I really like the premise, theme, and scenario, but mechanically I would've liked some insight on what exactly can be done by each player on their turn. Single-DC mechanics usually only work when there's a GM to rule out the stupid actions, like "Win the game." While you may have players more into this sort of thing, not having any difficulty gradient is just a bit unfortunate. It's also quite unclear who assigns the complications should they arise. I would have preferred to see the inactive players involved more in that judgment, seeing as it would kill two birds (inactivity and lack of human guidance) with one stone. Still a very innovative concept.
Viewing post in The Sun is Dead jam comments
Thank you for the feedback Salus!
I understand your concern regarding the mechanics, and indeed it's not a game for everyone. I would hope that nobody willing to play this sort of game would go for a cheap "Win the game" or similar situation, but I suppose it's possible someone would say that. You could play the game either with or without a GM. If one is present, it's easy to have the GM describe the current scene, and the players go from there; the GM could also assign the complications. This is what I had in mind when creating the game, though not specifically mentioned.
If there's no GM, the remaining players would have control over the scene and complications. Either the previous or following player, or even one randomly assigned every turn, could act as a temporary GM to determine what goes on. All of them together could work too, but that might be too chaotic. As you mentioned, this would indeed help with the inactivity of other players, though I expect there to be quite a bit of chatter even out of turn.
Lastly, the difficulty is set so that it becomes more complicated to do any sort of action the closer you are to the end (the less Light there is, the more difficult it is to do anything), with a bit of help around the middle of the game to help you beta a complicated scene and move the game along. Though I believe you might be referring to the difficulty of different kinds of actions; there is indeed no difference depending on the kind of action you want to do. In this sense it is similar to the game Dread, where it just gets more and more complicated no matter what you want to do, to make it more thrilling by the end.
Thanks again for the feedback, and I hope I could clarify a bit of my reasoning behind the mechanics. Perhaps I'll tweak and improve it after the voting finishes, there's definitely more information that could be added removing the 200 word limit.
Cheers!
Thanks for the reply! Always nice to get a real dissection like this.
I see your reasoning with the whole sans-difficulty-gradient thing. For me, I guess those games just aren't my cup of raspberry chai (I didn't like Dread much, more of an OSR person and less of a storygames person generally) but to each their own.
If you did ever expand this, I'd love to hear more about how exactly playing a cell works, and what sorts of things are inside.