I loved some of the other entries to the Duet RPG Jam, but I've got to be honest… Agent of the Throne is on another level.
We couldn't playtest this entry, but that's just because we didn't have enough time to do it justice. This is some commercial quality content. I'm surprised that it was submitted to a 3-days jam, and I can only assume that it's based on previous work by Toastmortem. (To be clear: that is OK and not forbidden by the rules.) It's also immaculately edited, with great pagesetting and nice, if sparse, art.
Agent of the Throne is a meticulously thought out OSR for one player and one DM. It has detailed rules for building a "retinue"–a party of NPCs following and supporting the player. That's a brilliant idea to make up for the lack of a party of adventurers.
Throughout the rulebook, you can see glimpses of an interesting setting. In pure OSR fashion, the setting is communicated less through evocative prose and more through the rules themselves. It's just enough background to get your creative juices flowing, without being overbearing. The gameplay itself is a brilliant mix of investigation and combat, supported by smart ideas such as the "Subtlety" rules. The authors even give advice on how to structure a compelling narrative.
Agent of the Throne is a rich "duet" RPG that begs to be played. Kudos to the authors! This is the kind of stuff makes me want to organize another Duet Jam tomorrow.
This is more of a sketch than an actual game, so I gave it low ratings overall. There is some irony, a few random events and dice rolls, and that is it.
However, the initial concept of a DM mastering the adventure of another DM made me smile. It's nice in a "meta" kind of way. Maybe there is an idea for a game in here, and I'd love to see the result if you decide to build that game!
The concept in this one blew me away. Among the games in the Duet Jam, this is the one that could only be a two-players game. Brilliant way to meet the idea of the jam!
The writing is also great: well organized, witty and even poignant at times. It really made me want to play straight away. Full marks on Creativity and Writing from me.
The rock-paper-scissors gameplay loop has something missing. I gave it a low rating, because it doesn't quite work just yet.
During our gameplay, we had a lot of fun until we got stuck in a prolonged duel. It was clear from the first few turns that my character was going to succumb, but it took dozens of turns for my seemingly inevitable death to actually happen. I think that there is some mechanics missing–some way to provide unexpected comebacks and twists of fate. Maybe some way for action cards to get back into play? Honestly, if you find a way to make the loop less deterministic, The Duel might be a commercial game. It's that good. Thank you for creating and submitting it!
This is basically a solo RPG roguelite. Excellent idea, with plenty of nice touches! We loved building the dungeon with playing cards while we worked through it. We got wiped out during the first boss fight, but that's expected in a game like this. 😀 If we'd had more time, we wouldn't have hesitated to start from scratch.
We had some trouble understanding the rules in some cases. Maybe the text needs some reorganizing, and the two pages seem to be swapped–but that's probably on us, for having such a tight deadline in the Duet RPG Jam. It's unclear how you source weapons in the beginning, but we got lucky: we entered the dungeon without weapons (reckless, I know) but my Architect created their own sword, and then we got additional gear from a trader early in the game.
We had to come up with our own simple rules for combat with two players and an enemy, but that was easy. (Basically, we had the enemy select the target at random before every turn).
Overall, this was really fun to play. Thank you for it! I gave top ratings for Creativity, because I loved the "roguelite with cards" concept so much. Playability is also brilliant, even though I shaved off one star because of the obscure points in the rules. I'll post pictures of our game in the Community forum. Please do more jams!
This is confusing: I don't see any game at that page. But when I try to generate a link for you to submit, itch.io tells me that the game at that URL has already been submitted.
We have no idea what is happening, so we just moved the deadline forward by one day, in case you or other people still want to submit. After all the point is building something, not the competition. @NiceCeramics, please let us know if you still have trouble submitting! Maybe try to unsubmit/resubmit and see if that works.
Thank you for submitting, friend! We did realize that the tight timeline was more vexing than we expected, so we'll probably make it last longer next time.
Thank you, all who subscribed! We had two games submitted–both looking great.
If you're still looking to submit: there is a short grace period available, so just ask if you have a complete game and you came in late.
If you didn't submit: what can we do differently next time so that it's easier for you to complete your game? Feel free to answer me in private or in this thread.
Folks, we reworded the "Self-contained" rule to make it more clear. It was:
"Please submit a playable game, not a supplement. Except for common items such as dice, the game should include everything needed for two people to play."
Now it states clearly that you can base your game on an existing Open Game System.
Hey, Thanlis! Thank you for asking! I got a similar question and answered it here. The gist of it is that we wanted to encourage experimentation. But you're the second person to ask, so I realize that we probably made it too constraining.
So, if the jam goes well and we make another, we already decided to make it longer next time! (Not this time, because it doesn't feel fair to change the dates after a few people already joined).
