Lord knows I love a good pirate anything. This checks a lot of boxes for me. Some thoughts, in the order they occured to me:
I LOVE the addition of the personal quest for each character. Some of them could certainly use a little balancing, though. Patches' feels underpowered (unless it's useable multiple times? In which case it's good!) The Mists' also feels a bit underwhelming. Personally, I wouldn't voluntarily blow up my character for an extra 2d6 once.
The Flaws as an alternative to injuries is great. For simplicity I might even take it one step further and eliminate the Injury option entirely. As a player, I would take a Flaw every time over an Injury, just for the narrative addition even if it had no mechanical impact. Could always mitigate this with a mix of injuries & flaws so that not every level has a mechanical impact (but should still have some kind of description when marked to keep the narrative alive maybe?).
I keep reading "Captain BrokenHeart" as "Captain Beefheart". This is not a critique, but a reflection on me.
I, like everyone else, demand that you keep Kozel as an actual bear! Would love to see him finished, as well (personal quest, flaws.
I would also like to see all stats start with "B" for the sake of alliteration. Perhaps Omens could become Banditry or Buccaneer?
I like how you use Heat, but I feel like it would make more sense as a shared pool? Since narratively they're all generating Heat together on their job?
Pg 18, under "Player Roll", the first paragraph ends abruptly "or can be".
I love how you break up objectives. Lends to the heist feel in a way I was struggling to capture in my game. Very cool. I would like a little more direction on structure, as far as the minor and side objectives go. Sort of a flow chart of this objective can lead this that objective, that sort of thing.
I also thing this game would benefit from a ready-made list of Adversaries & stats, so the GM doesn't have to come up with that all on their own. Makes for a lot more prep work. I understand you didnt have time to playtest, but that would be something I'd heavily consider when you do, to help find that balance.
This is a well laid-out adventure with lots of good details for a GM to dig into. Good bit of history mixed in for those that want to learn and play! Nice touch with the art for the big bads, I always appreciate having something to show the players! I agree with what others have stated about a map/flow chart being handy as an extra.
I am looking forward to running some of my fervent EtR players through this soon.
Love the theme of this game, I feel like you nail it. Applaud the addition of a glossary. it's something I wanted to do and never got around to, but seeing it in your game inspires me to add it to a later version! Very cool adding in the help and grit mechanics. Solves something I felt was lacking in EtR which I tried to tackle as well. Very well done.
Love the use of Merit Badges for additional skills, as well. You might want to mention in the MB section that they add dice to rolls, and not just in the glossary.
The structure of the scenes and the addition of the questions is great. And the variety included with different villains is a very cool addition!
Nice work overall! I'm very excited to run this as a Summer RPG sometime soon!
I love this bonkers concept! I was a little confused reading through the rules, and wish a little more time and explanation was given to some of the ideas.
I really enjoy the various arena powers the gators can get. There's some fun ways to play with the dice pool. I hope to see this further developed!
Thanks for the feedback! I stole the sensory thing from the excellent 9 Lives to Valhalla, and try to use it in all my RPG stuff now, helps me remember what I was thinking when coming up with the stuff.
Agreed, the layout definitely needs work. I was using Google docs, and it's not the best. I plan on redoing it in a word processing app to make it more clean and consistent after I revise some things, along with doing a more artistic layout.
I'm sorry about your stressful morning but happy you had gummy bears!
The stats are all pulled from quotes from the movie, which I know isn't exactly practical, but does bring me secret joy.
It's funny you mention the name of the Team Pool, because that's probably the 5th thing I've called it. I still haven't found something I love, but this was what I was settled on when it was submission time lol.
I'm glad you liked the dice chart! I had made a little chart for Eat the Reich on how to spend dice when I ran it at cons, because that was always the hurdle for new folks, so I thought it made sense to just include it on the sheet, especially since I didn't have time to do any pretty layout stuff!
Thanks for the great feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Art looks great! Love the thematic elements, all really well done. Will for sure be adding this to my EtR sheets when I run games.
Couple notes: Could you add boxes to the Loot on the text-only sheet? Or a number to indicate how many uses?
"Wrath of the God King" feels a little costly. I wouldn't want to spend a blood in the hopes that I roll a 6. Maybe nix the blood cost since it's only useful vs Ubermenschen? Could always drop the damage to 3 if you're worried about it doing too much.
I appreciate that, and great feedback! I've been thinking the ending needs a bit more, but couldn't put my finger on it. All my playtests agreed the ending felt rushed, but I wasn't sure if that was because we were cramming 8 hours of game into a 4 hour slot. I'll mull the final showdown over some and add that to my to-do list for when I come back to it. TY!
