Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is a 15 page module for Mothership by Marcus M. In it, you investigate a research vessel that has been trying to re-ignite a dying star. I was provided a complementary copy by the author.
Layout is minimalist and elegant; chunky text which is easy to read, clear headings, minimal and consistent use of highlighting. It’s simple, elegant. This is a zero-budget affair, so there’s minimal art here. Art always brings something extra, and it is missed here, but everything works in its’ absence. Certainly, familiarity with the genre that inspired the module — to me movies like Sunshine and Solaris and their very existential, character-driven horror are what it puts me in mind of — would give me images to work with to begin with, but also question precisely what kind of art would work best in the first place.
The key is a little confusing, and modifying it or providing additional instructions on start of play would make it easier for me to intuit how things will play out. How is the party docking with the ship? It’s implied you’re docking at the bridge from the order; if this is the case, a lot of the twists will be ruined through the approach through (2) very early in the session. I think the intent, though, is to enter through the airlock in (8), which is off to the side, and roughly in the middle of the ship. In a 10-room space, with almost no locked doors, it will be easy for the clues scattered across the ship to be short-circuited by access to the observation room with these spatial choices. You don’t need a linear spaceship for this to work, but simply placing the airlock at one end of the ship and the big reveal roughly at the other end, means the exploration is more likely going to encompass most of the space.
There are a bunch of missteps here that suggest to me that this was playtested by the author rather than by someone else; the ordering of the information is all over the place, to the point where it was hard to review because I kept taking notes that were then rendered inaccurate in retrospect. What that tells me, is that the information design here hasn’t been thought through: I kept having questions with no idea what the answer was. This is only 16 pages, but I would’ve given up on this myself largely because it would’ve been easy to answer those questions when they come up. There’s a corpse in (3) that isn’t mentioned in the key, just the crew descriptions. There are forsaken easter eggs in the crew descriptions. The main antagonist has no concrete location, and there is a random encounter table buried at the back. Advice for running the module is at the back, but honestly it should be at the front — the implication is that you’re likely to encounter the escape pods first, but this is buried at the end, and when you get the escape pod information, you aren’t sure why it’s there. Also hidden at the back is the fact that there’s a countdown until the star explodes (this feels essential), as well as hooks and incentives. There are more issues here, but it’s all out of order, and so it makes it very hard to follow.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star appears inspired by a very different of space horror than what is most commonly written into Mothership, and I think that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star could have far more interestingly leant into that harder. I want a little more psychology in there. I want the antagonist and the crew to be untrustworthy narrators. I want the PCs, if they are infected, to be unsure whether or not what they’re experiencing is real, at least for a while. Of late, I’ve seen more Mothership modules exploring a wider variety of themes — I think there is an opportunity missed by making this effectively another monster-on-a-spaceship Mothership module, given the more introspective horror in the apparent inspirations.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is neat little module, with a unique antagonist, and it takes some directions that most Mothership modules don’t take. 16 pages isn’t very many pages to read through to figure out what’s going on. It’s just a little disappointing, because this could’ve been a great module, had more thought gone into the information design and perhaps more into playtesting or developmental editing. Just give yourself some time and have more patience with it than I had, and if you’re one of the many people who enjoy incorporating small one-shot or two-shot Mothership modules into an ongoing campaign Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is honestly a no-brainer to incorporate.
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
Mana Meltdown is a 38 page module for Old School Essentials written, laid out and illustrated by Lazy Litch. In it you battle rivals to escape a collapsing psionic tomb. I backed this on Kickstarter (at first I said the recent Kickstarter, but let’s be honest, I’m playing catch up on modules a year old at this point).
The set up to Mana Meltdown is pleasingly old school. The players are dumped in this dungeon, equiped with their magical uniforms and a healing potion, and told to recover a red coffin and as many of the six living weapons as you can. You’re also told not to return that same coffin, in a nice touch, by an unknown hand, forcing you to struggle with your goals immediately. The set up feels very tournament: You’re immediately in competition with three factions, which are the key “characters” in the module.
These three factions, although you initially meet them at a distance during the dragonfly race (yeah, that’s right, a race between giant mechanical dragonflies across a magical desert), are just exquisite. They need detail to work, and you’re given it. Other authors take note. They have tactics, goals, likely alliances to form if they hit roadblocks, and most importantly 5 or 6 roleplay notes that make them easy to run: “ Occasionally fall out of sync with one another, need to speak out loud to restore psychic synthesis”, or “Upon seeing a construct die, whispers: “They made you wrong. Not enough iterations.”. You can just flip to their page if you encounter them, and it’s not too difficult to adopt the right mannerisms or choices.
Said dragonfly race isn’t as compelling as the one in Song of the Frogacle, but it’s not bad in the framework of Old School Essentials, featuring a series of actions resolved by ability checks, with a score for a success, which is compared to a set score for each of the competing factions. Your position in the race determines when you arrive in the timeline of the titular reactor meltdown — theoretically as late as the 4th item in the 12 item countdown. The reason your compared against a set score is because timeline itself assumes that certain factions are present at certain times — Myrioth for example, will always have been present for 3 “segments” by the time segment 5 activates, which is important because the timeline is how the factions are directed around the map.
My major issue with the writing here early on is the sheer amount of forsaken easter eggs buried here — a page on the hermit queen, a page on the dragonflies, a page on Myrioth, a page and a half on the Artificer — this is all in the front half of the module and I can’t see a clear way for any of this to be discovered by the players. It’s fine for things to be here simply for the referee to make sense of what’s happening, but this is over 10% of the whole page count. I’d prefer for this to be buried in the dungeon itself, and doled out to the players.
The dungeon itself is 4 levels, built in decreasing dimensions — the first 2 being 3-dimensional, the last being 1-dimensional. The special magical uniforms mentioned up top allow the players to traverse these dimensional “crunches” without being annihilated. Each level has its own random events, and its own objectives, as well as a series of if/then triggers when the players do specific things, as well as a risk of the Artificer’s ghost interfering…is this sounding like a lot? It is, especially when actually tracking the timeline. Luckily, there’s a spread of trackers and references that you can print out to attach to your referee screen or put on the tabletop. These are really handy, but the glaring problem for me is that I don’t know when to use them: There’s no indication regarding when to advance the timeline that I could find on a word search of the document. Typical OSE random encounters are replaced with a more complex and interesting random encounter table, but one that is rolled “when there’s a lull in the action”. I’d likely run it on a timer every 2 turns as per the OSE rules, although that may result in a higher incidence of encounters than the rules as written. I’d prefer greater clarity here — I’m happy to roll with my own vibes here, but I’d like to know with more clarity what was intended so I know if I’m making it harder or softer.
