itch.io

Honestly, I don't hate it.

Very much nailed the Appendix N visuals here. And the color-coding helps make keeping the worlds straight effortless. Great work.

You've also come up with a very Appendix N worthy high science-fantasy concept. This feels ripped from the pages of a 1970s novel from a convenience store spinner rack.

"The V'rek are not aggressive, but will attack in self-defense if they feel threatened, taking prisiones if win." has a typo and is missing a word.

Is this actually your first published adventure, or just your first at itch.io? This is a hell of a debut if this is your first time publishing.

It looks like this is larger than an A5 page, so ideally, you'd cut the word count back (which isn't always easy!) to fit. Most of the first page, though, is probably inessential, and is in the "nice to have" category, rather than being mandatory for the adventure.

Extremely good font choices. Classic and thematic while still being legible.

Likewise, good layout (is it Explorers?), nice choice of art and good map. I'd also add credits to the file so people can know who's responsible for it all.

A number of typos throughout -- "The Elders know how to harness the Sanguine Storm crimson lightning" needs an apostrophe S -- but nothing that makes things unclear.

All of the treasures seem very high value to me.  Player characters who finish this adventure are going to be set for a good while.

This is a very attractive adventure, but needs a polish run on the writing. I would have an outside editor go through it once the judging period is over and republish it. This has a lot to offer RPG groups!

Very strong cover art. I'm jealous!

Font size is right at the edge of legibility at the table.  I would probably pop the font up a size and turn the descriptive paragraphs in each encounter area into short bullet points instead, given that space is at such a premium in this jam. The font size also seems to change page to page, sometimes even within a page, which makes it look less polished than it deserves.

Good map with meaningful choices, including a passage that only the tiniest characters can get through.

I worry that if every corpse but one punishes players for inspecting them, the players will just start walking past the corpses, making those rooms effectively empty. (Dead crawlers don't get to turn treasure into XP via carousing back in Luton.)

The premise for this adventure is pretty good, Appendix N-wise -- venture into the dark with a glowing crown and put it on a statue to banish the darkness for a year -- but I'd like to see the weird and creepy tone cranked up a bit more to match the solid idea. Check out the novella Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore, if you haven't, for an example venturing into a very scary dark realm.

Good straightforward adventure that could be taken to the next level with a few minor tweaks.

I really like how clean and easy to parse your entry is. This is going to be very easy to run at the table, which is what matters most to me about adventures, whatever their other merits might be.

I also like that each encounter has something to interact with.

Nice clean map as well.

I'm not sure about the title font you use throughout. It suggests either a computer glitching out or sand being blown by wind, neither of which really match what's happening in this adventure. 

There are also a few typos it'd be worth stomping when the judging period is over.

For next year -- and I hope you enter again next year! -- I would lean more into the weirdness of Appendix N, which isn't really present here.

But overall, this a nice little gameable adventure that would fit in nicely in a River of Night campaign.

Space is at a premium in this jam, but the font size used in this is small enough that I think it'd be hard to use at the table when printed out. Similarly, having to parse long paragraphs makes it harder to use live. I would consider turning most of this into bullet points, if possible.

I don't love that the adventure prescribes what the players are doing with this artifact, when most players I know would want to get into a whole lot of mischief with it first. It's a minor thing, though, to tweak and it and say "this is where prophecy says it can be disposed of." Let the players get here, eventually, after discovering this artifact needs to be locked away on their own, rather than telling them from the jump that they can't play with this fabulous toy. (And it's a great toy.)

Depthcrawls are always fun and I like what a wide spread of random folks can be generated to show up -- the adventure will go much differently depending on whether characters run into kobolds or the archmage and their entourage. 

A lot of these rooms are fun, but I'm not sure that they really fit together. Are the inhabitants prisoners? Folks who just found this a nice place to live? Is this a viperian complex? I would try to unify them a bit more with a theme, perhaps one related back to the Tome of Lies or the demon wurm's corrupting presence.

This is very playable -- which isn't always the case -- but I feel like it would shine with a bit more polishing.

Truly gorgeous layout and art and wonderful use of color.

Is this pamphlet missing a panel? I'm not wrapping my head around how to have three panels on the outside and two on the inside.

The writing also probably needs another pass. (Why does "Attack from by Eyes from the Void" have a capitalized "Attack?")

I really like the ambition of this -- Decagon is my favorite Mothership adventure I've played and also involves a time loop -- but there doesn't seem to be a lot of player choice until the final choice at the end of the time jumps, at which point they just get a single consequential choice. I would see if I could add the ability for players to make meaningful choices throughout the adventure leading up to this point, as otherwise, I feel like this would play out with the players mostly just listening to the Warden narrate what happens to them for most of a session.

