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beatifully written and ready to be played without any interpretative effort by the dm. Everything runs smoothly. fairy-goth-arthurian style makes me think of Pendragon, which i love. With a real map it wouldhave been perfect
Focused and dense arthurian tragedy, really immersive through repetition but remains dynamic.
What I thought worked well
What I thought could be improved
I wish I'd had space to really go into the ghosts and their background, and I will in the expanded release. For the jam I think I was already pushing my luck at 2400 words on 4 A5 pages.
Yeah I mean this was a classic "It was so good I wanted more" problem
still slaps!
Beautifully written & well-organized. I know I’m not alone in my love of heartbreaking Arthurian tragedy, and this delivered heaps of it- especially in the little moments of each Knight’s individual graves. So well done, with such tenderness. Really superb!
Awesome stuff! The layout and presentation are clean, the text is informative and readable and the vibes are immaculate. It would easily slot into Cairn, Dolmenwood or Mythic Bastionland. (Frankly Pendragon would be fun too) The premise is compelling and the Deeping Chase is a great location and set-piece.
The only thing that I have questions about (and this might be less criticism and more just be me figuring out how I'd build upon this as a campaign...) is how the initial curse on the chase formed. The Graveshroud Stag is interesting, but it is not clear what circumstances brought it into being. This does allow for a fun reverse-uno if the GM wants to say "The Graveshroud Stag is actually a legitimate guardian and Koschel transgressed the laws of the forest somehow in hubris/lust for glory", but that doesn't seem like the intention, so i'd be curious to know!
I like how you account for different outcomes in a way that isn't prescriptive and the handling of the point-crawl is done well from a visual and mechanical standpoint. lots to learn from here, this is an impressive entry, excellent work!
Everything about it is fantastic. Specifically, the design and presentation of information is so clean and precise. Really made something special from this prompt.
i really like the point crawl within a hex. having a hazard per trail and an encounter per point really packs a lot of content into a little space.
figuring out what happened to ser koschel is a fun premise, but i could see it falling flat without the dowager's involvement. to that end, the other two hooks seem superfluous. the dowager is the juice.
gonna keep this one in my back pocket for my ongoing dolmenwood campaign!
I'm doing an expanded full release that will have Dolmenwood conversion pack. It should be out in the next couple of months. And yes, the Dowager is the juice, for sure.
Excellent layout! Its very pleasant to parse & seems like a breeze to run. I like that you dared to change the usual Shadowdark statblock order, it makes more sense to end with the stats rather than LV and AL.
You made a lot of a rather difficult prompt. Well organized and written. I would love to see how the Things Known table works out in actual play. Maybe I'll drop this module into my Dolmenwood Campaign.
The full release will come with a Dolmenwood conversion attached (if the guy finishes it). So, fingers crossed. I think it's a great fit for DW and I sort of had that in mind when writing it
The cover image is evocative. Even though you squeeze it into a mere quarter page, you include all the important cover info, and save your page real estate for the text of the adventure.
This is probably the most economical use of space I have seen in the jam. Yours is one of the entries with the most words: you even have room for the luxury of read-aloud text. The adventure is very clearly laid out, with judicious choice of fonts, colours, boxed text. The clear and attractive page layouts will increase playability at the table.
At first glance, the setup is a classic quest: break the curse, find the treasure. But the additional requirement to learn Ser Koschel’s story adds narrative and role-play elements. I like that the story is revealed piece-by-piece through player interaction as the adventure progresses.
The adventure is presented as a series of atmospheric locations, with random hazards and three repeating encounters. The fixed order of revealing Things Known means that the narrative will be progressively revealed. This looks like an entertaining night’s play, with plenty to keep the party engaged. Nice work!
Minor nit-picks:
In the “spreads” layout, shouldn’t the first page be on the right-hand side of the A4 spread, so it is the front cover when folded?
The factions are listed in a different order on p.1 than on the back page. (It adds a little unnecessary cognitive load to match them up.)
Typo on p.1 “amiral” → “amoral”
The spread design was strictly for digital consumption, or at least I never intended the design the allow print and fold.