[RPG]: The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (4/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13342.phtml

Christopher W. Richeson's Summary:

\"A toast! To learning, travel, and adventure!\" Members of the Committee recount exciting tales of their recent travels over a few glasses of their preferred beverages in this storytelling roleplaying game.

Go to the full review for more information.

[MattyHelms]

Nice review - the game looks to have much to offer. I've ordered my copy this morning.

[iago]

I love this game to pieces.

[Eric J. Boyd]

Chris,

Thanks for the review. I hope you get to play it dungeon-crawl style and would love to hear about it.

More copies should be arriving at IPR very soon and Lulu can get it to you in a pinch.

Cheers,

Eric

[Whymme]

This game combines some of the best ideas other small press games have put forward and mixes them together to create a really fun looking game. While it’s sometimes hard to trace mechanics to any specific source, I see a little Dogs in the Vineyard in the way dice are put forward with narration to overcome the Opposition and a little Primetime Adventures in the round table way narration is passed about.

To me it sounded a lot like Baron Munchausen, with some added frills.

[C.W.Richeson]

Originally Posted by Whymme

To me it sounded a lot like Baron Munchausen, with some added frills.

I think Baron Munchausen is definitely an inspiration here, based on what I know about it, but since I've not read it I tried to avoid such comparisons

[Eric J. Boyd]

Whymme,

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen game was certainly a large inspiration, and I hope it delivers some of the same play experience. But my design goal was to make an improvisational storytelling game that provides enough support and structure for the stories to be told that no one gets stuck or put at a loss for words. The brainstorming at the beginning of the game, the character's attributes and traits, and the direction provided by your Opposition are handholds or flags to achive that goal. The pressure of timed narration helps, too.

Another notable difference is that you're telling parts of one cohesive story, not a bunch of different ones. So there's much more interaction between the players and their characters. The expedition log serves as a map to the story thus far that rewards you for reusing prior elements and connecting them to other things in interesting ways, resulting in a narrative thread that makes sense over the course of the game.

Finally, the dice mechanics and pursuit of Acclaim add a strategic element to the game that also shapes the content of your stories.

So if you like Baron Munchausen, I think there's a very good chance you'll like The Committee, but the play experiences will be quite different.

[Mechante_Anemone]

I have not yet had a chance to play The Committee, but I really enjoyed reading the book and it made me very enthusiastic about trying it.
First of all, it's very well, very clearly written and completely unpretentious (though Committee members themselves can wax pretentious!) There are handy bullet-point summaries at the end of each section, cheat sheets, etc. so one should not run into the frequent problem of indie games where you practically need the game designer to sit at your table to help you understand it.

Second, it generated tons of ideas for me and I think my group will enjoy it as soon as we have a chance to try it. My group comprises several people who are self-described "casual gamers", love to get in character and dress up, love story more than system, and get as much enjoyment from our group dinners after the games than from gaming itself. I think they will like this as a special event.

It's sort of a meld of RPG, LARP and board game!

Plus, on the topic of a dungeon-style Committee, I was also picturing playing "Tales from the Floating Vagabond", "Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn", "Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon", and of course "Tales from the Cantina." The possibilities are vast!

[Jack Burton]

First of all I would like to say that I'm very glad to have found an rpg related site that is still active on a regular basis - a sad exception on the net today.

Where I did like this review a lot and found the game itself to have some interesting aspects, i do have one (hopefully constructive) criticism to add.

Where you give us an all important overview of the system and the way it works I did notice that the example of play given was a combat sequence. Where this is indeed an integral parts of any action-driven game (I know there are games in which fights hardly ever occur but to my taste these can be a bit on the boring side) - I would however have liked an example of a charisma or genius roll too, as I am curious how, in this particular system, this would be played out.

Where the game itself is concerned : I do very much like the fact that it is a "diceless damage" system in which you only need to roll once and not go through the whole "now roll for damage and then roll for soak, etc." ordeal.

Still (if I wasn't clear about it) : a nice, comprehensible and very well written review.

[C.W.Richeson]

Thanks, Jack!

A Genius Hazard immediately comes to mind in the form of a sinister trap. If I were playing the Opposition there I'd probably narrate increasingly complex mechanisms, secondary devices, and similar things as the hero attempts to disarm it. Ultimately the Hazards are all a matter of clever description and are mechanically going to follow the same resolution as the one above. Keep in mind that Genius could be used in a fight just as well as Daring, and the reverse is true for trap disarming (or avoidance).

Oh, and welcome to RPG.net!