Play book
Record of Mourndrift War's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Concept & Originality | #10 | 4.190 | 4.190 |
| Adherence to the Theme | #30 | 2.810 | 2.810 |
| Overall | #30 | 3.317 | 3.317 |
| Flow & Clarity | #31 | 2.952 | 2.952 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
The prose, imagery, and worldbuilding are really excellent here. I think 1000 words is too short to fill in enough of the worldbuilding concepts to really anchor them all, but the attempt is still impressive. I love the use of historical documents as directly quoted sources and like the contrast of a very personal, explanatory bit of history that is on the longer side and a short, profound statement that acts as the outro. Would be cool to see more of this devloped beyond the tight limits of the jam!
Lovely lore building, a whole new playground of ideas to work with in such short space. As others have said, would be nice to see even echos of stories like these in the world building that is taking place with OPR worlds. I am a bit lost with adherence of the jam's theme, though that is just my feeling!
I am all for this, I hate to admit that I personally didn't see strong ties to the theme, but that didn't stop me enjoying this read.
This was quite the ride. I agree this will make for some fine lore somewhere even if it doesn't become canon in OPR.
I think it was conceptually interesting but really needed more space to flesh out character and concepts without exhausting the reader's brain. I do think it nailed the feeling of 'reading a history book' though! Would make for good lore pages in a pre-existing setting.
Appreciate the notes! Glad to hear I succeeded at the goals I had, but I'm definitely looking forward to the next one page jam so I can focus on what I can really do in one page.
I found this difficult to follow with an overwhelming number of concepts, names, cultural ideas, and historical and political divisions being introduced very rapidly. Compounding the issue, the shifts between different perspectives (3rd-person omniscient to historical account to history text) were too abrupt and too frequent.
There's a time and a place to introduce a fully fleshed-out and unique culture in its entirety, and a 1000-word short story is neither the time nor the place. I would suggest that a piece of this length stick to a single perspective - or, at most, two - and as much as possible use old words to describe new concepts.
That said, I think the culture you've created here is an interesting one, and in a novella or full-length novel which has the time and wordcount to pace its introductions to that culture and its history, I'd love to explore it. There are some great turns of phrase in the piece as well. I really liked "enjoying the silence of absent artillery".
Appreciate the notes, especially on the technical point of perspective, which is something I went back and forth on. I don't regret getting it out of my system, but I probably wouldn't do it the same way again. Something I'm taking away for my future work in this setting is to focus on distilling things to make stronger standalone pieces for entry into the larger fiction so that the details can compound over time. Again, thanks for taking the time to write this up, I really enjoy the stuff you've written.
I'm glad you found my comments helpful. Re-reading my own post I think it comes across more critical than I intended it to. I did like the piece, and I can see you've put a lot of work into the cultural and historical background of your setting. 'Distilling' things to smaller elements that compound over time is probably the way to go; what I've found works for me in my own worldbuilding writing is to pick one or two core ideas that I want to introduce in that particular work, and minimize or hide everything else.
This is both original and a joy to read. It seems almost like its intended to set-up a larger story. Did you intend to use this as a starting off point for a series of stories?
I absolutely intend to write more of this, hopefully with a little practice the individual entries will get less dense and start to work more as a mosaic. Hope you'll tune in next time!
as destiny commands.
as destiny commands.
I really enjoyed this one - both the originality of it and the way it's organized. My only complaint is that your story feels like it really wants more space, and it just doesn't get that with the 1000-word/one-page limit here.
Thanks for taking the time to read and leave some notes! I'm excited for the next jam so I can focus on really nailing what it means to fit an entire story in one page.