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HogwartsHoe

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A member registered Jun 02, 2024 · View creator page →

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Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad it was a fun read! 

I'm glad you like the characters. I think each of them has a unique niche, though some are still a little hamfisted. I'm hoping with some polish and some character art, that will shine through even more. 

I'm definitely going to take a second look at the stats. I've received a lot of feedback on Omens, which was something I was really attached to personally. However, most of the feedback has been that it doesn't fit. I've been considering pulling it out and using it to reflavor the built in "tell a tall tale" mechanic that I think is underexplained as well. For Booty, I just felt like it HAD to be a stat, but I agree that it's not as intuitive as the others. I could always drop it as a stat and use it as the Gear/Equipment, but I worry that I'll lose some character and I'm not sure I'm ready to go a 3 stat spread.

I definitely hear you on heat adding crunch. I've also been considering going to a single roll at the top of the round which is everyone's heat added together, similar to what I've seen in a few other submissions in the jam. That may add a bit more crunch at the outset of a new round, but hopefully will smooth out each individual round. It will change a few of the other mechanics though, like pirates getting captured, so I'm still working out the details on what I think I'd like to do with it. 

As for thinking about the objectives as clocks. Honestly, that's one of the things that helped me wrap my head around the system in the first place. I might ultimately do a rewrite to emphasize that & make it more consistent throughout. I really like the way that it intuitively implies that progress is being made in a way that reducing an objective resilience score doesn't do as well. 

Lastly, I'll take the +1 to ship battle. I think that's the biggest thing I'm hearing as feedback for the adventure side of the doc. I've got some ideas cooked up that I think will be fun to play out. 

Thanks again for the detailed and thoughtful feedback!

The presentation is great. Adding in sections showing text unfinished to show what the end product would look like is a good idea. I really struggled to make sure I filled everything in, but probably had some pieces in my submission that were lower quality than I would've liked. It probably would've been better to mark some boilerplate sections as unfinished and instead focus on delivering better quality in the areas that really mattered. 

  • I like the alliterative stats. Similar to the core havoc skills, these really deliver a solid idea of what actions are rewarded in the system. 
  • I really like the Overdrive mechanic in the stress system. In my own submission, I tried to encourage players to take flaws by offering positive rewards. This is also a similar mechanic that encourages players to take risks and keep the story moving forward, even if it means their character suffers some harm. 
  • I'm very excited to see the finished mutation table. I really like the repeated use of these breakpoint mechanics to change your character as the adventure progresses. The way you call both the mutation & overdrive breakpoints out on the character sheet is great. Perhaps consider making these slightly variable for some characters. Riot in particular feels like they should get 2 mutations whereas Cheddar feels like they should get two overdrive abilities or get their overdrive earlier than 7 stress. 
  • Character art is absolutely incredible. Each sheet is extremely well designed. Do you do pirates? I could use some help lmao
  •  I'm so excited to see where this goes. If you manage to finish it, let me know because I would really love to see it again as a finished product. Also, let me know if you need any help playtesting, this looks like a blast. 
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I really like the theme.  I think that making the characters share control over a single character is an interesting choice that hopefully keeps everyone really in tune with each turn as what one player does with their has a big impact on each other players potential actions. 

The round structure is an interesting twist in that it feels like it adds a slightly competitive aspect to determining turn order.  I've seen a few games do one big threat roll at the top of a round.  Maybe you could use that to great effect as every character inhabits the same body.

I do think that there may be room to add additional objectives or pressure. Right now it seems like there aren't many decisions to make with your beyond protecting yourself and pushing the main objective. Bamboo Forest is closer to what I think you could do with all areas after the first one (to keep things simple for the first scene).

Also this is a sight nitpick but I'm assuming the x by some objectives and threats is difficulty. I saw difficulty mentioned once but not sure I saw how you represented it on the page explained.

Last note,  I love the haikus on the character sheets. 

Like others have said, I think there's an interesting concept here that needs some polishing.  I like the idea that the gods have a limited pool of miracles they can perform.  I think that helps sell the fiction that the characters used to be all powerful while increasing the tension after they've used one or two and suddenly their safety net doesn't look so safe.  I also like using 1s to whittle away at followers especially because there are a bunch of trust uses. 

