Got my rating in just under the wire!
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Choice of Life's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Inspiration: Effective use of assigned "Weird Tales" cover elements. | #16 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Vibes: Overall atmosphere and feel of the supplement. | #26 | 3.850 | 3.850 |
Overall | #31 | 3.717 | 3.717 |
Usability: Practicality and playability at the game table. | #56 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
A very cool zine, although I think it's got too many pieces to fit into 8 pages. You've got:
- a new class
- a new ancestry
- a new gear section
- a complex set of factions and npcs
- a hex-crawl with a timed event list
To me, that didn't all fit into the space, making the whole a bit hard to read. That said, if you spread things out after the jam with a few more pages, I think this could really sing. Dedicate a page to each single topic so it's not jockeying with other elements for focus and I'll have an easier time parsing it.
Other notes:
- About the hours, are those only covered by the hex-crawl times, or does shadowdark realtime-play also count against it? I feel like realtime should count against it, but also like that's going to not add up. Like, my read of the hex-map says just going across the center, 1->3->8, would take 11 hours. Add in many events in real-time, you're running out of hours, and that's only 3 locations hit.
If players try to go in any more complex routes, I feel like they're gonna only be able to get to a few, and never double back, which means they probably are deciding on their route at the start, before arriving at locations has informed them enough about the decision to choose a more informed route.
I think that, in practice, I would run it with the travel-times halved, and possibly some other things to give the PCs more freedom to operate in that 24 hours span. - Also about the hours, you say that "Hour 1 starts at 8 PM, 24 hours before the Lunar Shadow", but on the hours table you have "20 - Lunar shadow cloaks the valley in darkness", so it sounds like hour 1 is 19 hours short of the lunar shadow.
- More on the hours: I'm not sure what happens after hour 24. Maybe I just missed it, but if that's the case, I think this falls under the overcrowded page concern again.
- Final note, the hexmap is not on the same page as the hex descriptions, nor even on the facing page if viewed in two-page view, which makes that difficult to work with.
Hopefully this comes across as the constructive criticism I meant it to be. It's a very cool zine and I love the ideas, especially the fleaborn as a race, having something that makes more sense than vampires fighting against the werewolves. Not sure if you're going to revise it after the jam is over, but if you do, maybe my thoughts help out a bit. Whether you make changes or not, very cool zine.
Hey man! I got to watch you detail your product on stream. It was quite cool. I really like how you went about making the Lancer look like an old-school action figure packaging.
Love it! I am just a little confused with the inspiration, I am reading the title of the second entry an it says "a strange tale of the future" but in the text you mention the second entry as "thunder in the dawn" . I suppose it is one of the tales within the zine, right?
Thanks for checking out the adventure!
The image from the assignment with the titles is below.
Thunder in the Dawn is the name of that tale. It just isn't on the cover. Confused me to as I was looking them over.
I used the Meteror Crashing as the “Thumder”and the 3 people on the cover as werewolves from the moon. One of them is even a priestess. Plus I kept the concept the future as the warnings they give in the adventure during the Shadow event and to lock their doors.
As a lover of movies, this gave me the same vibes as the old B horror movies that were on as a kid, like 'Them,' or 'Night of the Lupus'...in their weird, pulp horror feel. Absolutely love the whole vibe, and the color pallet really works. I hear that there will be a b&w version...very interested to see! Adore the creativity of the Fleaborn. Look forward to playing this. Cheers!
This definitely has the pulpy weird tales vibe. My favorite part is actually the Start Here giving wildly different hooks to get the players moving in the right direction. Love the color and layout, but I like to print in black and white- not sure how that will play out, but the work is so strong!
Good layout and a nice mix of tropes can be found in this one! Glad I read it!
This is what I expect when I read Weird Tales, so pulpy, so... weird. I LOVE IT!
That Walking Worm monster will live in my brain FOREVER!!! This adventure is so creepy, bizarre, engaging, and a super easy to digest. The layout is crisp and I deeply appreciate all the secret Hyperlinks. ^_^
Gotta give some love to the Fleaborn, despite my deep hatred of blood-sucking parasites. This adventure is chock full of fun twists if you're willing to face the Dilemmas at hand!
What a beautiful layout! Nice work. There are lots of great ideas here, but I love the werewolf with twice the tapeworms!
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