Play game
Complication Curatives for Draw Steel's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #6 | 3.785 | 3.889 |
| Creativity | #11 | 4.110 | 4.222 |
| Usability | #25 | 3.569 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #32 | 3.271 | 3.361 |
| Theme | #43 | 1.622 | 1.667 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
As I've noted a few other places, it's been incredibly interesting seeing submissions that are add-ons/fixes for experiences lived at different tables. My players are absolute complication fiends who enjoy when the drawbacks that hurt them come up (love those weirdos), but I've also heard of games where they're forgotten about for long stretches of time. Neat to consider how different tools are more or less useful for different groups.
Anyways
Mother Morose is fantastic, you really nailed the Macbeth Hag:tm: vibe. Enjoy the guidelines for creating a delve into The Junk Trunk and how its owner can pop up again throughout the campaign. Really solid work here.
The theme isn't the most apparent; it could have benefited from an explanation of your approach, but you made something! I love the concept, but you left me hungry for a montage test or something more robust that heroes can do to cure complications. I would have loved some motivations or pitfalls for Mother Morose to help integrate them into games. Great idea though!
What a joy to read through this one! Wonderfully evocative, excellent work! I think Mother Morose works better for some complications than others (how is Mother Morose going to make your Meddling Butler not meddle...?) but I think it's pretty clear to both players and directors which ones this would work for and which ones less so, so it's not really that big of a deal. Really cool stuff with the suggested adventure too, and a good point about making weird combinations of enemies! It's almost worth bringing her in for that alone :D
This post is endorsed by the Directors of Characters with Stolen Face Gang.
I mean... I love everything about this, but the theme is basically completely unrelated. Granted, I'm not much of a fan of the theme. The song montage does really make me rethink how to present them in general. Usually a bargaining entity like a witch would be the source of a complication. It's a fun subversion that a witch is believable the one to remove complications
That’s fair! My interpretation of “a year of draw steel” was “what did I learn from Directing draw steel for a year: ooh this thing never came up all year, let’s solve that” more than being limited to “year” or “anniversary” directly. For some people that’s valid, and it could be a stretch for others, and that’s fine with me.
I’m glad you liked the song! We’re Directors so we should be making cool scenes. I’m glad it was inspiring to you!
I like this idea a lot, and I love a good list of fey bargains. I think removing or rerolling a complication is unlikely to be appealing to most players, unless they're playing with a very strict Director who made them roll in the first place and didn't allow them to change one they really didn't want? But the curative to remove just the drawback is neat, and I like that it's a respite activity so that you have to be judicious about when to use it; that feels very cinematic to me. Using a song as a montage test is also brilliant!
Thank you for the kind words! Yeah, your rerolling and removing complications comment did come up in testing. The only players that were interested in removing/replacing the complication were not the bad ones, but those that weren't using theirs at all! It's the intention of the design to have an encounter that reminds them that they have one, and lets them narratively get rid of them if they didn't want the overhead. That's why the cost is entirely RP-based, essentially "free". If you really weren't using it, then lets make a fun scene of removing it instead of a handwave, we are Directors after all! In contrast, the mechanical benefit of the curative requires the Delve because they gotta work for it :)
Very fair!
Complications are great if players and the director remember them. This is a great way to remind everyone of the things haunting their characters. I also love the Junk Trunk as an excuse to do one-shot adventures. Can't figure out how to get your players to that island run by evil angulotls? It's probably through the Junk Trunk.
Thank you for the kind words!
Angulot's are exactly what I threw in my Junk Trunk test! Always wanted to try those lil guys. I also had them with a Time Raider Vertex, because I could! Sci-fi mechs piloted by colorful frogs? The Junk Trunk's got you covered ;)