 To help diversify the gods, perhaps consider giving them more playstyle variance. Off the top of my head: 

  • perhaps Ave starts with more trust because of his long reputation of staying the same
  • Mar could have 4 miracles to spend but less trust
  • Ryl could have 4 key words to add to stats

I think you definitely have a decent base here,  but rewriting the document flow to communicate the key details needed to play and for readability would go a long way to making this a playable game.  Good job getting it submitted in time and good luck getting it finished. 

There's some really cool stuff here. 

  • Getting away from the rigid turn structure is a really interesting choice.  
  • Making players allocate all dice rather than just successes is something unique that I haven't seen in any other submission.  I'm glad you gave more things for dice to do to account for the higher number of things to allocate. Also,  giving different effects and requirements based on the rolled number seems like it would open up some very cool decision opportunities for tough decisions. 
  • I like that you used adjectives for the stats and tags.  It really reinforces the changes to the turn structure by specifying how you're doing stuff but not what stuff you're doing
  • The hit box idea for removing threats is so clever
  • In another submission I reviewed, they put a space on the character sheet for the dice pool and allocations.  I feel like that would work really well in this system where you're not necessarily spending all your dice immediately. 
  • Love the hazards and threats.  As I read those the whole system clicked in my mind. 

Love the setting. Immediately jumps out at you with a ton of character. The presentation is clean and I can see the effort you put into making the game feel polished.

  • The stats are great. I'm a sucker for alliterative stats that start with B. 
  • I love the boredom mechanic. What a good way to keep things moving along while still preserving player agency. 
  • I feel like you did a particularly good job covering the basics of how to play the havoc system to someone who wasn't familiar. Everything feels really clear and well written
  • I really like that you have the players name their band and their songs
  • The perform a song action is so good. I love every piece of it
  • It was a good idea to break out how many areas to visit based on session length and count
  • If I had a nickel for every punk band themed havoc engine game featuring a skate park that I've ready today, I'd have to nickels which isn't much but it's weird it happened twice.
  • Putting together a VTT for this is next level commitment

First impression: The title is so evocative and simple. Why say lot word when few word do trick

Love the idea. Placeholder punk bunny has my whole heart. He can come live in my house and smoke all my cigarettes and drink all my beer. 

Here are some thoughts and notes (in no particular order):

  • The characters are great, but I agree with everyone else that placeholder punk bunny needs to be worked into the mix. The art is fantastic, I love you how have the stats on the art page. 
  • Speaking of, I love the stats as well. They're simple, elegant, and fit the theme so well. 
  • Using "Allies" in place of Equipment is a great way to recharacterize the equipment system in Havoc. 
  • The Jam system being tied into the advances and then inflicting the living on the edge condition does a great job of incentivizing characters to take risk and mark jams. That's exactly what I was trying to do with the flaw system in my submission. Living on the edge is such a good way to show the player the barrel of the gun and because players have agency in deciding who takes jams and when, I feel like it can lead to some great roleplay at the table as people work together to keep their friends safe. 
  • The special Show Objective step is a great way to represent the characters working together to play the show. I really like how you have the gig timer counting down to represent the limited time to prep for the show, where players act independently using the normal dice pool rolling rules. The decision to make the perform show action work differently from the rest seems like a really good one and it really feels like a great way to build in a climax for each gig. 
  • I like the system for managing objectives via index cards. Totally going to steal that for my Major/Minor objectives from my submission.
  • The guidance for creating custom objectives is just way better written than my guidance for creating minor objectives in my submission. Stealing that too
  • I love how the gigs go from Skate Park -> Dive Bar/ Festival -> Protest. That's awesome. The objectives that have "Ask the Players X" are so good. I love the idea of using objectives as ways to get the players to think about their characters and improvise some drama. 

Absolutely incredible work. More placeholder punk bunny please. 

First impression: The title is so evocative and simple. Why say lot word when few word do trick

Love the idea. Placeholder punk bunny has my whole heart. He can come live in my house and smoke all my cigarettes and drink all my beer. 

