The Red Velvet Swing
Stanford White · New York · 1906
“Three hundred witnesses, and no two of them saw the same thing.”
New York in late June, and the coolest place in the city is a roof. Champagne, a chorus, a table for everyone who matters and a better table for everyone who believes they do. The architect who drew the building is out front in the audience of his own creation. When the evening comes apart there are hundreds of witnesses in the room, all of them respectable, all of them certain, and no two of them describing the same handful of seconds.
That is as much as the file will give you. The rest lands on your guests' phones in stages, and every witness at your table will be sure of something different by the end of the second act.
What you get
Fully scripted evening
Every act cued, every scene set, your lines where you need them. No prep, no printing, no experience required.
Clues arrive in stages
Evidence and private dossiers drop to your guests' phones as the night unfolds, one act at a time.
You play the victim
Set the table, welcome your guests, then haunt the evening while they work out who wanted you gone.
6 to 12 players
A core cast carries the case, with flexible roles as your table grows. Latecomers can join as observers.
App-hosted
The case runs from any screen in the room. Your TV is the stage, the phones are the wings.
Stanford White, the architect who shaped a great deal of Gilded Age New York, was shot dead at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden in June 1906, in front of a crowded room. The trials that followed were reported around the world and ended without a conviction for murder. What happened that night, and why, is still disputed.
The game reopens the case and reaches a solution of its own. Knowing the history will not spoil your night, and history does not decide the verdict at your table. Your guests do.
These were real people and real deaths. The file is written with that in mind: we reopen the questions, not the graves.
Reopen The Red Velvet Swing.
Host it for your own table, or take the free case for a spin first and see how the evidence treats you.