Having run - well almost to completion - The Spark Devil to great reception, I wasted no time in investing in Eternity at Sea.
The props are of excellent quality (I call these "movie quality" props) and having extra copies of the telegrams and the sealing stickers is a great touch (though I hope that at some time we will be ably to buy extra stickers for resealing purposes so that we can get more than two games with the same "oomph").
The 3-d models are interesting, but not suited to repeated dismantling and re-building unless I am mistaken, which poses a problem for me as I play almost exclusively "on the road" and would prefer that were these models to become a standard feature of the HPLHS Call of Cthulhu scenarios, a way of storing and transporting them in the original packaging was provided.
As with The Spark Devil the scenario booklet is not available as a PDF, which is a shame as I use PDF copies of my Call of Cthulhu scenarios to do advance preparation work. As I get older I find these "info-heavy" RPG scenarios are harder work on the (very) old brain. An electronic version would be welcome, even if "stripped down" to the essentials.
Those two points notwithstanding I think this set, while on the pricey side to those who would compare it to Chaosium book publications, represents excellent value for money to those who value the total immersion possible with high quality props.
The players who took part in The Spark Devil were impressed with how authentic the clues and handouts felt and spent a lot of time with them, resulting in several delighted discoveries hidden away in them. This bodes well for the reception Eternity at Sea will get when I run it.