Here are some thoughts and notes (in no particular order):

  • The characters are great, but I agree with everyone else that placeholder punk bunny needs to be worked into the mix. The art is fantastic, I love you how have the stats on the art page. 
  • Speaking of, I love the stats as well. They're simple, elegant, and fit the theme so well. 
  • Using "Allies" in place of Equipment is a great way to recharacterize the equipment system in Havoc. 
  • The Jam system being tied into the advances and then inflicting the living on the edge condition does a great job of incentivizing characters to take risk and mark jams. That's exactly what I was trying to do with the flaw system in my submission. Living on the edge is such a good way to show the player the barrel of the gun and because players have agency in deciding who takes jams and when, I feel like it can lead to some great roleplay at the table as people work together to keep their friends safe. 
  • The special Show Objective step is a great way to represent the characters working together to play the show. I really like how you have the gig timer counting down to represent the limited time to prep for the show, where players act independently using the normal dice pool rolling rules. The decision to make the perform show action work differently from the rest seems like a really good one and it really feels like a great way to build in a climax for each gig. 
  • I like the system for managing objectives via index cards. Totally going to steal that for my Major/Minor objectives from my submission.
  • The guidance for creating custom objectives is just way better written than my guidance for creating minor objectives in my submission. Stealing that too
  • I love how the gigs go from Skate Park -> Dive Bar/ Festival -> Protest. That's awesome. The objectives that have "Ask the Players X" are so good. I love the idea of using objectives as ways to get the players to think about their characters and improvise some drama. 

Absolutely incredible work. More placeholder punk bunny please. 

Thanks again! I'll make sure to check out JAMS asap! 

I absolutely see how the mechanic of a shared GM dice pool for all players in a round would offer tough decisions regarding risk/reward. i.e. not responding to threats on your turn if you think the next person will roll enough dice to get it on their turn. But it definitely seems like a great tool for reinforcing teamwork!

Up front, I'm reading and rating this submission in between meetings while eating gummy bears way too early in the morning because it's already been a stressful one. I feel like the theme here is perfect for the moment I'm in right now. 

What an amazing premise. I love the prologue story at the beginning. I think this is something I absolutely need to do for my submission. I love the idea of adding a second, darker chapter to the classic Willy Wonka story. 

The five stats are evocative. I love Nonsense, Heart, and Wonder especially. I think Perspiration and Head could be just a little bit more silly to match those. What came to mind for me was Wiggles and Wiles, though Wiles would have some overlap with Nonsense I suppose. Just a thought though, they're definitely good as they are already. Also the Imagination resource cap being the combined value of a character's heart+wonder is very thematic. 

Flavoring the GM dice pool as a bag of candy/flavor pool is so good. I feel like you could also do the same thing with the team pool and call it a candy bowl or something, but that might be just a bit confusing. 

Weariness is a great "injury" system. Reducing dice pool is a great way to show the sugar crash happening at the table.

Putting something on the character sheet for your dice pool/ spend your successes is SO SMART. What a great way to help cut out some of the challenge in helping players remember what they can do with their dice. 

Great job!

First off, love the theme. The ideas you have here are memorable. The layout is extremely crisp and the information is presented an extremely succinct manner. Great job in making it as easy to understand as possible. 

I particularly enjoy the conditions you've laid out & how the adversaries specify which conditions they apply (espeically one of them being NIMBY which tickles me). I like that each renewable has a unique condition. I do think it'd be fun if it were triggered more commonly than the others. This might be overly contrived, but I wonder if it would be interesting that if the renewable already has a condition being applied, they mark their unique condition instead. After that, if they already have the condition + unique condition, they roll for a random condition or even just pick one that feels narratively appropriate. 

I also really like the way you framed the burnout mechanic and given it narrative context, while allowing renewables to come back at the start of the next hex. I assume it's pretty unlikely, but what happens if all renewables suffer burnout at the same time? Is there some system for rebooting the game from there?

I really like the way you've built the Megafossils. They have lots of character and I'm picturing something like the Titans from the Disney Hercules movie. 

I really like the Partisan/Mech roll tables. The #1 industrial sabotage fan doodle is great. I was working up a system for rolling up random demons for a different game jam, and I feel like it'll be heavily inspired by this system. I have some questions from my first read:

  1. Is the objective system similar to the base Havoc Engine, where you can choose a bunch of different places to allocate your successes and narrate what you're doing based on those, or if you pick an action and you can roll toward it and allocate successes to that one objective only
  2. When you repair your mech, the way I read it is the first success goes to the roll itself and then every success after that adds 1 point of steel back? And then once you've done that, you can't do it again until the next mission? 
  3. What is Flesh? I see that when you advance in your optional rules, you gain 1 flesh, but I'm not sure what it does. 

