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As is obvious, reviewing this game was sheer pleasure. It evokes the 1930's pulp genre and may be the best drinking game ever. It also reminds me quite a bit of the flashback sequences in Warren Ellis' Planetary (but that may just be because both capture pulp so well).


REVIEWER NAME: Ian Burton-Oakes


1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 10
Feedback: The introduction rocks—I immediately had an idea of how the ingredients were going to be used. That description only made me more interested in seeing the final execution. The thorough use of the time theme blows my mind. From the cliffhangers (to break up sessions) and hourglasses (to keep conflicts fast-paced), the designer found mechanics elegantly suited to the premise of the game and the requirements of the competition.


2) CLARITY (1-10): 10
Feedback: The designer says he owes his wife a debt of gratitude for her editorial prowess—if she is responsible for a tenth of the game’s clarity, I hope he worships the ground she walks on. Seriously, the designer makes it look easy and has some of the best examples of game play I have seen.


3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 9
Feedback: Slap some cool pulpy art in this baby and send it to press. To whom do I address the check because, dude, I want a copy with cool pictures.


4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 9
Feedback: Wow! After reading through the rules, playing this game seems like a breeze. Better yet, it sounds like a blast. Those descriptions of game play make me want to get in on the action. I love the way in which player enjoyment feeds into character acclaim. Let me just go get some brewskies…

Only potential problem: the alcohol-player mix could cause some bumps, especially with good storytellers! (I know—this is a problem how?) And let’s not talk about the carbs!


5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 10

Final Feedback: Rock on! To say this game is well conceived and executed does not do its coolness justice. The design choices grab me and keep hold of me—from the elegant title script to the careful yet easily understood descriptions of play. The use of the ingredients is just wonderful and I adore the way in which props are used to evoke the setting. The adoption of jargon like ‘research,’ ‘harrowing indeed, but…,’ and so on just makes me giddy (admittedly, I’m an academic, so the research talk grabs me more than an ‘average’ person).

This is a paragon of cool indie game goodness. I have a copy of the rules in my hand and I still want to send this guy my money.

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 48

Wow, Eric, on the weight of Isbo's review I went back and read your entry, and I was mightily impressed. If this does not see publication it will be a crime!

I had a couple thoughts (okay, a lot of thoughts) as I read:

Glass = Hourglass was genius. :)

The high stat determining Gear and Associations was neat, too.

All characters have the same goal -- become the most acclaimed in the committee. Just a thought, but what if in character generation part of the process was determining why you wanted to become the most acclaimed member of the committee? This could lead to some interesting differentiation, where one wants to push his new memoirs, another wants to prove that a black man can be just as successful, and another wants to gain the attention of his distant father, the head of the committee? Then if you wanted to go whole-hog with it, you could have players get a die bonus or penalty when their motivation came into play in a hazard or something (or the Opposition gets another acclaim if the hazard relates to that motivation).

As a simple point of clarification, the players are narrating this in past tense, because they're recounting their exploits while swilling brandy, right? Some of your examples are both past- and present-tense, so I was a little confused.

Presently you have the overall structure presented first and then the resolution and acclaim economy presented afterwards. This unfortunately means that the structure keeps referring to the resolution rules that haven't been explained and the character creation is a long distance away from the resolution rules, so a first time reader is not given very good guidance on what their decisions in character creation actually mean. I think if you reversed it (characters, resolution & economy, structure) it would read a lot clearer.

To clarify: when it's my turn and you're my opposition, I frame the scene ("I was walking down the ruined boulevard of the ancient city...") and then you introduce opposition appropriate to that scene ("...and suddenly the cobblestones drop out from beneath your feet, and a vast pit opens up below you!"). Is that correct?

I find the restrictions on Unexpected Hazards to be clunky. I can see why they're there, but I think keeping track of how many have been introduced this round and if you introduced one last round will detract from play.

Can Gear and Associations be used in a single resolution? That isn't clear.

I'm also curious how Associations can be used once the PCs are deep in the jungle/tundra/desert/wasteland far away from civilization. Your example character has Adoring Fans -- are some of them in that ruined city of ape-men? It seems that the high-Gear characters have an advantage throughout the game, while the high-Associations characters see their advantage grow harder and harder to use. Perhaps they can use Associations to have flashbacks to the teachings of prior mentors or past lovers confiding secrets?

