Thank you for participating Ochi!
Since we had only a handful of participants, we figured we could share some written feedback to hopefully encourage you as you go forward and create more adventures in the future. Mind you, these are all personal opinion and in no way reflect your standing in the competition.
A Darkened Lighthouse
Writing:
- It's not often we see an eldritch threat in L5R so the idea feels novel. It would be interesting seeing how the players would believe a samurai is supposed to deal with a situation like this.
- The writing flows logically. The players are introduced slowly, and the intensity picks up later towards the end. The piece focuses on evoking feelings first, then there’s the mundane threat and creepiness of the cultists, then things get supernatural and frightening.
- It could have been helpful if the mentioned report was given more detail. What the players were told is happening with this village, who is requesting them, who are they working for/what authority do they have in this situation. You'll see why later in this feedback.
- The adventure itself seems to lend itself towards GMs who like to have just a skeleton of an adventure, a seed, where they can feel free to add more if they would like. Rather than having everything fleshed out and rigid.
- This adventure could act as a session 1 to a longer campaign due to its open ending, which is great if the table wants to continue exploring the idea of eldritch horror in L5R.
- It would have been super cool to see some descriptions of these cultists. Physical descriptions, like emblems indicative of who they serve. Description of their personality to aid the GM on how to pilot these cultists through dialogue and their actions. Related, there’s also no description that lends itself to the L5R setting in particular, outside of a few nouns in the first paragraph. This makes it feel less like an adventure made for L5R.
Page design:
- It seems clear when a new scene begins and ends, indicated by each line break.
- The font is legible at a reasonable font size.
- It would have been good to have something to make this page stand out, like color, layout, or an image.
Fun:
- The columns in the cave at the end seem like they’re meant to represent a sort of timer to the players. The race against the crumbling caves, running from an impossible threat, and even while being impeded by possessed allies – this all seems tense and like a great conclusion to the adventure.
- The idea of possession is interesting. The fact that it ties to strife makes sense for one succumbing to fear and madness. It makes one’s strife seem as important, if not more important, than their fatigue. This is again quite novel. I think the mechanics may benefit from a bit more consideration though. What is the recommended limit for the GM to set for this accumulation of strife? What does it mean when a PC becomes possessed?
- This adventure heavily depends on the GM to decide how the players will be pushed along. Things happen around the PCs for the most part, rather than to them or in a manner that conflicts with what they care about (to inspect the lighthouse).
- For the epilogue, the possibility of having the PCs disagree on where to report this catastrophe, or even having a final duel or something if a PC is living and possessed can be particularly fun if the Players spend a good amount of time getting the characters to know each other during the adventure. Imagine, if the GM decides to play with the bond rules this could be quite dramatic.
Theme:
- Overall, the theme “Overcoming of Fear” is relevant. The characters are met each scene with evocations of certain phobia, and yet they must push on to complete their giri. The players are expected to save the innocents at the end despite the possibility of dooming their characters during each round of the conflict. Not to mention, fear in the form of Strife may be what prevents the characters from escaping the cave at all.
- As a side note, the fact that these are samurai investigating a threat like this, and they should abide by the tenets of bushido, feels compelling. This is entirely subtext, as it doesn’t seem like this was necessarily the point the author was going for, but it will be interesting during play if the GM running this adventure is the type to leverage the Honor/Status/Glory system. After all, being a coward comes at a heavy cost in Rokugan.
- If that system is ignored though, honestly, the players could just choose to leave the cave immediately in that final conflict. Nothing changes depending on how many innocents are saved, and the threat takes care of itself by collapsing the cave. It may help to prime the players early on to care about these innocents, or one specific innocent, so that the choice to leave is harder.