I like the title font, but it's harder to read at a smaller size for the subheads inside. Similarly, I think the adventure would be easier to use at the table with the paragraphs of description broken up into either smaller paragraphs or bullet points.

The brain-shifting mechanic is great and unique. This will be an adventure everyone remembers forever.

That is an optimistic Shadowdark wizard seeking to hunt down a Shadowdark fighter. Not the way I'd bet, traditionally.

As others have said, the graphic design, especially the cover, is amazing. 5/5, no question.

I would format the room description slightly differently than the detailed break-outs from it. Maybe italicize the initial room description and leave the detail paragraphs without italics.

It's hard to get more Appendix N than flesh tanks and snake men! And I love the idea of flying away at the end on space pterosaurs. Amazing visuals.

A week-long bonus to carousing is pretty good, if you've got players with both coin and math skills. Still less good than having a bard in the party, though, so it's not out of line.

I think this is the first time I've seen mechanics for betting one's soul, which feels long overdue.

I like the idea of the Duskblade, but I would probably expand its description to also work at dawn and dusk, rather than simply being dependent on the torch timer.

I agree that this is a highly dangerous adventure for Shadowdark, but it'd make an epic one-shot with immaculate Appendix N vibes.

I like the central puzzle, but it's not clear to me why the players would get involved with it.

Some players certainly would -- give them a button to press and they pound on it -- but I can also see a lot of players going "well, we changed it to a chimera; let's leave." I know space is at a premium, but I would probably pop the font size down one and flesh this out a bit with more reasons for players to interact with the puzzle.

Thanks. I kept the western stuff vague so that this could technically be a standard Shadowdark game or, for sure, be used with Frontier Scum or something.

Good idea about a table of other encounters!

It is extremely light on kaiju!

First off, I love the hand-made art.

I would also have not thought to make this title a Pirate Borg adventure and I love the out of the box thinking here. I've been running a ton of published Pirate Borg one-shots at my local gaming store this summer, and this feels more Pirate Borg than even one or two big name publications I've run.

Fantastic cast of characters and great new monsters, all of whom fit into Pirate Borg like a glove.

I know space is a premium in this jam -- I had to cut a page's worth of content in the last 30 minutes before submitting -- but the typeface here is so small it's hard to read on screen and would probably be murder to read on a print-out. I'd find a sentence or two in each paragraph to cut (why do we care if the clay is edible?) and pop the typeface up a font. 

A gorgeous adventure, although the mention of the curse on the timeline threw me -- was it mentioned previously, or is it from the Violence rules? This feels like a climactic scene from a Tarantino movie, which seems appropriate.

First-rate layout, including the use of color to convey specific types of information. I also like the Arthurian feel to the language you use throughout.

This is impressively dense with information, while still remaining readable -- a combination not everyone can manage.

I love that you've included NPCs names, so that the GM doesn't have to come up with them on the fly. I would extend that beyond just the ghosts, maybe by making a single master list, since everyone seems to be from the same culture here.

You appear to have misspelled "amoral" in the faction listing. Also a typo in "reset he tracker" under the Approaching Doom section.

Gorgeous adventure. Love the cover, the map and the general graphic design.
I would like more of the rooms to be more interactive. Quite a few of them have nothing that the group is going to naturally want to interact with.

There's also at least one instance of referring to the "leeches" as "leaches," FYI.

I've been running Pirate Borg one shots at my local game store and the folks who show up every week are loaded down with stuff, but in true PB fashion, many of the items are either super-situational or are dangerous to the users and those around them. It's been fun, but it definitely makes things crazy.

Gorgeous layout and design.

Great use of multi-column random tables.

Obviously you're space-limited by the nature of this jam, I would have liked to see you engage with the amoral nature of the Demiurge's behavior -- his "failed" experiments being left to fight for survival in exile sounds pretty horrific.  

Man, the surviving pirates will make out like bandits with the eldritch relics. I like the chaos of the adventure -- very Pirate Borg and very Appendix N.

Yeah, there are no updates to the adventure until after judging is over. I'm making all the changes to my entry in a 1.1 file I'll post afterwards.

This adventure is gorgeous, top to bottom, and the art is spot-on for the Appendix N era. (Honestly, it's better than 99% of Judges Guild stuff.)

I really like the use of the hourglass to add time travel shenanigans.

I would like a little more specificity on Time's Needle (the sword), which is really potent and, as written, I could see arguments over interpretations of its powers.

Thanks. I had a crazy month and was rushing to finish this on deadline, including getting the scissors out and cutting away basically a full page worth of content. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that could be clearer, along with typos or styling inconsistencies. I'm going to be gathering all of the feedback and putting out a 1.1 version once judging is over.

The curse of getting a late start this year. (July was a month.)

