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A jam submission

A Descent of FeathersView project page

An archaeology expedition gone wrong for the Mothership TTRPG.
Submitted by bjcthatisme — 2 hours, 59 minutes before the deadline
Rated by 12 people so far

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A Descent of Feathers's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted

Art: I take it that you ran out of time before finishing all the NPC portraits, but what you have is nice.

Writing: Funny and effective. I like the casual tone. You did a good job of sketching out a memorable cast of NPCs with a minimum number of words. The tone is wildly different from most Mothership fare, which wouldn't ordinarily bother me much, but it's a little odd envisioning it as existing in the same campaign as some of the other Barrow stuff.

Game Design: My main complaint about this is that it's heavily railroaded. The party is going to the bottom of this thing and back out again just because it's there, there are certain steps that have to happen along the way, and the cast of NPCs and prodding from monsters are all sort of conspiring to make sure the players do all those things. Granted, you did suggest that there might be other ways to convince the pyramid to open the doors, but it's still structurally on rails pretty much the whole way.

Theme: It's definitely ancient mythology. It feels to me like it wants to use a different system than Mothership, though. The mechanics of Mothership are going to fight with the kind of vibe you're looking for with e.g. those monster powers, etc.

Layout: I think the map itself is really nice but it's a shame the way the text is just plastered over it without e.g. little label boxes or something. The direct overlaying of the text and the map's lines them both harder to see clearly, and gives a messy impression.

Utility: Full marks. Everything necessary is present for someone to run the scenario as it's intended, assuming the players are going to cooperate when herded.

Favorability: It's fun to read, but I wouldn't run it because a linear progression of encounters without much player agency is a personal deal-breaker. Again, just personal preference because that's what this category is for.

Submitted

This has a really fun, funny, and unique tone, especially for a mothership module. The juxtaposition between the goofy professor and what you need to do to him is pretty funny. 

The art is great, but the layout needs more polish. I think the readability suffers a bit because terms are used before being defined. The Sacrifice and Lightning Curse are mentioned before they're explained, for example. Some minor rearrangement of the text would resolve that.

I also think you need to shrink the pyramid so the text doesn't have to go over it. Maybe shrink it to the bottom middle, put some numbers in the rooms and then have room numbered descriptions arching over it. Like this:

 

Submitted

I want to particularly praise a very clear creative voice that I enjoyed seeing from this module. The juice is here for a full release provided some issues with readability primarily on the map are solved for. 

The map itself and the conceit of how the adventure is traversed are particularly fun!