itch.io

Hello, my name is Bo Ryan Crum. I write and illustrate OSR adventures as Gravy Press. You might be familiar with some of my work, like Beneath the Muckfort, Ex Inferis, or Spell of the World Weavers.

For anyone participating in this jam as a first time creator, or if you’re just interested in improving your craft, please reach out to me on discord (@gravy.press) for free & friendly developmental feedback and/or editing suggestions.

Good luck with the jam!

It’s completely crazy how small of a space two pages is. I really struggled with my entry to figure out a concept that could deliver on the title I had been assigned within the space constraints.

This one is an easy five stars in terms of information design, and a style of adventure that I love for jams like this: something to print off and stash in your GM’s notebook or binder, ready to pull out at that perfect moment to delight everyone at the table.

However! It’s driving me crazy that the tab stop after the ‘!’ bullets aren’t set to the same position as the other bullets.

Here’s the deal… this adventure is under appreciated. What an incredibly novel idea.

I’ve noticed that you have been offering incredibly deep and thoughtful advice on all of the adventures that you’ve rated, which is an act of community service that earns you additional stars in my book (well, and in the rating that I’m going to give you.)

I’ve also come here to offer a criticism, which is that there is something about the keying in these rooms that doesn’t really nail the ‘high level capstone’ that you outlined on your jam page. I’m seeing rats, I’m seeing copper, I’m seeing relatively low DCs.

The really cool design angle that only exists for high level adventures is the prevalence of extremely powerful magic like teleportation, power words, traps and obstacles where the adventure writer clearly wasn’t imaging a specific solution, instead coming up with the most diabolical thing they could think of and trusting that the inventories and spellbooks of these high level characters would be able to buy themselves out of danger.

I think that this adventure would be a 5* down the line for me if it embraced that high level adventure design ethos, and was willing to throw really insane stakes at the players in exchange for more exciting rewards.

I’m coming in biased on this one, I couldn’t possibly be critical of an adventure that employs the amazing word ‘ducal’ as often as my own adventure, Beneath the Muckfort.

I’m not going to mince words, this adventure kicks ass. You have crammed so much adventure into this one, but the pages don’t feel crammed at all. The terseness of your adventure writer’s prose is singing to me here, so much is communicated with only a few words.

If you’ve given any thought to ordering prints of these (A6 full color booklets are cheap as all hell and I’ve got a paper stock secret for them that makes them feel premium), you should reach out. There are some copy editing things that jumped out at me during my read through that I would love to help out with (if you’re interested, of course.)

This entry makes some concessions in visual design, but is otherwise a typical example of Cats Have No Lord’s phenomenal adventure design.

I love how modular this adventure is, literally squeezing an expansive adventuring locale into a single in room in any dungeon! This one is going into the tuck pocket in my GM’s binder, because I just know there will come that one perfect moment to bust it out for my players.

1pagedungeons is an expert in small form factor adventures, and that experience shines in this entry. They understood the assignment, blending old school fantasy and science faction with a masterclass in tight, site-based adventure design.

A quad-fold is a format that I’ve never seen before, but it has amazing conceptual symmetry with the adventure. I genuinely never would have thought of that, and I consider myself a person who is good at coming up with stuff!

This creator is someone to watch.

Cairn 2e

Ran it tonight as a one shot, everyone had a great time! One of the players tried to talk down the flesh abomination in the last room by offering it the body oil, but then instantly coup de graced the tranquilized necromancer XD, gave everyone at the table a good laugh.

Some jams allow you to use non-game-specific code like a character controller or other framework components that you have previously coded.

Is that allowed here?

Spectacular entry, oozing with character, and great humor. I can’t wait to run this for my players.

Thank you for the proofreading note! I’m ordering print copies soon, I’m so happy that I hadn’t placed that order before now XD

I wish it had room for more! I might have to consider an expanded version simply to include some art of our heroes climbing around inside the weaver

Thank you! I’ve been in the drawing mines finishing my Mothership Month adventure, it was a really fun little diversion to work on this.

Definitely leaning towards more science fantasy as my next project.

This is so cute! What a great idea! Will you be selling these on your website?

A small point of clarification on Adrian’s sword, the Fencer’s Estoc. The enhanced damage applies only when fighting 1-on-1. If I had had more space in the layout, I would have included something about the effect going away if the user fights dishonorably, and the enchantment being lost if the sword is not properly maintained.

Uploaded!

