For me, testing tables multiple times is part of the reading process. And when a random table has real thought put into it with a focus on usability and fun, like in yours, then it shows!
How have I only found this with 20 minutes to spare before ratings close?? It's wonderful, and it's very specifically something that my current group would love playing through, immediately if not sooner! You've densely packed each page with goodness, whimsy, and serious peril. The presentation warms my heart. Plus it's awesome that you got to playtest within the jam's timeframe! When I get to run this adventure I'll let you know how it went for us!
This is absolutely delightful! It's got a lot of variety in terms of how the PCs are challenged, from wilderness travel to roleplay to moral dilemmas. And you nail the slightly cozy, very creepy, entirely whimsical feel for the fey. Also, I love that the Rain Shepherd is so dang grumpy and unpredictable, that feels very true to real life. If I get to run this at a table I'd sneakily use my phone to play Don't Starve music when the bog lurkers approach from the darkness.
The fantastic art and layout and general style is also a huge bonus, and I love that you photographed the physical components too! Great work all around!
Yep, I read the instructions in the voices of those characters, and it was great! And rolling on the tables told me that Zoe requested me to disable a tooth fairy, which has me feeling conflicted. Like, I'm undercover for Mr. Rogers' hostage rescue operation, so do I disable a tooth fairy to keep on Zoe's good side? How murky does morality become when the citizens of this neighborhood are on the line? How far must we be driven???
The Countess' Castle is also a great area, and I love the bat-powered elevator. Thanks for the adventure, and the big smile I had while reading it!
Now it's my turn to say that YOUR layout is great! I love the way it flows, and how the maps and descriptions are combined. Also, in general I just love settings where the gods are closer, more personal, and can be interacted with by PCs, and this nails that mystical vibe. Plus the godly realms being in a cave yet somehow outdoors is perfect. Beautiful adventure!
Edit: almost forgot to mention, because it was at the very start: pronunciation guides are my favorite, thank you so much for including these!
Wow, thank you so much! My own "things to copy" file was pretty dang big for this jam, and has only grown from seeing other folks' submissions. So it's really heartening that my attempt works for you and others!
I'm floored, this is great work. This is professional-grade, thoughtfully imagined and realized adventure goodness on every level! Giving space for map highlights on each page, giving just the right amount of information to build the space in readers minds, giving GMs the ability to moderate difficulty or even do multiple delves over time ... you nailed this style of adventure design! One of my faves from this whole jam.
This is amazing. My single complaint is the font size, it's too small for 16 A5 pages, so it feels like 16 A4 pages instead.
Everything else is awesome! The concept and writing, the local focus and scope, the dungeon, it's wonderful. The dungeon map is among the best I've seen, and your art style is perfect, it's totally your own. Actually, the map could be a great addition for the Extra Resources zip file! I'd love to put an unlabeled version into a VTT for players to explore visually.
The NPCs are super distinctive and weird, yet also very relatable, which I love. The extraterrestrial nature of Zykom is strongly implied but not explicitly stated, which I also love. You preserve some mystery while allowing plenty of investigation and experimentation. Rontoc is a great standalone adventure and a great addition to a sandbox map. Hats off!
This has such a strong sense of place, culture, and madhouse zealotry, it's intoxicating. The signature of Knave's prompts is worn proudly, and you made everything weave together so believably with the background lore and characters! It takes a lot of effort to make this sort of world-building feel effortless. Absolutely one of the Knaviest adventures in the whole jam, and an unforgettable micro-world. Once the jam is over I'd love to see you give this text a few more pages to breathe; the density of ideas is clearly yearning for it! Great work.
Hey, once the jam is over you can even message me; I'd happily offer some proof-reading and cleanup work without altering the actual word choices or content! Also, so many friends and family have fought cancer over the decades, I've seen the struggle and the cost. It's great to have you with us!
Okay, while I was getting into the thick of reading this, a construction vehicle down the street started emitting a strange blip sound that was a spot-on match for the Alien motion sensors. And it genuinely made my heart speed up for a second. Combine that with your generator prompt being such a strong platform for this concept, and I'd say reality is conspiring on Ankheg's behalf.
This is both a fun original adventure and a great adaptation of Alien! It's well thought out within the fantasy world context, with plenty of new ideas to intrigue and shock the players. Plus I like how the Warrior evokes the original singular Alien, while the Nymphs evoke the hoards of aliens from sequels. You had your brain-cake and ate it, too! Nice horror, nice homage, and above all nice original spin!
Thank you, it would be so wild for an adventure I wrote to be ran by another person! In early drafts the Dwarks were pretty much mindless drones, but over the weeks they grew into something more, and I'm so glad that their individuality came through for you. Cheers!
Your concept is bold and infectious, and the execution makes it all feel deeply personal! Feelings, emotions, and mental blocks are sometimes kind of sidelined or ignored in TTRPGs in favor of external dramas. My own mid gremlins loved reading this! Though they might not be able to keep up with all the ideas here, it's still clearly great!
One thing I'd recommend is doing another pass after the jam for spelling, grammar, etc. A few words felt like speech-to-text or a phone's autocorrect got in the way. But that never stopped me from getting the meaning!