I really like how you built the random table for objectives & complications and then added the difficulty level mechanic on top. My theoretical first raid in this system is:

  1. I'm approaching via the Perimeter Wall
  2. I need to destroy a Data Center
  3. I need to Sabotage a factory
  4. If I can steal supplies while I'm at it, it will help the resistance effort
  5. The Enemy is on High Alert

Other random pieces of feedback in no particular order:

  • I think expanding the partisan skill system would be cool. I'm immediately picturing something where each player rolls 2-3 times (or maybe rolls 2 and picks 1). If they end up with a duplicate, maybe they can choose to reroll or add another die each time they use that skill. That will allow for some more variability and let them add their bonuses a little more often. 
  • In conjunction with the point above, I think adding more skills would offer a little bit more variety. I see a reference for rolling to restore a lost wound, but the best skill I see would be repair, which doesn't feel right to me.  
  • On the note above, I see the reference to restoring a wound, but I don't see any other discussion on it. I do see how you fix the mech though, so it feels like maybe that could be added to be more clear in the Player Stats section. 
  • Your coordination pot feels like a neat mechanic and helps to reinforce the theme of acts of resistance inspiring further acts of resistance. 
  • You seem to refer to the Partisan skills with different language in different spots. My understanding is that a player declares an action, if a specific skill applies, they get a +1d to the roll. However there are instances where you refer to specific actions or checks, where I think you mean skills. The Steal Suppplies Objective refers to rolling more than five successes on Scavenge Checks, when I think it means roll more than 5 successes while using your Scrounging  skill. I think cleaning that up a little bit would help learn the system more quickly. 

Great submission!

Thanks for the feedback! I was watching a lot of One Piece and Our Flag Means Death and listening to a bunch of Alestorm. The bear was explicitly influenced by One Piece. He was originally planned to be Kozel "The Mad Bear" Medved, a former combat surgeon with anger management issues. However, while writing it up, I jumped the shark and just made him an actual bear. I'm considering reigning it back in and making him a former combat medic with the power to turn into an actual bear to make it feel just a touch more grounded. 

When it comes to Objectives, I'll be honest. When I first picked up Eat The Reich, I just though that was how the system worked, so hopefully it feels intuititive in play. 

I am unfortunately lacking in talent for visual artistic media, so if I didn't have free art, I wouldn't have any art at all lol. 

Lastly, I'll copy the below from another comment on ship-based combat, because that is something I'm thinking up:

I've got two ideas on my list for how to incorporate ship based combat. Both are effectively an end game chase scene. The most obvious way is that once the players have Maggoteye's head, they need to get their ship out of the harbor and have to escape other ships chasing them. The other, which feels more piratey is that when they find the governor, he tells them Maggoteye's head is on a ship headed somewhere and then they have to get back to theirs, hunt the ship down down, board it, and find the head. I would just need to slim down major/minor objectives along the way so it doesn't feel too long.  

Thanks for your feedback! I think that's a very fair comment regarding the stats. While I was building this out, I worked up three different stat systems and frankly, I went with the one that felt the most piratey, but I definitely think it could be changed. One of the ideas I already have written down is to remove Omens as a stat and maybe turn it into a very limited resource (like something you get once or twice in an entire session) that allows for a full reroll of the dice pool. That feels appropriate to the vibe I was trying to hit. 

The other piece of feedback I'll take away is to revisit my other stat systems, which were these:

Stats Version A

  • Parley - Speak with a potential enemy to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement
  • Incapacitate - Temporarily deal with a threat while avoiding too much evidence left behind
  • Assassinate - Quickly eliminate a threat by any means necessary
  • Vanish - Get out of a jam
  • Rummage - Quickly search through a space and pilfer any booty
  • Decipher - Gather information from disparate sources to come to a conclusion

Stats Version B

  • Hardy - You can take a hit
  • Bloodthirsty - You can give a hit
  • Vigilant - You can identify who you should be hitting
  • Deft - You can dodge a hit
  • Garish - You can convince someone you’re not a person that they should hit

Thanks so much for the review! I didn't really set out to make a heist game, but that's definitely where it ended up by the end of the month. 

