Scaling the doc to printer size tells me the font is a little small, but mostly going to be readable on a low quality printer. Might need to squint a little, but I've seen worse. Scrolling back to a legible size for review and I am confronted by a map on page 1.

Conceptually it is interesting, but in terms of practicality I don't feel like it's particularly useful. Scrolling down to see if the next page helps at all and nope. Next page isn't even a key. It means the key is going to be printed on the other side if I go to print this. I do a quick pull out to be sure maybe it isn't something where the front and back are book-ending the pages version, but no, the key is on page 3. So even if I treat page 1 as the front and page 4 as the back, I still have to flip between map and key.

Okay, so I'll flip back and forth for a moment to see if the map is offering much beyond aesthetics. After doing that a few moments, the answer is no. I don't seem to have any reason to even need a map honestly. There's no scale here, but presumably each square is a city block. It shows me where they are in relationship to one another, but I didn't notice anything in the rest of the document where that would have a meaningful impact. Making it worse, the numbers are all over the place so it's not immediately clear about why. Without reading the document yet, I can only assume that's the order in which places become meaningful.

I do like the concept here, but for an entire page to be dedicated to it seems odd. It certainly hits the 'art' side of things, but the old time photo feel is clashing with the whimsical hand-drawn art style elsewhere. I know there are going to be people who love this. I kind of want to love it too honestly. For me though, it's just a wasted page I won't ever bother printing out. I'd rather the space have went to the adventure instead with maybe some photos in the corners.

On I go to page two and am kind of just sitting looking at it. Clearly I am missing something, so I go digging. The jam doesn't automatically show the landing page, so when I go a few pages in and pull that up, boom. That's what I wasn't getting. The adventure didn't tell me what system I was using in the document itself, but apparently something called Odd Noir. Explains why I was seeing what I first mistook as a half dragon, but I am guessing is a second form of the woman standing there. The clothing is a different in terms of color, but the same design. I don't know anything about Odd Noir, so I won't be able to speak to system elements. I would adjust that first sentence as follows: “A gothic, weird one-shot for the Odd Noir TTRPG. It's set in a dusty Southern border town, where a prominent high society vampire has vanished on the eve of an apocalyptic cosmic event called:” To avoid any confusion about what I am looking at. While the landing page means anyone who downloads it knows what they are loading, there's nothing to say that when they go to pull it out of a folder in 2 years, they have any recollection of what it was meant to be used with.

That aside, there's nothing particularly wrong with this page. Unlike the following two, the font is easily readable at scale and it does a fair job giving an overview of the adventure and what to expect. It's basically an elevator pitch for what's to come. Where I do have a problem is that we are now 2 pages out of your 4 and all I know is a basic overview of the premise and a map I can't really make use of. That means everything of substance needs to be mashed into 2 remaining pages. That's pretty tight and explains why the font size on the next two pages is so cramped.

Locations. I already talked about how I would have rather had them on the same printed page as the map when doing a front and back A4. No need to rehash that. The very first location though offers me nothing meaningful. Fastest way in or out doesn't mean a whole lot honestly. I guess it lets us know this is where we came into town from, but I could have gotten a notation in the description for that. A single sentence of where the characters arrive at. The next two entries both offer something to work with since they reference important events.

Saloon is similarly meaningless to me. Obviously it's where people get drunk and gossip. Rowdy is about the only word I care about there, but not sure yet how much that's going to bring to the table. The apothecary sounds like it's meant to be important later, so I am going to assume this isn't just fluff. The last two both mention things that seem important as well, so we'll move on.

NPCS gives us Josephine. Woot, I got it right about the whole bat person on page 2. Well, got it right after an initial thought it was two different people and the whole half-dragon thing. Don't take that personally. The ears reminded me of horns from another art piece I had seen, along with the wings on the back as opposed to her arms changing into wings. The sheriff is a dick. Sure. Not much to talk about there. Wish I knew why he's acting this way, but I guess I am making that up myself. Sterling's info is a little odd. Says he's going to take her from the cult, but also that he's going to frame the cult. There's no need to frame the cult, they did it apparently. I assume it's because he's going to hide that the ransom is his doing. Still feels odd to call it 'frame' here.

