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A jam submission

Murder at the Motel ZotelView project page

a Troika! Adventure and Six Backgrounds
Submitted by WatcherDM, AustinHolm — 15 days, 17 hours before the deadline
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Murder at the Motel Zotel's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality - does the adventure contain original plot and situations?#24.5004.500
Presentation - is the game material good looking?#43.5003.500
Completeness - does the adventure contain all the material to be played?#44.5004.500
Clarity - is the structure of the adventure clear enough?#44.0004.000
Overall#53.9003.900
Timely - is the proposed adventure suitable as a one-shot?#103.0003.000

Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+2)

Knowing my players there is not chance in Troika! hades they would finish anything in one night that contains more than 4 encounters, especially with such rich and colorful NPCs. Otherwise, I can't compliment the theme, look, and simplistic yet engaging plot enough. 29 pages of gonzo inspired Troika! madness!

Developer

Troika! encounters tend to be much faster than standard RPG encounters. You may be surprised how fast this module can go down. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Glad you enjoyed it.

Submitted(+1)

Wow, this is a proper zine!

First, gotta say that other than that rather rad-looking Sloshies dude, I don't find the AI art very interesting. AI art in general is all so samey, so many people are using it now, and its contrast with the much better illustration work is jarring. I’d love to see Gabriel Hernandez illustrate the rest of this zine (that 17-18 spread is fantastic), perhaps using the included AI art as templates to keep the same feel.

Austin’s writing on this zine had me cracking up. The rent-controlled motel, Punchcard Policeman’s Mien being determined by the Fashion Value of the PCs’ hat, the puns in the gangster Mien tables, the background descriptions, it was a fun read. Not many clues exist, however, for the players to be able to solve this investigation. The setting and characters are so well written that the whole neighborhood comes alive around the hotel. With all the dynamic characters and locations, I would want to spend more than one session with this adventure!

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for the review! Sorry you found the AI art off-putting; obviously, we used as much illustration as we could get done in the Jam period, but we ultimately decided that the AI offerings were a better option than any other low-cost art we could find, such as clip art. We felt that the product looked better with art on each spread than with the text walls we were getting in the first layout. You may be interested to know that Gabe actually retouched each AI image (I believe); they're all human-AI collaborations.

Glad you enjoyed the writing! It's kind of my first effort at a mystery, so I'm grateful for the feedback. If I take another crack at the genre, I'll be sure to include more clue lines. Thanks again for taking the time to leave a review that is both encouraging and thoughtfully constructive.

Host(+1)

Hi, please remove the fee or make available some review copies for allowing other participants for the voting phase

Developer

I’ve added 20 more community copeis.

Host(+1)

thanks