Life-sized board games are all the rage right now. Not long ago I got to try my hand at it when we did a Live Clue program for teens. Unfortunately, I can't take credit for developing this program. That credit belongs to my predecessor, who is now working in another department at the library. But she did such a good job with this program that we had lots of requests to do it again this year. Fortunately, my predecessor was willing to help out with the program and show me how it's supposed to work.
At its most basic, the Live Clue event is a lot like playing the classic board game. Players divided themselves into groups of no more than six. Everyone in each group is dealt cards from the deck which represent the rooms, suspects, and weapons. The players must make suggestions to uncover clues. The idea is to use the process of elimination to figure out exactly who committed the murder, what weapon was used, and in what room the murder took place. What makes this program special is that instead of moving small plastic pieces around the board, the players all take on the persona of one of the characters and physically move from room to room in the library to make their suggestions.
Since we were using different areas of the library as the "rooms" for this game, my co-worker also re-wrote the game's back story, which we read to the group before beginning play, to give it an appropriate library setting. The story reads as follows:
Each of the Clue characters has a secret: They’re very bad at returning library books on time. The Library Director has invited these six people to the library to discuss their long overdue books. Unbeknownst to her, each person would rather commit murder than return their books and has snuck a weapon into the library. Although everyone had murder on the brain, only one of them actually succeeded in killing the Library Director. Tonight you will become one of the Library Delinquents and it’s your job to find out who committed the crime, what weapon they used, and in what part of the library the murder occurred. Everyone’s a suspect, even you……
To set the mood, teen volunteers used decorations like caution tape, masking tape body outlines, and plastic "weapons" all around the library. A few participants also came in dressed as Clue characters, FBI agents, detectives, and the like.
Since we wanted to make use of the entire library for this program, it made sense to do Live Clue as an after-hours event so that we weren't disturbing other library patrons. We held the program on a Friday because the library closes at 5:00 on that day. This way "after-hours" did not equate to "really late at night." The teens gathered at the library for pizza and to hear a brief explanation of the rules a half hour before the library closed. Once the doors were locked the teens divided themselves into groups of six and headed into the library to start trying to solve the case. We played for one hour with a hard cut-off time, and this amount of time was just about perfect for most groups to solve their case. One group actually had time to start, but not finish, a second case.
Twelve teens were in attendance for this program, which actually was a very good number. You can have as many as six people in each group (one for each of the six murder suspects) and it's more fun if the groups are larger, so it was wonderful that we could have two full groups. I did require registration for this program so that I would know how much pizza to buy and how many volunteers I would need.
Three adult or older teen volunteers helped out with this program. Each volunteer acted as a group leader and was in charge of coordinating a group of six teens, leading them around the library as they made their suggestions, and keeping everyone focused on the game. With all of the walking around it could be a little bit tricky to keep player order straight, so it was the group leader's job to focus on turn order and further explain the rules if anyone had questions. Since I had at least one volunteer with each group, this left me with the ability to float between the groups and help out as needed, plus it gave me the chance to interact with everyone instead of being tied to a small selection of the teens in attendance.
What kind of work went into creating this program? It actually wasn't much work for me since this program had been done before and we already had most of the things we needed from past Live Clue events. My predecessor, however, must have put in a bit of time to get things ready when she first began doing this program. She had made all of the cards needed to represent the rooms, people, and weapons using Publisher, and then had then all printed and laminated. She also created "case folders" for each player. The case folders were color coded to correspond with the character that each player had chosen. Inside the folder was a rules sheet that included the back story and a slip that players to use to mark the clues they had seen. The good thing is that once these pieces were made, they were totally reusable. All I had to do was print new clue sheets to restock the case folders, sort the clue cards and, of course, coordinate registration and the volunteers. Expenses for this program were minimal, limited only to pizza and a few rolls of caution tape for decoration.
The hardest part of this program was getting everyone to understand the rules. I highly suggest playing the board game yourself before doing the Live version so that you understand exactly how making a suggestion and uncovering clues works. Honestly, this part of the game is something that's tricky to explain concisely and it makes the most sense after you just do it a few times. Be sure that your volunteers are also very well-trained and are experts on making suggestions as well, since they're the ones who will have to do most of the explaining to the teens. The single hardest part of this program was keeping some of the younger teens focused and following the rules correctly. Not a problem for most of the participants, but a couple of them were easily distracted which lead to some overall confusion for the group. Generally, though, everyone stayed on task with some firm guidance from the group leaders.
