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Because my son is a huge fan of TADC, I went to skim the page for the core system you're using. Kudos putting full pages up for people to look over. Kind of unfortunate that the first thing my eyes fell on was a grammar error and a spelling error in the same sentence. Don't feel bad. I somehow missed a spelling error in my title on the cover once since I was so focused on the text inside the book. None of that is relevant to this review, but thought I would mention it so you can give the whole thing another pass and update.

To the actual module at hand, I don't print them out for these reviews (I actually couldn't for yours right now anyway. My yellow is low and this would absolutely wipe it out!) but I do scale them on my screen using a piece of actual paper to verify before doing an overview of legibility. My old eyes sometimes struggle with readability for one reason or another. I big culprit is white text on a colored background, so thankfully that's avoided here. That said, the print is so small that when at scale it looks less like real words and more like implied markings meant to seem like them.

I increase to double size to do the review read normally, but even then this font feels painfully small. At 2.5 times print size, it was readable and it wasn't until 3 times the print sizing that I didn't feel a need to lean towards my screen. I have no idea what font this is and what size you used within it, but for me this is so tiny I would never even consider it. It feels cramped and I'm not sure my printer is high enough quality to manage making the letters readable if I printed it out. No amount of magnifying glass is going to fix a printer not bothering with details.

I started out with the dirty version listed as final, but that made the matter worse, so I switched to the clean version. Reasonable idea, just that the font issues made the dingy version an absolute no for me getting through it. Cover doesn't bring a lot to the table, but it's clear about what this is, so there's that.

And page one I am hit with a wall of text. Looking like it's supposed to be a hand-written journal entry of whoever put this together. Nice enough idea, but the cube of text is jarring. It immediately breaks the attempted immersion. People don't write in large squares normally. They put returns, they have awkward layouts that no machine is there to reposition the words into for them. It's typing, I get that. The lines will all be neat because it /isn't/ hand written. That's not what I mean. There's no breaks in there at all. Just pressing return once in a while would enhance the sense it was a person scrawling a note. If you wanted to be a little extra, changing letter spacing here and there, word spacing, font size up or down one. Those things create a more uneven feel like a person writing neatly, but failing to have machine perfection.

I hate read-aloud text. I never use it in a game. This notes it is found in the location, leaving me two choices. A: I absolutely must read it aloud word for word, or B: I must hand type this into a separate document and print it to hand to players. Having a set of printable documents that can be handed to players would go a long way here as a side item. Players love getting physical props as part of an adventure and it lets them reference back to things later by rechecking what was written there.

Word choices in the summary can be a bit questionable here. Feels more like an attempt to use obscure word combinations than a desire to convey information. I'll give you Gloam. It's kind of the assignment, but then you put sempiternal right beside it. Those who know me know I have a vocabulary to break an English teacher's soul, but I learned long ago that language is a double edged sword. The more words you know and use, the more focused the information you convey is. However, the more words you know how to use, the lower the number of people will understand what you are trying to say. You could convey basically the same thing by saying 'infinite', 'endless', or 'eternal', but have just about everyone reading understand what you were saying without needing to pull out the dictionary. The choice I suspect is meant to convey the Lovecraftian vibe given his penchant for odd words. Not ideal at the very start of things though since it's going to turn off a lot of people as being pretentious.

Next up, solve a riddle. You learn it in the adventure and apparently it's not something to guess or a set answer. No set answer is good. I've never had a lot of luck running riddles for players though. Far too often things go poorly. I'll reserve judgment for now. 764 words in now reviewing the module and I haven't made it past the first page. I am starting to worry.

