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THE OLD DUST - A Mothership RPG Trifold's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| LAYOUT — How well does the module get across information? | #6 | 4.038 | 4.038 |
| GAME DESIGN — How good is the game balance or concepts there in? | #8 | 3.769 | 3.769 |
| Overall | #9 | 3.797 | 3.797 |
| UTILITY — Does complexity inspire game prep? Or Is it very "Pick-up-n-Play"? | #10 | 3.808 | 3.808 |
| WRITING — How does this read? does it emanate with horror, humor, drama...? | #14 | 3.808 | 3.808 |
| FAVORABILITY — how much do you personally like the submission? | #14 | 3.577 | 3.577 |
| ART — How good is the art/graphic design? | #18 | 3.962 | 3.962 |
| THEME — How well is the jam theme used? | #19 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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This submission is very polished. I like most aspect of it very much. I am however not crazy about the map exploration type of modules and prefer more fleshed out concepts and mechanics over a detailed maps. You are however hardly alone in spending three panes on the map.
I enjoy other concepts as well but I definitely come from an exploration background in ttrpgs!
There's room in the second half of The Old Dust to roleplay and tackle the dilemma of the survivors.
Thank you very much for having a look.
Huge wins across the board on this one for me! Lovely, crunchy, classic MoSh aesthetic and lots of great ideas at play. I like the flow of the map, it's dense but there are a lot of branching paths that'll eventually guide the PCs to the database. Great info hierarchy, a good amount of horrifying shit mixed in with the classic "immortality formula" myth stuff, and a fun central antagonist! Literally the only thing that strikes me as a bit out of place is the direct "clones spawn out of the Prime's back" callout - I love the Substance inspo, but I feel like there could a bit of differentiation on that particular part to help it hew its own identity.
Other than that though, one of my favorites aesthetically and organizationally. Awesome work!
Thank you very much for the support and feedback, it means the world!
I'll take the clones into some serious thought for post jam. Would you say their inclusion at all is out of place or mainly the way and framing for how they come to be? There are a few possibilities I think - in fact THE OLD DUST's effect might be massaged to fit in general.
Glad you liked it!
I think the clones are great! Just the particular spawning method feels like it a bit too 1:1. If it was like "spawned by painful mitosis" or something a little vague, or a specific but distinct process ("spawned from their chest cavity")
Killer cover art, and I like the title a lot. Good design and keying. I like the map aesthetically, but found it a little hard to identify doors. The bioforge is such a fun idea! I'd like it if all the information was a consolidated and how it works is made more clear. I'd explicitly say it allows you to make pills with the listed bioforge properties. "Will produce product from any combo of chemicals" is pretty vague.
Some other small issues. The ancient myth portion of the intro felt tacked on, and I think it would be even weirder for people who don't know the theme of the jam. I would say you could just remove it entirely.
I think an editing pass to focus on defining terms and clarifying language would really help this one shine. Good job!
I agree that while there's a lot going on inside that is all very 1:1 with the various details of Chang'e's myth, it's difficult to get that all across in a trifold! I'll have to have a think about what the core element there is perhaps. At the heart of it "Elixir of Immortality" is the broad idea, the myth underneath a little more particular. Good ideas!
In terms of the blurb and cover together I kind of did wonder if nothing at all there might work and this is a great indication that I could try it.
I appreciate that you enjoyed the Bioforge! During the last sprint there keying the reader in to what it can do suffered a bit from space running out. Some rewording for post-jam is my plan for a little bit of everything especially in regard to that.
Thank you for the support and actionable observations.
Art: Decent. Could use a little more variation between panels and/or color as the overall impression is a bit flat.
Writing: As with the art, it's functional and spare. Good details, but a cookie-cutter story concept.
Game Design: Seems like a solid dungeon crawl if that's your jam. I find horror-comedy and dice-fest gameplay go well hand-in-hand so I think the hordes of killer rabbits are a good call here.
Theme: The quest for eternal life certainly figures prominently in mythology. Would haved liked to see the in-Universe mythology developed a bit or else more overt references to real world myth. Apologies if there's something related to Chinese myth I'm missing... I tried Googling Guanghan, Yuegong and osmanthus in relation to eternal life but didn't turn up much.
Layout: Large-scale structure is fine. Some small-scale spacing and typographic issues, especially in the boxed text. Generally doesn't look good when the line spacing is looser than the padding around the edges, and e.g. the Edi Prime box on the back panel has a huge chunk of white space at the bottom, while the Edi Replica box just below it is crammed right up against the edges on all sides.
Utility: Seems very pick-up-and-play.
Favorability: Not my cup of tea in that the narrative is cliché and the gameplay very combat-focused, but that's okay. It will do what it sets out to do for those who want that.
I was inspired by the Doom of Verden Prime and nearly went for all black and white with only the green accent for the cover, in terms of art.
My intention was to be fairly terse with all of the elements presented and so I agree that mileage will vary when it comes to the connections made between the myth of Chang'e and more broadly, Elixir of Immortality/Fountain of Youth/etc themes. Essentially all of the nouns are related to the myth and their roles in it. The Osmanthus is Fu Sang a permanently regenerating tree that Wu Gang (Ken Wu in this case) is punished to cut forever. The Rabbit(s) accompany Chang'e and help her to grind THE OLD DUST forever with their feet - in a mortar but that's ancient history. Obviously all down to context in those regards for sure.
Guanghan and Yuegong are "Moon Palace" and the name of the Moon in the myth, and are repeated in characters underneath the map. Moon for the labs, and Palace for the R&D section.
All of the notes on minor typographical things are appreciated!
I'd love it if you could elaborate on what you found cliché about the narrative.
Thanks again!
I'll bump you up to full marks for Theme because if it's there and I'm just not familiar with the specific myth, that's not on you.
Regarding clichés, there are basically two Mothership plotlines you'll see over and over for dungeon-crawl type formats. "Science Experiment Went Wrong," and "Mysterious Alien Device Turned Out to Be Bad." And in the science experiment version, there is usually crew (or in this case animals) that got turned into monsters, and it's almost always the scientist who's the BBEG, often in disguise when you first meet them.
Take a look at Project Indigo in this jam and you'll see what I mean... although the map is much smaller, the storyline for this one and that one are structurally almost identical.
For sandbox formats, there is a third cliché, which I guess you could call "Soylent Green is People!" where you're wandering around offices or a factory until you realize that what they're doing is even more horrible than you first thought.
To be fair, I think part of the issue here is with Mothership itself... it's a game that lends itself heavily to these structures.
After seeing the previous editions, I feel this is definitely the strongest yet. Seeing the font choices for the map changed and enlarged slightly have made the trifold design overall more cohesive and readbale.
Thank you for the feedback!
Utility became a top priority early on thanks to early read-throughs and I think we managed to preserve the aesthetic in revisions.