The dungeon itself, shows some learnings from Wind Wraith — each area has alternative routes in it, as well as the core puzzle. When Lazy Litch’s writing is on, it’s on, and as usual that’s in character and creature descriptions, filled with gems like “Its illusions are tinged with a complex sorrow.” and “Created to greedily eat the holy scriptures of enemy nations”. I find the keying itself a little hard to wrap my head around, though, partially because of the formatting (“Locked ornate red door [Symbol art on ground in front depicts the sun being cut in two by a sword, bleeding light] Inside [Stairs descend into a dissected shrine: stacks of cross-section cuts of holy marble pillars[…]”), and partially because what it’s describing is extra-dimensional and weird, so that format makes it even harder for me to describe something already very strange. Maybe that’s the point? You’re suppose to have trouble with what’s in these rooms? But as a referee, I would struggle to run these rooms. Add to that that that I’d expect the objectives to be hard to figure out — if they weren’t spelt out for the referee I’d have no clue, and they aren’t spelt out for the players. How are the players supposed to know the blue key is needed to open the Microscopic Museum? It’s not clear to me at all. This is a one-person module, and I think this is where it shows — it needed an editing pass to realise that, while the complexities are all-in-all good, a lot of it’s contained in the author’s head, and making it legible to another referee requires a little extra work that isn’t put in here.
In terms of information design and layout, I struggle a bit too. Each level starts its keying again from A, which means you can get confused if flicking through at speed, and it uses colour coding to tell these sections apart, which while thoughtful I think needs to be bolder to be effective. The page number positioning works just fine on single column pages, but when it switches to double columns it becomes unintuitive, particularly given I’m used to rooms being numbered and not alphabetised — once I realised what was going on it was fine, but I had to figure it out. Coloured highlighting is used for things like stat blocks and uncoloured for other points of interest, which is a clever way to avoid having italics and underlining all in the same text, which can make things harder to read for me. Italics are saved for quotations, which I like as an affect, although it’s overused in the early pages. The art, also as always by Lazy Litch, is exceptional, although sometimes it feels like it wasn’t drawn with the page it’s placed on in mind, feeling crowded out and uncomfortable. It needs more room to breathe, I think, and this module is very densely populated.
There are some things I’d need to do to make this work for me; Transcribe the text fragments to dribble in the interesting world-building, for example, and provide ways to let them know what the changing objectives are on each level. Honestly, this could be as simple as a sci-fantasy telegram when you hit each milestone, or some campfire moments with a different rival, who have little interest in you personally. And I’d need to come up with my own little descriptions for most of the spaces, so I’m not winging it. That’s no little amount of work. But it is the fun kind of prep: Pre-recording messages and burning the edges of calligraphy scrawled paper, daydreaming mind-bending descriptions. Is it worth it? That depends on how much you like the source material.
Mana Meltdown is a module filled with stellar writing, interesting characters and competition, fantastic art, and mind-bending concepts set in an off-kilter, science-fantasy world filled with clone-coffins, mechanical dragonfly races, and living nuclear bombs designed to destroy gods. But, in order to run it, you’ll need to put a bit of effort into annotating it, re-reading it, and adding in vectors for the players to realise important facts and objectives, as I mentioned earlier. I’m seeing huge improvements from one Lazy Litch product to the next, and they are in my opinion a creator that’s quickly developing into a powerhouse, so if you’ve enjoyed their previous stuff, I also wouldn’t hesitate to pick this up. I’ll definitely keep a close eye on what they make next. If the appeal of everything in that first list is strong enough, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that the work needed to make it legible is worthwhile, if you have the time to prep it. If you don’t want to do that kind of work, or if mind-bending spaces aren’t what you’re looking for in a dungeon, the concept might still win you over. Mana Meltdown is a flawed but interesting module, but I suspect for most the interesting heavily outweighs the flaws.
Make Dice Work For You is a series where I’ll regularly talk through a new way to use dice in your game. It came out of conversation surrounding What to randomise when you’re randomising, and what advanced techniques you can use for specific needs. I’ll where I know, but please help me out if you know a citation and I don’t have one, or if you know an example that I can add!
I just made up the term river dice. Let me know if someone else gave this table a name first.
The basic structure of a river table is a list of items that is larger than the die you’re rolling, and a trigger that adds +1 to future dice rolls whenever you trigger it.
The effect of this is a table that through encountering the trigger, you’ll be exposed to new items until you reach the final item.
Requirements: River tables can’t have a bell-curve distribution (i.e. are typically a single die roll), and their final item must be “X or greater”.
Example
Roll 1d4 whenever you enter a room. Every 10 minutes, increase the die by an additional +1 for future rolls.
1-2. You hear someone approaching.
3-5. Martha, goblin maid enters the room, dusting. She flees if threatened, but otherwise assumes you’re supposed to be here.
6-8. Rufus, goblin guard, stumbles drunkenly through the room. He may not notice anyone depending on whether you’re hiding. You don’t have to hide well. If he does notice you, he’ll raise the alarm to summon 2d4 additional guards
9-10. Gregory, goblin guard enters the room, performing a security screen prior to his boss returning home. He will raise the alarm to summon 2d4 additional guards unless you have correct identification.
11+. The Wizard Chartreuse arrives in the Foyer. They will walk swiftly by the most direct route to their study, and will recognise any intruders.
Considerations: The difference between the dice size, the size of the bonus, and the how long the list is, will determine how quickly the “climax” of the take is reached.
Alternatives: Increase die size when triggered instead of +1 if you want the earlier entries to remain available. Decrease the die size if you want the table to “hone in” on specific results when triggered.
You may have noticed that a common theme in my reviews is that I criticise people’s random tables: Their wilderness generators, their wandering monsters, their weather tables, their treasure tables. Why? Because often I see randomisation misused, particularly when taking the form of a random table. So, I’m going to break down a few of the ways that randomisation can be misused, and a few questions you can ask yourself to identify if you’re using it well. I’m writing this primarily for use in modules, but the principles can be easily generalised to broader TTRPG prep and game design.
