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as someone with ties to both minneapolis and appleton, wi i'm gonna try not to be offended by the suggestion that the twin cities are in wisconsin, that menasha is one of them and that duluth (also not in wisconsin) might be the other, that anyone outside minnesota says "gray duck", and just say that this is a nice quick-and-dirty mission set for grabbing and going. i love reading the phrase "sino-soviet split" in a fist doc. good stuff. 

it's not really a material criticism! you did great, it's usable and still well-assembled, it was just a thought as i was looking at it. once the jam closes you've got all the time in the world to go mess around with layout... all the time in the world...
so many first-published-missions for this jam! hope it's not the last

can't help but feel like i dropped one of the pages here, as this feels like everything but the mission proper, but it's easy to imagine slapping all these yokels in the woods upstate and seeing what happens. this is an underexplored historical era imo and i think some backwater adventures would go down pretty smooth. your historical-adaptation notes are well taken, though i'd love if the included lists were numbered for rolling on. promising stuff here, but i must say, the land could have a lot more fat on it (and i second the suggestion to get the project page content into the doc itself, even if it just says "hey, go kill these guys" somewhere).

this is so zany and i feel like it might end in disaster if i tried this with my usual crowd but it's too juicy to not love it. close enough to a mission concept i had that i almost just want to scrap it. the codeword thing is clever and fun, the shared dialogue is great drama for the table, it looks great, it reads well, and there's a reason you're already a jam winner. gonna have to exercise my freedom* to cassette shop and give my boombox some love if I ever rustle enough people who can get their ADHD locked down for this. innovative and stylish, great stuff

an ambitious, impassioned historical critique masquerading as a game module. i've long believed tabletop is the bridge between our real lives and our revolutionary imaginations, and this is so close to the veil i'm emotional about it, especially as someone who had federal agents invade my city to steal and kill my neighbors only a few months ago. i doubt i'll ever put this in front of my players, but i'm so grateful to have read it, and it's very powerful and brave to make something like this. gracias, y claro, no debemos olvidar a los que murieron por la justicia.

ooh this is just the kinda thing i hoped to read for this jam. love the setting, semi-random facility layout, the code table (i snorted), the song title abilities, and the clear distinctions between 'canon' mission text and helpful notes/suggestions. i'm ready for something to go horribly wrong in that pool. the fact that this is based on a mission you ran makes a lot of sense, as this feels appropriately lived-in and the document itself feels very usable for a referee (and i really appreciated your narrative voice, particularly in the notes). i hope you make more, this came together really nicely for your first publication.

LOVE the visuals. great basic hexmap, header and footer greebles, and that cover is so choice! clever names (i see you with those flyboy references), great flavor, fun statblocks and scenario. even though it's not so dripping with references, this almost feels more like an mgs game than my mgs3 sendup mission feels like mgs3... and i would never complain about that. i really like both the traits, H.E.A.T. especially (i love forcing ridiculous justifications from players in an attempt to do some WANTED bullet-curving nonsense). i think you could add just a little more variety to make the layout scan more easily, as I struggled occasionally to know where to look next in the first few two-column pages, but i really liked what i saw when i did look! please publish more, this is pitch-perfect and very promising. 

clown control to major tom. thanks for bending the jam theme as far as it could go. the flavor is consistently on point throughout, but some more strong narrative beats, especially in the first half, would go a long way towards giving the world building some more utility--i don't even think we get an explicit objective in the mission brief. a proofreading/editing pass would probably help clarity too; i kept feeling like things took a left turn on me, but i'm easily distracted, and typos take me out of things really fast. it feels like the traits and clowns got the most attention, and that stuff gives this a big boost, so i'd almost prefer this as a guidebook for clown emergence protocol or something. i enjoyed it though! lots of heart, a strong flavor, and just the kind of off-center cultural phenomenon i love drawing on for inspiration at the table (i remember when the clowns came out ten years ago... lord, do i remember). 

there's so much stuff here that i'm not going to be able to digest it quickly enough, but this is exactly the kind of thing this jam was going to solicit: on-the-nose spy novel/movie shenanigans with plenty of clever names, places and faces. the floor plans are also really welcome, as i like to have a touch of 10mm mini action to keep tabs on everyone's location sometimes. this is like, months of play for my table, and i'd actually like some of it chunked out in parts that would be easier to share with players, but man, this will be a great asset when my usual suspects start begging for a heist. 

a tri-fold pulp comic pastiche is such a choice approach for a fist mission (though i'm stuck with letter size, unfortunately). beautiful illustrations! the scenario feels classic and the details are evocative, though it gets a little dense on the layout for the second page. i like the threat table and the various ways things can turn, and pulling the twist out into an optional module is a smart move. that said, i think you could use a proofreading pass here, and i feel like it could run really, really fast at the table, but i do like missions that leave room for PCs to talk to randos and make bad decisions. i think this would be great fun for the noir lovers.

holy tiny font! love the art, the lava flow clock is a nice way to add urgency and make the mission dynamic, and i'm always down for big island representation and some bloodstained aloha shirts. weresharks and semi-immortals aren't quite on theme for "NO FUNNY BUSINESS", but the chopper stuff definitely is--a lot of air combat in this jam! great descriptive language throughout and some fun set pieces to imagine. though i'm definitely a pamphlet hound, i think this would be a lot more referee-friendly in a half-page format, and i'm not even sure my printer could accurately reproduce text this small... but if i keep it zoomed, this would make for a great time for vtt with my buddies on Oahu. 

