side — no tracks until 9.30'.
Ring the wind figure in red pen and write 'gusting' beside it in the margin.
Clip it by the door where the manager would keep it, and let someone else find it.

Sealed in the paid kit

The other 2 props

The remaining build sheets: materials lists, cutting guides and the folds that make them convincing by candlelight.

Unlock the full kit — $30

Print one booklet per guest from these pages. Each act has a line to read aloud and a secret for that character alone — the lines are what the table hears, the secrets are why they lie.

Act I · 7:00 pm

Apres-Ski

Host: Welcome the table as the manager, hand out the keys, then have the owner make his announcement. Take the Act I pages round, starting with the guest nearest the fire.

Greta Lindqvist

The lodge manager

I run this place and I know who has been paying in cash, which is more than the owner does. The pass closed at ten past seven and the telephone went with it, so we are all here until the plough comes.

Only you know You have been taking cash from guests and leaving it off the books for three years, and the owner found the second ledger this afternoon.

Pieter van Dijk

The ski instructor

Charming in four languages and insured in none of them, that is me. I have been teaching on this mountain for six seasons and I know every route down it, including the ones that are not on the map.

Only you know You have been taking guests down the closed north face for cash, and the owner threatened to report you to the guide association this morning.

Anneke Vos

The guest

I came for the skiing and stayed for the argument, which is what one does at this altitude. I have been coming here every winter for nine years and I have never once been asked to leave.

Only you know You have been in love with the owner for a decade and he has never noticed. You were on the balcony with him at nine, and you left him alive and laughing.

Monsieur Clair

The chef

A good sauce can solve almost anything, but it cannot solve a closed pass or an owner who wants to sell the kitchen he built. I have been cooking here since the war and I do not intend to stop.

Only you know The owner told you at dinner that the new buyers are bringing their own chef. You have been drinking since seven and you have not been entirely honest about where you were.

Sealed in the paid kit

The other 2 acts

Every remaining character script, the line they read and the secret they are protecting, laid out to print and fold into booklets.

Unlock the full kit — $30

The welcome

“Welcome to Blackpine. The pass closed at ten past seven, the telephone is down, and the radio is unreliable, so we are all here until the plough comes. Fondue at half past seven, keys by the door, and please do not go out on the balcony — the rail is older than the lodge.”

Sealed in the paid kit

The dinner toast and the accusation

The two speeches that open the second half and close the night, with the cue for when to stand up and how to hand over the confession.

Unlock the full kit — $30

Host’s eyes only

The culprit, the method, and how the clues fit

The solution never appears on this page. It arrives with the paid kit, sealed, to be read aloud only after every guest has accused.

Unlock the full kit — $30

Unlock

Everything, printed.

What you have just read is the sample. One payment unlocks the whole kit on this page — every act, the props, the speeches and the solution — ready to print the moment the card clears.

3 acts of player scripts, one booklet per guest
3 prop build sheets
The dinner toast, the accusation and the cue list
The sealed solution, for the host only

One payment, one kit, yours to print again for the next party. Bought it already? Open the printable kit.