I want to keep working on the flaws. I think the concept feels good and enticing to pick them, but also gives some mechanical weight that intrinsically tied to the narrative, which is my favorite thing about how the equipment works in the Havoc Engine. I think with some more playtime, I'll find some things that feel interesting and impactful after I see where people take the characters in game. 

I'm glad you liked the heat mechanic so much, it went through a few different version before I found one that felt impactful and thematic. After reading the Trash to Treasure submission, I have almost been wondering if the GM should roll one big dice pool at the beginning of the round based on everyone's heat combined, then allow players to whittle way at it until the end of the round, and then spend it accordingly, maybe with the cavaet that anyone whose heat gets reduced to zero during that round can't be hit, but then I'd have to rework the capture mechanic because it is dependent on what a character decides to spend successes on in their turn.

 I've got two ideas on my list for how to incorporate ship based combat. Both are effectively an end game chase scene. The most obvious way is that once the players have Maggoteye's head, they need to get their ship out of the harbor and have to escape other ships chasing them. The other, which feels more piratey is that when they find the governor, he tells them Maggoteye's head is on a ship headed somewhere and then they have to get back to theirs, hunt the ship down down, board it, and find the head. I would just need to slim down major/minor objectives along the way so it doesn't feel too long.  

I'm going to take it back and rework some stuff for sure and reupload in a week or two I think. Firstly because I ran out of time, I basically just had to format and submit my google docs version and I didn't have the time to edit it and lay it out in Affinity. Now that there's less pressure, I'd like to improve the presentation. 

This is so good it's annoying me. The text is so well written. The art is perfect. The mechanics are great. 


Here's some stream of consciousness notes I took:

  • The concept of a skeleton adding random junk as teeth brings me so much joy. 
  • Fractures impacting stats feels so elegant. I think I'll have to steal that for injuries in my game
  • I almost used a very similar clock system to limit the number of rounds in my game. Maybe I should revisit that idea
  • The vendetta's and rewards system is also great. It's similar to a personal quest idea that I had but way more detailed
  • The specialties feel perfectly in tune with the characters. The heart that yearns to break genuinely feels poetic but at the same time involves doodling little drawings that are stabbing a drawing of an anatomically correct heart which is also funny because skeletons don't have organs. The incomplete poems are so good 
  • The sword of thirteen uses is so funny and I can't even tell you why it's funny. The knife to the heart having nine uses and the description being "pull the knife out a little" for each use is cracking me up.
  • How are the NPC descriptions so funny? This is really getting annoying

The one thing that I see that I think may be tough to handle at the table is that there isn't really a reason for skeletons to play as a group. Seems more like a game where every character is an island and doing their own things. I think I'd like to see some kind of challenge that encourages  characters to work together to accomplish something. 

But all told, this was a delightful game and I can't wait to give it a shot. 

Not sure I can support this one. Too many pirates. It's sort of stepping on my turf...

But seriously, these characters are a blast. Im half tempted to steal Bonebeard and throw him in my game! The Ahoy Matey skill is so clever. Though I think my favorite is definitely Friedrich. 

Seconding the other comment that the gear descriptions are top notch.

One piece of critical feedback is that Julia should the option for a handful of holy hand grenades from her Gift From Above skill. That seems like a blatant miss to be honest.

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For starters, I'm a big fan of the fairy tale / kid's story theme. 

One of the first things I noticed as I was reading the doc is the simplification of the engine to make it less crunchy. I think it makes sense to remove some crunch, but I wonder if in play it would feel like there aren't enough decisions to make with your succes dice. It feels like the core gameplay loop for players is 1. Describe What you want to do 2. Roll Dice and see how many successes 3. Describe how successful you were based on the dice. What I like about the havoc engine is the ability to keep a bunch of plates spinning and competing for attention and I thnk some of the simplification of that here may have cut out a bit too much. 

