August 2018 Newsletter

It's been a minute!

This summer has been incredibly busy for both Danni and Cmrn. They both moved! The production schedule has hitched a little bit as the summer has gone on, but we're going to get right back in it soon enough. 

I (Cmrn) read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I have to say that it's kind of a mind boggling book, and I'm not quite sure how it has gotten such a strong reaction from people. There's a bit of an apocalypse narrative, but it isn't spectacular; there's a pitch out to Shakespeare, but it doesn't really turn into anything; there's a critique of religion, but it remains fangless and then it kind of just fizzles. In many ways, the book feels like a response or an echo to the work of David Mitchell, although I think Mandel's Cloud Atlas (whatever it looks like) will ultimately tower over Mitchell's work. The way she puts the pieces together seems to have a higher ceiling than Mitchell's work.

There's gonna be some t-shirts coming, so be sure to keep an eye out here for them!

Anyway, here's Danni's board game review for the month:

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective absolutely nails it.

It just does.

That’s the review. I think you should get it or convince your friends to get it. It works well as a 2 player game and I think it works great up to four players. It may get weird with more than four.

That’s it. Go got it.

…

Ok, I’ll write more.

But I don’t want to spoil anything! The game is so good and there are only ten investigations per box – so I’ll give you my impressions.

My coworkers come over and I tell them about this new game. We will be Sherlock Holmes’ assistants and we will try to solve a mystery. Basically, we read the introduction, then decide where to go next. That works like a choose your own adventure book – you pick a place, then turn to a corresponding page in a book. You have a directory of London, a map, and a bunch of recent newspapers that can give you clues. When we think we have solved it, we answer some questions, then we read how Sherlock Holmes.

Everything that happened next was just absolute gaming magic.

Here’s something that can happen in Sherlock Holmes

~

Jess is reading a long section of text after you decide to go to Scotland Yard or St. George’s Hospital or the Crytographer and the names just keep coming – “Oh, the victim knew Mr. Lees – also, his old wife was known to frequent this social club...” and they keep coming. You are writing them down in your notebook and you look up Ruhee makes eye contact with you and smiles nervously – there are too many names! You look over at Rasec and he is buried in last week edition of the London Times – he’s down a completely different rabbit hole. You run to your gaming nook ™, get out your vinyl D&D playmat and non-permanent colored pens, and then run to your closet to get another table. Ruhee keeps writing names, her pen furiously trying to keep up with the investigator trying to get through the long passage. You fold out another table and begin writing names, circling them, and connecting them with various kind of lines – solid, dotted, black, red. You circle some and you “X” others out. You mock up a calendar in the corner and map out the week before the murder. Jess finishes reading.

You all stare down at the now two dozen names on the vinyl.

“What’s your top five leads right now, Jess?” you ask.

Jess takes a breath and lists off a couple of things she is most curious about – what about the dowager? What about the gravedigger? What about the concierge?

Ruhee counters – “At this point, we need to make a choice.” She stands up and walks to the conspiracy board on the playmat and places her hand in between two nodes – “this is either about the inheritance paperwork or it is about the conflict at work – we need to decide what we are devoting our time to.”

Rasec lifts his head up wait – “What about the inheritance paperwork? Where was that?”

“We found out about that at the clerk’s office,” Jess explains.

Rasec eyes grow wide: “That wouldn’t have happened to belong to Gershire and Associates law firm, would it?”

“Yeah.”

“Get a load of this, then.” Rasec pushes last week’s newspaper to the middle of the table.

“Well, shit.”

~

You compare how you do versus Sherlock. You don’t do well. You don’t care, because for an hour and a half or two hours you were fully immersed in a world you were trying to understand. There’s no quarterbacking – everyone’s input is valuable because anytime anyone has a brilliant theory it is immediately improved upon by the group. It was fantastic.

Only one thing: There are typos in this game that can really make it difficult and can make solving a case significantly harder. There are supposedly ways online to try to avoid it. I’ve done one of those mysteries – it didn’t really detract from the experience, but your mileage may vary.