I want to design a Murder Mystery Party data schema.

A murder mystery party is fundamentally a home dinner party.

All dinner parties have:

Drinks
Appetizers
Dancing
Dinner
Dessert

All games will have:

Game intro
Game items (shared and private items)
Game role-plays
Player role-plays
Timed card openings

A game role-play is an action a player must take during the game in character.

All games will have characters. I want the game to support 4 to 12 players.

Players are expected to be in character.

Every party has hosts that are serving the food and drink and providing the location.

A game is fundamentally a live-action story.

We must write or construct good stories for every Murder Mystery Script.

Scripts are also somewhat formulaic. The back-stories can differ wildly but there is always a reason for the players to be meeting at the location.

So i want to first fundamentally break down the story formula so it can be replaced with interchangeable new values. So for an obvious example we can easily change the times and locations which will have major effects on the entire story and game. But less obviously we should be able to swap out very specific attributes like the third act betrayal or the twist at the end or we may have multiple tension building elements. All these stories are mysteries, that have funny hijinks during the solving and reveal everything by the end.

Eventually we are making a Murder Mystery generator but currently we are focused on modelling out the story and game.

I want to start this process using text, dense technical outlines, start fleshing out the relationships.

How many unique attributes approximately will be in every game?

What are the main categories? We may want to add or modify.

It’s a big schema