Oh god... more walls of text I am expected to read out in a uniform block. Not going to lie here. I would have already deleted this by now if I wasn't reviewing. This isn't for me. I have no issue with narrative roleplay, but the daunting idea of reading out endless journal entries in this monotone visual is more than I am willing to put in. I want information about things they find, what they can do, etc. I don't even need stats in some cases, but so far, this document isn't giving me anything but a sense of having to read my homework out loud in front of the class. At least we do get the information on the face. One small mechanic and a note to just use it as I see fit when I want. It would be nice if it was clearer about things that might trigger it other than 'when engaging'. Being unkillable and seemingly able to just do whatever, this is feeling less and less like an TTRPG and more like a 'DM wants to do things so just go with it and don't expect to have success unless I allow it' situation. Narrative play can sometimes fall into that unfortunately. Rules are guard rails and rolls are simulations of chance over choice. When the rules just say I get to do anything as the DM, they're basically saying the players are going to be NPCs in the story I want to tell. It's one of the big reasons I am so much in favor of emergent storytelling over pre-planned stories.

Okay, onward to doors. I see a lot of grammar and spelling errors in here. Make sure to do another pass if you plan to expand this. As an idea, this is interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it's certainly different. I don't think I have ever seen a map where the GM is expected to make up all of the rooms themselves and the system elements offered are just procedurally generated door functionality. Functionally, I don't care for it. The tables are a bit odd so that the dark gray pops out and my brain tried to short circuit. The white blends so well with the gray background when next to the dark gray that it doesn't always register when I look at it.

I sit for a time feeling like I am missing something before deciding to instead rant about the Deus ex Machina element of item functionality. GM decides they jump in and out of existence as needed to ensure players can't resolve issues too easily. Instead of rewarding smart play in a narrative game, I am being told to punish them for thinking outside of the box. Better to just say nothing can travel beyond the room it came from and have it all be self-contained.

Then I am realizing I have 2 rows of information about door functionality that could probably been condensed down to a single chart, but only 1 row about the actual rooms. I know I see more below about that, but for now, it's telling me I have to make all of my own material up. I could go on. The fact this implies every player's character is in a separate location as I run things unless a door leads them to meet up isn't helping me feel like this is something that can be run without a few weeks of extra prep either. I end up just shrugging and moving on lest I get too deep into this area rather than trying to offer anything useful to you as a designer. The TLDR here is that I don't think this works as well for a person reading it as it does for you who is already intimately familiar with what you want it to do and how you want it to work.

Until now, I've largely not commented about the contents of the in-setting text read-aloud/print elements, but I have to point this single thing out. You have a picture on a page with a single statement under it. You use the word 'closet', but I suspect from the image and implication you meant 'wardrobe' here. With only one exception, every home I have lived in or visited had a door on the closet that led to a small space. Sometimes a walk-in space. A wardrobe though is never really a room. It's just a box with door-like openings on the front. Bonus, by using the word wardrobe, you're evoking C. S. Lewis. Never a bad choice.

The only 2 set rooms are fair enough. Not much happening in the first one and a combat at the end. Exiting is apparently just about saying something with confidence. No idea if half the players I have had over the years could ever make it out in that case. One in particular always spoke to questions in a tone that sounded like he was questioning his own answer. Players are expected to be all over the place, leading me as the GM to need to bounce back and forth between situations. Either someone is sitting for extended periods watching someone else play or everyone is getting a few actions in and being made to wait while I rotate around the group. I can handle this type of play well enough, but two things are noteworthy. First is that I know a lot of people over the years who could not have handled it well as GMs and would lead to bored players. Second is that even if it is handled well, it's a lot more work to maintain a whole night than a one-shot event is probably going to be worth for me.

You've got an uphill battle convincing people to play an unfamiliar system. You get some credit for the fact it did cause my son to go looking up your game out of love for the source material. That only gets you so far though. There's zero chance he could make it through reading this, let alone trying to run it. Even myself with decades of experience as a GM would have to sit down and do a lot of legwork ahead of time to make sure I was ready. You swung for the fences here with trying to create mood, add elements of old style writing, building out systems to add complexity and interest. It was a good attempt, but I am afraid it fell short of where I believe you wanted it. It's the scaffolding, but the building hasn't fully come together. At least for myself. If you get anything useful from this long-winded analysis done in real-time as I read it, then great. Not everyone will have the same experience I had, but maybe it will offer insights into where my thoughts were going as a GM while reading the document.

