DISCONTINUED - Post Mortem London Gothic: Ghost in the Machine (old version) - Live play part 1

[@league-of-shadows]

Your videos have been really great for helping me make sure I'm not missing anything. So interesting to see the differences between your edition and the 2023.

[@COOPFORTWO]

If you notice any interesting differences I'd love to hear about them.

[@jonathanwarner2893]

So far I'm enjoying the experience. But it has had a few odd points. And we haven't come across any super dense clues yet. It still feels more like were at the periphery of a lot of things. I'm hoping for a lot of twists in back half of book 1 and book 2. Spoiler thoughts from first session. mixed. I don't mind the idea of a prologue to try to introduce mechanics. Dune House Secret, and Razorhurst both tried something similar. But I think we agree that we'd like it to be a little clearer that is what is happening from the beginning. So those who know the rules don't jump the tracks early. I like the mechanic of revisiting people during the case. I think it helps them develop more over time. But I think in this case we might be encountering a few too many who sort of have a similar way of saying "I know something significant but I'm not going to just come out with it yet". There have been several times where I feel our group has gone "well that conversation sort of just ended. Why didn't we ask a follow up question? Or for them to clarify?" I also like the gate mechanics and ways to modify page numbers. But I'm not sure I'm loving the way it's been set up with the informants. I wonder if it would have been easier for the corner to just be like "Add the value of the first and last initials of the deceased and then turn to that page to see if the corner has new info". And the same for the records office. I guess that would be a weaker gate than making sure we've seen a particular scene with the character. But I'm not sure we're loving trying to re-remember where we first met each character we might be interested in. nitpick. Maybe there could have just been two maps instead of a double sided one? That way we start with the general map of London. On level of deduction. I'm not sure if I really feel that this is lower on deduction than the original La trilogy so far. But so far there haven't been super dense clues like shcd Adventures by Gaslight etc. I think we would have enjoyed much denser police reports and coroner's inquest reports. On setting. I'm enjoying the setting but I do think as a group we might miss some of the uniqueness brought by the noir setting. Setting in Victorian London invites even more comparison to shcd and it's deluxe length cases: Adventures by Gaslight, case 10 of Baker Street Irregulars. nitpick. At times though I'm not sure if the dialogue and characters feel super period authentic. I do think maybe the mystery itself could have been set up to feel a bit more odd from the beginning. A few more physical clues from the beginning that real strike us as weird. So far it's mainly just how others are acting that seems really suspicious not so much the deaths themselves. On the other hand I kind of get the sense we're going to be peeling back layers of weirdness as we get deeper into book1 and then into book 2. We notice some more physical clues from poking around the mill. Pros. I enjoy how different characters reference and foreshadow one another. I think it helps make the leads all feel like they are significant to our investigation. I think deciding to save the dog was a fun little moral decision moment. I agree with Jesse that the characters have nice distinctive personalities and some humor. Makes some of the more traditional one off visits feel less dry than in some of shcd cases. I'm enjoying how it feels like we're going to be finding darker elements the more we dig. We found out about Florence's death portraits. The rat arena. Seems like we're going to learn more about the ghost. I also think the rat scene was one of the better choose or own adventure moments. Had the moral bit with the dog. But also wasn't us chasing someone else. Those were in some of the previous Post Mortem games. And I think with those we often just wanted to get them done so we could actually interrogate the person we were chasing. Unlocking a map is always cool. Had a nice descriptive atmospheric beginning. But also has dialed back the description so not overly descriptive on average.

[@COOPFORTWO]

As usual, these are terrific points very well said with actionable examples. I agree with everything here. No one summarizes pros and cons with examples better than Jonathan.

[@COOPFORTWO]

Another item of weirdness is the mill map -- are we just supposed to waltz around into any room we want to there once we get the map? We walked into one guys office and it sounded like we were there before we should be..

[@COOPFORTWO]

The double sided map was similar to the double sided autopsy reports and police reports -- there was no explanation for why these items were printed double sided like that -- and in the case of the autopsy and police reports, the book talked about them as if they were two different evidence items that we would have logically gotten at two different places.

[@jonathanwarner2893]

@@COOPFORTWO thanks

[@COOPFORTWO]

Mixed feelings to far -- some great scenes and characters, but maybe our recent playthroughs of more puzzle-focused games has made us expect to be more mentally challenged, and it feels a bit heavy on the choose-your-own adventure side of things so far, rather than challenging our deductive skills.. But we shall see how it develops..