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RootJam 2024 - Pagan Sloths's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #10 | 3.938 | 4.067 |
| Use of this year's theme | #11 | 3.550 | 3.667 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #18 | 2.840 | 2.933 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
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Comments
What a phenomenal -idea -faction board -faction mechanic -token and board design -theme. Like seriously this is great stuff. Simply the amount of creativity alone that shines through in the blessings and curse decks is phenomenal (tho as loopy said, maybe we find a way to free up those items somehow 😆)
The card abilities actually seems pretty balanced, and I love the push and pull of WANTING to skip phases (excuse me what a unique idea) but in this way making these benevolent forces upset in the process. Really illustrated well by the tokens of each phase. And you've used the pases of birdsong daylight etc in such a unique and compelling way. Obviously a lot of thought has been put into this, crazy there's so much where AFTER cutting a lot of content you've cooked up.
I do think balancing might be an issue with them, and part of me is interested to see how much you CHOOSE to do on your turn when you are a lil deincentivized to do things.
Great work and submission!
Yeah, might need to free up item tokens in some way. While it is good to have more item factions I feel.. it also does bring up the point of.. potentially making others item factions 'useless'. Or, more of.. whoever gets items first will just make the other faction(s) feel bad the rest of the game. Originally that was the idea to free up the items, but probably just made it too... complex before. One issue was how to word Ruin items. Which would probably add 2~3, wordy, sentences.
The idea was... Use the item to build, then it would return to the item track as a gray (facedown) item. Then, "Pray" was a way to unflip it. Gray items would be uncraftable, so it would rely on the Sloths to restore them. It would make them an extremely heavy crafting faction. And I like the idea of it. Probably enough to warrant a whole faction for the idea haha.
And yeah, I'm sure balance will definitely have issues haha.
Thank you for the feedback!
Oh my word yeah I can see the headache that the wording would cause. Still great work though! :)
Great faction. I love how the sleeping through phases works, as each phase is so beautifully linked! Do you want to move more? Then you have to go a bit with less recruitment, which means you have less forces to move in the first place! Okay, then you want more recruitment? Well then that's less card draw for you, but wait, the crafting step is linked with recruitment, so then you'll be getting less cards to craft! It all tangles up in a really fun way ^^
My only strong concern is how this faction interacts with Vagabonds or the Lord of the Hundreds. The fact that they take items perminantly from the pool - even the normally sacred ruins - seems like it'd really make the game impossible as each faction cannabalises each other, especially hard for the poor Vagabonds! In theory, the sloths could gobble up two of the ruins before the Vagabond even takes a turn D:
Still, overall a really super design, and that's not even covering the fun flavour of the blessing/curses. Big fan of it ♥
(P.S. "Setup (ZZZ)" - *chef's kiss*)
True on the double ruins taking. But also, Vagabond and Rats are the most powerful factions (or so I hear.. I don't really know meta Root), so maybe it works itself out! (Probably not haha).
I was worried about the potential taking items from other factions, but since Rats/Vaga can't take from each other, I figure that was part of the game for item factions. Probably would be a painful game for double Vaga, Rats, and Sloth...
But, other potential ideas would be have the items go back into the pool somehow. I tried that before, but becomes a word mess.
Thanks!
(Have to make sure it's thematic and they /really/ go last :))
Insanely unique idea! I'd be really interested to see how this faction interacts with everyone else, though I think the bloat needs cutting down slightly, maybe refine the core ideas of the faction. I can sense a lot of analysis paralysis coming from the amount of faction pieces.
Yeah, there is some bloat in there for sure. Had to keep whittling it down until I got something... I was able to have enough space to put on the board and (hopefully) not be over complex. The Shrine system could be made simpler, but I didn't want to just have the sleep (skip a phase) be the only thing. But could potentially do something where there are only 3 different types of shrines or something.
Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, I agree. Love the idea of skipping phases and gaining/removing sleep tokens but it's not so easy to understand - and I must say I consider myself somewhat capable ;-) - I've translated from English/French to Polish around 40-45 different factions. Also: shrine powers/curses are rather hard to track. I mean, I can imagine giving cards out to players but they should be in multiple copies, as multiple players can be present on each clearing :)
I'll go back through sometime and try and clean up the wording; anything in particular that is hard to follow for the sleep stuff? I originally had it where you put sleep tokens on and removed them later, but that was a whole other bag of worms that made less sense haha.
And I figure it would be similar to landmarks. Of course, main issue being usually there is only 1 landmark at a time. So this would be potentially 7 different landmarks (in the form of buildings). So yeah, will see how it goes whenever I can playtest and trim from there.
Thanks!