Thank you so much for taking the time to play, and leaving such detailed feedback! I do plan to keep working on this after the jam ends, so this sort of response is invaluable 🙏
Your suggestions are very sound! I definitely need to simplify a lot of things, and onboard people better to the systems that will stay complex!
For example, Heroes not only have Stats & Skills, they also have tags which can be positive or negative! Quests have tags too, and tallying the Quest tags against the dispatched Hero tags are what lead to to Advantage / Disadvantage (rolls with two dice).
If I do keep this system, I will lead quite a lot of design thought regarding how to communicate it, as that’s like 3 secret things that just lead to a confusing result 😅
Maybe the Heroes just have one positive & one negative tag, which is easier to keep on-screen with the UI, and display to the Quests and Choices… I was thinking it could also be “artifact-style” items that allow you to see the tags the Quests have (or the DCs and skills), or else you’d have to rely on guessing based on the flavour text!
And besides clarity, there’s a lot of room in the design for juice! Like the typewriter effect you mention which sounds really fitting: will definitely check out your game too 🙂
Thanks again!