Thank you for this game! I found it overall satisfying and as a non-gender-conforming queer person I loved the queer touch. Here is some feedback from my group's recent game of Sleepaway (played over six sessions, three hours per session). I hope this is taken in a constructive way, because I truly enjoyed the game and I think it is an incredibly strong concept that could become a huge hit.
Suggestions:
- Having a GM would have made pacing better (lots of lulls in gameplay)--although on the flipside, having no GM made it more possible for individual players to declare what was in the game world. Overall, some help with pacing would be welcome.
- The randomly-chosen Lindworm channeler could have more responsibility to settle details and push things along
- Moves should be less vague; item card creation and movement between scenes should be better-defined and connected to moves
- scene elements and strangeness elements should be one deck, not two separate ones; there should be clearer rules for how you pick one of those cards (rather than "whenever you feel like it"). Overall there were too many modular moving parts for new players to keep track of: scene elements, strangeness elements, character moves, Lindworm cards, corkboard, map, item cards, character cards, rituals, three-act structure...
- there should be a clearer mechanic for how NPCs respond to the characters, e.g. in dialogue (similar to camper "sparks" or Lindworm cards)
- Character traits (fears, etc.) do not connect with the game mechanics; for example "fear of bugs in ears" never became relevant or seemed like it could become relevant
- one player who does not identify as queer felt like it was voyeuristic for them specifically to role-play as a queer youth, with experiences and hardships that they did not experience personally
- Some mechanics of the game were never described in the rulebook: for example, "motifs." (How are they generated--just from the Murder of Crows move? How do motifs come into play during the "moving along the strings" portion before the Lindworm showdown: are they treated in the same way as items and scenes?)
Strengths:
- Once we got into the groove, free-form role play felt liberating
- the ending mechanic for facing down the Lindworm made things feel cohesive and complete
- strong/normal/weak moves were intuitive
- a large map was easy to use for online play (maybe simplify the rulebook's suggestions about having both a corkboard and a map?)
- for me, the queer outsider setting clicked in a way that few other games do