Is there anything in the structure of the rules that prompts players to connect the hazards together? At present this seems to string a lot of hazards together, but their only connections are pretty loose associations and some fill-in-the-gap narration. Now, I'm sure lots of players will take this and make those connections and relationships between hazards to create an organic whole, but I don't see the structure of the rules really supporting that impulse -- it's something that savvy players will do to any game. I think this is perhaps your weakest point in the design, and if you could strengthen that up, it would make the game just take off.

The acclaim economy could use a heavy rewrite for clarity before publication. There are a lot of options (which is a good thing), and they kind of get confused. Good layout can also help, as well as naming each option and putting that name in a header. As a totally minor example, you introduce one use of acclaim (helping others) in the resolution segment, and then have to introduce it again later. I'm sure you can reshuffle that so it's a little more straightforward.

It seems to me that acclaim would best be tracked with poker chips or some other token, since I'm guessing it gets spent and earned too often for pencil tallymarks.

As far as acclaim in general goes, I'd be curious to see how its dual use as fuel for player options and the final scoring mechanism goes. Sacrificing your score in order to be effective can lead to problems. I see that a lot of uses of acclaim can have payoffs greater than the investment, which is good. I suggest that you make sure each and every acclaim use is a gamble (which you might have already done), and then rename the segment "Using Acclaim" to "Gambling Acclaim."

Lastly, to my eye, the acclaim economy will probably eclipse the player stats in actual play, and yet there is no mention of this aspect of play in the initial overview. To me at least, presenting this as a straightforward "you have a pulp adventurer, you go on adventures that earn you acclaim" is so-so, but presenting this as "you gamble your pulp adventurer's acclaim in order to go on adventures" makes this sizzling-hot.

That's a whole lot of me blathering, but I want to stress that I find this an incredibly strong entry and a very viable design. I'd really like to see it developed further!

Hi guys,

Ian, thanks so much for the review. I'm glad you like the game; it was great fun writing and I'm excited about its further development.

Joshua, thanks for reading it over and offering the detailed feedback. It confirms a couple things I already suspected and gives me some great ideas to chew on. I'll be giving it careful thought along with Graham's questions and getting back to you both sometime Monday.

Thanks again to you both.

This is just a random idea--what if the acclaim tokens were small squares with images of pulp heroes doing things like giving the thumbs up? You could have four basic types, one for each of the major pulp styles, with each player getting a stack to slide over when their actions lead to acclaim. Since the acclaim economy isn't exactly one-to-one, that would require a little tweaking, but still could work. (it's my turn to give an acclaim token...) Alternately, each player would collect tokens from a central pile based on the 'theme' of the action that earned acclaim. Or the images could just be cool and not have any direct correlation to the events that caused their accumulation--just eye candy to go with the pleasure of accumulating them.

Publication-wise, it could be provided in an 8 1/2 by 11 page in a PDF, something a player could quickly print off and cut out for a game (using whatever paper quality they feel like).

Mike, feel free to post the whole review; I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

I'll have to give your idea of tying hazard difficulty to acclaim reward some more thought, but here's my initial response.

In designing the current acclaim rewards, I wanted each level of difficulty to create its own dice manipulation challenges, and I thought a stable target for maximum acclaim (using three dice in narration) could do this. My idea was that it's the telling of the tale, not the inherent difficulty of the hazard, that determines the acclaim received. I also assumed that in most cases no matter which attribute is being used, the player will narrate in the use of Gear or Associations (maybe both) so that between 3d6 and 7d6 will be available for each hazard before accounting for any acclaim spending.

So the characters, the dashing folks they are, want to turn even minor hazards into showcases of their grand abilities. So when presented with a 1d10 hazard, a player will actually be hoping that some low results show up on their dice so that they can narrate a lengthier resolution and get maximum acclaim.

With a 4d10 hazard, on the other hand, there's a chance that even with good rolls that a character will be out of their depth and need to spend acclaim to get rerolls or that extra die that doesn't count. 2d10 and 3d10 hazards round out the middle; the character should usually have little trouble having a total that beats the hazard roll, but they may have trouble maximizing acclaim.