  • quantified stats adding d6 equal to their value to qualitative stats that add a flat modifier of 1d6 to a base 2d6 to attempt
  • Removing limited use items & situational bonuses
  • Removing injuries & resources
  • Removing adversaries threats and resilience & instead treating all adversaries as objectives

That's not to say that I disagree that crunch can be removed. I just think that maybe there's opportunity to add back in some of the competing priorities for the player at any given point between keeping themselves healthy, making progress on the objective, dealing with adversaries, etc. Maybe it's as simple as adding more side objectives or incorporating some environmental aspect. 

Some pieces of this that I really like:

  • I think my favorite thing you added were the list of Challenge Characteristics having different modifiers. That's a really clever way to make each challenge feel unique. 
  • Characters having different stats based on their skills feels like a great way to drive players to think in terms of "what would this character do" rather than just picking the highest value skill. 
  • The Reserve being designed to give you extra dice based on how far you push yourself. I think I'd like to see a different option to refill the reserve, rather than having to skip a turn because in a game of 6 people that feels like a heavy punishment. 
  • The missions being adaptations of classic stories is great, but I think the end credits press conference is hilarious and very fun. 
  • Predefined "Tension Rises" challenges for each scenario

Cool Submission!

Similar to the comment I left on the Trash to Treasure core book, as this is a pre-existing creation, I haven't dug too deep into specific mechanics to provide critical feedback. The holiday special theme is nice and I think it builds well off the core rulebook details. I do like the audience Environmental threat called out, I think that's something that could be used very well in this system, treating some environmental hazards as threats/adversaries rather than objectives like my intuition would tell me. 

As this is a pre-existing project, I'm not sure if you're looking for much in the way of critical feedback. It was a good idea to add some community copies for reviewing in the Jam. Looking forward to giving this one a shot. 

In general, I like the vibe and the product feels complete in content and presentation. I especially like the momentum mechanic, the flashback scenes, and the way goblin advancements are tied to the conclusion of each act (and how dragons become familiars when their objective is cleared). The regeneration mechanic also feels good in the way the action is televised and can be countered. 

Also, giving the GM more to do with their dice and making their pool huge is interesting. I was initially concerned it would feel difficult to manage, but giving them 1 dice pool per round and allowing the goblins to whittle it down throughout the round is definintely a great way to reinforce working collaboratively as a group. Honestly that's something that I might try out in playtesting for my own submission to the jam and steal if it feels good. 

Fantastic concept. I'm a big fan of how you reframed and renamed the Havoc mechanics to match your genre. I tried to do some of that but just couldn't get there. Even though the mechanics of the engine are havoc, the way you presented them felt like they belonged to this game. 

The characters were excellent. I especially loved the mutated kangaroo, alien, and bomb shelter hive mind. The concepts feel unique without feeling ham fisted which I think is an issue I ran into in my game.

Lastly, I was a big fan of the mission structure and how modular it felt. It felt easy to envision someone building their own missions based on your template even though that's not technically in the scope of your game. 

Great job pulling all of that together for what feels like a really well rounded and refined game.

Thanks for the feedback. Im really happy with the concept of the flaws but definitely think some of them could be more refined. One of those things that I think has a lot of promise but I need to spend more time cooking them up for each character. 

The bear character is absolutely out of left field and is still pretty half baked. He was originally intended to be a human medic with an old war nickname "Mad Bear". But I was watching a lot of One Piece while working late at night and I think a little too much of that influence worked it's way in. I was in a rush to get him added and probably could have left him out entirely until I had a better idea of who he is.

I had the same thought about omens and almost dropped it entirely for that reason. I couldn't think of a suitable replacement to keep the pattern going. But I felt like the thematic influence of having the concept included outweighed my concerns about it not fitting perfectly with the other four.

It's funny you say that the adventure needs more time on ships because my initial outline had a fourth phase which was getting the boat out of the harbor. I cut it for time but I agree that it does feel like the pirate adventure needs to at least be partially spent on a boat.

The way this is written like a real new hire orientation package is very charming. One thing I'm wondering though is that The GM is presented as The Handler in the fiction and is characterized as an external resource working to help the Rangers accomplish their goals. This clashes with the narrative built into the rolling and allocating successes system, where Handler successes count as harm to player characters. Perhaps for this game, flip the framework and write it so that Handler failures result in harm to the player characters, rather than their successes. That might keep the narrative framework a little more consistent. 

