First Impressions: The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries

[MJ Harnish]

I finally got a chance to sit down with my local gaming group last night and play The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries last night. My first impression is "Wow!" All of us were brand new to the game with 6 players total (it's a GM-less game). Only I had read the rules prior to the session. Within an hour we had generated our characters and finished the outline of our adventure. I decided to play "Sin Jin Lee, Kung Fu master." Our mystery was the search for the famed, lost city of El Dorado. We decided, keeping in the pulp tradition that our journey would take us from England, to Madrid, Spain, then on to South America, and finally to Antartica (yes, that's right....El Dorado will be found in Antartica. It's a pulp story after all!).

From there we started playing. What a great time. Although it took some of my fellow players a bit of time to get the hang of handling narration - I normally GM and they play so narration of events isn't something they're used to. However, once they got the basic idea we started to really roll. I can't remember the last time I've laughed so much or had to think on my feet so fast during a RPG. The session ended, in traditional pulp fashion, with a cliff hanger involving us attempting to hijack a Nazi zeppelin. We'll pick up the story there next month.

I can't recommend the game enough if you're looking for an evening of pure story-telling and gaming.

[MJ Harnish]

We had a lot of fun but the non-GMs in the group struggled a bit with the narration during the session - they either were at a loss for words or began rambling on without moving the story forward. The timer really helps with the later, but the former is something I think they'll get better with more practice. It certainly was a lot of fun and the other experienced GM in our group commented that it was the most fun he's had at a game in a long time.

[Brennen Reece]

I bought this game a few months ago but haven't had a chance to play it. I'm really looking forward to pushing this onto my group.