itch.io

Excited to check this out! FYI Jennell is spelled with an 'e'

I'm sorry it missed out on being a finalist, it was in my personal top 8. Great writing and art!

Nice to know about your inspiration, I can definitely appreciate the more extreme consequences.

The art and concept are both really interesting! A little town with a dark secret.

I think these kind of loosely scripted event-based adventures can be tricky to run because they often rely on PCs taking a specific action. In this case, I'm not sure what motivation the PCs would have to check out the vineyard house basement. From what I gather, the PCs are hired as caravan guards to protect the shipment on the road and not to raid the vineyard. After the first attack, I think a GM would need to add some clues/hooks that encourage the players to investigate the vineyard. It might be easier instead if the characters arrive in town in the immediate aftermath of the first attack, and a desperate victim/witness can provide some direction to the source for the players.

I also wonder if it would be a more interesting development to have a targeted revenge curse. What if specific NPCs were called out as members of the angry mob responsible, and only they were the targets of the vengeful mannequins? Some families could be broken instead of completely wiped out. Damaged characters being more compelling than dead characters and all that.

This adventure has very charming art and a cute concept. I love the idea of substituting larger monster variants to account for the shrunk PCs!

I found a few aspects of the layout that could be improved to make it more usable to a GM. I think this could easily be condensed into a one or two page dungeon, especially since there are no unique monster stats required and there are only a handful of areas. There are several ways to use the page space better. The page numbers are the largest size text on each page but they don't seem to be used or referenced at all.  It is also strange that half a page is devoted to a refuse table without any interesting interactions in the results. Searching through refuse can be fun if there's something interesting/unique to find.

Besides using space more effectively, the utility for a GM at the table could be improved. The room keys on the map are not used anywhere besides on the map itself.  Looking for a location description requires a finding the number in the map legend, noting the title, and flipping through the text to find that title. This could be as simple as reading the description directly off the map (for a one-page dungeon), or following the numerical key directly to the description. 

I'm a big fan of pirate-themed adventures and this one is solid!

The map looks fantastic. It could be a little easier to read if the walls were drawn with slightly thicker lines to help them stand out. With the mention of the natural chimney, I find myself wondering what the island above the grotto is like. It would be nice to have even a couple bullets for direction on that, plus some indication of the terrain going up from the beach or ocean entrances. Otherwise, there's no direct way for a GM to make use of that alternate chimney entrance.

There's lots of things for players to interact with here and it's all described clearly so a GM could run it with minimal prep. The traps, castaways, organ encounter, and statue are great. I do wish that the encounter with Captain Marrow was presented with a roleplay / non-combat option, however. My favourite ghost encounters usually involve some kind of mystery or unfinished business that the players can engage with. A lot of the fun of ghosts comes from letting the players have something to solve (such as an unexpected love story, seeking justice for a secret crime, returning something that was stolen, etc.), instead of just a combat slog. I also wonder if it would be fun to add a brief ghost haunting to the encounter table (even as an alternative light extinguisher to the tidal waves) to make things more cohesive.

This is easily my favourite of all the submissions and I'm puzzled it's not at the top of the rankings. There are so many things for the players to interact with. The boulder that might get "inked", the unique monsters, the hidden passphrase, the phantom chariot, the secret chamber, random teleportation, and the miniature colosseum interaction (!!!) are all excellent, to name only some of the stuff packed in here.

It's presented in a clear and concise way, with a fun introduction that incorporates player input into some of the magical effects in the dungeon. The text is so easy to follow that even as a novice GM I feel confident that I could run it on the fly, with maybe only a few minutes of prep to review the monster stats/effects.

It's clearly a deadly one-shot / challenge dungeon for experienced players who know what they're getting into in terms of lethality. Even though my regular game is a campaign for beginner players, I could easily see myself using this as a fun interlude or an "establishing shot" for a transition to a harsher Red Sands / Dark Sun type region/setting.

I love the way the map is drawn. 

I think this could be a fun one-shot or bandit lair in a hexcrawl if random encounters (perhaps a haunting?) and some rumours/hooks are added. With the text alone, I'm struggling to think of a compelling reason for exploring the site instead of just taking shelter to wait out the storm.

For better usability, I would like to see the doors and ladders mentioned in both room descriptions, especially if they are locked. Otherwise, if the players are in room 1, the GM won't know that one of the doors in that room (the one leading to room 3) is locked until they read all the adjacent room descriptions too. I think the author understands this concept at least partially because this is done for things like sounds that can be heard from adjacent rooms.

I would also like to see some more interesting magic items to find. The locket and speak with dead scroll are interesting/evocative. However, the +1 sword and +1 dagger aren't as fun. 

I liked the statuette easter egg. I wonder if the pose of each statuette can be highlighted as a subtle clue that they fit together.

I like the illustrations here! I think there's room for improvement in a few areas to make the content usable for me. 

The village of Ucksol has short descriptions of districts but no tangible points of interest or NPCs. The town crier is mentioned but doesn't have a name, personality, or anything to interact with. I think a potential target when including a town could be at least 3 specific points of interest and 3 NPCs with clear interaction possibilities.

The actual hunt adventure hook felt underutilized, despite being the name of the adventure. In the text, it seems to be filler - the characters see the boar after wandering around in the forest and then follow it to the dungeon. I would love to see even some simple landmarks in the forest with tracks/clues that the players could follow/investigate. I'm imagining a small pointcrawl from the town through the forest to the dungeon (or to some alternate landmarks).

The dungeon itself seems to be linear, with minimal opportunities for interaction. I would love to see some branching paths/loops to allow the players to make choices and explore. If I understand the riddle correctly, the solution is crumpled on the floor in the room directly before. Having a more interesting dungeon layout would let the characters earn the answer through exploration and play. Instead of labelling the exit explicitly, you could make it an alternate entrance that clever players can find by searching. It would also be fun to have more traps/toys/factions to interact with. Most of what I saw in the dungeon is picking up items and encountering standard monsters.