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XEPHION - A Knave 2e Survival-Horror Adventure's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun: Is the adventure fun to play in an OSR playstyle? | #43 | 3.789 | 3.789 |
| Writing: Is the adventure original and fun to read? | #54 | 3.737 | 3.737 |
| Overall | #63 | 3.526 | 3.526 |
| Usability: Is the adventure easy to use on the fly? | #88 | 3.053 | 3.053 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
The first 3 pages are beautiful and immediately attract the eye. We jumped straight to this module after seeing the cover. The layout is done exceptionally and horror/survival elements provide a real sense of urgency to the players!
Awesome Adventure. Love the Shin Godzilla vibe of Xephion and the scenario itself is super evocative! The Layout is clean and tidy. The font-size is a little bit small in my opinion but conveys the information well and is fairly concise on the dungeon key, I feel like the list of monsters should probably come at the end, but that's a very minor thing, all in all, this one is very cool, Excellent work!
The cover is stunning, as is the project page. The interior is beautifully laid out, I love the choice of font and limited use of color. The maps are great but it looks like they were a bit over-compressed when exporting the PDF - it's hard to read the letters/numbers, at least on my monitor.
Breaking the backstory into three parts at different points of history was a great idea, it really helps digest the information. You might consider flipping the Overview and the "Five Years Ago...", "One Month Ago...", "At This Very Moment..." sections, so new readers see the overview first.
I love the idea of an evolving threat, I think you did a great job of making each of Xephion's form interesting. It would definitely keep players on their toes, having to learn new tactics each time they engaged it.
You did a good job of sprinkling the story throughout the adventure, without overloading the reader with too much information at any one time. I liked all of the traps you provided, they could easily be used in any adventure.
The descriptions were vivid but some artwork for the monsters, especially Xephion's forms, could be a nice addition.
This has some excellent maps to explore and most certainly hits the survival/horror notes! Those transformations gave me the heebie-jeebies! Everything is laid out really nice and easy to digest.
This has some excellent maps to explore and most certainly hits the survival/horror notes! Those transformations gave me the heebie-jeebies! Everything is laid out really nice and easy to digest.
wonderful and well laid out with very nice isometric maps. room 16 - the kings vault had me on the edge of my seat. Fantastic deployment of survival horror! the forms method is a fantastic way of deploying this growing horror.
Good work! I enjoyed reading it. A well-crafted adventure that adds a layer of psychological horror and evolving threats. Good map and cover!
Well I told myself I’d stop reading modules for the night and then I saw yours noting draws from Alien and Metroid… so I stayed up way too late reading it all. It hits all the right beats, I personally tend toward sci-fi horror so this had me engaged fully. I love the evolving monster concept as it grows and becomes stronger and the little hints dropped about the prince’s true nature. Giving people access to create the poison and cure is a great way to allow tension to build while that 1d4 poison saps away your strength. The architecture is cohesive and makes for a working understandable space and gives lots of ideas on how our primary monster might utilize these spaces. Also being drawn by the sound of metal is just perfect. Because I can imagine them tipping over a bookshelf and just waiting to get attacked and nothing… sigh of relief as a coin hits the floor and all hell breaks loose. Just a total bit of confusion for a human beings logical senses of a predatory creature.
Some thoughts I did have were as this is for Knave, having coin values for valuable items that are found would be helpful to know how much experience players gain from gathering treasure in this place aside from what the prince is paying them. Another thing that might be helpful and you may have purposefully left this out is time tables for the evolutions. GM discretion can totally be applied here but if as players we decide to track and hunt the thing instead, a time table until it meets its next evolution would be helpful to know.
All in all though I love it and is definitely a thing I would run, now I just need to find the time to run games :).
Wow thank you so much for such high praise! We're so happy that you felt we hit the mark with the Alien and Metroid inspo and that it was an enjoyable read <3333
Your notes are great and honestly we wanted to included a time table/evolution countdown section but we just didn't have enough time. And coin values is such a good point, totally should've been more thorough about such a central theme to the game. But definitely look for both to be addressed in XEPHION: Complete Edition after the jam is over!!
This was a great read. Really enjoyable. Traps were a bit complicated to parse. Good structure. Well done.
Thank you for the kind words and constructive criticism :)
Definitely going to revise some of the wording in a Complete Edition after the jam is over !
The cover art, maps, layout are FRESH. And I love the plot. Great work Knighthouse Co.
Thanks so much for the kind words!!!
This was our first attempt at an adventure for Knave, glad that you liked it!
Seconding the great look of the cover (Vermis vibes 🤘) and maps.