1. How many journal entries?
7. I'll likely do more to get my story to a conclusion and wrap up a few things
2. sugggest vs your experience?
I think I expected the hexes to mean more rather than simply a choice splitter. Maybe a bit of a hex crawl? What if a you rolled for the hex when scanning (building out a map), but when you choose a location you roll for the event type and then your variability/difficulty role. That adds another roll in there, but I think I like the idea that I might want to revisit my home and at first I thought I'd be able to do so.
3. text/support?
The stats really seemed to hone in on . It was strange at first thinking of stratagems/goods as stats, but with the addition of the depiction of the stat point it worked rather well. I thought the variability did well - you spend a lot of time on pages 12/13 in play, so the text for variability helped. I never did roll a double success.
4. mechanics opinions?
I mentioned some in #2 I think.
I really liked the pick either or the difference. That felt really neat to me as a way of providing options and was sad it was over at setup.
I rolled v Difficult a lot, which meant my stats all ended up around 1. I don't know if that's intended, but I didn't see a way that I could drive a stat. This does seem okay, but it is def. not a game where you push your stats well. Also, "lowest stat" was often a tie, so how to resolve? I just picked based on the story I was going to write.
I still don't know if difficulty is an option or given. Take "1. agri planet" It says variability is Family OR Cosmicity-Difficult. Does that mean I'm choosing between "normal family" or "difficult cosmicity" or do I choose between family and cosmicity and either one is a difficulty role or are there 4 options: norm fam, norm cos, diff fam, diff cos? I played it as 4 options, which should have given me some advantage in the choices, but all of my rolls were half passes or fails anyway! Now that I'm reading what I'm writing, I'm wondering if it isn't the first option that was intended. Even a set of parens might have forced me to choose how the OR and --- Difficulty were attached. What about empty space? All options?
A 10 or higher is 25% and 9 or higher is 33%. That's still a lot of failing for +1 stats. Even rolling against a 7 with a 0 stat double fails 25% of the time. Struggle makes stories interesting, but it's possible the numbers are geared one pip too high. Anyway, I leave that crunching to you as the designer, but let me know if you want some a math professor to look at anything - haha.
Wormhole instructions were a little cloudy. I roll to scan. I hit 6 and 6 so wormhole. Flip to random page, roll a single hex scan. I get empty space. That's my central hex, but it doesn't get a log entry/variability role? I then roll a scan again (2 dice) to get the next two tiles for my choice and log entry? I ended up wrapping my log entry for the wormhole and the tile I choose after the worm hole and not doing variability for the wormhole hex. Didn't seem clear. There's also an interesting bit where the wormhole instructions say "first time" ... curious.
5. SPACE LUST?
nihilistic void
6. Ignore?
I didn't ignore, but I would probably ignore a double wormhole - since you can never go back "directly" and I'm a little confused on those rules. I guess it is possible that I could ignore something in setup if I had a specific story types I wanted to tell, but then, I would just choose those instead of rolling at all.
7. perfection?
Since 12/13 are used so often, having them as a single reference page would be absolute gold. If printed, I guess they end up side by side, but I was playing from pdf.
It's possible that a "round of play" example might be useful. I'm torn on that one. But it probably wouldn't hurt.
I had a bunch of other questions / assumptions that I'll put here. This might just be me but could be rules clarifications are needed.
You can not revisit a tile or go backwards right?
I picked normal vs difficult in my roll for variability. Is that right? Or are they always difficult except empty space?
Can you only stake +1? This didn't matter long for me because I quickly lost my +3/+2 stats and never got them back.
Is there a base log that is different from the rest? Maybe one that tracks the linearity of timeline compared to the non linearity of the other pages? More on that in a second.
Left/Right/New Open Spread is an interesting gimmick but I'm not sure it adds to gameplay. It might help in immersion - especially wormhole, but going right left right in your choices might cause you to move a dozen pages each direction each time, even though those "nodes" were next to one another. I accidentally just went to the next page on a 'right' choice and then just kept things linear after that.
Every page of my log seemed like my stats changed. For a long game, that could be quite a mess in pen. I do like that pen allowed me to see what I had lost though. No changing history!
