The end of another year and here on roll4sanity and time to announce our game of the year chosen because it was one of our most favourite gaming session in the past 12 months! It’s a fun one this year because I actually got to play in person at chaosiumcon, not only that but I was able to have the author of the game as the Keeper of Arcane Law – Matthew Sanderson writer extraordinaire! Game of the year then is The Blue. Not my usual sort of game to play as I don’t really go for the stories where you are put into someone else’s horror movie. I always want writers to include a simple flip around so you can play your own investigator in the game as there are some great games out there that you might want your character to investigate as part of an ongoing campaign. The Blue though manages to get it right in that you are investigators rather than a random person off the street and put in the dangerous situation. You have the task of investigating (no spoilers here on roll for sanity!) lets just say, some ocean as a diving crew.
The team of investigators / Pregens you can play are:
- Doctor Chris Hedley – Marine Biologist
- Page Spears – Geologist
- Gary Fairburn – The Surveyor
- Peyton Tyrone – Photographer
- Courtney Brent – Rescue Diver
We’re sent out on a dive boat to take a look at the environment but when we get there not is all as it seems and there is an emergency that needs our expertise to resolve but naturally the truth behind the situation is much more than we bargained for!
I played Peyton Tyrone the photographer who was always keen to get that shot and was very keen to be in the water to make the other rescue divers look good for National Geographic. Also, when the adventure is called The Blue, it would be a shame to stay on the boat! No spoilers but you can possibly guess that the divers who have entered the water need to do something and The Blue is great because there’s some diving mechanics to help. When a character usually goes underwater there’s a extra few things you have to consider like how long can you stay underwater, your breathing apparatus and looking after your dive buddy. Fortunately there is some useful handwaving of scientific difficulties for story purposes but they are very well researched which makes it not too onerous on the players too push through and have some fun without being constrained by technical difficulties.
The game is very much a one shot designed for convention play which means there is a very clear Act One, Act Two and Act Three. I find this very useful as a players to help me keep track of the luck I am spending – save as much as you can for Act Three! The game could be stretched out over a couple of sessions if your Keeper wanted to take their time. We found, even with the author running it, we took more than the allotted four hours convention time and had to complete the end of Act Three in the bar! I think when we played it we did linger on the more cautious side with folks identifying genuine risks to their character. Being a bit more of an experienced player, I was keen to… what’s the phrase? “Poke the shoggoth.” We’re here for a game of Call of Cthulhu as opposed to a game of avoid the mystery and play it safe! You have to go into the basement and see what the darkness is all about.
When our characters literally dive in and then swim back to the surface screaming it was great fun. There were some fun decisions, fun dice rolls and some extremely good dice rolls by the keeper! Matt actually told us that in all the time he’s run the scenario he hadn’t had a specific dice roll come up at a specific time. This allowed him to play a very tiny rule he’d included in the game should this dice roll come about which proved very deadly for a character! We all had fun and enjoyed ourselves as the Call of Cthulhu is a very deadly game if the dice turn against you. So if you ever get the chance to play The Blue by Matt Sanderson or even play The Blue run by Matt Sanderson do so. It’s a really great game to enjoy, discover some mysteries and see what happens when you get in there to poke the shoggoth! This is why The Blue is Roll4sanity’s Game of the Year 2025!
https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/369605/The-Blasphemous-Tome-7