Note: I’m numbering these “errors”, not because they have any type of hierarchy, but simply so I can refer back to them at a later stage. Also, I’m certain I’ll have forgotten to include some types of error, so I will come back and update this as I think of more stuff that’s relevant (or if you alert me to something I haven’t thought of that I think belongs here).
Randomisation is almost always a stand in for another, more complex system. If you identify what it’s standing in for, it’ll be easy to see if you’ve made a mistake. Some common things randomisation stands in for include:
The predictable daily movements of people through a lived in space
Unpredictable changes in weather conditions or other effects like mutagens
Knowing what a character you’ve never met before would do
The nature of a building in a large city
The infinite potential of a closed container
There are other common uses. One common other use for randomisation where it isn’t a stand in, is where it is used to introduce dramatic tension. For this, the players need to know what the results might be and need to be hoping for a specific one. The obvious example of this is, of course, the to-hit roll which might — just might — score a critical hit. But, that d6 you roll in Old School Essentials to find out if you’re going to have a random encounter? That’s also an example of this. Another common use of randomisation where it isn’t a stand in is in the form of abstract prompts. An example of this is a spread of Dixit cards because they have no intrinsic meaning but instead help you create meaning from nothing. Spark tables are another example of this. These kinds of randomisation don’t really play by the same rules, so these errors don’t apply there.
What about replayability?
A bunch of arguments for committing a bunch of the errors I’m about to list hinge around the fact that committing them might potentially increase the game’s replayability. Your argument is probably right: committing some of these errors may increase replayability. However, I don’t think that the value of that replayability is greater than the cost of the replayability. There are probably more costs than these, but certainly those costs include:
The verisimilitude of your world being compromised by the wrong things showing up too often, too rarely, or at the wrong times
Your carefully worded, thought out, and refined results not seeing the play or gravitational affect they deserve in the world you’re writing about
Referees or players that are less engaged by random tables than you, being turned off by the slow pace of your book, and never engaging with your module
As a referee, I have never experienced giving the same players playing the same characters the same scene twice and seen them acting the same way. There’s so much unpredictability inherent in this hobby, that I just don’t think replayability merits significant consideration when it comes to module design. Your module is probably immensely replayable without your putting any effort into it.
I suggest we focus, instead, on writing excellent tables.
Type 1 Error: Poor choice of distribution
Be intentional about whether you’re utilising a flat or a bell-curved distribution in your randomisation. A brief refresher: If you roll 2 or more dice together, the probability of the numbers in the middle of your available “slots” being rolled are higher than the ones on the edges (the lowest and highest numbers).
From Anydice. This is 2d10, and will become relevant in the example, below. The edge cases are less likely to occur than the middle slots.Also from Anydice. This is 1d10, and as you can see, you can’t really see anything on the graph because all the results are the same.
So, if you’re choosing to roll 2d6, you need to consider how often things are going to show up — it’s not just a handy way to have 12 items (sic) when you only have d6s to roll. And, if you’re rolling 1d6 it’s important to remember that the 6th option is just as likely to show up as the 1st one.
Batman Roleplaying Game (1989): Poor choice of distribution. The most likely villain to occur here is Kobra, followed by the Joker and The Mad Hatter, while classic villains are reserved for the higher scores which have chances of occurring as low as 1% (this is why I used d10s, above, feel free to refer back).
If you want more information about probability and distribution, I’d check Lyme’s primer or AnyDice’s articles. There are a bunch of advanced techniques you can use, but honestly knowing the difference between a flat and a bell curved distribution will cover most people’s needs.
Ask yourself if some items on this list are more likely to happen than others.
Type 2 Error: Poor choice of governance
A random table has to be specific to when it’s used. If you start using a single table to govern multiple circumstances, you’ll weaken the “power” (for want of a better word) of the random table in the circumstance in which it is used.
In my hypothetical module Dragon-Spearers, random encounters are used when moving around the wilderness, typically for most OSR-style wildernesses. But, in individual keys, it’s also used for filling monster lairs, if the party approaches the decomposing bodies, if you fail to cross the river fast enough, and on certain weather rolls. These circumstances really require their own bespoke tables or specific examples of what might happen. Why would bad weather trigger the same selection of encounters as a monster lair?
If you’re referring to a random table designed for another use, ask yourself if this circumstance warrants its own random table.
Type 3 Error: Poor choice of scope
When you’re building a dungeon with only 6 rooms, having 1d20 random encounters means a bunch of those will never occur in a single play through. If you’re building a dungeon with 30 rooms, having 1d6 random encounters means a bunch of those will recur in a single playthrough. If I’m super-generous and assume 3 rolls per room because the player characters are loud and dilly-dallying, a 6-room dungeon will still see only 12 rolls, and hence most likely only see 2 of your entries.
Basically, I’d suggest trying to intuit what your dungeon needs, and try to match the scope of your tables to the scope of your module, based on the instructions you’re using for rolling on it.
From Against the Cult of the Reptile God: This 6-item table is used for a 20-room dungeon (plus 10 subrooms). There’s going to be a lot of repetition, despite the instruction to roll every 3 turns, rather than the typical 2 turns for the era.
Ask yourself does this random table have insufficient items to satisfy the instructions I’ve given for rolling on it, or does it have too many?
Type 4 Error: Sub- and co-tables
If I have to roll multiple times on different random lists or tables to get a single result, it’s usually boring and time consuming. Almost all tables are better off being a giant array with very specific results, i.e. distributing all of those sub-table rolls into one extra-big table. Don’t forget, we have tons of options for weirdly numbered tables using the d100 method: d44 with 16 results and d88 with 64 results, plus you can combine any two or three dice for a unique number of entries. The reason there’s been a trend towards overloading random tables lately, is to reduce the number of rolls necessary to get results.
I6 Ravenloft: Unnecessary sub-tables. As the sub-table is used here to generate different chances of occurring, substitute this for a random table with a different distribution (see Type 1 errors).
Ask yourself if you have a good reason to be asking someone to roll on that second random table.
