In this game the players take on the roles of the Celestial Committee of the Eternal Circle of Suffering, judging the many incarnations of the soul we know best as Doctor Livingstone. Each session one of the players is Livingstone retelling the events of one of his incarnations; the others interview him and determine his balance of karma.
REVIEWER NAME: Joshua BishopRoby
1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 10
Feedback: Not only were Committee, Glass, and Ancient all used and used well, but they were used in ways that I certainly never predicted. The 10x1 time constraint was exploited very effectively.
2) CLARITY (1-10): 9
Feedback: The only point that I'm confused on is whether the benchmarks for karma gain are per-player or global. The rest of the game as presented is pretty clear.
3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 9
Feedback: This game is certainly playable and potentially publishable; a little more work on the layout may be in order before publishing, but on the whole this is a very strong and complete entry.
4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 7
Feedback: You could, indeed, totally play this game as written. I'm not sure, however, that I would jump in with both feet. As it stands, the game is a framework for sharing narration rights and pushing that narration to bigger and bigger effect. It is sort of an open-ended imaginary exercise, but it doesn't quite seem to go anywhere.
5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 8
Final Feedback: This looks like a quirky, fun little game. I'm not sure about devoting ten hours to it, however. It either needs to play lighter and faster and shorter or incorporate some other core element to fill up that much time.
TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 43