Engaged with this project 3+ times 🌟
1. How many journal entries? 7. I'll likely do more to get my story to a conclusion and wrap up a few things 2. sugggest vs your experience? I think I expected the hexes to mean more rather than simply a choice splitter. Maybe a bit of a hex crawl? What if a you rolled for the hex when scanning (building out a map), but when you choose a location you roll for the event type and then your variability/difficulty role. That adds another roll in there, but I think I like the idea that I might want to revisit my home and at first I thought I'd be able to do so. 3. text/support? The stats really seemed to hone in on . It was strange at first thinking of stratagems/goods as stats, but with the addition of the depiction of the stat point it worked rather well. I thought the variability did well - you spend a lot of time on pages 12/13 in play, so the text for variability helped. I never did roll a double success. 4. mechanics opinions? I mentioned some in #2 I think. I really liked the pick either or the difference. That felt really neat to me as a way of providing options and was sad it was over at setup. I rolled v Difficult a lot, which meant my stats all ended up around 1. I don't know if that's intended, but I didn't see a way that I could drive a stat. This does seem okay, but it is def. not a game where you push your stats well. Also, "lowest stat" was often a tie, so how to resolve? I just picked based on the story I was going to write. I still don't know if difficulty is an option or given. Take "1. agri planet" It says variability is Family OR Cosmicity-Difficult. Does that mean I'm choosing between "normal family" or "difficult cosmicity" or do I choose between family and cosmicity and either one is a difficulty role or are there 4 options: norm fam, norm cos, diff fam, diff cos? I played it as 4 options, which should have given me some advantage in the choices, but all of my rolls were half passes or fails anyway! Now that I'm reading what I'm writing, I'm wondering if it isn't the first option that was intended. Even a set of parens might have forced me to choose how the OR and --- Difficulty were attached. What about empty space? All options? A 10 or higher is 25% and 9 or higher is 33%. That's still a lot of failing for +1 stats. Even rolling against a 7 with a 0 stat double fails 25% of the time. Struggle makes stories interesting, but it's possible the numbers are geared one pip too high. Anyway, I leave that crunching to you as the designer, but let me know if you want some a math professor to look at anything - haha. Wormhole instructions were a little cloudy. I roll to scan. I hit 6 and 6 so wormhole. Flip to random page, roll a single hex scan. I get empty space. That's my central hex, but it doesn't get a log entry/variability role? I then roll a scan again (2 dice) to get the next two tiles for my choice and log entry? I ended up wrapping my log entry for the wormhole and the tile I choose after the worm hole and not doing variability for the wormhole hex. Didn't seem clear. There's also an interesting bit where the wormhole instructions say "first time" ... curious. 5. SPACE LUST? nihilistic void 6. Ignore? I didn't ignore, but I would probably ignore a double wormhole - since you can never go back "directly" and I'm a little confused on those rules. I guess it is possible that I could ignore something in setup if I had a specific story types I wanted to tell, but then, I would just choose those instead of rolling at all. 7. perfection? Since 12/13 are used so often, having them as a single reference page would be absolute gold. If printed, I guess they end up side by side, but I was playing from pdf. It's possible that a "round of play" example might be useful. I'm torn on that one. But it probably wouldn't hurt. I had a bunch of other questions / assumptions that I'll put here. This might just be me but could be rules clarifications are needed. You can not revisit a tile or go backwards right? I picked normal vs difficult in my roll for variability. Is that right? Or are they always difficult except empty space? Can you only stake +1? This didn't matter long for me because I quickly lost my +3/+2 stats and never got them back. Is there a base log that is different from the rest? Maybe one that tracks the linearity of timeline compared to the non linearity of the other pages? More on that in a second. Left/Right/New Open Spread is an interesting gimmick but I'm not sure it adds to gameplay. It might help in immersion - especially wormhole, but going right left right in your choices might cause you to move a dozen pages each direction each time, even though those "nodes" were next to one another. I accidentally just went to the next page on a 'right' choice and then just kept things linear after that. Every page of my log seemed like my stats changed. For a long game, that could be quite a mess in pen. I do like that pen allowed me to see what I had lost though. No changing history!