I think I am again missing something tied to setting again when it comes to Clara. I have to assume the all-blue is just the style thing since other characters on this page are similarly monochromatic. However, she has extra eyes. There's no note about her being a weird species unlike when you mention Josephine, so I am left to just assume as much. Not going to lie, between the single color and the extra eyes, she feels very much like a Steven Universe character to me. That's a touch jarring when I was in the middle of a western fantasy noir already. As to the remaining NPCs, I don't have much to say there. Information is present that I might want about them, so it's fair enough.

Earlier it was mentioned we are a recovery team. I have to assume that's a standard part of the game play in Odd Noir, so it's with that in mind I am trying to evaluate what comes next. Last page and immediately Clara is asking if we know what happened at the manor. I assume she's here waiting on them specifically, but it's only implied. Her question feels odd for people who just arrived. I think saying she asks if they're the recovery team and if they say yes, she lets them know they'll want to check out the commotion there. Just feels like it makes a better flow of logic to me than asking a random group who just arrived if they know about something local.

Also, this is broken into Acts, but act 1 could literally be just a five minute scene. A GM could probably break it down a bit. Scene 1: coming into town and passing through to describe things along the way they see from the train, letting them know what's around and where. Maybe even some foreshadowing. Scene 2: meeting with their contact Clara to figure out where to go, etc. I'm not going to break down everything for the 4 acts here. Instead I'm going to say there just isn't a lot of meat or mystery. It feels like a framework to build the adventure on, but almost everything (including all of the clues to the mystery itself) are on the GM to come up with.

The doom clock mechanic isn't a clock so much as a series of increasing events as each 'act' progresses. If I am reading it right, nothing the players do or don't do really changes the clock progress until they move to the next act. Of course, this means we basically start at stage 2 since 'act' 1 ends almost immediately. I would much rather this be a matter of either time or milestones. Stage 1 already sounds like it would shut down the train on the way in honestly. I could see stage 1 being just visual signs of the comet as a slow line of light in the sky. Then 2-5 stages as progressively worse situations. This means the hostile folks wouldn't start right away until they were partway into the investigation.

Ends on credits. Perfectly normal. I agree with thanking the partner who helps ensure you make progress when you otherwise might not. My own wife is someone I call out often as the one always supporting my efforts and keeping me from losing hope when the moments aren't the best. I'm glad you have someone like that in your own life.

I'm going to judge this fairly by a rubric, but this wasn't really for me and I can admit that. I didn't feel a connection with the fantasy noir western setting, the art style didn't suit me and felt a little jarring when combined with the realistic photos, and I don't even know the system in use to be able to judge on those merits. I can only go by what is here and how it feels in relation to the Appendix N. I don't feel like this is much game so much as setup. The only game element is the clock, which is a bit abstract and didn't feel strong to me. The acts even pulled a 'quantum ogre' moment where if players fail to investigate well enough an NPC swoops in to give them the answer at the cost of the reward. I think more space should have gone to the mystery elements and digging into clues. There was another mystery game I reviewed so far in this jam that was pretty short and simple, but handled it well. I believe it was The Lycan's Pelt if you wanted to get some ideas there. Not at all the same setting or system, but did focus on the mystery elements in addition to setting elements. With a lot of people expanding their entries, the mystery aspect is where I think this would most benefit from an expansion.

It's honestly a shame about the map. It was a neat idea, but mostly just ate space that could have gone to adding more to the adventure itself. A lot of page 2 probably wasn't valuable enough to be taking up an entire page either. With an extra page and a half of space, this could have been a pretty intriguing mystery and not require the GM to do quite so much of the legwork. It's not a bad effort by any means, but at least for myself it didn't sing. Either way, you got it done which is more than 2/3 of the people who entered can say. It's largely coherent and is at least a viable framework. Trust me when I say that's at least something to be very proud of.

Can you please provide some additional community copies? :)

Hello The Wyvern's Den, would you please generate 8 download keys for our judges and email them to me at jorphdan@gmail.com 

thank you!

Interesting characters and town. I think if I were to use this, I would add details or other NPCs to fit it into a setting I was running. To run it as is, I think a GM would need to do some work to fill in some details otherwise be ready for some improvisation (which is cool and totally fine by me!). I was wondering what system you would think of using? Vampire the Masquerade is the obvious one that came to mind. Also, I played in a game of Cy-Borg recently and I could see adapting this to work in that, or something Borg. Or, maybe Blood Borg would be the more natural fit (which I've wanted to play ever since I picked it up!). 

I like that each character mostly has their own illustrations! Awesome map, descriptions, and investigation flow. I just wish this adventure was more packed! Fantastic work, regardless!

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