"The Molasses Part" is a hilarious header, and i really don't wanna be subject to MOLASSES RULES. i like the highly specific CHOKEs for the CROs and while there's plenty left open-ended in the postdiluvian section, there's also plenty of helpful ways to guide the ref through the hot water (or, uh, molasses) that i think is crucial to a great act 3 in a FIST mission. having a little referee tool to apply time pressure on dawdling PCs is also great. the layout design is slick (no pun), though i almost wish you'd committed even more to the skeuomorphs and old-timeyness. really nicely done, and this'll go pretty high on the mission cue for me, as half my players are already going midatlantic on me constantly. 

'sabot/auteur' and their surnames was a good bit. i think FIST Gets Taken Out At The Ballgame is a great conceit, and though it might have been a jam-hastened decision i actually really like the bullet-point lists of descriptive stuff for the different areas. i couldn't make heads or tails of the roll in that 'surveillance' insert, and i think the tri-column landscape layout might be unsuitable for something longer than a tri-fold, especially with a single monochromatic font and no images. that aside, i thought this was clever, well-executed conceptually, and would make for a fun mission (and a great excuse to slow down some organ music for ambience). not sure about the protagonist of baseball assertion, but i'll let it slide if we can agree that the yankees or the dodgers are the antagonists.

a real thick slab of history that would be great as a writing tool or for peppering contemporary cultural references for something set in Q1 1961. it doesn't feel like an at-the-table thing, idk if i could pull stuff out of a doc formatted like this off the cuff. still, a good way to get a context injection without the inevitable fruitless hours down wikipedia rabbit holes. an entire airfleet spec sheet/"monster manual" in the vein of this b-52 one-sheet is actually the thing i want the most, especially after reading the other submission FLAK. thanks for putting this together!

though the cyborg stuff is slightly further than I'd go for "NO FUNNY BUSINESS" i guess we do keep hearing about Combat Dolphins, so. the presentation here is really nice and clean and I quite like the straightforward restatement of character building and rolls-- those might usurp some of the F:UE docs I put on the table for players. it leads into the mission proper nicely, too. this makes for a really great option as a first FIST experience on both sides of the referee screen, "ask the players" is so useful. it also has me wondering about a gm-less mission deck system, but that's an aside. simple and sweet, i like this a lot!

(ps double check the spellings of those mission titles on your recs page... i believe it's "ataraxia" and "the ouagadougou job"!)

i love crab people as much as the next guy, and the STRAINS thing reads great, but i can't help but feel the business is a little too funny for "NO FUNNY BUSINESS". that said, this is a really straightforward way to introduce your new mechanics in a basic mission. lock and key feels like an elegant way to keep objectives manageable. i'm sure the full version will be catnip for the resident evil heads in my playgroup. 

printer friendly version hopefully incoming when i get a chance this weekend!

hey, that's a fair shout! my intention was to make the whole thing scan without prior knowledge, and i did my best to lay out something coherent in the 'transmission' and 'objectives' sections, but if you've never played metal gear solid 3 i can imagine a big flavor loss.

even the needle drop thing is a bit of a misdirect. while mgs3 has an iconic bond-like theme, the pop song most commonly associated with the franchise now is duran duran's invisible, despite never appearing in one of the games (a tiktok mandela effect). wow ooh ahh nothing's real

as someone who's already published a chess-themed mission for FIST, this was already winning me over. fischer-spassky has a lot of cold war texture, and the idea of a hotel full of mobsters and danger is a great mood-setter. i'd love to get a little more meat inside the exoskeleton, though; while i respect the commitment to referee choice, so much is presented as an option or a suggestion that i found myself wanting some more explicitly established scenarios, or at least named NPCs. still, this is a great concept and there's enough here that I'd have a fun time running it with the Intelligence Matrix in tow.

bioweapon korean action movie is a great fist flavor. i think you might have hit the mark twain "more time for a shorter letter" thing but hey, we're jamming; there's also no accounting for my text allergy. i'd love some zhuzhing of the layout in that dense middle section. this feels a little more "zoomed out" in terms of scope than i think of fist while still being very boots-on-the-ground, but i like the idea of the city-as-dungeon, location-as-room approach. the extrapolations at the end especially made me like this, as i crave the flip-the-whole-thing-over energy you can only get on tabletop. nice work!

