Entry: The Holmes and Watson Committee- Power 19

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I have an actual play write up of my first playtest of this game on the Forge here:

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to go over what I found out about the game mechanics themselves before the contest is over.

Peace,

-Troy

[kenjib]

It seems like the time limit is supposed to put pressure on the players - to add a sense of out-of-game immediacy to the in-game investigation. It also seems that the players have a great deal of control over the pacing of the game. What mechanisms do you use to manage the latter such that the former is still effective?

[MatrixGamer]

Troy

Interesting game, I think handing control over to the players works well with mystery games. Also the Sherlock Holmes hook is great for getting players.

I've run (or had run for me) a Sherlock Holmes Engle Matrix Game murder mystery game at Gen Con since 1998. They always go over well. Of course they are different from your game since players champion suspects as well as make arguments for what clues are found. Consequently as clues build up the finger often starts pointing to one of the players who then must scramble to get out from under it. It all culminates in a trial where the evidence is presented and a jury of players decides guilt or innocence. Very dramatic and story now.

I also don't follow the Holmes stories religiously. Holmes cases never go to trial and I like Law and Order too much to skip the court room.

BTW You mention Call of Cthulhu. Were you meaning Cthulhu by Gaslight? I know the author of that book (he lives in Indianapolis) and can give you his email if you want to get in touch. He runs a Sherlock Holmes club (interesting group - at the last meeting they played Ma Jong. Next meeting we are playing my next Holmes mystery game.)

Cheers

Chris Engle

[Troy_Costisick]

[BryanHansel]

[Eric J. Boyd]

[Troy_Costisick]

[Graham Walmsley]

Hi Troy,

Feedback from the PDF.

This is great. What I like about it is that it's so simple: wounds are simple, weapons are simple, skills are simple. It looks as though it would work together really well.

There's a few cultural references that aren't quite right - "Her Majesty's Royal Army", "homicide", "Parliament Building" - which doesn't matter much at all, of course. If you ever want me to proofread through and correct un-Britishisms, though, let me know.

May I check? You say that, when I'm rolling one die and I get a Failure, I get a Mutilation. Does this mean that if I roll my die for Tax Law and get a failure, I get mutilated? Or did I read this wrong?

Initiative rolls look as though they could be a bit of a pain. If, say, there's four players, and they roll 1, 3, 3 and 5. So the two players who got threes roll again. Let's say one of them gets a five. Does that mean he then has to roll again?

How would you feel about widening the set of Mutilations? At the moment, I worry that there's going to be a load of detectives going around London with missing teeth and eyes. How about things like "Blinding headache", "Walks with a limp" or "Prematurely white hair"? They might give players some nice roleplaying toys.

Could you represent Investigation Points (and Setting Points) physically, with some form of token? It would save a bit of bookkeeping.

I'm interested to know how that economy of Investigation Points / Setting Points works in practice. I worry slightly that there's no real incentive for the players to spend Investigation Points: it's not like Capes, for example, where if you have too much debt pile up you get a penalty. It's probably just me.

There's lots of things I really like about the game: I like Putting Your Life On The Line, I like the Artifacts, I like the idea of Scotland Yard having three clues.

Oh, I'm also a bit worried by the "Competing with the Rivals" thing. It strikes me that the story could end very suddenly, just when it's getting interesting, when the players make one too many Failure Rolls.

But, yes, looking very good. I'd like to play it.

Graham

[Graham Walmsley]

By the way, I don't know how your map search is going. But you could try this link:



which lets you see Greenwood's Map of London.

The "Printing" link gives you the contact details of the guy who owns the copyright, which might be worth a try. The "References and Links" section gives links to other London maps from around the same time.

Graham

[Troy_Costisick]