Sorry for the late response but thank you for giving this module a proper review and harsh detailed criticism. I don't believe any work is above criticism and will always have criticisms of many different scales for different people and of different lengths, so it is a fresh breath of air to hear real feedback from an experienced individual I can actually use and talk about thoroughly. 

For the Core Book, here's a second thank you and I do not feel bad for such an error (in general, I expect it, therefore never sad about it, only wanting to do better) because it's an ongoing development and that was the first edition and will be updated so the comment on the writing error is appreciated. For the module and the Core Book, last month I had to deal with the aftermath of graduating high school, family drama, constantly working and starting some summer classes so the two projects were rushed with the Core Book being created in the after work hours of a week and the module made in 5 after work days. 

Both projects were not playtested (especially the core book in which I ask for people on itch to help but nobody commented or joined the discord) nor fully edited as after being finished with the module it was an afterthought. The only thing I did for editing is doing a minor rougher version a week later which was only cosmetic. In fact, it was a project I currently hate due to how terrible the planning, execution, and some of the mechanics critiques before you mentioned them. 

For the complex words on the diary I used a literal complex word generator to change what I wrote with more complicated words and I used some of the words in the normal text in which in hindsight and in general, the entire module was designed to fit cool ideas and certain aspects of old literature and references with the layout and mechanics but it was without thinking about playability, simplification, and modern TTRPG norms.

I wanted to restart the entire project after finalizing and even when I got to the ¾ mark, it was too much of the lengthy small texts like my past work and because of the complex words and the mechanics combined it seemed overwhelming for a single module that conceptually was supposed to be a one shot. The wording and art was especially rushed, for example the closet and wardrobe as I wanted a picture of a fancy door and didn't think about it until you mentioned it and I realized it was a wardrobe. I didn't redo anything nor wanted to because I worked 5 days worth of hours on it. I had to deal with class work, and doing more would make it more stressful than any good.

I agree with the majority of the criticism given and some may be interpreted differently, especially the items functionality, most of these I should have worded differently or slightly altered. I would agree that yes it is only scaffolding of a work compared to an actual complete work. The main problem with most of these game jam projects is the majority of people and critics say it has potential or the bones of something bigger but needs to be further developed, needs more time, greater editing or looked over by others in the development process or after finalizing the project. This is not always possible in my development(s) as I'm constantly busy and have no acquaintances, support, or friends outside of the game jam(s) that are willing to help.

 I will not develop this module further as I think it's too complicated, is a product I'm not fully proud of and would be a complete waste of time. I consider making better quality passion projects like the core system of TIDC in which I will develop further as I see a better future with the system improvement than this module. These past projects would be a reminder of my past and I will continue to grow from that. If there's any criticism or adjustments for the system please comment because I’m updating the system from V1 to V2.

Thank you again for taking the time to write such a long and detailed review. Even though a lot of it was harsh and some of it was encouraging, it's exactly the kind of criticism that is useful to me for the coming future. -DTIMAL 

I'm also making a new game jam for the TIDC TTRPG system called Caine's Suggestion Box: https://itch.io/jam/caines-sb-jam

Don't feel too badly about the lack of playtesters. Until one gets a larger following, it is very hard to get them. I still find difficulty getting reliable playtesters for anything I do. Also, there's no shame in starting somewhere and growing. My first game design was twenty years ago now and while it was a work of love, I probably wouldn't share it. Other projects I have worked on for years and still not had ready due to time constraints and the desire to have them meet a certain minimum standard. We each put out our best work and hope it does well. We see our mistakes and use them to grow so the next project is better. No shade at all to you. It's why I do these deep dive critiques. They help others to see how things are happening and where they might decide to make changes. Good luck on your continued growth!