Type 5 Error: A concrete entry would be better
Intention and context is really important when identifying a type 5 error, which applies almost exclusively to when randomisation is used to generate content. If your wilderness only contains enough space for 3 villages, but you include a wilderness generator with enough information to generator 12 villages, most of the work you’ve done will be wasted at most tables that are playing your game. I strongly recommend in these cases, that you should put your best writing into just making 3 villages. The same goes for random character generators that will only be used once or twice.
In my hypothetical piracy module Black Tath’s Trove, all the islands are generated procedurally, by combining a list of 30 terrains and 30 features, requiring the referee to improvise a new island based on this huge number of potential combinations. However, in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t expect my campaign of the Black Tath’s Trove will last 900 islands, let alone my imagination remain capable of improvising new islands based on these increasingly repetitive combinations. The 30-odd pages I spent on these lists of things to combine to make islands could instead have been a significant number of unique islands based on exactly the same content — at least an isle per page or 30 islands — plenty to sustain any campaign for a decently long time.
Ask yourself what the benefit of this being a random table is, over it being a concrete thing, and weigh that benefit over the benefit of the concrete thing.
Draw the rest of the owl
One final thing before I conclude: I’m assuming through all of this that your baseline random table is a good one. That the writing is excellent. That it’s meaningful in context. That it’s tied into your world. That it’s evocative. If you write a random table that isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter if you don’t commit any of these errors, your random table will still suck.
Here I’ve written a random encounter table for a small fortress of about 8 rooms, where some goblins live. Does this random table answer all the questions satisfactorily?
2d4
Encounter
2.
4 goblins
3.
3 goblins
4.
2 goblins
5.
1 goblin
6.
2 goblins
7.
3 goblins
8.
1 goblin boss, 3 goblins
Are items on this list more likely to happen than others?
What is the benefit of this being a random table, over it being a concrete thing?
Do you have a good reason to be asking someone to roll on that second random table?
Does this random table have insufficient or too many items to satisfy the instructions I’ve given for rolling on it?
Does this circumstance warrant its own random table?
I think it does. It’s just boring, nevertheless. Write more interesting stuff, if you want to fix it. Look for three cumulative features (although you might be looking for other things, based on the context or what you’re randomising):
Always make your entries evocative in some way (imply things about the world or the characters — all of these items try to do this)
Often make your entries interconnected in some way (items 2, 5, 6 and 8 all relate specifically to other characters or spaces)
Occasionally make your entries dynamic (items 2, 6 and 7 change depending on what has happened in other spaces or with other characters, or are impacted by them)
2d4
Encounter
2.
4 goblins, on patrol, wielding machetes. Their leader, Grug, has a magical whistle which summons the ferret in the walls, to activate the traps in rooms 2, 6, or 5.
3.
3 goblins, in clothes marked with a shark tooth, playing cards.
4.
2 goblins, patrolling but deep in conversation. They can be heard in the next room, arguing about whether the latest book in the Black Lotus series is as compelling as the earlier ones.
5.
Hermit, sketching still life. Actually his name’s Kulk, they just call him Hermit because he the other goblins won’t be his friend. They just don’t get art.
6.
Frannie and Herb, being intimate in a corner. If they notice you, they grab their clothes and flee to (5). They aren’t found on a second roll, and instead you find…signs.
7.
3 goblins, in clothes marked with a shark tooth, practicing machete-fighting with bamboo machetes. It takes a round for them to grab their actual weapons if they’re surprised.
8.
Shark-tooth the Bossblin (from 8), his graft-surgeon (from 9), and 2 guard-gobbos wielding stonefish-tipped clubs.
The goal here, is to make your random table immediately engaging, even when there are only a few items. Always evocative, often interconnected, occasionally dynamic.
Wrapping up
So, when you write a random table, consider asking yourself these questions:
What the benefit of this being a random table, over it being a concrete thing? If there isn’t one, or the benefit doesn’t outweigh the cost, replace the random table with a person, place, or thing.
Are some items on this random table are more likely to happen than others? If yes, consider a curved distribution. If not, consider a flat distribution.
Does this random table have insufficient items or too many to satisfy the instructions I’ve given for rolling on it? If so, kill some darling entries or write some new ones.
If you’re referring to a random table designed for another use, does this circumstance warrants its own random table? If it does, write a new one.
If there are co-tables or sub-tables, do you have a good reason to be asking someone to roll on that second random table? If not, shake and combine.
Of course all of this is awfully subjective, depending on the context of your module, your intent as the author, and a ton of other things. Being able to use randomisation effectively in your modules is but one tool I’m hoping to add to your toolbox. I hope you find a place to use it.
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
Providers is a 38 page module for Mothership by Joshua Kramer, with portrait art by Sean McCoy. It describes the Shaletown colony and the galactic cult that controls it. I backed this when it crowdfunded, I think.
The first 26 pages cover the colony itself. The Church of the Providers and the law they lay down open the book, with 5 pages of mechanics on them. The Church here doesn’t appear to have any beliefs, but rather it is a scheme where the more you pay in donations the more privileges you’re afforded in the colony. It’s quite transparently capitalist; a fact pleasingly confused by the fact that the Invisible Hand appears (and is treated by the game) to be a supernatural force. The heat and retaliation mechanics mirror stress and panic, but instead relate to illegal activities. I quite enjoy the retaliation table: “Pacification trawler.W:3(60) AP:10. Wide, unwieldy, hovers at 10m up. Drifts slowly, floods the street with tear gas.” I imagine these will result in some really fun situations. I also love that this is, despite the despotic justice system, in many ways a utopia: Healthcare here is free, for example. Special skills bring a degree of interactivity to otherwise uninteresting locations, which is a clever choice. A rare misstep is the placement of the random encounter tables: Awkwardly located together after the locations. I’m reading in digital, so I hope these are cleverly placed in the middle of the zine, but I don’t think the page numbers quite add up. The random encounters themselves are really fun, and feature a lot of interesting but mundane encounters as well as more intense hooks, and being the chaos of a big colony well. Then we have 4 characters that I think will serve as points of disruption to the typical goings on of the colony, effectively the factions here. They are super compelling, easy to run, I love them. Other authors take note: This is how it’s done. And here, where most Mothership modules fall short on evocative writing, this one brings the thunder, with stuff like “What does he fear? As simple as it gets — death. There’s nothing after this for an android and he doesn’t intend to face it.” and “If you’ve caught heat, she can make it go away. If you need money, she can pay you. All she asks in return is some help.” I’m excited to bring these characters to life as a referee. What’s missing? Any other NPCs — I counted only 2, although I could’ve missed some, but I want far more to help me populate a city. The module comes with an additional bonus 10 peacekeepers, but I’m more looking for the people who simply live here. There is also a bonus set of cards for PCs that tie them into the world a little more — I really wish these bonus stretch goals had been incorporated into the core book better, though, as they gesture towards gaps I’d like filled.