Here's mine: https://lby3.itch.io/fable-of-the-silver-lanterns-a-shadowdark-adventure

Honestly, I feel like the biggest challenge for folks new to publishing is royalty free art that's not AI. 

Folks who crack that seem to be unleashed, but sorting through the maze of "this says it's royalty free, but obviously is pirated or AI" and "stuff I know must be royalty free because it's 100+ years old seems weirdly hard to find on the internet" never stops being a pain in the butt.

This is also my plan.

It's an insane amount of entries to get through, especially in a thoughtful way. My hat's off to you all.

Is the plan to sell the physical version of this at the TNG store?

Gorgeous!

Wow, that's really flattering, especially considering how many great entries there were in the Appendix N Jam.

Whoa, what?

Great cover, for starters.

Wonderfully clean layout with a great typeface.

I love the character names. I know a lot of them are drawn from history, but they work well together to give a picture of the cultures involved.

In a world of fantasy RPGs full of weird and gross stuff, congratulations on coming up with skin magic, which somehow is ickier than a lot of the more overt eeeevil magics seen elsewhere.

I'm not sure I understand the centurion just laying in bed, talking to himself. Likewise, why is only being able to move single-file through the rubble-filled room important?

I like the subtle warnings to not look in Josephina's eyes. It will take a clever player to realize why the painters don't know what her eye color is, but it'll save the characters' lives if they figure it out in time. (Yikes to her gaze power.)

Very creepy adventure and a compelling and horrifying villain. Well done!

That's a very effective cover. Great idea!

Pretty small type for an A5 booklet. Great typeface, though. What one did you use?

Beautiful presentation all around.

This feels very mythic, which I know is a big part of His Majesty the Worm. This would take a little bit of work to convert to other systems, as some of the ones you reference here don't have obvious counterparts, but I suspect this adventure can be used in a lot of other OSR games to great effect. 

Well done.

The art has a vaguely Edward Gorey feel to it, which is great, and a flavor I haven't seen in RPGs before, strangely.

I love the maps, although they're wildly different stylistically than the artwork.

I like the classic structure of the ship getting cruddier with each descending deck.

There's a lot going on in this adventure. Even with the introduction to the main NPCs at the beginning, I feel like I might need a bit more hand-holding to make this run smoothly in play.

Overall, an incredibly creative setting and it makes me want to play a gonzo game like Troika so that I can experience it.

The cover art is a delight, as is the art and design throughout.

In a challenge full of wildly creative entries, this is one of the most creative. This feels like a more family friendly take on Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, which isn't something I would have predicted, but it's great.

The mirror puzzle is pretty hard, especially with a ticking clock involved, but that's literally my only quibble.

Basically a perfect adventure for many urban campaigns. I will 100% be using this in future.

Excellent maps. Bregan Manor has a great, Conan-stealing-into-the-garden kind of vibe.

I think the site description and layout are excellent.

But the adventure feels a bit too much like the players are being dropped into a lore-dense short story for my tastes -- I would prefer a bit more freedom for the PCs, especially with the possibility of instant death just a few bad dice rolls away.

Is the pact itself a scroll? It appears to both be the legal contract and a physical object, but I think I'm missing what the physical object itself is. (I assume it's a scroll.)

First off, that cover is just fantastic.

I like decaying orbit as a ticking clock. Nice and scary for the players and it's a doom that can't be bargained with.

The actual adventure having a page width two pages wide makes for some very wide paragraphs and it makes it harder to parse, especially at the table. I like the experiment, but I would probably reformat into two columns.

The map reminds me of the graphics on the old Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy show on BBC, which is fantastic.

This is a good adventure and  I think reformatting it a bit would really elevate it.

I have rated a ton of entries and am not even halfway through. My hat's off to you all tackling all the entries -- that's a heck of a feat, even beyond the question of having to pick the best among such a giant pile of great works.

The cover is great. I love the extra little touches to make it look like an old paperback.

Honestly, all of the aesthetics are great. The cream-colored paper, the font choices, the art. All great.

Incredible job of laying out an interesting dungeon (although that brain is not where I'd expect it to be) in one page and change, along with an evocative map and a single page of background and interesting monsters.

I don't see a system stated anywhere in the PDF. Is this for Cairn? A delightful adventure, no matter what.

I love the spooky cover. 

The cursive header font is a little hard to read, in my opinion. I'd consider something with a similar personality that's a little easier to read.

Elegant way to handle sea elves.

I like the rival parties, who are a colorful mix of characters.

This whole adventure is packed. 

Smart move throughout to just reference existing monsters instead of making new ones, which saved you a good amount of space and is fine -- 99% of players won't notice and most of those that do will understand.

I would love to see this revised and expanded. You've got so much going on here, I'd like to see more of everything, including what the mask actually does.

This whole thing just bursts with energy.