Great entry! It looks really good and clean and ominous. You get really good mileage out of your space with way you use your sections, particularly the known/unknown lore dump and the timeline. The objectives are clear, the only thing I would tweak would be to make the repair goals a little more clear. Maybe fetching some sort of mcguffin "we need the [part] from the [location] to fix the platform" would be helpful for me and other new DMs, but also I think that a lot of groups would be fine without this level of detail.
Play trifold
Mother Sleeps Beneath's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Polish - How is the overall look/vibes/writing & design? | #4 | 4.258 | 4.533 |
| Theme - How well does it match the Jam's Theme? | #4 | 4.384 | 4.667 |
| Overall | #4 | 3.977 | 4.233 |
| Favorability - how much do you personally like the submission? | #10 | 3.695 | 3.933 |
| Usability - How "pick up & play" is this for a Warden? | #12 | 3.569 | 3.800 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
This is close to the best one so far, really did a lot with economical design and with a scenario which is balanced and has excellent jeopardy. The level of detail means that inquisitive players will be rewarded with a lot of very solid pathways to explore and achieve their objectives. Although the map is kind of just a key, because of the way it interacts with the tools it acts like a very well-Jacquaysed dungeon. Very nice!
Submitted
LookbackHiya, took some notes while reading this, disorganizedly presented here!
don't see a lot of pamphlets eschew writing on their covers, but i think the art and the tagline speak volumes--bold and effective. nice work to artist (for the beautiful piece) and writer (for their restraint!)
presentation is all around very slick. not just in a "wow this is pretty" way -- the way you've chosen to lay out the information is cogent, legible, complete and sinewy. that is not easy!
feels like it bucks the trend of low-information crawls, instead creating a tense resource-management mission. the kind of thing that would be really good to run after one (or more) of the former, to keep players on their toes.
several pamphlets have interpreted the theme as undersea adventures, but (of the ones i've read so far) i think this and one other are the ones that are most "about" the theme, if that makes sense. like the depth is vital to the storytelling. the bends, the cave, mother herself -- all interface w/ the theme beautifully.
this is an excellent work -- confident, unexpected, tight. hell yeah!
Submitted
DOWN BADA sizeable setting with an extensive mission for players to sink their teeth into and spend few days to discover the truth of this sea.
+ Large but direct list of objectives for players to complete, making progress feel steady
+ Lots of details on how time progresses and what consequences player actions can cause.
+ Plenty of tools and equipment for players to thematically explore the sea floor and repair the platform
If you're looking for feedback, let me know and I can expand further.
This is maybe the best all-around effort I've seen so far. I like that there are several interlocking challenges, time pressure, etc. The icon-driven design immediately appealed to me, although as I got into it I found a few small issues that hurt the usability a bit.
I like the bolding of keywords, but the contrast between the bold and regular text is too great, while that between the regular text and the background is too weak in comparison. The result is that it's hard to read the regular text because your eye keeps getting yanked onto the keywords.
Likewise, there are just so many icons, and they're so graphically strong, that it becomes hard to focus on the text that actually explains what they all mean. Overall, I think you're on the right track with the icons and keywords, you've just got that dial set at like a 9 when it might be better at a 7, because the reader still needs to be able to focus on the regular text in order to make sense of it all.
In terms of the scenario design, the main weakness I see is that repairing the platform airlock is both mandatory before getting basically anything else done, and doesn't seem to have any challenges attached to it. As a result, it doesn't currently seem to add much to the story. Maybe it could be presented (e.g. in the Progression section) as a chance for the players to interact with Captain Singh and pump him for info while he assists with the airlock repairs.
Mechanically, I think the consequences of getting the bends need to be more severe. A point of stress and a penalty on Body saves is a very mild consequence for ignoring a mechanic that's central to the scenario. I'd suggest requiring a save and applying stress/penalties on a successful one (mild case) and a Wound plus partial paralysis on failure. If there were space for it, a special Wound table just for the bends would be cool, up to and including a possible death save for the worst cases.
Submitted
Skin Deep (Mothership Module)Thank you so much for the detailed response, but also your comments on other modules. I am finally getting to my ratings and after reading a module and formulating an opinion, I will read the other comments and find yours very insightful and covering most of what I wanted to say and better than I could phrase it. For example, I found your comment about the dial from 9 to 7 very helpful. I am preparing to rebuild the document with some design changes and some visual edits to address the contrast issues, and as I looked back on my work there was something I didn't quite like about the execution of it, but you summed it up perfectly. While I love the free icons I used from gameicons.net, I would like to ideally replace them with custom ones, and scrap some others in favor of a small illustration or technical diagram for things like the boat or the sub.
I also appreciate the notes on the bends - I knew it wasn't enough of a threat but I couldn't figure out how to implement it the way I wanted. The intention was to have it interact with the depth layers and time mechanics, i.e. until you repair the decompression chamber you would have to come up slowly (meaning you are stuck underwater with the threats looming or risk the bends), and even after you repair it you have to take some time in the chamber (more forced downtime in an enclosed space adding to the time pressure, perfect scenario for someone to fail a save and wig out). Your notes gave me a lot of ideas on how to beef up that mechanic and make it more central to the design and pacing of the scenario.
This is some great “hard sci fi” underwater shit with lots of attention paid to realistic risks. The art direction is slick as hell with an icon heavy setup that would really pop in print! I like that there’s some implication of eldritch stuff going on but it’s more or less a mundane, if alien, mutation that could be leveraged by players.
For the content itself, the amount of work that needs doing starts off seeming a bit overwhelming, but the “objectives” section breaks it down clearly enough that it feels like a part of the module’s horror more than anything else. You have a million fires to put out and not enough time - what will you do? I also really appreciate the timeline clearly delineating what Wardens and PCs are each supposed to know, that kind of information can often be hard to parse in a lot of modules and it helps me get to grips with the content super fast.
My only critique is that the treatment of "body text in white, important stuff in bold+dark navy" is kind of the only lever for visual depth/hierarchy used and it can get hard to read with how much they contrast. Reserving the dark navy for headers/paragraph starters and a lighter tone for important stuff would give my eyes an easier task!
Phenomenal stuff here. Great work!
Beautiful stuff, the inside feels like the UI of a videogame I'd jump to try out.
I wasn't entirely sure how the movement process worked. If it takes 6 hours to go from one stage to the next and the tanks last 12 hours you need to solve each tier in order, which goes a it against the freedom that water invokes. But maybe I missunderstood.
If you ever come back to this, please consider adding a Theta-2 intoxication progression because I'm sure players will try to eat the fish no matter how contaminated or agressive the warden makes them look.
Submitted
Daikon Sphere
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