Thank you so much for this feedback! It's incredibly helpful.
Responding to your questions / observations:
- Hunter (specifically Hunter: the Vigil) is definitely an inspiration! As was the Wyrm / Pentex / the Fomori. I should maybe add the latter to the list of Touchstones, actually. The needle I'm trying to thread here is between describing a very bleak and uncompromising setting to serve as a stark backdrop for the ethics and decisions of the characters, but not making it so dreary and unrelentingly depressing that nobody wants to play it! I'm glad it seems intriguing enough to not be an instant turn-off, at least.
- Because it's such an intense game, I think a long-term campaign would be difficult to sustain on a purely emotional level. I imagine that games would be single "episodes" of 1-3 sessions or relatively short "arcs" of maybe 7-10. Which means that I do expect characters to burn out relatively fast. But at the same time, I don't want it to be so lethal that the players don't have time to get to know them (and thus feel the impact). I did think about giving a way to "heal" relationships, but decided against it. I'll need to playtest the death spiral to see how fast it tightens though, and how that feels.
- The point about the character's own abilities is a good one. In my current thinking, the idea was essentially that your relationships *are* your abilities, in that if you, say, know how to shoot, one of your Tethers taught you that. But I see that it's not really explained in the text. Plus, I think it might be a bit muddled. Separating those out may work better, though I'm not sure how to distinguish them mechanically without adding unnecessary complexity.
Anyway, once again, I really can't thank you enough for taking the time to engage with this. If you end up doing a solo playthrough, I would love to hear how it went and any notes you may have. Honestly, just the idea that someone might actually play the weird little game I made absolutely makes my day!