I also feel like there's an opportunity to condense the Capabilities a bit. I see both Calm and Convince are distinguished. I can see why Calm is such a useful capability as many of the adversaries are wild animals. I do only see three preset encounters with sapient NPCs though that I think Convince would typically be used in the place of Calm. It feels to me that Calm could probably be used for all social encounters and you could potentially drop Convince entirely. 

I like the Energy -> heart -> injury system in concept, but I feel like it might be hard to track as you have 5 different events triggering energy loss, that then start to trigger heart loss when you're out of energy. Then you have 4 other ways to lose heart on top of that, plus the 4 ways to regain heart. I'm not saying the idea should be scrapped, but I do think maybe it needs to be on the character sheet to help remind players when to mark them. I do also like the pressure to get rest and how you make that challenging if locations have active threats. 

I think I could use more guidance on where to start and how to move through areas. It seems like you start in the River Valley and pick one of two paths to the Alpine Valley, but I'm not sure if I'm reading the map right. 

Very cool theme. I especially like the inclusion of a hand drawn map at the end. I wish I had thought of that for my own submission, as I didn't have time to whip up a map digitally, but probably could've gotten a decent one on paper. The art included throughout also lends a great sense of foreboding and weight to the document. Overall, solid visual presentation.

I like how you built in time pressure. That seems like a really great tool for adding to the air of foreboding I feel when reading through the doc. 

It does feel like the dice pools will typically be fairly small compared to the Resilience scores I'm seeing. However, that could just as easily be an intentional design decision to reinforce the lack of resources available to the players. 

Absolutely. I enjoyed the premise a ton. The mechanics feel like the easier part once you have a concept that people are actually drawn to. Personally, I think Snatched, Drip, Flawless, Bougie, Savage, and Slay make great stats, but you could always drop one or two if you want fewer stats. Give each one a score equal to the number of dice you want that character to roll and then add a page to the doc explaining what sorts of actions are tied to those stats and I think you're golden. 

I really like the idea of a game that tells the origin story of a superhero. That's a really cool concept. 

The havoc engine bits feel well implemented in the core gameplay loop of building a dice pool, rolling, and allocating successes. I like that you implemented the push/pull of allocating successes and objectives toward challenges while also having challenge clocks from PBTA games in the background. That was an idea that I also had but didn't find a great way to implement into my submission for the jam. Giving each challenge an active effect is also a great way to drive action from the players. That's something that I had in mind in my submission, but didn't get put into the text directly. 

I like how you've weaved together some elements from the Havoc engine with familar elements from PBTA systems. Specifically the Stress Test feels like a great concept. I do think maybe there could be fewer Effects, lumping together some of the effects in the middle and leaning into the PBTA style of allowing either the Player or the GM to pick one of the results based on the narrative, just to simplify the process of rolling and getting back into the fiction. 

The pages and panels system is pretty cool and I could see it being used to actually write/develop a real comic book as a fun exercise. 

The added reference sheets in the back are a great touch as well. It makes it feel like a well-refined product. 

The theme is interesting and fun. It feels like it's a stripped down version of Havoc Engine, which would hopefully give more space for roleplay to happen organically by deemphasizing some of the mechanical bits. That is reinforced by the periodic roleplaying prompts throughout the adventure. It seems like those drop off after the adventure gets going though, maybe there's a way to thread some more together throughout the later scenes. 

I like the idea of incorporating built in resistances to the engine and how the abilities modify stats. A few things are unclear to me though: 

- Can characters die/leave the game? The Dominated and Charmed conditions seem to have gameplay/narrative impact. The Injured condition states that fey will use injuries against the player, but it doesn't directly say if anything happens to characters when they reach 5 injuries. 

- Are there any mechanical impacts behind the instruments? They seem like they're mostly for flavor, written into the narrative descriptions for special abilities, but maybe they could be improved by using the Havoc system for equipment more directly. 

I think with a stripped down version of the havoc engine, there's more room for unique character attributes. With three stats and 1 instrument, maybe think about building out idiosyncracies for the three characters in more detail. Does it make sense for all three characters to have the same stats? Maybe they have different attributes based on their strengths. With only a few stats and relatively few dice, I worry that the session would mostly be spent trying to justify why your character's action fits the one stat you're best at rather than having a greater variety of narrative opportunity if they were personalized. 