The final 8 pages cover 2 scenarios, The Sale and The Tower. The Sale is just that: Smuggle something to a buyer in the Scrapyard for sale. It’s an introduction to the colony, very brief, and while it introduces themes and the atmosphere that the author expects, it’s a bit fluffy for me; an encounter more than anything else. It might not even take some tables an entire session, which could leave you scrambling. That said, it introduces you to the Peacekeepers straight off the bat, and you’re likely to get some heat, and also likely to get the attention of at least one of the core NPCs, which is a fun way to kick off your time in Shaletown. The Tower, on the other hand, is a heist on the most powerful organisation on the planet, to do damage to the Providers. This is a late-campaign type scenario, but it’s well set out, a really fun micro-heist. That said, by contrast with the core setting, both of these scenarios are slight and a little anti-climactic. I wish we had more here.
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but Providers leaves a lot of questions unanswered, that I’d like to see answered. Why do the Peacekeepers have divine powers? What do the Church of Providers actually believe? Why are there criminals in this abundant, utopian version of capitalism? These are all worth exploring, and make it a unique take on Mothership, but they are answers you’re left to ponder yourself. I think whether or not Providers is for you comes down to whether or not you think those questions are worth exploring and whether you want to answer them them yourself, or be provided with a canonical answer (you aren’t).
I love some of the layout choices here. Black highlighting is used for special skill related knowledge. The maps underlie the key, subtly reinforcing your navigation without you having to page back and forth or rely on section headers. Keying is highlighted and very clear. Page references are throughout, and underlining is used for all other highlights, much as bolding is used in the OSE house style. This isn’t a crowded layout; plenty of white space brings the aesthetic of the Church’s utopia to the page. The art works excellently for the page, despite being very abstract in nature, because of clever layout choices, and the maps being colour coordination to the pages, bringing a huge amount of visual interest without a huge amount of art (I count only 11 pieces of non-map art). This is smart visual design.
Providers is an excellent setting and colony, with a notable lack of NPCs filling it, and some lightweight scenarios attached. For me, while Providers has me excited for Joshua Kramer’s future work, the content here is not for me: I want more compelling scenarios to give me a reason to be in Shaletown; at the moment, its inspiration for me to write my own scenarios. I’m not looking for that, but if you are, and the concepts left hanging here are ones you want to explore, this is compelling: The nature of religion and the supernatural, the insidiousness of capitalism in a utopian society, what drives people to crime when healthcare and food are cheap, and how people respond when gods are real, are all pretty compelling questions posed and not answered here. You could make a campaign out of this backbone, if you were sufficiently compelled, and the characters that are here are ones you want to spend time with. If that is something that sounds like your jam, and you want to explore this twist on Mothership with your own expansions, I’d check Providers out.
I’m a sucker for these challenges. But, every day feels like an overcommitment. So I’m toning down the expectations, and I’m going to post something every week, here.My two favourite cities are Fever Dreaming Marlinko and of course, Duskvol. I want to try to meet Marlinko’s scale with Duskvol’s detail, which hopefully will be a good middle ground to create something meaningful in 52 weeks. I’ll use this and the lists by Joey and Boglins in their City26 posts to generate goals and a list of things that I can choose to create in a given week.
There’ll be a lot of repetition between these lists and the list in my process section later, so feel free to skip ahead. But based on reading through those 4 suggestions, my goals for this city are:
4-6 districts
4-6 locations each
A description of the district:
1d6 incidental scenes
1d6 streets and their descriptions
3-4 typical buildings in the district
a random encounter table (2d3 items, for night and for day) with descriptions
unique carousing in that district (potentially with 1d6 bad outcomes)
items and services for sale at the markets
2-3 NPCs with a 1-2 sentence description and a quote (major NPCs are a faction, but not all NPCs)
1-2 factions for that area (“their turf”)
A power level (I to IV)
3 NPCs
3 assets
1-3 quirks
A list of allied and enemy factions
A current situation
1-2 faction clocks indicating when their current goals are
The City:
Rumour table (36 items)
Things overheard (36 items)
Minor events (36 items)
Major events (12 items)
Some notes: Effectively I took what Duskvol has, and scaled it down to Marlinko size. Duskvol, however, has a whopping 4 factions per district, which even when I ran Blades in the Dark, meant a lot were left on the table. I scaled this down to 2. In Duskvol they’re separated into underworld, institutions, weird fringes and trade. Dice types used for different numbers: 2d3 for 5 items with a bell curve, d6 for 6 items, d6 with 2 options for 12 items and d66 for 36 items.
If I end up with free time, I’ll write some lore:
City history (1-6 events)
Cultures and associated languages (1-3 cultures)
A calendar with seasons and holidays (1-6 events)
Typical food: 1-6 for the poor, comfortable, and wealthy)
Law and order (1-6 paragraphs)
Academia (1-6 paragraphs)
Underworld (1-6 paragraphs)
Ok, so doing the math, basically it’ll take 14 weeks to write a district, so 4 districts will take me 56 weeks, if I don’t stray into lore or miss weeks. If I do bonus entries when I’m on holidays or have extra days off or am sick or whatever, I can get it done in a year. There are certainly options in the list that will be less time consuming than others. The goal, however, is to enjoy myself, not to complete it.
Themes and approaches
Wenya City is a stilted city, built on and around the hundreds of small islands in the Wenya Lagoon. It’s wracked by squalls and storms in the wet season. Wenya Lagoon is protected from the worst of the storms, and so it’s a major port, with endless caravans coming up the Drowned Highway that winds through the mangroves to the west, bound for the drunk and rich ships of the Thundering Sea.
System? Writing stats and mechanics is the easy part, and if I complete the city, I can go back and do that stuff afterwards. It’s the writing that’s harder, so let’s call this project tentatively system agnostic, but maybe not long-term.
