Hi Esteban and thanks for your comment!
I can understand if sci-fi isn’t your thing. Initially I wanted a more Indiana Jones-like game, but the setting and feel was much closer to a Star Trek exploration. In the near future, I think I’ll try to rework the game by fixing something to make it more flexible.
1- I understand what you’re saying about the examples. In order to make reading this draft game faster, I made it all on two pages. I will definitely include examples and clarifications in a future version. I tried to make the text as clear as possible, but it may be that I didn’t succeed.
2- Yes, the player who consults the Oracle decides whether to use the lowest or highest value for the Mood. This is because he has to choose whether to make the mood more quiet or more tense and dangerous. As a result, the drawn POI may be rarer or stranger on the Personal Map.
3- The only limit on the two initial POIs is that the first one must remain within one inch length from the X mark, the second one anywhere else on the map. So yes, where to draw it is up to the player.
4- When the Oracle is consulted, the player decides the Mood and creates the POI. After drawing the POI, he or she tells the other players what’s there. You have to consider the Personal Map not in scale, so what is drawn may be 500 meters away from the character.
5- The game continues until all members of the crew are grouped together. For example, in a 4-player game, it is not enough that only 2 players find each other, but all 4 must be in the same place to be recovered by the Daedalus.
6- You’re right! This is one of the mistakes I thought I made. I’m not very good at writing in English, forgive me. Step 1 is something like “The active player gives the dice to a player of his choice. That player rolls the dice to consult the oracle”. To make a discursive comparison it could be:
Active player: Hey, other player, do you see a mountain near you?
Other player: [roll the dice and consult the oracle] Yes, I see it on my left! [and draw the POI on the map]
Active player: Perfect. [he moves in the direction he wants and uses the Mood die]
7- Step 2: The Mood die is used by the Active Player to give a description to what he/she finds. During setup (Begin your mission) players immediately use all the dice because they are alone and have to tell others what happens. During the next phase (Research your teammate) the active player asks another player if he/she sees a POI, but the mood is his/her own.
8- Step 2: yes, as described in the paragraph before “Research your teammate”: “Inch Length […] from where your character currently is. […]”. This means the point on the map where the character (X or dot marked) is.
9- Step 3: If the other player sees a mountain on his Personal Map (for example) and the active player has a mountain on the map, he is more likely to go in that direction to find the other player. The goal is to get together as well as to find out if there is a civilization on the planet.
10- Step 3 “mood die”: This step was done on purpose. The other player, who consults the oracle, must decide how tense the situation of the active player will be (as specified above in answer #2). This is a specific and important choice that the other player makes: find the POI and get the active player into trouble, or not find it and make the active player go smoothly?
11- There may be inconsistencies between the maps, it’s normal (the characters are exploring a planet, not a city), but during the “Research your teammates” phase you try to go to the same POI for this, to get together and have common points on the maps.
12- I think I wasn’t completely clear at the beginning of the rules when I wrote about bold words and rules in left-hand bordered paragraphs. Inch Length is a measurement used in the game on the map.
Hypothetically, if you and I who are playing the game have a mountain and a tree one inch apart on both of our Personal Maps, then those two POIs are definitely the same and we can find each other.
13- If players have found obvious signs (the drawn POIs) of a culture or civilization on the planet they were exploring, then they can decide to leave the planet behind. But it is up to the players to decide, following their role. Medical Officer: do the traces of animal remains that have been found concern an organized hunting expedition? Or, according to the science officer, could that construction found during the exploration be related to some technology? In this game “the Oracle gives a result”, but it is always up to the players to interpret it.
Thank you very much again, Esteban.
Many questions you asked me have allowed me to better clarify the flow of the game in my head.
I’m just going to write down these details so that I can fix them after the jam.
If you have any more questions, reports or anything else, just write them down. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Bye!