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The Gilding Piscean's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Writing | #138 | 3.652 | 3.944 |
| Gameability | #187 | 3.395 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #217 | 3.240 | 3.500 |
| Visual Design | #261 | 2.726 | 2.944 |
| Theme | #264 | 3.189 | 3.444 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
that's a gold standard of short form rpg mistery, pure and simple. It could be improved in a number of ways, but you can clearly see where to put your effort to get to perfection. I love how the "crime" is not a crime and everybody but the victim-perpretators is pretty disgusting (i cant help but see Tor and Pyg's relation at tainted at least). Very good. Will play.
An interesting and coherent mystery!
The Layout and presentation is clean and well-separated, while the writing is clear and informative, the character descriptions flow nicely into one another and the GM quickly gets a handle on the overall mystery. I like how you made clear the outcomes and set the stakes. The only thing I'd prefer is if the clues present in the text were highlighted distinctly so I can pick them out at a glance (but that is a personal preference), it doesn't make sense to pull them into a separate section completely, since that would break the flow, but highlighting them out would be useful. Great work on this!
Nice solid mystery with interesting characters, a good setup, with plenty of clues to guide players towards a conclusion. I like that the endings outlined really help to easily understand the possibilities during gameplay.
This is a good mystery you could wrap up in a session or two without going off the deep end in add on compilations. The layout is very evocative of stuff I’d find in used book stores. Nice work.
That’s an investigation that could actually work! I’ll put it on my to-play-list, looking forward to try it with some of my players!
I don’t want to spoil here, but there’s somethin very obvious not coming to pass and something surprising coming up and I love it!
Also, I like stories where children for once aren’t possessed or dead for 100 years.
Great writing, very atmospheric.
My main worry would be that the PCs get stuck and don’t solve (or wrongly solve) the mystery at heart.
Always a concern with a mystery! All my playtests managed to answer 2 of the 3 questions every time, but a different 2 each time - so the information is available. I imagine playing with a party of people rather than solo+GM like I did wouldn't have too much trouble.
Really focused and interesting drama, really up my alley!
What I think worked well
What i think could be improved
Thanks for your kind words! I agree the map is a bit out of place and that it could have used more graphics - I think my commitment to making the first page the cover highlighted my weaknesses (layout and verbosity). As far as the anachronistic styling, all I can say is that I was trying to imitate those $2 70s paperbacks I grew up on so as far as I'm concerned that achieved my goals. Anyway, thanks again!
Oh yeah it totally felt 70s. I was getting 1870s vibes 😅
This is great. You set the stakes and sketch the characters really well.