If you’re anything like me and my friends, you think a Traitors party is the perfect combination of comedy and cutthroat fun! When I started to plan my best friends birthday party, I couldn’t think of a more fun concept than imitating one of our favorite TV shows, The Traitors. Lucky for us, the source material is brimming with inspiration and guidance to throw your own Traitors party at home! Here I will share all my design, setup and gaming tips for an epic night!
Time to Plan
If you’re asking yourself “what is a Traitors party” quite frankly I’m surprised you made it this far, but I’m glad you have! The Traitors is a reality TV show where contestants play challenges to earn money, while simultaneously trying to uncover which contestants are secret Traitors and working against the Faithfuls.
How to play The Traitors:
- Traitor Selection – Players put on their blindfolds/close their eyes. About 1-4 players (depending on your party size) are selected to be Traitors with a tap on their shoulder. All other players remain Faithfuls. Players uncover their eyes and the game begins.
- Challenge – Players participate in their first challenge. These game can vary greatly (more on this below). During the challenge, players are competing for a Shield. This shield prevents them from being murdered by the Traitors during the next Murder only.
- Murder – Players are blindfolded again. When the host announces, the traitors will remove their masks (covertly) and see for the first time who their fellow Traitors are. They then need to agree on a contestant to Murder. Once they have selected and indicated to the host, they cover their eyes again. The host announces a murder has been committed and reveals which player was murdered.
- Banishment – After the murder is committed, the floor for debate is open. Remaining players (not the murdered player) participate in a discussion where they present their suspicions of who they believe is a possible Traitor. Once the players have finished their discussion (or maybe sooner if things get tense) the host will announce that it is time to vote. Players will write their vote on their boards. Each player will be asked to reveal their vote until a consensus is met and a player is Banished.
- Circle of Truth – Once the player has been voted out, they must enter the Circle of Truth and reveal if they are a Traitor or a Faithful.
- Final Banishment – Challenges, Murders and Banishments continue until you have reached your desired number remaining (usually 3-5). This can also depend on how good the Faithfuls have been at Banishing Traitors. Once the desired number of contestants remain, each remaining player will be given an option to keep voting out Traitors (if they believe some still remain) or end voting (if they believe only Faithfuls remain in the game). If players choose to keep voting people off during the Final Banishment, players that are voted off will now no longer reveal if they are Traitors or Faithfuls.
- The Reveal – Once players have decided to stop voting, each player left reveals if they are a Faithful or a Traitor. If only Faithfuls remain, then the faithfuls split the prize! However, if even one Traitor is left, they win the pot!
This is the general outline of playing the game. But remember, this is your Traitors night, so don’t be afraid to get creative and have fun with it!
Guest List and Invitations
Traditionally, The Traitors starts with about 20 contestants. If you have 20 friends that you can trust will come to the party and not flake after tons of your planning, good for you! I ended up landing on 15 people (13 of which ultimately came) that I thought could make it and would enjoy participating. In general, for the game part to work effectively, I suggest you at leave try to hit 10 people! This will guarantee that you have enough people for Banishments and Murders during the game so you can play several Challenges.
When creating the invitation for my Traitors party, I tried to pull inspiration and the color palette directly from the show. In the invitation I reminded my guests of the covert nature of the night, informed them of the suggested attire and provided date, time and location details. If you would like to use my invitation template, it is available on Etsy here!
How to Host
The next step is deciding how you’d like to host the party. I decided that I would play the Alan Cumming (The Traitors host) of the party, and fully host the game. This means that I will be orchestrating the evening with full knowledge of who the Traitors are, the Challenges and any and all answers. This role is incredibly important in making sure the wheels don’t fall off during the evening, keeping people on task and narrating through challenges, murders and banishments. But this also means that you won’t be able to participate. If you have a game-master friend of the group, this is the dream role. But it is also a blast to see your friends enjoy the games you created for them.
If you would really rather participate, there are ways to borrow from other similar games (Werewolf, Secret Hitler, etc). But for the purposes of my blog post and my experience, hosting kept things running smoothly and allowed all my guests to enjoy!
The Challenges
The Challenges are where things get the most tricky, but also the most opportunity for creativity. I used the games from the seasons of The Traitors as inspiration, but then found a way to make them home-friendly. Since I was doing them for a birthday party, I also made them birthday-boy centered (trivia about him, etc).
For the purposes of this post I will give an overview of the Challenges I used for my Traitors party, but if you are looking for a more in-depth guide, check out my Instructions and Templates here!