Though I'd just as soon do some janky "hey you have to make a choke roll now" thing as a ref, the rules are pretty nice, the reveal conditions are fun and the jobs table is low key the thing I like best.

...and I AM a regular guy, and I CAN order that sandwich with no mayo!

Dummy weapons function mechanically like clones of real weapons, they just don't do the violence part. The idea is that at the objectives, you just run normal FIST-style combat, but when something would be lethal they'd just call "hit" mil sim style. I thought I specified they have full-fat weapons for the open field, and are instructed to switch to the dummies when they enter an objective area. it's supposed to introduce some of that back-foot friction you describe and possibly the opposing sense of "oh, we might need to shred some defenseless guys to stop this actual threat". Either way, the fun here is making the simulation go to heck, and I trust refs and players to make that happen (and quickly). I always try and keep it loose, especially when I'm jamming out a pamphlet. 

this is exactly the impulse I had in this jam: try to make the goofiest thing that still qualifies for NO FUNNY BUSINESS. the parallel play thing is fun, but i actually love this as a deep-cover sidequest that eventually falls back apart in the middle of a multi-mission campaign. light and sweet, plenty here to go on, i'd love to see it dressed up as an employee handbook. makes me want an espresso drink intelligence matrix too.  

interesting stuff. i think of myself as an off-the-cuff ref in terms of vehicles, and i go back and forth about hard-coding specific stat rolls into mechanics (and still do it a lot), but this is still streamlined enough that i think it could work nicely for an aviation-specific mission. 

i can't believe this thing. insanely deep for a jam game. great spy movie beats one after the other after the other, and such a well of backstory and world-filling bits and bobs. i feel like this is three sessions' worth of stuff for me as a ref. packaged beautifully in great art and design, dripping italo. my doe is too silver, my garden too sunken.

This felt a little high-concept at first glance, but the way you exploded the prompt and worked in the biomatons, all the critters, Prime Directives, NPCs, and all of it locking into the segments... I'd imagine taking a loooong multi-session stroll through each and I bet it would be a lot of bug-splattering fun. Seemed like some stealth Bionicle themes popping up too... I like and I'll probably try it out (but i'll probably have to image invert before I print it, I'm not made of toner money)!

The red-on-black gave me Virtual Boy energy more than PS1,  with the squinting to match (lol), but I really liked the random fighter table and I love a good mountain cult. Feels really runnable and I think the fights would be a lot of fun at the table, but some more direct narrative beats around the Ritual would make it a little easier to run. Plenty of places to check in and alternate ways to skedaddle to the end, though. Gotta respect the commitment to square pages but I bet with half-sheets you'd have more room to put meat on those hitboxes. Nice stuff!

Thought this was a great example of how finding something achievable in the jam restrictions can uncover something cool! I actually felt like the less-designed layout played well with the tone of the writing and the idea of a supercomputer output/ really old tome, and the implications of the simple stuff like doppelgängers and wishes has vaster potential than what is explicated in the mission itself. A disruptive Norton warning is a great goof too. Nice work!

appropriate informational overwhelm for a bureaucratic nightmare. i liked the silph co/hudsucker proxy thing, the recurring tower shape and "a fucking hind". felt like an extreme escalation, which is always great for the "top this!" FIST energy. diggin it!

A pretty straight-down-the-barrel mission with a dense fruitcake of weird stuff inside. Wendy's bad intel might be tough for a ref to casually pull off but it's a great narrative touch. Always a fan of a triggerable apocalypse mode like the Red Light Protocol, and the random room thing flavors the Fractal Vast thing nicely. As a Magic player, a snake with deathtouch is always a good look, and ACAB includes Dogman but not this one. Well done.

Now That's What I Call FIST!
I actually like the balance of character description and mission detail here, and obviously the art is perf, that last drawing is so gnarly. I have an impression of someone in a dour looking building listening to the recording of the proceedings on cassette and grimacing like Werner Herzog in Grizzly Man. Filling in and mailing my fan club card once I get through reffing my own stuff. 

Loved the table of forgetting, i have a buddy who's written a lot of OSR nightmare tables and that sort of thing always rules. This felt a little lore-dense and light on mission flow, but between the obliviating hundo and the usual player foot-tripping i think it'll play alright. fun graphics too!

i'm so excited to typewrite the hidden roles and seal them in an envelope and leave it ominously on the table labeled "NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL MISSION COMPLETION". Reading a stat block labeled "AUGMENTED PENGUIN SWARM" was my great pleasure. this one really flipped the script and I dig the predestined-betrayal mechanic, an inspired interpretation!

clicked through from your jam submission-- I never commented, but I ran this for some people a while ago and it was awesome. the sad wine cellar guy was the teddy bear npc. 

the fake staples are everything. love the flavor and the design economy, not a word wasted.

it's not super important to the module, and the subterfuge aspect is broadly fictional, but i'm glad to inspire curiosity!

Ran this last night and it was awesome! thanks!

If only I had a bald cap...