Play project
Storm Shelter's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| How appropriate/desirable is this as an astronaut mission? | #2 | 4.571 | 4.571 |
| How well are design principles used to create a fun mission? | #2 | 4.571 | 4.571 |
| How legibile and easy-to-understand is this mission? | #6 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #6 | 3.893 | 3.893 |
| How stylish is this mission, visually? | #10 | 2.429 | 2.429 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Which astronaut RPG/setting is this for?
Orbital 2100
Orbital Cold War
Pioneer
Other
Other system/setting
Airtight!
Which hard mode challenges did you do?
Limit the submission to a single sheet (two A4/letter pages).
No images or diagrams
only text (ASCII art is allowed).
Write your mission for 1 player and no GM.
Optional theme Last-chance rescue.
What do you want comments/critiques to focus on?
Drama
How harsh do you want people to critque your submission?
Normal amount
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Comments
My feedback is significantly delayed, but hopefully still useful.
Legibility: very clear overall. There’s some bleed-over of text into another column, but that’s a minor blemish. The only potential challenge I predict to comprehension/usability is the lack of aids for travel time and fuel. A map with each location and its travel time/fuel cost (or a simple bullet-point directory listing those, to stay ASCII-only) would help.
Design: the adventure is a fun dilemma between saving as many lives as possible while minimizing risk and managing time and propellant. I only found two blemishes:
a selfish solo player, uninterested in saving anyone else, will quickly resolve the situation by going to Prospect and refusing to leave when Mercury Belle arrives. I don’t think this is intended, and I recommend explicitly forcing the player out when the Mercury Belle comes ringing.
the various NPCs feel under-developed for player manipulation/interaction/negotiation. A casualty of the length constraints, and something a passable referee can overcome. I would give Marr one more explicit motivation/characteristic the player can use as leverage when negotiating with Marr, and give Li Wen two or three more to give the player leverage to “force his hand.”
Aesthetics: plain in all the best ways. Easy to print, easy to read, and vaguely-modern.
Applicability. Very applicable for an astronaut game. Although in LEO, this can also work in further-future astronaut games (say, around Mars) with some tweaks to the timeline.
Overall, a fun and excellent example of an astronaut mission. I believe most of my critiques were preemptively incorporated into your version 2.0, so anyone should give that a look too: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581513/storm-shelter-2-0
Very cool setup! Lots of room for interesting drama, personal and corporate and political.
The denseness (and general typesetting) definitely makes it tough to read. There’s a few things you could do to alleviate it but from other comments you just have a longer/less dense version elsewhere so I won’t belabor the point.
Thanks for looking. Was definitely giving myself a huge PITA fitting into two sides of A4. It was so much more fun to expand into....17 pages...
this is tightly written and inormarion heavy. A ton of consequence and fun plot in a short space. I don’t vibe with this design style but can see its worth and it clearly pays dividends in how much you’ve put I. Such a small space. Great work.
thanks Alasdair, there’s an expanded one on Drivethru with the same name. But it’s much nicer laid out.
This one was compressed to fit into 1 page.
A sharply-drawn scenario with a great premise, loads of tension, and three equally bad options with opportunities for great roleplay.
The tension here comes entirely from resource math and hard choices rather than monsters or plot twists, and it works really well. The Manoeuvre Reserve system elegantly forces trade-offs between rescuing Survey Three, reaching shelter, and time itself. I especially liked that none of the NPCs are obstacles for their own sake: Marr, Li, and Mission Control all have legitimate, sympathetic reasons to say no. The solo-play NPC reaction table is a smart, lightweight solution too.
My only note is the prose is quite dense in places. Bullet points or just a summary table of costs/options might help. Also, white space is a must-add if you go for a V2.
Great grounded, hard-sci-fi tension overall. Terrific job!
The denseness is certainly my fault - trying to get it all on a single A4. DS page. Thanks for the kind comments.
This is a very solid scenario. The premise feels very tense, and the following results/moral dilemmas are very fun. The NPCs all feel very realistic in their motivations, and the pacing is nice and tense.
In terms of improvement, it could use more white space, and some information could possibly have been bullet pointed for readability.
I would also personally like more expilcit details explaining the results of various roll/decisions the player can make - can you use up less Reserve by rolling well on a piloting roll? How much Reserve do you need to get from Survey 3 to Prospect?
hi KingDunnad,
it definitely could be expanded into something more but it was put under the restriction of the 1 page, 2 sides for the Jam deliberately.
I would presume a Gm using something like Pioneer or Orbital 2100 would sub in their own systems for handling delta-V.
That said. The Reserve numbers given are for excellent handling - assuming everything goes right. You don’t get a Hohman transfer without the delta-V. . If you waste any with a bad roll, everyone dies. If you mess around, everyone dies. If you make a wrong decision, everyone dies. If any component fails, you get the gist