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(4 edits)

You’re definitely right that a “good ending” where the players are able to recapture the Octopode and make it to Procyon B is not well supported in the text. The NDA arrangement is primarily meant to create some immediate friction with the Fox crew (and goofs), and hopefully lead to a more intricate and volatile situation when the raid starts.

As for the theme, we decided to interpret it a bit more loosely… we’ve got a seemingly tight knit crew, but with tension bubbling beneath the surface. 

A note on the information ordering, when you open the cover to read the inner flap, the page headered Fox Uniform with the Vulpes diagram will be visible. Just a quirk of roll fold ->digital conversion. I have a version for screens that I'll put up after the jam period with a min. price

I understand the ordering of the flaps, as mine is the same. That's what I'm saying though.

As you read it, you get the inner flap with the Vulpes ship and the Fox Uniform crew before you read the interior. However, that means you're reading "Fox Uniform" before getting to "The Job."

The result of that, for me at least, was that I initially assumed that the players were part of Fox Uniform and would be aboard the Vulpes, dealing with a mutiny among their own crew. 

Then I got to The Job and didn't immediately notice that it was referencing a different ship, so I thought the Octopode was in that exterior cargo compartment. It was only when I got to "Now" and the sentence "Fox Uniform, a mercenary outfit, picked up your distress signal" that I realized that no, the players are on a different ship and Fox Uniform is who's coming to get them.

I realize this is partly my own fault because the cover blurb does say "Now, your ship is dead, and half the rescue crew decided today was the day that they were going to become pirates." However, I still think it would be helpful either to better establish the players' situation before introducing Fox Uniform, or include a phrase like "...who respond to the players' distress signal" in the Fox Uniform description to reinforce that they're the outside party in the scenario.

I really think that the confusion is stemming from the digital format. When you open a roll fold trifold, the first page that you see is the leftmost panel on the 'interior' spread. As long as you read left to right, you will read the Job first.

(1 edit)

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, the left interior would be visible alongside the inner flap.

I'm not convinced that's the natural order in which people will read things, but yes, they're both visible at the same time. I think even though left-to-right is the normal reading order, my instinct as I'm opening something is to read the flaps first, then the interior. I designed mine so that the timeline is on the interior left panel, knowing that it would be visible alongside the inner flap, but still expecting the inner flap to be the second thing people read.

This may vary from person to person though. It's clear from Graham's post on trifolds that he's also a "flap first" guy because his numbering goes 261 345. But I'm sure you're not the only one who has the opposite instinct. https://lordgt.itch.io/children-of-eden/devlog/925521/writing-a-tri-fold-a-look-...

(+1)

The other consideration is what is all on the same side of the piece of paper. Putting the timeline where you did makes perfect sense, it puts all of the information you need to understand the module on one side, and all of the information you will need to reference on the other. 

I was balancing my decision making about what columns you would see first when opening the trifold, and then what makes sense to have on the spread when it's open