You're welcome! : )
qzaf
Recent community posts
Ok, I downloaded it and tried it. We had a question.
- If all players choose to use the Flee action, is the game completely over or do you keep your gems and get to do the whole setup over again in the hopes of finding more loot? Do you keep your points and delve into a new 'dungeon" and reshuffle the gems back into the deck?
Wow! you really did a lot to this since I've seen it last. you got the entire map colored, you made some changes to the PDF that really improve it. excellent job!
The only thing I'd personally like to see changed is to make the page margins narrower to really fill out the page. This would allow the maps to be bigger and the font to be larger and even easier to read.
Overall a good adventure that can be plopped down into almost any campaign with only a few hours of prep. It'd be good to keep in your back pocket as a DM if you should need it.
Wow! This has everything, goblins, rumors, random encounters, a dungeon, monsters, items, and a Dead Cow! Excellent art work. The map looks great. The layout and design of the pages are excellent. I love that you used tight page margins to really fit the most into the 8 page limit of this contest.
I bet you could have filled 8 more! 😅
Looks great. definitely something you should be proud of!
unbelievably great title page. Probably the best I've seen in the whole submission!
The map itself looks great. the random encounter table looks great.
The one thing I'd change is to spell out that the Danger Level is High. the text itself spells it out quite well though! "Role for an encounter every 3 rounds of crawling." on page 3. this is a minor and probably stupid quibble.
Everything else looks great! you should be proud of this.
Wow. The monster stat blocks are very fair considering the party level. The hexcrawl is well drawn, the maps are isometric. It was an interesting choice to not have random encounters or a danger level in the dungeon. I'd love to bring this to the table for my players and see how they do!
Thanks for creating this, it looks good.
Easy to read, clean layout. meets the page limit for the contest. Well done.
You might want to read the Shadowdark License and include the required text of "You must include the following in yourpublication:"[Product Name] is anindependent product published under theShadowdark RPG Third-Party License andis not affiliated with The Arcane Library,LLC. Shadowdark RPG © 2023 The ArcaneLibrary, LLC."
Things I love:
- There is a lot of content and world building here.
- The inkerate map looks good.
Things I don't love so much:
- there is no printer-friendly version for us ink-conscious folks? 😅
- I'd like to see the page margins narrower so the font can be made larger?
- Looks too similar to a 5e adventure in layout and doesn't make use of the "Designed for Shadowdark RPG" image I've come to expect on the title page. The design/layout could use some work to be more inline with Shadowdark's vibes.
- Metric system. I love it for science but it doesn't feel medieval fantasy to me. "My horse is 8 heads high and my arm 3 feet." metric feels too scientific and clean for peasant folk.
Looks good otherwise. Solid 4 out of 5 imo.
Things I love about it
- Every monster stat block has a brief description AND a quote about the monster from an in-universe character. This something I absolutely LOVE to see in bestiaries as I often photoshop out the stat blocks and just give the descriptions to my players IF they spend in-game coin to buy an in-game bestiary from a merchant.
- The layout/design look great and really fit the Shadowdark theme of pdf design.
- The art is lovingly made by someone that has passion.
- All monster stats are reasonable for low level characters with the only exception being TRAFAWL APES with a whopping 15 HP, three +3 attacks. Even for Level 3, that may be too powerful.
- The page margins are narrow allowing a lot of information and art on each page!
Things I don't love
- The art is not on par quality-wise with officially released products, which is understandable considering it's fan-made! It has a homey-feel like a child drew the images. But, they are still personally below my standards.
- The title page could be more avant-garde with it's art style. There is a lot of whitespace. The fonts chosen for the title and subtitle aren't my favorite. they seem almost "piratey"?
- The text on page 2 for "A Guide to the Dreadful Critters" seems really tightly squished which makes it difficult to read.
Things I'd like to see someday
- An additional redesigned pdf that is specifically supposed to be handed out to players. No stat blocks involved. Only descriptions, quotes about the monsters, battle tactic recommendations, and if possible some tactics to avoid combat. Example: "Rainbow snails will generally ignore you if you scatter coins around." or some such thing. I've been in love with Players having handout bestiaries ever since watching Questing Beast's video on youtube about "The Dark of Hot Springs Island" which has an amazing player's bestiary.
Improvement recommendations
- The monster stat blocks need to be better laid in an easier to read manner. There is no reason to leave Dexterity dangling at the end of the sentence and have the next one below it start with -1.
this happens frequently throughout the pdf. It's especially noticeable on pages 3, 4, and 5. often a sentence will end with "MV" and the next will start with "Close".
Content: 8 of 10. Great!
I will be bringing this to my players as an option. 1 point lost for type-os. 1 point lost for "Community Events" being potentially devastating and always negative. I'm not sure why the players should be punished for advancing their Standing within the community. "Thanks for building that orphanage ... did that kid just summon a demon?"
Layout and Design: 2 of 10 Boring.
Times New Roman font, incorrectly background color "Designed for use with ShadowDark RPG. The page margin are set to the default setting instead of being very narrow to allow more content on each page. Headers aren't big enough because of this. It's also very noticeable when it comes to the tables not being justified based on the content within the cells, columns, or rows. Some text needs to be center aligned vertically and horizontally within their cells. +1 point for the only two images in the pdf being quite good and evocative.