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Moon Pool's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme - How well does it match the Jam's Theme? | #18 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Polish - How is the overall look/vibes/writing & design? | #23 | 3.353 | 3.353 |
| Overall | #24 | 3.353 | 3.353 |
| Favorability - how much do you personally like the submission? | #27 | 3.235 | 3.235 |
| Usability - How "pick up & play" is this for a Warden? | #27 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Hiya! Reading this now, here are some scattered notes i took!
daily questionnaire from bentley already has me on edge. wasn't expecting a dose of corporate horror, love it!
I LOVE the idea of handing cards to everyone saying "this says who is the Doppel" and nobody actually is one. The mind reels at how much of a headfuck this would be. ditto the "one on one interviews" in another room.
What do you envision for a party that manages to get out of here but brings a Doppel with them?
Really like the two skeletons event, good foreshadowing. Would love to see you expand on the other ones.
V cool stuff! The vibes are on point, great interpretation of the theme, and bursting with PC-on-PC paranoia.
thanks so much for the comment! I’m happy you liked it, I’m going to rework the performance review part so I give the wardens a more definitive version to pass/fail. The Doppel cards and taking players to a room one on one are just some random ideas I had late in the process that I thought could dial up the paranoia as everything is trying to make the players as distrustful as possible.
I’m not really sure what the outcome is if a Doppel escapes with humans. I’m thinking something like the ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Doppel tries to convert humans in the rest of the Galaxy. It could lead to a bigger narrative arc of the nearby system being infected and turning. Or you could take it in a blade runner way and have the company develop some test that can distinguish doppels and want some bounty hunters to find them and bring them in for experiments.
I am planning on further developing the mining events to make them more cohesive to the narrative threads and turn up the tension.
i might be in the minority here, but i wouldn't add a definitive pass/fail, personally! i like the idea that there's no way to tell what to do. imagine one player "passing," telling the others how they passed, another trying the same thing and failing... or imagine giving what feels like perfect answers only to fail because it didn't pass the android's vibe check. i think leaving it open-ended encourages wardens to lean into the vibe of paranoia you're creating.
that said i may very well be in the minority--and if you WERE to add pass/fails, freaks like me could ignore them and go full paranoia demon anyway :D
when I wrote it I intended it as a vibes check basically and the warden could deduce who’d to sedate. Ad Astra was a big influence on the performance review and you see Brad Pitt mentally break while giving a psych evaluation but the robot is like you passed. When Brad gives a concise, well worded responses they ground him. In the movie it’s all about control and I thought the warden could pick the players who most defied the company that day regardless of the answers.
My pillar of design is to provide as many fun toys for wardens to play with and to break and ignore whatever doesn’t fit their flavor. Plus I feel Mothership is more fun when it’s narratively rich as opposed to mechanically rich. That’s why I added the mod section as it’s loose ideas I thought could be implemented but didn’t necessarily think it needed to be a core feature and if a warden thought it sounded fun or not they could run with it.
I have not actually play tested this and I do hope I get the chance this month as I work on a polished version. I think a playtest to see how the performance reviews play at the table will help me find the right balance but I really appreciate your input. I think I might end up splitting the difference but I do agree if I ran it I would just go off vibes and sedate players that I think would make the most paranoia. I just want players to point fingers and trust no one, they can’t trust the company, the crew, the mines, and most of all each other :)
Clever premise with a lot of great ideas! I really like the cover panel and the title treatment. The map is also really stylish and useable, super cool wireframe aesthetic. The art direction is a really good retro NASA-style balance that I feel would direct me to run it much more groundedly than some other modules. I think the horrors are super classic, I love a good doppelganger plot and/or malicious Company android. The countdown of "5 days until retirement" provides a good framework for placing PCs on the moon and giving them motive to engage with the material at hand!
Also strong, the inclusion of Mods! Signposting potential mechanics for the adventure that Wardens can use or not without worrying about impacting the rest of the module is a great setup. I know lots of adventures that could use this kind of thing.
Now some things where there is room to improve:
1) Text treatment could be pushed a lot further. I think especially the numbered lists would look better as tables and read a lot more smoothly as a result. A more consistent grid system, some spacing/styling tricks to help guide the eye could really pump this up! DM me on Discord if you're interested in some more specifics.
2) Performance reviews are a compelling concept but they read very subjectively. I can guess what might constitute a "failed" review in the Company's eyes, but further procedures for how Bentley grades the party + guidelines for how to lie to him etc. would go a long way. I would also worry about potential repetition day over day, so I'd consider potentially some kind of "fast forward" mechanic for covering the fallout of a session without going question by question.
3) Information is a bit scattered. There are starting points, there are endings, and some stuff between but I feel like it floats around a bit and it would require players really pushing forward to put some of the pieces together. You've mentioned in another reply that you have plans for an escalating timetable and more procedures for mining and that's exactly what I think is needed. Each individual element is solidly compelling - you just need something like that to gel it all together.
Ultimately you've done solid work and you sound like you've got a good handle on where to take it next! Congrats!
thanks so much for the feedback and I’ll hit you up on discord.
Clever premise with a lot of great ideas! I really like the cover panel and the title treatment. The map is also really stylish and useable, super cool wireframe aesthetic. The art direction is a really good retro NASA-style balance that I feel would direct me to run it much more groundedly than some other modules. I think the horrors are super classic, I love a good doppelganger plot and/or malicious Company android. The countdown of "5 days until retirement" provides a good framework for placing PCs on the moon and giving them motive to engage with the material at hand!
