REVIEWER NAME: Willow Palecek
1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (10):
Feedback:
I was extremely impressed by the use of time, including the game calendar, which fits thematically very well. The four players/four seasons/four suits/four sessions is a neat lineup, and its nice that the time limit actually means something, with tightly timed scenes. “The Glass Skeleton” is an apt name for the game system, but suffers from seeming overly arbitrary. Emotion certainly plays a valid role, and I have an easy time imagining horror-movie-like dread. I’m not a fan of just naming game elements after key words, but “The Ancient” is a really good name for a creepy haunted house.
2) CLARITY (7):
Feedback:
Most portions of the text were written very clearly. The sidebars and examples were very useful and make a big difference. The game does seem hazy on who has authorship of PCs, because the conflict rules refer to a character “tak[ing] an action that the Narrator deems has a chance of failure.” This makes sense if the Narrator is a temporary GM, but I understood the rules to say that the Narrator narrates everything. It’s also unclear if you can only use the Birthday Rule in the relevant season, and exactly what the card of the week rule does. How cards get back into the hand is a little murky. These are some pretty big errors, but I feel that they’re easily enough worked around, and the rest of the text is so well structured to make up for some of it.
3) COMPLETENESS (6):
Feedback:
The Cards of the Week seem to be missing (unless it corresponds to the first card of the week, but that’s never stated). It also isn’t stated if that means the week that the players are actually in, or an in-game week, or something else entirely. However, I could ignore the missing card of the week rule and play the game just fine. I would also have to agree with my group just how conflicts are oriented. (I imagine we’d give the Narrator broad narration rights, and if a player says, “gee, I don’t want that to happen,” then there’s a conflict.) However, the game is certainly playable with some interpretation.
4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (7):
Feedback:
The almost-random story aspects of the Calendar strike me as a very cool way to have unique stories, and there’s some real gems in there. Like I said above, I think I’d need to infer some stuff from the rules, but I like how the cards are used to represent different things and have many different roles. There’s a lot going on here. I like it.
5) SWING VOTE (9):
Final Feedback:
Despite having to take off several points for failings of the text, I think that Merryweather is a very cool game with a solid backbone to it. I like the structured scenes, and a longer version would do well to add a detailed how-to description for each scene. I will find the time to play this game, and I hope you make an improved version with some clarifications (notably concerning conflicts/the week rule.)
TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 39