I am a huge fan of this, and I had a blast reading parts of it aloud to my partner. Every one of your PC concepts is awesome; please keep the literal bear in some form. I like the flaw-injury system a lot; it adds some exciting choices, taking disadvantages vs. forgoing advantages and mitigable vs. permanent conditions. The tiered abilities play well with my sense of symmetry and also add some meaningful decision points around resource use. I instinctively got what a few of your Stats were for without having to read the description, but not Booty or Omens. Heat and the multiplicity of adversaries is an interesting twist on reinforcement rules; it does add a fair amount of crunch, especially for the GM. Your structure of major and minor/side objectives gives the players and GM a lot of narrative freedom while providing a nice clear plot skeleton and game arc. At one point in your rules you refer to "advancing an objective clock" rather than removing resilience, and I think this way of framing it actually adds a mechanical contrast that might help make Havoc games more legible. +1 vote for ending the campaign with a set-piece ship battle; just a capstone Objective would work great.
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Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad it was a fun read!
I'm glad you like the characters. I think each of them has a unique niche, though some are still a little hamfisted. I'm hoping with some polish and some character art, that will shine through even more.
I'm definitely going to take a second look at the stats. I've received a lot of feedback on Omens, which was something I was really attached to personally. However, most of the feedback has been that it doesn't fit. I've been considering pulling it out and using it to reflavor the built in "tell a tall tale" mechanic that I think is underexplained as well. For Booty, I just felt like it HAD to be a stat, but I agree that it's not as intuitive as the others. I could always drop it as a stat and use it as the Gear/Equipment, but I worry that I'll lose some character and I'm not sure I'm ready to go a 3 stat spread.
I definitely hear you on heat adding crunch. I've also been considering going to a single roll at the top of the round which is everyone's heat added together, similar to what I've seen in a few other submissions in the jam. That may add a bit more crunch at the outset of a new round, but hopefully will smooth out each individual round. It will change a few of the other mechanics though, like pirates getting captured, so I'm still working out the details on what I think I'd like to do with it.
As for thinking about the objectives as clocks. Honestly, that's one of the things that helped me wrap my head around the system in the first place. I might ultimately do a rewrite to emphasize that & make it more consistent throughout. I really like the way that it intuitively implies that progress is being made in a way that reducing an objective resilience score doesn't do as well.
Lastly, I'll take the +1 to ship battle. I think that's the biggest thing I'm hearing as feedback for the adventure side of the doc. I've got some ideas cooked up that I think will be fun to play out.
Thanks again for the detailed and thoughtful feedback!