Also strong, the inclusion of Mods! Signposting potential mechanics for the adventure that Wardens can use or not without worrying about impacting the rest of the module is a great setup. I know lots of adventures that could use this kind of thing.
Now some things where there is room to improve:
1) Text treatment could be pushed a lot further. I think especially the numbered lists would look better as tables and read a lot more smoothly as a result. A more consistent grid system, some spacing/styling tricks to help guide the eye could really pump this up! DM me on Discord if you're interested in some more specifics.
2) Performance reviews are a compelling concept but they read very subjectively. I can guess what might constitute a "failed" review in the Company's eyes, but further procedures for how Bentley grades the party + guidelines for how to lie to him etc. would go a long way. I would also worry about potential repetition day over day, so I'd consider potentially some kind of "fast forward" mechanic for covering the fallout of a session without going question by question.
3) Information is a bit scattered. There are starting points, there are endings, and some stuff between but I feel like it floats around a bit and it would require players really pushing forward to put some of the pieces together. You've mentioned in another reply that you have plans for an escalating timetable and more procedures for mining and that's exactly what I think is needed. Each individual element is solidly compelling - you just need something like that to gel it all together.
Ultimately you've done solid work and you sound like you've got a good handle on where to take it next! Congrats!
Good double-layered use of the theme. Decent writing and aesthetics, although the typography could be improved.
Most of the components of a good adventure are here. I think the calm room, Android manager and sedatives are the strongest point of the whole thing. I'm a big fan of "quiet horror" and I think you've really nailed that. It's a great change of pace in a game where most scenarios involve giant alien monsters tearing limbs off people. And the "metallic scream" provides a good jump scare in the midst of all that eerie calm.
The main thing I think is missing is a default timeline of events. The scenario is very sandboxy, which suits my preferences, but there are relatively few cues to the Warden for how to drive the story forward. I would prefer to see a sequence of events that the players can try to disrupt, instead of the table of random events for each day in the mine, most of which don't really relate to the central threat or serve to advance the plot in any way.
thanks so much for your feedback! I love a good giant monster to fight as much as the next person (I’m currently prepping an adventure for my table in which they are going to square off against a giant space jellyfish with an eyeball that makes people go mad), but I always thought mothership lends itself really well to a slow burn style of horror. When I prep for myself I like to do a sandbox style as I find the narrative thread at the table if I crafted fun pieces to play with. A big learning curve for me is trying to find the balance of what information I need to provide for other wardens and what’s just my personal preference. I do want to revamp this trifold post jam and adding a cascading events section so wardens can make it as slow burn or face paced as they want. As well as fleshing out the mining section and creating a daily routine schedule so hopefully everything starts to feed in to each other and narratively becomes more cohesive. I appreciate you taking the time to offer feedback and it’ll help me in polishing up my first trifold :)
Really enjoyed this one! its got good vibes and a clever double use of the theme (Both Mining, and whats going on inside people/how to tell them apart from their doppelgänger.) I think as it stands there are a few usability issues, although you make up for that by offering a lot of plug and play “Mods” which I think could really change up the vibe of the adventure; and what is more i don’t think any of the Usability issues would be hard for a Warden worth their salt to overcome.
Congrats on making a cool thing!
thanks so much for taking the time to read and give me feedback. I’m really happy you liked the mod section, most of that was stuff I just didn’t get time to play test and some different ideas for flavor I had. I know wardens all like to run their games differently and I want to provide as much as I can for that. I’m planning on a revamp of the trifold, cutting back a lot of the big blocks of text, fleshing out the mining chart to give more variety, and creating a cleaner better layout.
Cheers and thanks for hosting a killer game jam!
A pleasure to see a user of doppelgangers/ illusions. A fun sandbox setup with a Dr. Who style horror to slowly discover.
+ Great and diverse roster of NPCs to spend time with and slowly be mimics by the waiting horror
+ Excellent corporate dystopian practices to put players under the pressure of
+ Lots of nice modifications and creator suggestions to implement into games for different pacing and game styles
If you're looking for feedback, let me know and I can expand further.
Thanks so much for the comment and taking the time to read my trifold. I am trying to improve both this trifold and my skills in general so I would really appreciate more feedback if you have some :)
Certainly. My main point of feedback is that I would love to have information for all the other spaces given on the map. Several sections in the second page feel to have repeating information, namely the Karidium, Mines, and Mining Gear sections. I feel these sections can either be trimmed down or implemented into the room descriptions, such as integrating the Mining Gear section to describe what is found in the Storage Yard or Barracks. Further space can be made by moving the Intro section onto the cover page and shrinking the map to fit in the middle column . By having descriptions of each of the rooms, it will save a lot of work for the wardens in terms of preparations, and make the mining site lived in. This can then make it additionally easier to see how the Doppels mimic the NPCs based on where players can expect to find them.
Overall, I feel the overall module has a great horror to force players to second guess themselves, with an oppressive yet expected-of-corporate setup to push your players to engage with the world and help the NPCs. With some more information on the rooms, this module can be quite easy to pick-up-and-play.
Thanks for the feedback it’ll really help me improve the trifold. I plan on reworking it and my first thought was to give a proper map key. I think it’ll really help the players go from the mundanity of the job to the horrors they’ll face. Also, What Reflects From Inside caught my eye and I have it in my queue of trifolds I’m going to read. The art and vibes are great just at first glance I can’t wait to check it out!