Start a Murder Mystery Minecraft server

Murder Mystery is a minigame where innocent players try to survive a murderer, with detectives on their side. The Murder Mystery plugin from Plugily Projects adds it to a Paper server with multiple arenas, statistics and a setup you finish in game. Its official download is the plugin's SpigotMC page, which our Plugins tab does not search, so you upload the jar by hand.

Checked against Murder Mystery 2.1.10 on Paper 26.3, October 2026. The plugin's Spigot page lists Minecraft 1.8.8 to 26.3, and the 2.1.10 update note reads "Support up to 26.3". The FAQ on its wiki still says 1.8.8 to 1.20, so trust the Spigot page.

What you need

• A Paper server. This is a Spigot plugin, and Paper runs those. Vanilla has no Plugins tab, so switch software in JAR Manager first (see Change your Minecraft version or mod loader).
• A map for the game and its lobby. They can be in the same world. The wiki recommends an extra world for the minigame maps, and says the plugins should run on a separate world on a server that also hosts survival or other modes.
• Operator status for whoever builds the arena, from the Players tab with Make operator. Operators get the murdermystery.admin.* permissions by default.

Install the plugin

1. On your own computer, open the plugin's page at spigotmc.org/resources/66614 and download the latest jar. Use only this page, because the wiki lists it as the official download source.
2. In the File Manager, open the plugins folder and press Upload files. Choose the jar.
3. Restart from the Console tab, then type plugins to check that Murder Mystery is in the list.

Turn off spawn protection

The wiki FAQ says players cannot join through signs while spawn protection covers them. Open the Config Editor tab, set Spawn protection (blocks) under World to 0, press Save changes and restart.

Build an arena

Run these in game and replace <arenaname> with the name you want for the arena.

1. /murdermysteryadmin setup create <arenaname> creates the arena instance.
2. /murdermysteryadmin setup edit <arenaname> opens the setup menu. Follow its instructions. After you finish one, run the same command again to get the next, and repeat until nothing is left.
3. Run the command one last time and click the rocket to validate the arena. That finishes it.

The commands also work as /mma for the admin command and /mm for the player command.

The setup includes a value for how many murderers and detectives a game has. It counts per number of players: with 5, a 20-player game has four of each.

Let players join

• /murdermystery arenas opens a menu of arenas to join.
• /murdermystery join <arenaID>, /murdermystery randomjoin and /murdermystery leave do what they say.
• /murdermystery stats and /murdermystery top <statistic> show statistics.
• /murdermysteryadmin forcestart starts the game you are in, and /murdermysteryadmin stop stops it.
• A join sign needs the murdermystery.admin.sign.create permission to place.

Per-arena permissions are murdermystery.join.<arenaID>, or murdermystery.join.* for all of them.

If something does not work

• Signs do not respond: spawn protection is still on.
• You cannot run a setup command: you need murdermystery.admin.setup, which operators have through murdermystery.admin.*.
• The arena is not finished: run /murdermysteryadmin setup edit <arenaname> again. The menu moves you on to the next step until the rocket validates it.
• The plugin shuts itself off: the FAQ shows the message "Your server version is not supported by us!" for an unsupported Minecraft version. Check the version in JAR Manager.