This is some real classic D&D adventuring, done with all the modern formatting tricks to make it a breeze to run! And it could even be a great candidate for a first-time OSR GM to read, as it really sold the flexibility and spirit of the genre. Most modules kind of assume that you already know how to interpret them. I also liked the compact yet thorough dungeons, the numerous story threads that could be woven in or left out, the prose intro to get the reader into the vibe, and the conclusive final page that wraps it all up so nicely. It's all clearly written for the sake of the DM and players' freedom, and that's what these games are all about!
Amazing, grisly, and open-ended adventure design! All my critiques have already been noted by you and others, so I'll just lavish praise upon a few more parts:
The NPCs are overflowing with personality, and all feel like they belong to this place and no other. The horrible circumstances still allow for investigation, roleplay, and some potentially heatwarming outcomes. The title itself feels like something the Grimspoon kids would sing like a nursery rhyme. Having a wilderness hexcrawl, a small town, a tower AND dungeon, and unique NPCs and monsters all in one zine-sized package is impressive, and I never felt overwhelmed by it. Well tuned!
Hey, that's a way better line! Thanks for checking this out. And I've never heard of Kingdom of Loathing before now, either, so thanks for the recommendation!
Amazing premise, execution, layout, art, title, cover, and vibes. And your application of the Hex Flower system was perfect, this is exactly the sort of thing it's best for! If my Dolmenwood players ever eat dubious mushrooms (or if I just wanna run this as a standalone) it's gonna be a blast!
Also, for the multi-part Weird Creatures table, I love that there's technically a 1/1,728 chance of each one just being a Greg. Greg is truly everywhere.
This is now one of my favorites from this jam! As a child one of the first video games I ever saw was Myst III, and this adventure felt like a perfect fusion of that environmental puzzle/mystery design and classic D&D dungeoneering. (Also, sentipedes made me giggle.) The map did its job in being clear and helpful, and you gave the text room to breathe on the page. It's an adventure that wants to be run at the table right away without delay. Great job!
My friend's recent drawing inspired me to try again for the first time in 15+ years, so thanks for that! It makes me want to draw more silly little guys! And I can't wait to read your work tomorrow!!
That's great to hear! I've kept circling back to this one throughout the day. Also wanted to say that A: putting population limits on the encounter table is super good design and something I wish everyone did (me included), and B: you actually made the banshee's wail a really interesting and terrifying mechanic compared to how it normally works. Forgot to put those two in my first comment!
Somehow I missed that on my readthrough - that's amazing! Cearly my reading comprehension is going down the drain after enjoying so many modules in a single day.
Thanks so much! Glad these lil guys can spend some time in brains other than mine for a bit, they've been strange company for the last month. I love your flying goat-bandits!
This is fun to read, and I bet it's fun to play too! Also, those indigo sprites are precious and must be kept away from Torvik at all costs. And the cover art of the titular Magnetaur is honestly what drew me to check this out, it's super expressive.
Not only is this a heist AND a political conspiracy thriller, it's also allowing players to inhabit a very specific part of folklore and history through the medium of RPGs, which is one of my favorite kinds of adventure material. Your love of the history and magic come through loud and clear. Thanks for sharing your craft with us all!
The premise alone put a huge grin on my face, and the rest of the adventure doubles down; this is a beautiful way of handling devilry in an OSR game! Morpheus would be really fun to roleplay with his inability to lie. He bleeds that over-controlling DM energy, the whole "how dare you PCs mess up my story!" vibe. And the fact that you can literally deal damage to him by being creative is spot-on. A very imaginative adventure!
This is a pitch-perfect fantasy island adventure, tricornes of to you! It's also the Knave-est adventure I've read thus far, if that makes sense. You do a stupendous amount with very few words on each topic. And the descent from pirate-themed skullduggery to the unveiling of these terrific spirits must be a great experience at the table. I'm sure the nearly prose-less writing doesn't work for everyone, but it sure works for me!
Your writing drew me in; this is great! You really pinned down the tone, flavor, and specific mechanics of a fairy tale adventure. (I'm a huge Dolmenwood fan, so of course it reminds me of that. Also reminds me of the Sepulchre of Seven, if you've heard of that one!)
The Healing Pool mechanic is great, and the Greenrook Grimoire is one of my favorite cursed items thus far, especially with the easier method for destroying it also requiring the sacrifice of the healing pool. The characters are wonderful.
The formatting could use work, but the writing is strong enough that I'd never recommend taking a Winter's Daughter bullet-point approach; that could actually ruin it! Mostly just things like breaking up the bigger paragraphs a bit, using column layouts, adding minimaps where needed, and (once the jam is complete) even expanding the page limit to let the current writing breathe a bit more with those tweaks. Usability at the table is the only real stumbling block that I found here. Again, though, I think the writing on display is wonderful, crafted with great care and accuracy. I love the adventure, and want to run it!
And props to the artist, the cover is 100% perfect for the adventure. I aIso agree with GiantBrain that the map should be at the front, forever and always!
Now that's a wild ride! You've got a real madhouse going on here, and it seems really open to player agency. And you managed to make Dregnora deeply disturbing without it feeling juvenile or crass. One thing I'd love is if there was a hyperlink back to the main map on all the pages with location descriptions, or even some minimaps inserted into the black spaces those pages had. Maybe that's just personal preference though. Great job to your whole team!
