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Shen-Yi: Sunslayer ~ A Mothership Scenario's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| FAVORABILITY — how much do you personally like the submission? | #7 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Overall | #13 | 3.726 | 3.726 |
| GAME DESIGN — How good is the game balance or concepts there in? | #15 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| WRITING — How does this read? does it emanate with horror, humor, drama...? | #16 | 3.792 | 3.792 |
| LAYOUT — How well does the module get across information? | #16 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
| ART — How good is the art/graphic design? | #19 | 3.958 | 3.958 |
| THEME — How well is the jam theme used? | #22 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| UTILITY — Does complexity inspire game prep? Or Is it very "Pick-up-n-Play"? | #25 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Having reviewed all but ten entries, I only have time to rate the final ten but not provide a written review. If you want detailed feedback like I've given others, hit me up on Discord (xopods) and I'll give you some after the ratings close.
Incredible submission! I love the three competing NPCs as a device, especially the trust fund weapons dealer.
This is just my personal opinion, but when I see a star destroyer/end of the world or universe type plot device my eyes glaze over a little bit from its overuse. But other people clearly love it! One thing to consider, I think part of why the original Star Wars trilogy worked is because they were trying to stop the Death Star after it destroyed Alderon. Same with Avengers Endgame Part 2, Thanos successfully did the snap. I don’t know why, but it counterintuitively seems to raise the suspense and it might be worth setting the Star Killer adventure post first use.
This might be a surprise to hear but I'm totally with you, taste-wise! Even thouhg I'm obviously referencing it, I'm not EVEN a fan of Star Wars or Avengers or anything like that lmao. I would almost count myself as a hater.
This was kinda a self-imposed challenge to see what transposing a cliched heroic scenario into a deadly horror system would be like. So far in playtests it's been interesting, there's been a real tension between the drive to do the "right" thing vs. remembering that we're playing a system with no plot armour and facing down danger might ACTUALLY mean getting mutilated in an unflattering manner. Tastes vary but for my money I much prefer that kind of conflict to heroic RPGs where success is all but guaranteed!
Also agree, if I were running it as part of a campaign I think it'd definitely put Shen-Yi as a potential climactic finale and seed in actions from the villains throughout. And because it's MoSh and NOT a heroic RPG, I'd also give the players the choice to build up the funds to actually just "skip town" i.e. leave Barrow altogether and save their own skins if that's the direction they'd prefer. That's a totally fitting end state in my mind (although since in this case it'd be MY content they're skipping I'd be maybe 1% annoyed lol).
Everything looks pretty polished. Good choice to not let the map take up the whole inner spread, it does however suffer from the same issues with most scenario maps in that the layout doesn't really matter. One interesting thing that could have been done with it is to allow the various factions to fight over it (area control) when things starts to go bad.
Thanks! But yeah the factions fighting over areas of the ship IS what is meant to happen if (/when) the players turn them on one another, but I suppose I can make the wording a bit more explicit there.
wowe. This is some impressive work, an interesting cast of villains, and this can either be a session or a campaign. The versatility of this module is amazing. I would love to run this sometime, and I'll come back for a comment if I do.
Also I just realized ur the author of 小笼包 after seeing your pfp lol, beautiful work.
Thank you, please enjoy!!!
Highly based "90s rts box art" feel to the visual design, which I really appreciate. Another great factor is how scalable this adventure is, and adaptable into an existing campaign. Another quality piece from the creator of one of the best from the last jam.
Thanks! Yeah, scalable is what I was going for.
Simply wow. This is good clean fun squeezed into a trifold. I'm excited to try this one out.
Thanks, lemme know how it goes!
Stellar work as always! (pun very much intended)
I think you did an excellent job distilling down what is NEEDED to run what is clearly a larger idea. That said I would love to see you remove the section on how to run this as a campaign and instead just write the full zine as well! I think there is something to be said for “hey do you want this as a 5 session mini campaign? here buy this fleshed out zine!” — “Oh you’d rather do this all as a single action packed one shot, here is the trifold”
I like the art a lot, i think the graphic design could use just a touch more (but only because I’ve read your modules and hold you to a higher standard haha.) also the silhouette/map of the ship looks a touch blurry (just the outside, the rooms are crisp) if its intentional i think it needs to be more to give the “on a screen” effect if its not intentional get the full vector in there so it can be nice and crisp!
Regardless, good character motivations (villains who have ALREADY turned on each other who the PCs are trying to expose) nice change of pace from MoSh being just horror, to more action adventure, and an excellent use of the theme to make something fun that I immediately want to play when I read it…
You have a Gift!
Thank you very much! Yeah I think I mixed different resolutions on the map on second glance (sinful) I will definitely fix that up at least before final version.
Stellar work as always! (pun very much intended)
I think you did an excellent job distilling down what is NEEDED to run what is clearly a larger idea. That said I would love to see you remove the section on how to run this as a campaign and instead just write the full zine as well! I think there is something to be said for “hey do you want this as a 5 session mini campaign? here buy this fleshed out zine!” — “Oh you’d rather do this all as a single action packed one shot, here is the trifold”
I like the art a lot, i think the graphic design could use just a touch more (but only because I’ve read your modules and hold you to a higher standard haha.)
but regardless, good character motivations (villains who have ALREADY turned on each other who the PCs are trying to expose) nice change of pace from MoSh being just horror, to more action adventure, and an excellent use of the theme to make something fun that I immediately want to play when i read it…
You have a Gift!
Really impressive how the map and map key both show the same connections so elegantly. Tight design, easy to read and looks easy to run! I've written a thing or two similar to this, and the one thing I run into is "Does it need to be Mothership"/"Why is it Sci-Fi Horror?" If I was running the module, I'd amp up the characters to each be scarier in their own rights (rites?!) - but that's clearly not the tone you're targeting, so pinch of salt and all... ;D
Thanks a lot! The genre discussion is an interesting one that I kinda wanted to make a boxout for and might go in an expanded version of Shen-Yi, but it's a bit like that question of "can modern D&D run horror?" And the answer is "kinda" but also no, because the mechanics will always pull you back to heroic fantasy. In the same way, IMO no amount of action-hero paint can pull Mothership away from it's horror core... but that's actually what I like. Shen-Yi nods at Star Wars, but I really want it to play more like ALIENS: an action movie, but always with the threat of absolutely horrific consequences and sudden death. It's just that the latter part is mainly handled by the engine. That's why for personal taste I WOULDN'T want this to be, like, a Starfinder AP or whatever.
As an example, I've playtested Shen-Yi twice now, and although it's action-packed we've also had:
Now to ME those are features, but granted if you want a more straightforward heroic experience, they're bugs. All that's to say I'm not trying to make MoSh into Star Wars (and I couldn't), I'm trying to exert brutal violence on Star Wars style characters lol
A lot can be done with some sensory cues - if the ship is lashed together from salvage, poorly lit, and decorated in chains and grizzly trophies (more like a Klingon vessel?), then that will make it much more like The Rock or something along those lines. That can also be worked into the graphic design - it's all super shiny right now ;D
This looks amazing and is mechanically very sound! I like how you've laid out useful information about the NPCs and called out useful clues and mechanics throughout.
Thanks!