The Weekly Process
Logistics: Open a new post. Copy the Loose Ends footnote from last week’s post to the bottom of this week’s post, and read it to remind you of what the loose ends are. Don’t feel pressured to pay attention to them. Don’t forget to put the number of the week in the title.
Write. If there’s a piece of lore that inspires you in the Loose Ends, write that. Otherwise, roll 1d8 to find out what. Ignore a result you can’t do, and do the thing that you need to do to do it. Otherwise:
Start a new district (needs a landmark, 1d6 incidental scenes, 1d6 streets and their descriptions, and 1d3 typical buildings in the district; up to 6 districts)
Write 2-3 minor NPCs in an existing district (needs a 1-2 sentence description and a quote; once per district).
Write a random encounter table for an existing district (needs 5 day and 5 night items; once per district)
Write a location for an existing district (if it’s a shop, needs 1d6 goods and services available with prices; up to 4 locations).
Write a faction whose turf is an existing district (needs 1 NPCs, 1 assets, 1 quirk; 1 current situation, and 1 faction clock, twice per district)
Add to a faction you haven’t yet completed (add up to 2 NPCs, 1 quirk, 2 allies, 2 enemies, and 1 faction clock; once per faction)
Write a unique carousing action in that district (needs a 1-2 sentence description, a unique NPC which you can add to the district list with a 1-2 sentence description and a quote, and 1d6 bad outcomes; once per district)
Write a physical secret connection between 2 existing districts (needs a lock and at least 1 key; twice per district)
Name the post after what you’ve written. Add it to the category “City26” and then hit “post”. Or, if you still have a moment, do some of these things first.
Update dynamic tables: If it feels relevant to the location, faction, NPC or whatever, add something to the relevant table.
Add a hook to the district’s hook table (up to 6 per district)
Add an item to the rumour table (up to 36)
Add an item to the overheard in the city table (up to 36)
Add an item minor events table (up to 36)
Add an item major events table (up to 12)
Map stuff. If you’ve added a district or a location, add it to the map, or say to add it to the map in “Loose Ends”.
Add to and remove from “Loose Ends”. Remove anything you’ve used this week. Add anything you haven’t completed (for example, a missing key to a physical connection). If you feel you need to break the maximum allowed for a space, make a note in the Loose Ends and say why, and see if you still feel that way in a year.
Like, I don’t like my chances of completing. My Dungeon23 lasted a month. But, wish me luck!
Everyone loves an informal end-of-year awards ceremony. This year, everyone’s doing it! I’ll join the bandwagon!
Best Single-location Module
Gold: Cyro-Siq (review here) is a tiny module, that hits so far above its’ weight you couldn’t believe. You’re trapped in a space-ship, and one of you is an assassin hired to murder the others. Will you find out who’s after you first?
Silver: Owe My Soul to the Company Store (review here) is a tour-de-force socio-political module, up there with modules like Witchburner for their depth and focus. If you’re interested in the interaction between exploited workers, unions, and corporations, this is a winner.
Bronze: Brackish(review here) is an investigation in a doomed spaceship with a dangerous force ready to destroy you. It’s inspired by videogames like Return of the Obra-Dinn, and does it better than anything out there.
Best Multi-location Module
Gold: Arkos(review here) is a vibrant, sparkling, overwhelming mess of a city and a module, and an absolute masterpiece of god-politics and music.
Silver: Isle of Hex(review here) is an odd cultish town full of fascinating characters and interesting interactions, feeling like you’re exploring an island where Wes Anderson shot the Wicker Man.
Bronze: Curious Creeps in Crimson Creek(review here) is a wildly illustrated and darkly humourous sandbox packed with interactivity and fun.
Best Roleplaying Game
Gold: Spine (review here) is absolutely the most unique, and the most emotionally affecting game I’ve played in a long time. It’s a solo horror journalling game, and you should check it out.
Silver: The Field Guide Handbooks(review here) are a series of unique games that you carry with you, and play in real time, potentially over a year. They each immerse you in a different aspect of your environment, and they’re absolutely fascinating roleplay.
Bronze: Chain X Link(review here) is the best revolutionary game I’ve read, with an incredibly compelling multi-layered take on dungeon-crawling, and a fascinating structure inspired by John Harper and Tim Denee’s work.
Best Podcast Episode
Gold: The Story of Over/Underon Between Two Cairns was a candid and eye-opening interview and interrogation into what will be remembered as the most significant gaming event of the year.
Silver: The First 30 Minutes on Dice Exploder was full of surprise insights for a series on Actual Play that I (arrogantly) didn’t expect to find much to learn from.
Bronze: Talking To Your Unconscious on Yes Indie’s Pod was a fascinating interrogation into how some people engage with solo games.
Best Videogame
Gold: Blue Prince is just an absolutely compelling, rogue-lite puzzle game unlike anything, with a story that you’ll be begging to uncover more of.
Silver: Balatro ended up being the game my partner and I played the most of together this year, and unendingly challenging puzzle, although stymied at times by the too-random randomness.
Bronze: Hades 2 was just so much fun, with so many challenges, and so many highs. I just wish the end-game was a little less prone to requesting you pursue extremely specific challenges, as it started to grow old, although it took a lot of playthroughs.
Best Book
Gold: The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong is a lovely story of wizard romance in a basic fantasy world, filled with cosy feelings and deep history.
Silver: Little Thieves by Margaret Owen is an excellent con-girl story with fascinating world-building, small gods and political marriage and is the first in a series I look forward to digging into.
Bronze: A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell is a queer romance featuring a woman archaeologist set in regency England. Do I need to sell it any further?
Well, my life will get a lot harder next year, outside of the hobby, but I have a few goals for next year:
Playtest, find an artist for and finalise Lightfingers for publication
Playtest, find an artist for and finalise the Great Egg Hunt for publication
Edit, lay out, playtest, find an artist for and finalise the Cat Vats of Gatraxas for publication
Finish editing and laying out The Ratcatchers for publication
To those ends, I’ll be creating a small server where I’ll share these modules as they’re ready for playtesting, and then collecting feedback for those tests. Thank you to those who’ve already volunteered!
And, most of all, thank you to all of you who’ve voted for me in the Ennies, in the Bloggies this year and the last, and who’ve engaged with and read my reviews and other posts. I really appreciate all of your support!
Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community.All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!