Betrayer’s Mark
For this challenge, contestants each take a turn shooting a toy crossbow at the Traitors wall (more on this below). Each player had two shots to hit someones face. The players hit are no longer in the running for a shield, but are still allowed to take their shot. The last 1-2 remaining contestants receive a Shield!
Pop and Think
This riddle game was a little more complex of a setup. But that also means there are many ways your could do this! For me, I used a balloon arch ring I already owned and used string to display balloons with words taped to them. There are 25 words total, but 8 of the balloons have confetti inside them. These balloons have the words that correspond to the riddles I read.
One at a time I read the riddle to the contestants, first person to raise their hand has a chance to come up and pop the corresponding balloon. If they are correct, the confetti will flow, if not, they are eliminated from the round. If they are correct, they use paper slips with all contestant names to nominate someone to receive the Sheild. Every correct answer gives the players a chance to swap out the name for the shield. The last 1-2 left when all correct words have been guessed receive the shield!
Trivia Murder Party
This is a round where you can truly get creative with the questions! The basic setup is rounds of trivia questions asked to each contestant. For the first round, I did birthday boy trivia! I picked some of my favorite facts about the guest of honor and that was the first round. But you could also have these be friend group lore questions, family history questions, or anything else that suits the group and the vibes!
For the second round, I picked trivia questions based on things that I knew the birthday boy loved (tennis, cooking shows, etc). Then for the 3rd round and beyond, I simply picked general trivia questions.
My thought in this process is that some would be eliminated in the first round, more in the second and then the 3rd round and beyond, I am trying to challenge them to eliminate it down to a final Shield winner. For each round, I asked questions to each player in order. Any eliminated are out for the challenge. Each round I start from the top and filtered through all my prepared questions. I allowed “murdered” players play, they just weren’t allowed to win the Shield.
Puzzle me this
This challenge is puzzle meets scavenger hunt. Before the party begins, I created puzzles with 4 pieces that spelled out a secret phrase (all supplies listed below). Then I broke the pieces apart and hid them around the house. For each hidden puzzle piece I wrote a riddle that would direct them to the next piece. The first clue is given on a sheet of paper, then the following clues are written on the back of the found puzzle pieces. Once all 4 pieces have been found and put together, the player/s shout the secret phrase. First to do so wins the shield.
Depending on how many players you have, this can be done solo or in pairs. You can even incorporate one murdered/banished player with one live player, and just the living earns the Shield.
Musical Gold
If you know musical chairs, you get musical gold. This challenge is so simple and easy to add in or leave out depending on how many players your have. The game is simple, put one less piece of “gold” on a table than you have players playing. When music begins to play, players circle the table. Once the music stops, the last to grab a piece of gold is eliminated. This continues until the final player wins the final shield!
The Decor and Supplies
This Traitors party can be very supply heavy, but there are so many ways to get creative and use what you already have on hand. As always, I am also a huge fan of the Dollar Tree, thrifting and borrowing to minimize some of the cost! Here is a list of things that I used and helpful links in case you can’t find them!
decor:
When it comes to general decor and creating that moody traitorous vibe, there are a few things I used.
Candles
Candles were my biggest asset when setting the mood in the space. I managed to find a few flameless candles at my local Dollar Tree. But mainly, I used this remote flameless candle set. There were 36 total candles in 3 different heights. It made it easy to mix and match them in different areas and give the room that dim spooky glow. Also, these candles did need batteries, so make sure you have those on hand as well.
Gold Bricks
One of the biggest features of the Traitors TV show is the gold bricks that contestants are playing for. This gold motif is carried throughout most of the interior design and challenge aesthetics as well. So I wanted to make sure that I had a presence of Gold to match. For these I ended up using practice foam hockey pucks and gold spray paint. As a tip, if you plan to use these gold bricks for Musical Gold, I wouldn’t. Because they are foam and contestants will be grabbing at them, every time they squished the foam, the gold paint would flake off! Find something sturdier if you are going to use it for more than decor.
Traitors Masked Figure
This one is more of a silly but fun addition. Right when my guests walked in, I had a coat rack dressed as one of the masked figures from the show. This set a spooky tone in the space. For this I ordered a black cloak and wrapped it around the coat rack (but you could also use a mannequin or any other tall pieces you have on hand. Then I bought a plain mask and used the gold spray paint to paint it.
The Traitors Wall
If you’re a fan of the show, you know how iconic the Traitors contestant wall is. I knew that this would be an essential part of the decor (and also a challenge). For this, I had each guest send me a headshot and then put them on a neutral red background. For the frames, I was able to find simple gold frames at the Dollar Tree. But if you can’t find them, here is a link for some gold picture frames that will work perfectly.
murders and banishments:
For the Murder and Banishment portion of the evening, there are a few items that are essential for each player!
