The Volstead Rebellion

Speakeasies, mobsters, and flapper dresses. 

Sneaky ways to get a drink if you're in the know or have the dough. 

Prohibition is a common setting for Escape Rooms, Murder Mysteries, and the American imagination. 

We're not any different. 

In our particular case, it lets us set up the premise for why our guests are coming together that night. Each participant will receive a letter from the disgruntled employee of a speakeasy owner explaining why they'd specifically benefit by bringing down his business. One person will be an undercover reporter, one will be the boss of a competing establishment, one person will have been wronged by the main bad guy in the past, etc. The employee wants their boss to go down, but in case the guests aren't successful they can't help the participants overtly because they will risk retribution. They have planted clues throughout the restaurant that fronts the speakeasy and the bar itself to help expose their boss' wrongdoing and criminal empire. 

Unfortunately, one of the guests will die after dinner and one of the other guests killed them! The speakeasy owner needs someone to turn over to the police and the remaining guests will have to figure out between them who is responsible. If they don't solve the murder in the time he gives them and the speakeasy owner has to go to the trouble to disposing of a body, then it isn't much more effort to dispose of everyone's bodies. 

The deceased guest can still participate in solving the mystery and gathering information against the owner of the speakeasy, but will have a few limitations on what they can do on account of being dead.

The goal is to cover the saloon door with a fake brick wall including a fireplace where the back opens up into the saloon. To this end, I've carved Styrofoam panels into brick patterns that match the existing accent wall in the basement. I did want to just buy one of those wall covering panels that have a brick look, but because the basement wall has a distinct paint scheme and widely spaced bricks the off-the-shelf option wasn't viable. It is still obviously going to feel different from real brick, but hopefully having this "hidden" room will prevent everyone from expecting our actual hidden room. 

Carving Styrofoam makes a big mess but it makes for a decent wall. 

As the participants go through the restaurant to figure out their way into the speakeasy and go through the speakeasy, some of the locked containers will contain information drops for each guest or the groups as a whole. Some of them will be background information (ex: One person was a code breaker in the great war and knows Morse code so they'll have a sheet that gives them the code. Later on they'll have an opportunity to announce their ability to translate code.), some will give them information to take down the speakeasy owner (tax records, bootlegger routes, hit lists), and some of it will help will solving the murder (one of the guests had a partner die under suspicious circumstance suspicious for poisoning, one has a background in chemistry). 

It feels tidy enough in my mind.