OddFolk is a modular TTRPG by Maxwell Lander. The core rules are 12 pages, and the modular part is about 20 pages of kits, which I’ll also look at in the review. OddFolk is intended to be a basic fantasy roleplaying game, for running OSR or system agnostic modules in.
OddFolk is a game designer’s game. The first 4 pages are, effectively, a discussion of Lander’s intent. This is an unusual approach, definitely, but in the context of a dungeon crawler, I don’t think it’s a bad one: Given how similar so many of these games are, and how so many of them are tiny variations and recombinations of each other, explaining your choices and reasoning seems a step forward. The basic gist is this: To achieve an action, you roll a d4, and choose the number of options you roll from a list of 4 options. Typically, the options include 1 that is a simple success, 2 that are complicated in some way, and 1 that is bad. You choose which one — this means you could choose a negative result if you felt it was the right choice for the narrative — but more interestingly, you will have to implement all 4 options if you roll a 4, which has a 1-in-4 chance of occurring. The other major aspect that’s unique about OddFolk is the kits: Basically, it comes with a bucketload of them, each with special actions. You can either choose a set of actions for everyone to use, for example, an OSR game, or you could let each player select 5-7 unique actions to reflect their character. There are of course, lots of small adjustments for various specific circumstances: gear and damage and critical hits and teamwork. Resources are only remarkable in their absence or abundance, which is neat, to me. That’s it. That’s the whole 12 page rulebook. In much the same way that Into the Odd is not exhaustive, but rather exemplary, most of what you see here is an example of what to do in your game, rather than an exhaustive list.
Most of the text is the kits: The official set of kits, entitled “Fantasy Basics”, and a set of kits by guest authors Aaron King, Christian Sorrell, and Kait Tremblay. Fantasy Basics starts out straightforward: Covering your basic actions in an adventure game, stuff like picking locks and sneaking and showing off, then magic, combat, and weirder shrooms like seance. Then Lander starts to show us what you can do when this framework stretches its legs: We have an action for taking an unknown substance, or for when you encounter a member of a long-lost civilisation. Then, it stretches further: Oh, so NPCs can simply be their own action? Oh, group actions use both d4s, and you choose from 2 lists for 1 action? The conceptual space for actions expands palpably within Lander’s own work. Then we get to the Special Guest Kits. These plainly aren’t basic fantasy: King brings science-fantasy, and devouring your enemies. Sorrell brings a kit to play out slasher horror, but also brings a set of crafting which brings you back to basic fantasy. More interestingly, Sorrell adds a bunch of Slasher-specific moves, suggesting a player-vs-player version of OddFolk. Tremblay brings actions themed around gardening, and modern day ghost-hunting. These expand the possibilities further, and also bring a bunch of interpretations to how broad and evocative these actions can be. We get from “The passageway opens.” in the 1st kit to “The lights blink out swiftly. What have you lost?” in the 14th kit. This is huge difference in possibility space.
The neat thing about the basic structure of the kits is that each action is basically the structure of an Apocalypse World move, but turned up to 10, and the structure is such that you could easily invent your own on the fly, or write simple love letters to your players between sessions without much ado. It’s a great little framework with a huge amount of flexibility. Reading the kits included calls for you to create your own moves, and calls for you to share them with the community.
The problem of course — and Lander identifies this — is that it can get pretty heavy coming up with 4 results 1 in every 4 rolls. That’s a lot. The official advice here is “Embrace the potential for messiness and bring in the whole group when you’re stumped on how to resolve an action.” which loops around to how I feel this is a game designer’s game, which digs itself an interesting hole. Because, while I can imagine how you could simultaneously “move in silence and shadow“, “leave a trace“, “leave a trail” and “someone notices you” (from Kit 1), it’s harder to comprehend a no-nonsense way of interpreting all four of “You are revealed to actually be a past victim – who wasn’t really dead.“, “You are not human but rather… something more.“, “You are not real… but the deaths were.” and “You were protecting an innocent, who now comes into view.” There’s a real degree here of my thinking people will start saying “don’t worry about that one, it doesn’t really fit the narrative”, a little more than I’d prefer. I want that randomness. I want to be forced to take a story somewhere unexpected, and I think the high chance of all four results occurring may end up causing more problems than its’ initial elegance suggests. And there’s a very real consideration that kept going through my mind as I read these compelling and excellent actions: Would these actions be better served by the discreet move structure of Apocalypse World than the cumulative action structure of OddFolk? I’m honestly not convinced that they would be; I do think OddFolk actions benefit from being more uninteresting, because of their cumulative nature. The creativity of the special guests doesn’t pay off here as much as say King’s work on universal moves.
So, OddFolk: It’s a framework the sets of actions that are kits. But it feels at its best when you’re playing it at its simplest: the basic fantasy version, because when you try to get fancy with actions they begin to fall apart. That additional flexibility, though, for creating custom actions, and the ease of creation of custom actions, make it a really fun take on basic fantasy, though, with a nice story game twist. If you’re looking for a game that leans into resource management and risk assessment while playing OSR modules, this ain’t it, and you’ve already got a bunch of good options. If you’re looking for something that brings narrative flair and the flexibility to add your own design signature to running those modules, it’s worth checking out OddFolk.
Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community.All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!
The Knight Errant is a 4 page micro-module for Into the Odd by Isaac Is Afraid, with art by Citaaticat. It won the popular choice in the Appendix N Jam, for which I was one of the judges. In it you discover the last member of a knightly order, frozen for eternity — the only lifeform on a dead planet. Will you save him?
First up, for effectively a 4 -page module (the entire first page is a cover) this is absolutely gorgeous. It’s styled as a pulp fiction cover, as you can see from the cover art above, and the interior is also damaged, but readable. A simple royal blue palate features on the interior as well, used for some highlighting and as an inverted background for stat blocks. It’s absolutely packed with text, but not in an illegible way, due to its’ judicious use of tables and bullets, as well as how highlighting is explained within the text. While sticking to the page count, you couldn’t be better than this; although it does squeeze 8 or 9 pages of text into 4. As a judge on this project, I quickly realised, however, that our criteria heavily favoured visually distinct and well-produce pieces of work over more amateurish productions, which I’m not sure I’d be happy with in future choices of criteria — does The Knight Errant hold up in other ways?
