Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• How clear & compelling is the game's central idea? The journey and focus on the inner struggles of the characters is a nice take on the adventure genre. I also like the diceless nature of the game How elegant, useful, and intuitive are the game's mechanics? the mechanics are a bit obscure, but I got a much clearer vision after reading the play example How cohesively designed do you think the game is overall? the flow from description to the classes goes very well, and the voice of the authors all fit together.
• Beginning to read Triage was like getting dunked into freezing water, but in a good way. It started out dense and meaningful in its poetic rules description of the game's fundamental conversation, called a "chain." The robust Safety description immediately put me ease, and helps contextualize the earlier statements as intentional in their extremities. The game then wastes no time setting up it's traditional 4 archetype dungeon crawling playbooks, while still maintaining enough of the poetry from the beginning. It goes on to explain the game structure, and it does so very cleanly. While I wish there was a third set of encounter questions beyond just a sort of "go somewhere" and "do something" dichotomy, the variety in Respite is very lovely. And then it even includes a play example! I did find the Scenario inclusion kind of weird. How are you supposed to encorporate them? I scrolled up and could not find that information anywhere. The cohesiveness of the design fell apart in some smaller spaces, but the stumbles were most evident here.
• I really love getting to see the full history of all the games, but I'm especially interested in games like this one, which have such clear visions every step of the way, but manage to be meaningfully distinct from each other in each iteration. The conversation chain I think is a very useful way to structure the scenes, and I love the playbook specific details, questions, and outcomes. The spending of your stats as resources (and the sharing of your stats as healing) is very resonant for me. The end result is one of my favorite "melancholy fantasy" games I've read (even as I fondly think of the first iteration, and what I interpret as its more hopeful, gentle leaning).