The Partie Carré Experiment

 There was a lot of fun to be had at the Dangling Prussian virtual pub night on Zoom tonight, our annual fill-in for those of us who don't make it to New York for the birthday festivities. Some wonderful Sherlockians showed up, many of the usual suspects and some very happy surprises. Good conversation, toasts, our third puppet Sherlockian premiere, the induction of new members into the Montague Street Incorrigibles, and the very first time for a fun experiment in Sherlockian play.

And it worked.

With our core team of players being Mary O'Reilly as Sherlock Holmes, Edith Pounden as Dr. Watson, Kristen Mertz as Inspector Gregson, and Heather Hinson as Inspector Lestrade, we all saw a new client, the young blonde Lucy Slaney and her nanny Lanny come rushing up the seventeen steps and into the sitting room at 221B to begin the case that our Watson would come to call "The Adventure of the Scented Invalid." 

As I've probably explained elsewhere, with Zoom as our medium all the other attendees got to be parts of Sherlock's brain and feed our Sherlock information as they wandered from Baker Steet to the Surrey countryside in a sort-of "Dungeons & Dragons" style that require no dice and orc-fighting. We decided to call it "Skunks and Scalawags" at some point as the mystery involved a skunk brought over from America. Characters abound, from Brixton Bob, the simple carriage driver who liked his beer, to a certain dancer who held a grudge against inspector Lestrade, to a young boy in a Watson mask who was happy to meet the real Sherlock Holmes. The murder room was thoroughly searched, time was spent in a local pub (too much, according to Brixton Bob, and in the end, Inspector Gregson solved the case?

What the heck?

If you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons as it should be played, you know that it's a story not just being told by the dungeon master, but by the players as well, with the "yes, and . . ." quality of improv. Our Lestrade came up with a clue that was not at all in the script. A wandering naturalist, a singing milkmaid, and "maid number two" showed up out of the blue to add to the tale from the audience. Instead of dice-roll fighting, the key to getting past certain barriers in this game were things like singing or agreeing to a witness's unreasonable demands.

It took an hour and a half for "The Adventure of the Scented Invalid" to play our and be successfully solved, which is the right length for a movie. As Watson once wrote "It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy," but I think wound up with more of the former.

In any case, it was fun and we're definitely doing it again, and definitely before next January. The same game could play out with different people in different ways. And the best thing: It was an experiment in Sherlockian fun that worked. In the early 2000s when we tried a role-playing society out called The Dark Lantern League, I think this is the part we were missing -- it just took Zoom to make it possible.

Thanks to all the folks both mentioned above and unmentioned who were there helping us wander the halls of Morfield Manor and save an innocent skunk. We can never say it enough: Sherlockians are just the best people!