Eye Masks
For the Traitors to successfully commit their murders, it is essential that players are unable to see the silent deliberation happening. For this, rather than trusting my sneaky friends, I opted to get a set of eye masks to use as blindfolds.
Chalkboards and Chalk
During the Banishments, players will have to right down their vote of who they think the Traitor is. For this, I bought a set of black stand chalkboards and chalk.
Shields
During the challenges, players are play8ing for Shields. I knew i wanted to have a physical thing for the players to win, and something they could put in from of them at the murder table to signify that they couldn’t be killed. For this, I found a simple round wooden block similar to these shield cutouts (but this link is for far more than the 1-2 that you need) that I spray painted gold.
Music
During the Murders, I found it was important to play music to try to mask any noise or shuffling that might occur while the Traitors are deliberating. For this, I used the Traitors theme music that I found on youtube here! There are also playlists of music from the show if you want to raise the Traitor party vibes.
challenges:
The Challenges are where most of the supplies come into place. Here I will list all of the supplies I used for each.
Betrayer’s Mark Supplies
For this challenge, I used the Traitors wall that I created (supplies under decor) as the targets. For my shooting apparatus I found these adorable wooden toy crossbows that shoot suction darts. This was perfect for getting them to adhere to the photo wall. There was a bit of a learning curve but they ended up working!
Pop and Think Supplies
For this game, I used a few things I already owned, but I will list similar items if you are looking to match my game. The structural item for this game is a balloon arch hoop. I also needed black balloons, gold confetti and cardstock to create the word labels. I also used the cardstock to make cue cards for myself of all my hosting duties and instructions! To stuff the black balloons that would have the correct words/gold confetti I did use a funnel to stick it into the balloon opening. But they also have tools to help stuff balloons. You will also need something for players to pop the balloon with. I opted to use a cocktail pick from my bar set!
Trivia Murder Party Supplies
This challenge really didn’t require a lot of supplies. Mainly I used the cardstock to print out all of the questions that I was going to ask my contestants.
Puzzle Me This Supplies
The main supply needed for this challenge are these cool 4 piece blank puzzles that I found. I spray painted them with the same gold spray paint and then wrote the hidden message (a Traitors homage) on top of the puzzle. I numbered the back of each puzzle piece to indicate which set they were a part of. You will also need slips of paper for the first clue, subsequent clues are written on the back of the found puzzle piece.
Musical Gold Supplies
For this challenge you really only need a few pieces of something gold and good music. I used the same Traitors music I listed above and played it over a portable speaker. For the gold pieces you can use the painted shields or even pieces of chocolate gold coins!
The Food and Drinks
The Bar
For my Traitors party I knew that the bar would play an essential part of the moody aesthetic. I am lucky enough to have a friend that was willing to play bartender for the beginning of the night when everyone as showing up so I could play host. I decided to go with two “featured” cocktails and then also had enough other liquors, wines, etc that people would have drink options.
Dirty Martinis
For some reason, nothing felt more classy and deceitful for a Traitors party than a Dirty Martini. Plus, I knew they were a favorite of the birthday boy! For these I got Vermouth, Grey Goose and lots and lots of olives. I even decided to make the frozen olive ice in their brine that I had seen all over the internet! For those I used these ice trays and put one olive in each well and then filled them ith the olive brine and from them!
French 75
The second features cocktail was the elegant French 75. This cocktail consists of Gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and Prosecco. I also make a few lemon rind peels as garnish in their glasses.
Hors d’œuvres
When it came to food, I decided to do heavy hors d’oeuvres so my guests could snack as the night progressed. Because there is so much transitioning between challenges, and banishments and murders, I tried to pick items that would last throughout the night as yummy options.
Menu:
- Veggies and dip
- Caprese skewers
- Charcuterie and cheese
- Pepper jelly and cream cheese dip and crackers
- Shrimp cocktail
- Pigs in a blanket (shaped like a cross to fit the Traitors party theme)
- Browned butter and radish crostini
- Mini baked potatoes
- Beef Wellington bites
Happy Traitor Hunting!
I know this is a lot of information! But I hope this can be use as a great guide for you to host your own Traitors party! May it be as fun and successful as mine!
This post was all about hosting the most epic Traitors party!
If you are looking for more party inspiration and ideas, check out the Entertainment section of the blog!