I’m glad to say it does. As I said earlier, it doesn’t really sacrifice on word count. I think in a full-sized module of the same theme, we’d likely have a few more words, but not too many. They’d just be given more room to breathe. There are 7 rooms here, along with 2 stat blocks, a random adventure table, and adventure background. These rooms, unlike what you’d expect, are quite detailed, and the descriptions are solid, although after the terse stylings of The Iron Coral. There are a bunch of interactive elements: A laser-shrine that can be used against your enemies, glass on the floor that causes noise, clues about secret entrances if you observe enemies, multiple entrances, and lore drops. Often in small modules, there are forsaken easter eggs — here, each clue folds back in, such as the oath in room 5 that opens the secret door in room 4. It’s solid design. If I were to change anything, I think that there’s a decent chance that a certain type of party will charge through some of these encounters, and miss altogether that there’s a moral dilemma at the end of this: I’d simply have the squire in room 5 be a little more obvious in his simple sentences, to avoid this, as the moral dilemma is a compelling one.
The random encounter table is important to such a short module, and I’m not sure it’s well thought through. The four encounters included are all solid, and I like them a lot. By the book, you have a 1-in-6 chance of having a random encounter in every new room, when you loiter, or when you make noise, plus a 1-in-6 chance of a clue of said encounter. Let’s estimate that there would be 15 rolls in this dungeon — generous I think — and we’re getting 2, maybe 3 of the written encounters, of which there’s a significantly higher chance of a vision or a meteor falling from the sky than there are of the plot-advancing ghouls or the corrupting voice, given those latter 2 only occur roughly 1-in-36 times. Given the slim chances, I’d rework this table if I had more space: I’d add suggestions for each for the clues, and I’d adjust the probabilities so the rarer are more likely to occur. In small modules, you really want each of your random encounters to punch above its’ weight, because you’re not spending much time in the space.
What does it choose to omit? Well, it has no hooks, it has no rumours, relying instead on a tight frame of the player’s arrival on an alien planet. This is a good choice, given the constraints, although any dungeon will be more interesting with the addition of a few hooks that contain juicy worms: You could have a player who worships the Horror From Beyond, of course, one who pursues archeological knowledge, and one that wants to cage and examine one of the ghouls, off the top of my head, all of which would change the player’s approach to the dungeon. Similarly, given the constraints, the choice to have only 2 stat blocks is smart, and I think 1-2 monster types per 7 rooms is pretty reasonable. I do think that the behaviour of the titular Knight Errant needs to be better telegraphed, however. Finally, one thing that is left untold is the goals or intents of the Horror From Beyond, and given the fact that this is likely a one-shot given its’ unique sci-fantasy setting, and the fact that there’s a decent chance of the Horror From Beyond being freed, I’d love a short section that covers what happens in the wider galaxy when it is freed. The module has room for it: Both the about section and the background section could be trimmed.
Overall, the popular vote isn’t wrong: The Knight Errant is excellent, with a unique, pulpy theme, decent, if terse, writing, and compelling spaces. It does very well with the space it uses. I think it would benefit from expansion, though, in some specific places, and it would benefit from being not quite so dense in terms of layout. Could you run this without any preparation, though, if you needed a one-shot? Yes, you could, and you’d likely have a ball, although I’d do some fudging, beefing up the one NPC, doing a little foreshadowing, and changing the random encounter table to have equal chances across the die. If that’s what you’re after in a short module, The Knight Errant is worth picking up while it’s still free.
Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community.All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!
Time To Drop is a 19 page roleplaying game by Marn S. In it you play a team of cons going on one last job to get out of the biz, but get caught in a time loop. It’s a collaborative game for 3 or more players, played to the tune of the album Nonagon Infinity.
Time To Drop is separated into 6 phases, with an optional seventh phase. The first is creating your crew; this is done in two cycles around the table, the first describing names and your role and why you’re choosing to retire, and the second being to describe relationships between you — grudges, feelings about each other, and the like. The first cycle is well supported, with a list of 11 of each, the second less so; I’d appreciate a similar table of suggested relationships, especially given the very specific inspirations the game has. The second phase is about choosing the job; again, we have a random table to support this, as well as a few questions to expand upon that. Phase 3 is planning: 3 tarot cards indicate the 3 complications you can plan around, and then make your plan. This is all preparation.
Phase 4 is the start of play: You begin with downtime, describing what your character does in the lead up to the heist; this is important, because this phase changes as you recognise you’re trapped in a time loop. Then you start the heist, phase 5. In this phase, you interact with cards on the board, rolling dice with mixed success, potentially clearing or adding new complications to the board. Complications are twisted on doubles, which changes things going forward, and you can of course convert characters to your side. You narrate other player’s complications, and they narrate yours. During the first heist, this is all written down, to provide a framework for the loop. The heist ends when the album finishes, or you fail completely (although there’s not a mechanism for death or being caught here, just the addition of new complications). Phase 6 doesn’t take place in the first playthrough — just play out an extended downtime to see your characters responses to the realisation they’re in a loop — but for every other loop, you review changes to the timeline here and update your notes. The loop ends when all complications are cleared.
One interesting unstated choice in the gameplay here is that you can’t outwit the heist, you need to trial and error this through repeated loops. This is built into the rules — “2d6 + your crew’s # of cleared Complications” — and makes sense given the collaborative nature on f the game, but it is easy to miss. You should roleplay this — you should be foiled a few ways before each success — but the roll here indicates how you’re foiled, not whether you are. Because the roll is the prompt here, it would benefit from this being stated outright.
Small choices would improve the play here — the small lists in the text that cover the detail would be better called out either in expanded random tables or just in bullet points. This is a good example of where layout and information design overlap — the layout is excellent and clear, looks good, but this modification would make things more playable.
Honestly, this game slaps; we don’t get enough time loop games. I could see this being a super fun weekly session after a dinner, given the brevity of a session. The concepts here are strong, and they work for any table that is confident with improvisation. It could be made more broadly playable with more support for those less willing to wing it based on a tarot card, or with a few additional tables. There’s a set of modules available to cover the tables half of that concern. Marn S has made a bunch of variations on this game — including relitigating a relationship,an action move, and a romcom. If this appeals to you, but you don’t care for heists, check out some of the alternatives. Overall, though, if you’re interested in short games or time loop game, and you’re happy to bring a little of your own imagination to the table, I’d check Time To Drop out.
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Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
Playful Void 