Of course, since this hasn't been playtested beyond my rolling some dice and looking at the averages, there are likely some adjustments to be made. Do you have any thoughts on the idea of simply varying the maximum awards possible depending on the difficulty of the hazard, but keeping the number of dice necessary the same?

Eric,

I thought that it might be intentional, actually. Maybe playtest is the answer (as you'll see, I ended the review with exactly that comment )

Here's the whole review, except I'll remove the bit I posted and formatted above:

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 7
Feedback:
The use of glass is really cool. I like that how empty or full your glass is can matter. Maybe you could use this more often in play, even. Like, any time a judgment call is required a player is picked this way?

Use of committee and ancient are good but uninspired.

The time limit is made use of fairly well. Probably some more structure over the sessions would help here. Maybe have a mandatory 'arriving at the site' group hazard midway in session two and a mandatory 'huge twist/betrayal' group conflict midway in session three? Also a more developed closing/epilogue scene would be good. Give everyone a chance to explain how their character used what was discovered?

Using the hourglass to time conflicts is an amazingly cool idea. Although only half related to the time constraint and ingredient, I think it will add a great deal to the game. I also think that group hazards should also have this constraint, but maybe two turns of the hour glass instead of one.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 6
Feedback:

Your examples are all really good.

You really need more subheadings and a table of contents or index. It can be find particular rules as it is.

I'm not sure about the die matching mechanic. Rather than have all opposition dice out there, matched individually, how about this: both sides roll all dice. Opposition pushes one forward and describes initial hazard. Player pushes response (however many dice) forward to match and overcome. Opposition responds with next die and complication. Repeat until one side loses. This seems a little more organic to me.
I'm not sure why you included the rule that only one die may be used each narration – is this just to use up time? If so (and you consider my alternative above) maybe keep that and just change turns when you match what the other side played last time?

Group resolution needs to be explained better.

You need a bunch more explanation of how cliffhangers work differently to other conflicts, and an example.

You should refer in the hazard resolution section to the ways you can spend acclaim to help. Just so people won't forget about it as easily.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 5
Feedback:

I'm not sure that the group hazard resolution rules are going to work well. It feels like it might all be too easy.

How come you can change tactics if facing a hazard as a group but not alone?

There's some holes in the acclaim spending rules, but I think they'll be addressed when you fix the awards from hazard resolution. You probably only need one of the options to improve chances in a hazard (I prefer 'reroll two unused dice'). I don't think you need to limit it to one use, either. If anyone wants to blow all their acclaim here, I say let them do it.

The example for being stymied only notes one character losing a die, even though they all should.

You need some notes on closing the third session. This is mentioned but not really addressed in detail.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 5
Feedback:
Character generation is very cool. I like the group adding extra attributes too, maybe these should be allowed to act as extra descriptors, even?

Unknown hazards/glass mechanic: I'm unsure about the roll for relevance of fullness of the glass. It seems like it would be an annoying extra step that you can do away with. Maybe always emptiest glass always? Of course, that allows people to intentionally choose to be the on the receiving end of unknown hazards, but that might be okay. Maybe balance it with a bonus somewhere else for having the fullest glass?

I think your rules for veto of inappropriate pool uses should be simplified. Like, opposition gets to call 'inappropriate' and if the uninvolved players agree then take it back. This is just to streamline play (less stuff for the other players to think about).

When you are bidding to see who resolves being stymied, can you drop out if the bidding gets too rich and keep your acclaim? Also, maybe to clarify things, people could bid by pushing the dice they'll roll forward (as one die = one acclaim bid). Add more to bid up.

I love having summaries of game structure and rules like you have here.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 7
Final Feedback:

Overall, this is a cool idea and I think basically have a great game. At least for anyone who likes Indiana Jones. I'm a big Hellboy fan, as well, and this game could easily be the BPRD rpg (loads better than the GURPS Hellboy on my shelf, in any case).

One revision, some playtests, and I think you'll be able to fix all the things I thought might be problems. Or confirm that they are not problems at all.

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 30