This is brilliant, love the design, great integration of fairytale elements, right on theme, great Guide advise and player prompts, diabolical choices for players to make.
Play game
Three Sisters of the Glass Mountain's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| ART — How good is the art/graphic design? | #1 | 4.736 | 4.833 |
| LAYOUT — How well does the module get across information? | #1 | 4.327 | 4.417 |
| FAVORABILITY — how much do you personally like the submission? | #1 | 3.919 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.187 | 4.274 |
| GAME DESIGN — How good is the game balance or concepts there in? | #1 | 4.082 | 4.167 |
| WRITING — How does this read? does it emanate with horror, humor, drama...? | #2 | 4.082 | 4.167 |
| UTILITY — Is the module easy to follow? Is the prep reasonable for the payoff? | #2 | 4.164 | 4.250 |
| THEME — How well is the jam theme used? | #5 | 4.001 | 4.083 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Lovely art - evocative and illustrative of the major encounters! The fairytale feel is true to Fatherfog (what we've seen of it), especially the Golden Apple choice.
- Clever and well-executed copy of the official colour and layout. However, I would have liked to see a little more original design work.
- Why is Rinkrank transforming three women instead of one (servant)? Does he have uses for a horse or a fire tower?
I’ll let Austin speak to rinkrank’s motives but for the design critique. I had played with other ideas but I wanted to try and build something that the creators would see as an homage to the game they made. First foray into a new game especially I like to learn the rules of the design before I start breaking them. I’m sure this reflects my relative lack of experience in design, but I am really trying to learn more than express in my work right now.
Bruni's laser-generating form keeps out competing monsters and angry mobs. Grani's horseform can cross the firewall, presumably carrying one or at most two people with her; she creates a sort of intake for new servants. Rinkrank gives her the burned cloak scrap and sets her loose, hoping she'll lead a small group back to the mountain as she tries to free her sisters.
Anyways, that's my take. It's a humble 1pager, so -- you know -- sometimes scant on details.
Really good all around. As written, the only thing I struggled with was visualizing the mountain itself. I see "Looming in the upper tunnels, [Rinkrank] calls out in a gurgling voice," and, "The PCs fall down twisting tunnels into the Glass Mountain’s heart. Rinkrank’s cottage, a three-room hut with a glass door and three windows, sits alone in a vast glass hollow. It has a bedroom, kitchen, and vault. An old woman sleeps on straw in the kitchen corner." Maybe I'm missing another key phrase, but I'm struggling to understand the physical layout of the Requests/"barricade" situation, to the extent I could explain it to my players.
Is the following correct? There are tunnels inside an otherwise solid glass mountain. Rinkrank's cottage in a hollow clearing in the center of the mountain, which the Players fall into. The Players presumably easily enter the cottage and meet Mani. For some reason, Rinkrank cannot enter the house the same way the Players presumably do, and is instead skulking in the tunnels that are presumably above the hollow clearing, and will drop down once his Entry-seeking behavior is triggered by player choice.
Also, I didn't really understand the Glass Post or who its author presumably is, or why it matters at all for the Players to find. I think that's my own lack of familiarity with the source myths. Is Rinkrank their father? Why is he offering their hand if he's harming them? Is it just to give flavor? Is comprehending it meant to change how the Players act by giving them more knowledge of what lays ahead?
Those notes only came up because this trifold so clearly lays out a flexible vision; great work again! I can't afford Into the Fog but this gives me a really great idea of the "House Style" that Xiao mentions. I really, really like how the impulse to save Bruni in Act 3 rely relies on comprehending that these are the sisters, transformed, which leans into that dawning sense of horror. And the Ever After questions are lovely.
Hey hey, thanks for reading. The way you describe the mountain is basically how I perceive it. The Rinkrank entry bit is from the fairy tale and so his asking to be let in a trigger for PCs who know it to realize that can trap his beard in a glass window or door. It is definitely a fairytale conceit, telegraphed by his song. The glass post is mostly meant to act as a last place the beast will go without a push, but the writing is from the fairy tale: the Princess on the Glass Hill (or the Maiden on the Glass Mountain) where the youngest son of three uses magic horse to climb the mountain and win her hand. The author is ostensibly a king, taken from his daughters by the fog (leaving them orphaned to the village). Glad you enjoyed it, having run it I can say that it definitely is a bit cryptic in that the PCs without knowledge of the folklore will find somethings to inscrutable but I think that actually added quite a bit to the fairytale nature of the game and the players all really seemed to enjoy the strangeness of it.
Thanks for checking it out. We definitely looked to Into the Fog for inspiration on designing the adventure and just lifted the three-act structure directly. Austin is really great at weaving interesting choices into what, on the surface, looks like a linear adventure (see Carving Ymir). It does make a good one-shot, though Rinkrank is a tough fight without leveraging his trick, so your players may need those backup characters.
Genuinely very impressive to see how close the team was able to get to FF's "house style," from the visuals to the structure. Great stuff.
Submitted
The Queen of Wind & FlameThis is beautiful and leans into what FatherFog has shown artistically so far. I think this would be amazing as an Intro/First Adventure for FatherFog! It does appear quite linear, but I am starting to feel that the way the game has been released, that may actually be a strength! I really enjoyed it and its very high on my list of modules to run!
Small critique - I would have liked to see a given way that the PCs may realise that Mansraut is one of the daughters. I feel when running it I'll be finding ways to make this a subtle consideration. The players may latch onto animals, and consider this a seperate part of the journey, especially as they are not aware there are 3 acts.
Thank you! I hope you get to play it and enjoy. Re: linearity, I heard the same critique of Into the Fog on the Between Two Cairns podcast, but having played it I’ve actually found Fatherfog does a clever slight of hand here; the decision making falls to the characters and how they interact with each other and the world. In Into the Fog, we all ate the stew, all but one. When we encountered the glistening armour, I went off the string to examine it, unafraid, holding my lantern. And when the hair tried to capture me, I shattered my lantern to defeat it with fire, but leaving me without light. It definitely inverts some expectations about classic role-playing games, and arguably b2c are right, this is a story game with torches and rations.
Re: Mansrot, its a good call, and I think the thing we came to after play test was that a description of the three sisters with cloaks and brooches would actually really support clocking what was going on. That said, it was fun to play it and have the PCs NOT recognize mansrot, only realizing later that the old woman Rinkrank had devoured was someone they cared for per the questions in the intro.
Some amazing art here and a very clean design.
This may be an odd statement, but looking at the pamphlet, it seems like it would be easier to follow if Act Two and Act Three were swapped in the layout. When you open the cover, you would be staring at Act One and Act Two that way. Opening the pamphlet entirely would reveal Act Three. Just a thought!
Submitted
Hogsheadthis one comes together so nicely as you read it. As I read I felt like I was playing. It feels like you captured the style and the structure of Into the Fog and made something that feels like it would be in the same adventure pack with it. Killed it absolutely. I felt like I could run it after a single read through.
Submitted
CAN YOU TAKE ME HIGHER?My personal favorite of the Jam. Marrying the fairytale vibes from layout and art, to writing and game design, can't have been an easy task. The adventure is largely a straight line but the premise is where it's at. A perfect little one shot and probably also introduction to FatherFog as a system, provided the quite high fantasy elements can be effectively communicated to the players.
I appreciate the framing of Bruni's combat abilities as well as the changeable nature of one of them. Creature expression in these fairly light rulesets is one of my favorite parts of reading and writing in rpgs!
Rinkrank is terrifying!
This is utterly stylish! I have a soft spot for limited colour palettes, since I hate comlpex colour pieces, but this has been utilised very very well!
Submitted
Cemetery Beach
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