(+) Great cover art that grabs readers' attention like it would in the game world
(+) Great take on the idol-fan relationship and twisting it to a horror premise
(+) Great chain of events that lead to feverous curiosity on what happens to the fans
Play TTRPG Trifold
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I think the premise of a performer feeding on their fanbase, with the twist that the corporate machine they fuel is the one facilitating the entire thing, is really compelling. The art is also fantastic! I like Selenia and want more of her as a character, behavioural quirks and tabloid rumors could have filled her Idol Profile section with more actionable details for the Warden. To echo some of the comments here, it is hard to conceive of Cosmos as a location, it needs a map or encounter table.
Most of all, I wish there was more presented for the player crew to do. Receiving the celestial goodies and attending the show take up a lot of panel space for events that occur passively and do not present the crew with anything to act on or react to. There needs to be more challenge and intrigue here. The facility is the one dangerous part of this pamphlet that player characters will move through. It too needs more environmental detail or perhaps a focus on how the Guardians behave and what they do as threats in this space.
If I run this scenario, I will likely use Selenia and the premise while fleshing out the location to make it more engaging for my table.
Thanks for the praise and feedback!
It was our first-time working out a trifold and unfortunately, fitting a full fridge door worth of post-its in a US-Letter proved to be a daunting task!
We will be improving The Cosmos locations, with some discoverables in each room and clearing up some fluff in favor of more mystery unraveling. Part of our internal goal was to attempt to keep it as light as possible to fit a one-shot session, while having some bits for the Warden to trace back to the module in bigger campaigns with all the goodies.
Definitely going to rework it after the Jam to have something worthy of the Celestials! ★~
This one has a lot of potential. The setup is great. But the execution lacks detail. I'd love to see a next version because as it is now, I can only use it to recreate an unsatisfying fan experience. Traces of hooks are there, but they do not bite yet. As it is, it remains up to the Warden to make it engaging and personal. If I would run it, I might create an evil record mogul preserving this status quo to feed the hype for profit and influence.
Totally to be improved after the jam!
In retrospect, we wanted to keep it light and easy to pick and modify, but it ended up a bit flat and linear from within the Cosmos.
Already have some plans to improve the rooms and discover the mystery a bit more progressively through player action.
One other option was for a group of devoted Celestials [The Guardians] who kidnapped her idol to keep her forever perfect. Or a crime syndicate profiting from addictive and unregulated merchandise edibles! Will give it a spin with Lilinn!
I agree with the other comments - a great piece of work that could really use a map! I think that giving Selenia some way to communicate with he players would have been great. Maybe she could defend herself or present them with a moral dilemma? What if she actually wants to die and the Celestials are keeping her alive against her will? I like the juxtaposition of the bubblegum pop and a dark-themed storyline!
Oooooh thats a good-one!
In some of our notes we had Selenia, if spoken with, she would only be half-there. She speaks with the players and glitches mid-sentence, singing or thanking the audience in one of the many concerts being live-broadcast across the system through her brain.
Glad you liked our piece of cute-pink-kawaii entertainment industry horror!
A module featuring everyone’s favourite idol, Senelia Esteria. The graphic design and layout are beautiful and impressive, as is the art. The setup of the idol being sustained by physically extracting the life-force of her most devoted fans is great, and Celestial goodies and “purity grades” of the fans are super juicy ideas.
I do wish the module had a map showing the locations, as well as a bit more to grab onto for PCs to interact with in each location. I don’t think the module provides super strong motivations for the PCs to dig deeper.
A lot of space is spent on the “default setup”, which I think could have been better spent fleshing out other details. Especially because the default hook does not seem very strong to me. I wish there was more motivation provided. E.g. in Selenia’s hall, there is a description of what happens if pods are deactivated, but there is no suggestion for why the players might want to deactivate the pods.
All in all, the module is beautiful and oozing with vibes and good ideas, but I would have to do some of the heavy lifting to get it running interestingly, rather than as a tour through an idol diorama.
Thanks for all the feedback!
After the Jam we plan to sprinkle the Cosmos with some more discoverables and to improve a bit the hook for the main dilemma, as it needed a bit more meat ( Luckily, we still have some space for it ), as well as a better layout for the ship-map itself.
With the pods wth the kidnapped victims, saving depends a bit on the group morals and/or the chosen hook. We might add some good old-fashioned encounter of all the Celestial Guardians if the group ends Selenia via trying to save everyone in that room. Still have to flesh that part out after!
Great concept. A music idol figure with a dark secret to plop into any campaign.
Selenias profile, goodies and portrait help fleshen her out and give material for the warden to pepper around the campaign way before introducing the hook, and after as callbacks to the adventure.
However for The Cosmos - I feel adding some more details could make it easier to run and more engaging for the players. Reasons to stay or revisit a room, things to discover and/or avoid, subtle hints that something is off.
Getting tickets, into the venue or into the moon lounge could also be turned into interesting challenges for the players.
Thanks Collapsologist!
We rushed a bit the submission, and the Cosmos resulted a bit flat, but definitely post-jam we are going to sprinkle around some discoveries around the rooms.
In our initial idea, Celestials were going to do some "trials" to prove they were worthy, which were used for testing their Purity Grade™. Maybe we will rescue a bit of that.
For the tickets, we thought of complicating it, but wanted to keep things one-shot/one-session friendly, and at least with our usual groups, obtaining tickets could have been worthy already of a session of its own, but we will give it a spin to see if we could add some more "active" action to obtain it.
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