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Wow, I've had to read this a few times to get my thoughts in order. It's so DENSE.
Love the hooks on the front cover, especially the seventh (decorative) hook about a lost memory but the text has been torn off. Nicely poetic. There are lots of these little poetic moments that make it a joy to read.
Now the inside. Yes, too small text, it's been mentioned. I'm not sure how you could edit it down much further though. The prose is really strong and evocative and I think it would suffer from too much trimming. I like the door icon, very clever.
One thing that confuses me is what's the actual setup here? The intro is written in the second voice and makes it seem like the players are Ur themselves.
I love the factions. They are distinct and characterful.
Where I'm getting stuck is with the layered procedures of the Kudurru stones, the triplets, the game of Ur, the Rules of Rhetoric. I just can't figure out how all these procedures fit together by myself. And unfortunately you just don't have the extra pages needed to explain this properly.
But it's so flavourful I want to see how it works.
Anyway, probably one of the most memorable entries I've read so far and fits the themes so well. Really well done.
Ah! Yeah, I regret not having an explanatory section somewhere!
The module is written in the second person addressed to the person running it :))
The warden is Ur - it's a clumsy attempt at a meta thing where the warden is in the position of being an in-fiction storyteller for the dungeon. Through whatever means: seeding hooks, rumours, etc, they bring the party here and hope to be freed. They have fairly limited influence beyond that outside of talking to the party at the peak.
In terms of how everything would fit together mechanically, yeahhhh this one really needs a playtest. I think I tried to make everything fit together a little *too* much, and I'm not sure how easy it would be for a party to interact with a lot of these systems. The Game of Ur in particular, having both the constrained grammar and vocabulary of the glyphs, is kinda rough. I think after the jam and a few playtests I'd defo love to write up a less obtuse explanatory document to make these things a bit clearer :))
There's a ton of rich and evocative content to digest here. It seems a bit intimidating to run—but oh how I'd love to give it a try sometime. Well earned 5-Stars down the line from me.
A really great adventure—plus, I have a soft spot for ancient Mesopotamia. I’m a big fan of the cover art and the map, and you’ve included a ton of content. That said, it might be a little text-heavy for such a small format, but I think that’s something many of us have struggled with when creating our own adventures. Great job!
OOZING PURE STYLE HOW THE HELL DID YOU FIT SO MUCH INTO THIS BOOK??
stellar writing. i think what i really want from this jam is Maximalism and you've got it in spades. there's so much going on that i really had to devote time to sitting with it, but the juice feels worth the squeeze.
fav: the annihilist, great encounter and great POV flavor text
least fav: the tower mood table, feels like the too many'th cook in the kitchen i think. or like instagram filters for a picture that already looks great!
Some great visual design but I struggled to read it at the A5 scale.
Yeah agreed, one thing I've learned from this jam is to start layout much sooner in the process, I really struggled to fit everything in.