GLoG reviews 5

    Here's the first post, as normal. I'm a little more critical in this one, so I want to reiterate that if I'm reviewing your hack, that means I found it cool enough to read through and offer advice on, and I always mean to give pointers and ways to improve, not tear down the work of others. After all, I'm no voice of Game Design On High, I'm just some dude writing his own hack who wants to learn more about the craft just as much as you do!

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GLoG, DEADLY DUNGEON EDITION, by Elanfanboy

OVERVIEW This is a pretty orthodox GLoGhack that has a really "I made this because I have a game in 5 minutes" feel, which is always great to see.

FLAVOR 1. Very much vanilla, the only implications there are about magic and a generally grittier, darker feel, making this game quite adaptable.

PLAYABILITY 2. I would play the system if I were terribly intrigued by the adventure, but there's not enough of unique meat here for me to want to play it for its own sake. Part of what turns me off is that most of the class abilities are mechanically-based instead of narrative- there's more bonuses to damage than there are interesting tools for players to creatively.

COMPREHENSIBILITY Unfortunately, 2. The big problem with this is the ordering of ideas. There seems to be very little rhyme or reason as to in what order the information is presented. Weapons are put in the middle of the classes, a number of pages away from the equipment rules. Spells and wizards have a great gulf of pages between them. Consider taking each section, then copy-pasting it into a separate doc into a better order- link concepts, go from character creation to base mechanics to day-level mechanics for travel and such, just figure out something better than what's here and it'll easily kick this up a number or two.

OVERALL 2.5. Though throughout there are little nuggets of gold, generally speaking, not terribly much thought or editing has gone into this product, and even an hour's work of polishing would do this doc a world of good, especially in the order of information presentation. (And some typo check would be nice too, the Base Adventurer table has a lot of little discrepancies, for example.)

THINGS TO STEAL Title and loot based leveling (ya love to see it, folks), Vancian/GLoG hybrid casting rules, in-depth hexcrawl rules, advice on structuring random tables

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FINDERS KEEPERS, also by Spwack

OVERVIEW An exercise in minimalism and speed- a bunch of really scaled back rules so there's a lot of space for oddity to exist around them. I've reviewed a number of Spwack's rules already and generally have a favorable opinion of them, so I'm excited to see how this one holds up.

FLAVOR 2. Unfortunately, the picture inspirations at the end don't really work together terribly well, and there's so few of them that I can't ascertain an overall aesthetic. I find myself going back to the rules to see if I can figure it out, but they're so light I have a hard time there too. There's a bunch of interesting snippets, but altogether not enough for me to put together the puzzle.

PLAYABILITY 3.5. You've piqued my interest, and if there was a fun adventure with it, I wouldn't hesitate giving it a shot.

COMPREHENSIBILITY 3. There's a lot more ambiguity here, and not in a good way. For example, the first line of equipment says: "Gain Useful, Odd, Memento, Weirdness". What distinguishes Odd from Weirdness? How do I make sure the Memento isn't encroaching on any other categories? If that weren't enough, right below it are optional rules to pick equipment, so is that blurb even useful at all? Do you get those things on top of the optional systems? I can't make heads or tails of what the designer wants me to do, which means it's bad ambiguity.

OVERALL 3.5. I liked it quite a bit, but it feels incomplete as-is. I'd love to see more flesh given to the world and a little bit of playtesting for it to coagulate into a solid 4.

THINGS TO STEAL Random character generator (ya love to see it, folks), multiple sets of rule options so you can customize easier ('yeah, we're doing FK with Equipment 2 and Inventory 1'), "oh crap my hat!" is just a really fun rule overall

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CRAWL INTO A HOLE AND FUCKING DIE, by FilthPig

OVERVIEW Name kind of says it all. Very flavorful, punchy hack, with a dark fantasy sensibility and a lot of DNA from some classics like BONES (but not bereft of a healthy dose of novelty). I've written so many of these little blurbs, I'm just gonna dive right in instead.

FLAVOR As it stands, a solid 1.5. I know some more flavorful classes are coming down the pipeline, but as it stands, it's a pretty good generic engine for more grim games marketed to 5e players (as that's where I see a lot of the classes coming from).

PLAYABILITY 2. I trust FilthPig to make these rules sing and run a unique, cool adventure with them, but as these rules stand I wouldn't trust them in anyone else's hands.

COMPREHENSIBILITY 3. There's some strange combat mechanics that probably make a lot of sense to people with brain cells, but otherwise, there's a lot of very familiar mechanics here. Perhaps an effort at mechanical consistency and consolidation would come in handy, but it's not too glaring an issue.

OVERALL 3. Very solid, and I'm excited to see where it goes as it develops into its own. I like FilthPig's work, so I'm sure that over time, this will mutate into something truly spectacular and grotesque.

THINGS TO STEAL Robots on the ancestry list, simple exhaustion rules, language rules (finally! I've been looking for good unique ones, and these are some of the most novel I've seen recently), some good half-GLoG half-5e classes.

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AMULETS AND ECLIPSES, by L. Barber

OVERVIEW Strangely enough, this isn't a complete game engine. Rather, think of it as a sort of splat book for your favorite mechanics, set in a magical medieval Britain. It's a strange and wonderful little game indeed.

FLAVOR 5. The lush graphic design immediately helps convey the tone from the cover page, and the game explicitly spells out where and when it's set, going into great detail as to how it differs from history, and even goes as far as to provide graphics to demonstrate what the weapons look at. Easily worth a 5.

PLAYABILITY 3.5. This concept isn't the most interesting to me (I like to stay nice and distant from history), but if someone ran it, I would certainly take notice and want to hear a little more about the adventure.

COMPREHENSIBILITY 4.5. Again, given how this bolts onto the game engine of choice, and how much thought is put into introducing the setting, everything is really accessible and easy to grokk.

OVERALL 4.5. Really solid, and I like the idea of creating a splat book of classes and setting data to be layered onto an existing system... more people should adapt that format.

THINGS TO STEAL You don't have to build your game around a system! This is a great way to release setting information and classes without locking into specific mechanics, which often take a lot of effort to explain well. Also, the techniques used to make the setting accessible and intriguing are top notch, so steal liberally. Sample adventure is always a plus!

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I've got one more list of reviews to do, then something special. Get ready for the first ever GLOGGIES...