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All Along The Watchtower's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| ART — How good is the art/graphic design? | #21 | 3.908 | 4.000 |
| WRITING — How does this read? does it emanate with horror, humor, drama...? | #24 | 3.629 | 3.714 |
| LAYOUT — How well does the module get across information? | #27 | 3.489 | 3.571 |
| Overall | #32 | 3.303 | 3.381 |
| THEME — How well is the jam theme used? | #33 | 3.257 | 3.333 |
| FAVORABILITY — how much do you personally like the submission? | #36 | 3.024 | 3.095 |
| UTILITY — Does complexity inspire game prep? Or Is it very "Pick-up-n-Play"? | #43 | 2.885 | 2.952 |
| GAME DESIGN — How good is the game balance or concepts there in? | #43 | 2.931 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- I was immediately gripped by the stellar design and evocative nature of All Along The Watchtower, but came away wanting more. The strength and weakness of Unconfirmed Contact Reports rests in their concepts leaving you eager to solve their mysteries, but just enough remains mysterious that I can't fully appreciate the rest of what we have. That said, The Sound of Home can easily spread to nearly any other module, setting, and campaign you want to play, but what rests at its core is entirely up to the creativity of the Warden.
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Comments
Having reviewed all but ten entries, I only have time to rate the final ten but not provide a written review. If you want detailed feedback like I've given others, hit me up on Discord (xopods) and I'll give you some after the ratings close.
I actually prefer the printer friendly version, the regular version became a little much to me.
This a great way of presenting a threat. In my opinion more evocative than the official unconfirmed contacts reports.
Love the name of the anointed, also personally, I'm a big fan of the gold color themes. Golden veins, hmm, fantastic combination of holy and horror. The vignettes format is fun to work with, but it will require a little more prep, a worthwhile tradeoff imo.
The colour palette is good and the layout feels dynamic. Unique idea and feels mythic. Good use of radiation mechanics. A couple suggestions that could improve it:
Using the Golden Record is a sweet idea and unconfirmed contact reports are a great niche to fill!
This hits for my brain in a big way, really love the visuals and overall more “Eerie” vibe than full out horror horror. I think you did an excellent job of both getting a story across through small vignettes and also creating something useful that warden’s can pepper in through their campaigns. Also i really like the veins of gold, it reminds of the art of Kintsugi which i assume was your intention, and making a sort of horror version of the rejoining of parts… well thats just fun.
Congrats on a cool thing made well.
What Joshua said about outlining - it's a bit too much, and a reasonable amount could have simply been avoided by how text boxes were arranged or shaped. You're also going to have to get in there and manually fix the kerning issues that the font has with all caps.
Also, I wasn't too sure how I'd use this, felt like more of a starting point or part of something larger.
I really like the visual design of this, there are great concepts at play, and the enemies and tone are frightening.
There may be too many quotes and too much descriptive writing though, which feels weird to say, It really works as an evocative, experimental piece, but reading as a warden wanting to be able to quickly get a sense of how to run it, I hit some snags when trying to distill the content into actionable information.
Some questions I had:
I liked the note about cults and faith. TTRPGS too often treat cultists like faceless cannon fodder. I think you could remove the "be respectful" part though. It feels a bit like an admonition, which could rub some people the wrong way.
Ultimately, I think this module is a flavorful and effective artistic statement. Good job!
Some quick answers for your questions
1. What I intended by "A tragedy witnessed through Unconfirmed Contact Reports" was to tell the silhouette of a story of the Watchtower's societal death through peeks. The way I interpreted UCRs was similar to capturing a blurry photo of aliens/cryptids/what have you, and enough of them put in the right order with a little context framing would tell enough of a story to use in other campaigns or modules.
2. The Cassette Cache puzzles are intended to be common geocaching puzzles, like physical puzzles to assemble and solve. In use/play, the cassette caches are meant to be looks inside the greater culture of the station through mixtapes and/or playlists assembled by any person on the station.
3. The Astronav Cartography Feed is a space version of The Weather Channel and an airport's departures/arrivals list. Reports are aggregated, and the feed shows stuff like likelihood of meteor showers, solar storms, and occasionally, patterns of issues with incoming ships. If you want to signal an imminent threat or have subtle signs that something is amiss, you can use the ACF to bring it to a common point.
4. The Fort Lot is more like an empty lot with supplies kids take there to make forts and such. It's less a play place and more an empty slot for a store occupied and repurposed by children.
I greatly appreciate your comments and critique, as this is the first time I've tried something this experimental, I'll keep them in mind moving forward!
I fuck with this severely. Very cool stuff! I love the questions it raises, the setting it suggests, and the thoughtful integration of hard mechanics with very soft narrative! I think my only notes would be:
Enough nitpicking though, I love this and it's got The Sauce and The Vibes!! You made me hungry with the Tamale stand. I also fucking love the "cults and faith" callout - incredibly good reminder for stories like these! Huge ups for a fellow UCR enjoyer. There are dozens of us
I will second the suggestion of contouring the text to the background images, when I first opened the adventure that was my immediate thought. You might even be able to get away with breaking through the trifold fold lines to do so, you'd have to experiment.