In addition to that, maybe consider increasing the number of dice associated with the stats. The game as written takes 29 successes to complete in the shortest possible path, that assumes they're not allocating successes to defending or attacking. With smaller dice pools, I could see some of the later phases being substantially longer than the earlier phases. Maybe that's an intentional part of the pacing, but it might be something to revisit either way. 

Cool idea. I see other comments about the readability. It seemed mostly okay to me after you updated it. The font does have some legibility issues, W's and H's look really similar, but that's a minor issue. I see why you picked it to help evoke fighting game nostalgia.

I really like the limit break idea. Turning 1 results into a resource for a big move is a great concept. I'm a big fan of how you executed that. I'm not sure if I'm missing something though regarding Combos and Combo moves. I understand that once you unlock you combo box, you can do a combo move with another player once per session. Does that mean that each player can combo move only once per session, or each "pair" of players can only combo move once per session. On top of that, what are the mechanical differences between a combo move and a regular action. I'm not sure if I'm just missing where that's written or if it's left vague intentionally. I really like the idea and would like to see more of how it works. 

Lastly, I think some work linking together the mission setpieces to one another in the narrative would be nice. I like the idea of moving between stages and how that evokes the old fighting game nostalgia. And I know that a lot of those games only put cursory efforts into explaining why you suddently walked into the mall. But as this is a TTRPG and the goal is to tell a cool story, I think fleshing that out would go a long way to giving your players something to chew on when they're making decisions. 

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The premise is unique and interesting. The tone is fun and I think there's definitely something cool here. 

I'm struggling to get through how you'd translate the character sheets into actual play at the table. I think maybe some more explanation defining how the character sheet works would go along way to making it more quickly playable. Some specific examples: the stats seem to be the most common six stats, but I also see Snatched, Drip, Flawless, Savage, Bougie, and Slay applied to the stats. It's mostly identical between character sheets except Olympia has Slay Charisma and the other two have Savage Charisma. I'm not sure if the Savage, Slay, etc. are meant to be abstract ratings that tell you how many dice to roll or if that's just a typo and Slay is meant to be the name for Charisma in this game. In this case, how do I know how many dice to roll for Slay if I'm playing as Olympia vs. Esmerelda.

I think some more refinement on the mechanics part would be really helpful in ironing out this cool concept. 

Love the theme and presentation. The characters all have interesting concepts that are flexible enough to be used in several different ways. 

The art is great. The premise is great. Lots of flavor baked in right from the jump. 

I really like that you worked up multiple missions to demonstrate that this is less about completing one big job and more about the life of a supercriminal prisoner trying to survive. 

Awesome submission!

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I really like how condensed the information is. This seems like a really handy 1 pager to print off and keep at the table while playing. It looks like a great tool for any havoc engine game. If there's a printer friendly version, that might be a nice add to the download package. 

For starters, the presentation is fantastic. The scope is also impressive. The card system seems pretty well thought out and I'd absolutely be interested in giving it a shot. Building the Havoc Engine objective system into a fog of war card that gets progressively revealed is both thematically interesting and feels like it would allow for this to be replayed several times showing the different ways war can play out. 

Implementing the "lethal" roll to demonstrate the brutality of war is a great idea. It goes against the grain of the havoc engine's premise that you play as larger than life killers by making your characters replaceable, but that helps to drive the theme. I do wonder if that impacts your ability to connect with a specific character and roleplay their emotions and actions, but I think adding the Regroup actions/cards helps to alleviate that issue. I wonder if it would make sense to have a Mourn regroup action (or a subaction contained in Gossip) in which the characters can acknowledge those killed in the previous battle phase. 

Another bit that I really liked was the "trench gong" promotions. What a great way to work in a bit of history into a mechanical element of the game. 

As a final note, the choice to make this a game about struggling to achieve seemingly random objective passed down from on high, rather than giving the players a discreet objective to accomplish and all the tools they need to get it done is definitely thematically appropriate and interesting. I really enjoyed reading through the document and would be happy to give it a try sometime. 

Love the vibes. Specifically, I really liked the microbot building rules on AB's character sheet as well as the Belief resistance concept. The whole thing reminded me of the book Vurt by Jeff Noon.