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A jam submission

The Great Boar HuntView project page

A level 0 Gauntlet adventure for Shadowdark RPG by Dimme
Submitted by Dungeon Monkey — 4 days, 14 hours before the deadline
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The Great Boar Hunt's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Game Master Usability#14.1114.111

Ranked from 45 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(2 edits)

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.

Developer (3 edits)

Hi Matt,

Thank you for writing that extensive reply. I appreciate the time you took and hopefully it will allow me to address some of the issues in next versions or new adventures. Some things you mention I did on purpose. My main goal was to design something that would only take three hours to play and would introduce people to either Shadowdark RPG or the Gauntlet version of the game. I actually have a whole map of Ucksol, including multiple points of interest, hooks for adventures, I even have menus with all kinds of food and drinks based mainly on goat, goat cheese and goat milk and mushrooms. But as I wanted to keep this adventure to be a short introductory and fun dungeon crawl, I decided to leave all of this out. If my Ucksol plans are far enough to present, I might upload it as a supplement.

I agree with the actaul boar hunt. During the playtest, people seem to do okay. It is a nice and slow way for both the DM and party members to get into their (probably shortlived) character roles and play around with DC checks like setting traps, finding tracks etc. We had quite some fun just improvising but now that the eight page Game Jam limit is off, I will see if I can add some more flavour to it.

I was hoping the exploring, and picking up items and interacting with the fairy would be a nice way to add story to the dungeon crawling aspect of this adventure. In the three play tests we had so far it did, but I understand this might not work for everybody.

Thank you once again for the effort of writing feedback. Means a lot to me. I hope you can still enjoy the adventure :)

Happy crawling,


- Dimme

Submitted(+1)

Upon first reading, I was instantly hooked! You provide such quality adventure tips, visuals, and lore-specific tables for backgrounds and treasure. Excellent job!

Submitted(+1)

There's plenty to play with here, from the level 0 careers to tales of love and woe, very tightly crafted work. Nice!

Submitted(+1)

Very clever formatting to fit within the 8-page limit.
Great setup and region info.
Excellent spot art and map.
Good balance of combat/npc interaction/traps.
Really cool ways for the players to uncover the narrative.
I only wish the boar hunt itself had a bit more to it. It just seems like a device to get them to the ruined stronghold, which is fine, but given the title of the module its not what I was expecting going in.
Overall this totally rules, thanks for making it!

Submitted(+1)

This is an excellent module. A great balance between open ended and detailed, and very well organized.

(+1)

Fun one shot game with enough to miss despite the game length. 

(+1)

Super detailed, beautiful artwork and partly for that reason extremely fun to play! Can’t wait for the next roll of the dice. 

(+2)

page 14's "Add +3 when in total darkness" is absolutely genius and should become the standard for adventure creation in not just ShadowDark but every Fantasy TRPG!

Submitted(+2)

I love how you even managed to fit background info for the realm into this eight page adventure! Visually appealing as well.

Submitted

I love how you even managed to fit background info for the realm into this eight page adventure! Visually appealing as well.

(+2)

Well detailed, with plenty of gaming potential.

(+1)

Well detailed, with plenty of gaming potential.

(+2)

I liked the written notes, very cute 

(+2)

Nice concept! Ideal for dnd newcomers 

(+2)

Finally a true believer in stopping the Boarpocalyse.