Hell yeah! Glad to hear it. I really enjoyed putting this one together, and I had a couple level-up moments during the process. Can’t wait to order some prints

8 A6 pages was one of the options listed as accepted formats

That’s a great idea! Might add that when I order some prints

Wow my guess was pretty close!

Next year I’ll do a 300 page module in A12

Doing 8 A6 pages is allowed, so there are definitely some legal entries around with more than 2/4 pages

It is immediately following the "bewitchment" bullet. "plays the harp to bewitch his victims"

I heard that, I think everything on my itch page was submitted to a jam. Finishing up the illustrations for a non-jam thing, but it's taken me probably 6 months to get this thing done

WAIT A SECOND
You did questionable Morels? 
WHO ARE YOU??

You just show up to win jams?? 3/3 of your adventures won jams

I always vote 'move on to the next product.' It's easy to keep polishing forever, I think it's better to just take what you have learned and make a next product that's even kick-ass-er.

Praise: I can't express strongly enough how happy I am to see that you were brave enough to leave empty space in your trifold. It's really tempting to make a wall of text, but you didn't. You came up with enough interesting stuff to play a fun game of Mothership, and then you stopped. Well done.

Criticism: I noticed the vampire is variously referred to as "her" "him" and "it" throughout the description. The text blocks on the interior spread are placed on page folds, but there is plenty of space for them to be inside of the fold columns. That, combined with the very low contrast on the text, guarantees that some of the text will be unreadable after the page is creased and folded. 

Praise: I love it. You left some work for the warden to do to get this to the table, and I applaud it. An adventure in this format can't explain everything. 

Criticism: I had some minor quibbles with the use of justified text, and noticed a typo. Otherwise flawless.

I think you deserve to win

Praise: This is a really fun and original idea for a module, and the timeline guarantees that the whole play session would stay lively. The icons indicating the presence of NPCs on the map at a given time is a stroke of brilliance. 

Criticism: I think that the scope of this work is pushing the boundaries of the format. There is so much condensed 8pt type on these pages. I'd really love to see the work slightly expanded with more detailed area descriptions, and laid out in a more comfortable 12-16 pages

The other consideration is what is all on the same side of the piece of paper. Putting the timeline where you did makes perfect sense, it puts all of the information you need to understand the module on one side, and all of the information you will need to reference on the other. 

I was balancing my decision making about what columns you would see first when opening the trifold, and then what makes sense to have on the spread when it's open 

I really think that the confusion is stemming from the digital format. When you open a roll fold trifold, the first page that you see is the leftmost panel on the 'interior' spread. As long as you read left to right, you will read the Job first.

The information ordering is optimized for reference during play. Scenario, timetable, cast, and monster are on one side, both ships are on the other. As a physical roll fold, you would see the page outlining the Fox crew before you see the cast list. I can certainly appreciate some confusion when approaching it as a PDF, but the ordering of information is carefully thought out for print. I'll make a mobile-friendly pdf available for a min price after the jam with the columns in a more logical linear order. 

You’re definitely right that a “good ending” where the players are able to recapture the Octopode and make it to Procyon B is not well supported in the text. The NDA arrangement is primarily meant to create some immediate friction with the Fox crew (and goofs), and hopefully lead to a more intricate and volatile situation when the raid starts.

As for the theme, we decided to interpret it a bit more loosely… we’ve got a seemingly tight knit crew, but with tension bubbling beneath the surface. 

A note on the information ordering, when you open the cover to read the inner flap, the page headered Fox Uniform with the Vulpes diagram will be visible. Just a quirk of roll fold ->digital conversion. I have a version for screens that I'll put up after the jam period with a min. price

I’ll take that advice, thank you

I’m definitely going to be using this mechanic in more of my modules where a clock makes sense, I hope others do as well! It was a total lightbulb moment. Using a die icon takes up so much less space than “if the countdown clock is at 4…,” and you run out of pages quick when making smaller zines

Hmm I would use this when the players were on their last legs, maybe fleeing from someplace else. You see smoke rising from a town on the horizon, at last, shelter!

I hope to revisit this module for a print run, adding art. I’ll be sure to add some guidance for the DM with suggestions for hooks to get it to the table 

Actually, I'm totally wrong! There was overset text, the other option for a working cure is:

No, that looks like an error. The “options” were brain or living subject, but I split it into two headers and did not refactor the text. I’d encourage you to allow another solution for the working cure, if your players come up with a good enough idea.