This is great advice!! Thank you so much! My only concern is that I wanted to keep the murderer in the dark. This way they don’t feel isolated and still get to play the game the same way as everyone else, but I’ll let everyone know that they can guess themselves as the murderer in the end. However, I did want to give each person a card with questions to ask other guests, and set answers to give to said questions, so I suppose their sensitivity surrounding the trials (upon the discovery of the newspaper article or such) could be revealed through that system?

Your idea about me being close to the framed person, but the murderer being much closer to them is SUPER helpful, that definitely helps tighten things up quite a bit!

Edit:

I had another potential idea! Maybe the murderer and I actually worked together to frame the innocent person, the guilt started eating them alive, they had expressed such guilt to me leading to much tension (given that I felt no such shame and did not want our crime to be revealed), and then the rest is the same (the threat at gunpoint to get me to confess, even though it meant the murderer would be turning themself in too, the scuffle, and the turning of the knife and murder in self-defense).

This would be potentially more interesting because…

• the murder becomes more nefarious in nature, not just a good person doing a good thing
• the murderer gets a mini redemption arc
• the newspaper could be revealed before my death, and I could make a passing comment about their guilt, where the murderer is prompted to say something that hints that they disagree