Well for a couple of reasons (one good, one meh) 2023 has been lighter in games than 2022 so that naturally means less games from which to choose. But that doesn’t diminish the fun and atmosphere that a game can create and the Cthulhu by Gaslight Era adventure 12 Black Feathers by Clym Arnold certainly did all that!
You might have thought that the location of the game would make it loose points as it took place during the very chaotic environment that was the UK Games Expo in a rabbit warren of a hotel. Literally to find the room in which the game was held it was into reception, head to the left, down the corridor, take another left, pass the main loos, right at the wedding reception then up three flights of stairs and pick an un labelled door and hope someone said 12 Black Feathers to you! Fortunately, I was with the Playhouse Crew and Co which meant we could all follow each other! We’d already had a face-to-face game that weekend on the night before which was very busy for me as not only was I the Keeper improvising the game from scratch but I set up the audio and video so we could record it. For this game I only had to concentrate on setting up audio and mics which went quite well and I was at last free of the kit I’d been dragging around at the convention all day!
The table was set-up very nicely with each of us having been provided dice in a colour matched tray and an arrangement of 12 Black Feathers. Clym was our keeper for the game and is an experienced convention Keeper so was able to easily handle the playhouse crew. Being taken through the intro to the session as though I was a newbie was a great experience and really professional. Yes we’d paid a nominal amount to play the game but you could tell Clym was there for the fun of playing Call of Cthulhu as opposed to it being a job. With the mics set-up and door locked, we had the room to ourselves!
My character for the game was Esme Ward, a Baltimore Police Detective from Alabama. Her personal description was “resilient and audacious” and also has one of the other characters as her closest ally who Esme “quarrels with her friend but depends on them more than they would admit!” This was a great opportunity for some role-play as the one upmanship between the two made for some excellent fun during the game. For example, there was one part where the group (3 detectives and 3 police officers) were shown into the morgue and Esme was one of the few that didn’t feel ill at the sight of the dead. No Spoilers here but I can say we were tasked with investigating the death of people in the Whaling community in Baltimore in the 1890s killed with multiple injuries and left at the scene were black feathers.
Player tip, look for this kind of foreshadowing in a game. This technique is used in films to show the effect of something on another so when it comes up again to face the hero of the story, we can be worried as we know the danger the threat poses! As my character made their skill checks to piece together what was happening by looking at the people who appear to have been pecked to death, it certainly got me wondering if our characters might be next in line to suffer at the owners of the black feathers we saw.
As a group we didn’t make it easy for Clym. After a briefing on the death we paired up detective with police officer promptly and split the party into three to run all over town to look into the clues! With a good appearance stat and great Charm skill Esme and her police officer assistant charmed their way into the good books of the Ornithologist to give us the clues we needed about the feathers we had found. I think we fumbled something and so a good old fashion fire alarm was used to get to other parts of the building we needed to reach. The pairs equally had success and failure until after, around five hours of play we reached and end and wrapped up the game. We probably could have teased a little more out of the game and sometime I think it’s a little sad when a game is cut short because of time but when we called it a night it was the time. When the game is available for listening I’ll post a link here so you can hear how my character got on and how my voice deteriorated! In the new year, the Roll4Sanity podcast will have a new intro recorded at the time my voice was damaged!
So why was 12 Black Feathers so good? Well, you kinda had to be there! Clym created a unique Cthulhu by gas light world in which we could play great characters that we could put our all into as this was a one shot. The mystery had enough guides to help you through the investigation so I knew what I needed to do next but this didn’t feel as though it was my only choice. The folks I played with where amazing! From the characterisation and depths of the NPCs brought to life by Clym, to inter-party rivalry as we all wanted to be first to solve the mystery and stay alive. All these elements make 12 Black Feathers the Roll4Sanity for game of the year 2023!
