Seeking Feedback: Usability

[Connor9120c1]

I just finished my first adventure thanks to the limits imposed by the 8 page Shadowdark game jam last month, and I would really appreciate some feedback any of this forum might have on Usability. I have other larger adventures I've been working on, and as I get into writing the location and room descriptions, I don't feel very well calibrated for how easy my writing/formatting/ layout instincts etc. are for other people to understand and use quickly.

I have seen plenty of adventures that I thought I would be interested in only to open them and not want to deal with slogging through trying to actually use them. The bang wasn't worth the buck. On the other hand I had an incredible experience last year buying Waking of Willowby Hall 5 minutes before an unexpected game, and sight-reading the adventure during play, without any hiccup whatsoever even though it was my first time putting my eyes on the content.

I want my adventures to feel like that. I want them to feel exciting and smooth to use, not daunting. So I'd really appreciate any thoughts on any area that seems difficult to use, too wordy or unclear, or seems like it is either not as filled out as you would need at the table, or overwrought. Could you take this as it stands and EASILY make a session or two of gameplay out of it? If not, where are there hang-ups that I can weed out of my other projects?

Thanks for your time.
(Google Drive link because I can't tell if the PDF attached or not): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZ1Fhr5CIqgiBhbDm3kD8plWSyYzEDzj/view?usp=drive_link

 

[Malrex]

On a quick lunch break....
I would switch locations of the Design notes location with The Ruk.
pg. 4 area 1 is all bolded...

I think I prefer a space before the 1st bullet point from the paragraph. Sometimes you do it, sometimes you dont.
pg. 7 room 4--you have bold words of turnstyle and steel plate....try to have the bullets match where they are in the paragraph (i.e. steel plate bullet should be first since its first in the paragraph).
Id consider putting scaled mutant stat blocks near The Ruk on pg. 1...like have all the statblocks in one place. Scaled mutants stats are kinda buried. When you used scale mutants again on pg. 7, you have to go looking for where those stat blocks are.

Overall the layout works for me and I like it.
There are some other things....like I like the RP: half-deceased Brad Pitt references, but some people may not get them all.
I dont know if I need the impediment/condition on the wandering table, but maybe thats a Shadowdark thing..
Might be cool to add a sentence saying what happens if PCs decide to take off with the sword (i.e. baron sends a group after them in 3 days time, etc.).

 

[Connor9120c1]

These are all fantastic notes, thank you for taking such a thorough look. I agree with you on the bullets, I must have started doing that at some point to save space, I'll adjust.
Agreed on the stat blocks as well. I'll work on getting/keeping them unburied, and do a sweep to make sure I at least have them all referenced everywhere.
The impediments/complications were an idea from a wandering encounter style I've wanted to try, allowing you to read straight across the first time, and then roll for each column on further occurances to add variety. I am also not super impressed with them in implementation. They may be more useful in a broader hex crawl than a narrow-scoped adventure. Pulling that column would also let me bump the font size of the table back up, it is currently the smallest in the whole document.

On a side note, your work in Peril in Olden Wood along with Mr. Weidner's writing made it only the second POD book I've ever purchased, after Stonehell, and is exactly the type of Usability I meant. Your feedback is very appreciated, thank you.

 

[Maynard]

So, I understand there are lots of compromises here because of the page restriction. There are many places where additional whitespace would be appreciated but would not fit. I'm sure you are already aware. I think If you were to redo it it could be in 10-12 pages comfortably. Entry 6 is a good example of appropriate spacing.

On page 2 in entry 2 and 3 the top of the two columns are misaligned. This same issue occurs in entry 2 and 7 on page 4. I believe you have two columns and you are using the return key to get to the next column instead of doing a clean column break.

The Captain of the Guard is misaligned with the above bullet for no discernable reason.

There are many inconsistencies with your formatting rules as malrex noted. You need to make sure to standardize it across the document. Otherwise people will wonder why it looks different, probably take them longer to absorb the information.

I think you're right about the impediment complication situation. Give yourself more space to beef up the foreboding text. That said it's a cool idea I could see being used in a bigger campaign.

Like Malrex said, put the scaled mutant in page 1, maybe remove the ruk picture or make it smaller (so it's in line with the columns above and below at least). Should give you more room to feature both.

"To show the power of the Shadowdark adventure creation tools..." this section takes up too much space. It should go in the product description on the itch page, or be omitted entirely. It's a cool tidbit but make space for gamable content (like statblocks!)

The town looks great! I could run those NPC's, although the references could be hit or miss. The hard part is getting across who jason mamoa is in two to three spicy words. Sister Mariel is fun, glad there's at least one thing to discover in town if the players poke around. It's no Blackapple but it'll do for one page.

It's not clear to me which waste location matches each hex on the map. In fact as far as I can tell at first glance there are only three locations on the map. I eventually understood the way the numbers are laid out but I suggest improving clarity. Does shadowdark include the terms for risky, safe, and unsafe? If not I suggest just writing why they are safe, unsafe, and risky.

The dungeon is cool. I appreciate how open the top part is, but I wish there was more to discover there. Seems like careful players could case the place out and choose the easiest way in, but there aren't any rewards up there. This whole place is light on treasure in general, nothing to get the players excited except a magic sword. Might be fine for shadowdark but isn't compatible with B/X. I was hoping for a second entrance to the Donjon from the first floor, as is the space is somewhat linear with only one loop. Like, 1 more loop could have been pretty satisfying (I know space restrictions probably kept it small).

Otherwise, I like the writing. I like that this place is unstable, with lots of pillars to play with (true to your earthquake theme). Fun stuff, lots of natural obstacles for the players to navigate. I always say a good old pit is the best thing to throw at a first level party.

"the hunt leader gets your adrenal glands." sentence is out of place. How does he get them, why does he want them?

Cool adventure man. Great for a first effort. I look forward to what you can do in more than 8 pages. The tone is too grimdark for me, but that's the shadowdark IP I suppose.

 

[Connor9120c1]

Thank you for the thorough notes, I will definitely be doing a layout sweep to correct all of the issues you and Malrex pointed out. It's crazy how hard they are to see when they are your own mistakes, even after multiple editing sweeps.

Agreed on the "Shadowdark creation tools" part, I originally thought that would be a cool thing to include due to the contest being focused on Shadowdark, but there is no reason for it to be there in future versions, and I would give me the room I need. Great idea.

I was worried the hex numbering might not be clear or easy to use. I'm not a fan of numbers right on the hex, so I was searching for a work-around, but I will have to adjust in some way to make it more straightforward. Risky, Safe and Unsafe are defined terms in the system that note encounter check frequency.

Treasure was randomly generated and located, and Shadowdark is about 1/10th the treasure of B/X in my experience. I agree though, there is not much reward for exploration in the upper level. Maybe in combination with your other note, a sinkhole or other tunnel that leads down from one of the towers and just short of breaking into room 5 or 6 below would give a vertical loop tied into the lower loop, and a potential reward of avoiding the sidekicks in room 3. I'll think on it and see what might work. Either way I am immediately adding a vertical loop to a particular one of my other projects; that is exactly what it needs.

With regard to the adrenal glands line, that is just because of the amphetamine-like addiction to adrenalin that drives their savagery. So in the sentence before he holds you while the rest drink their fill, and then he takes his cut (the source themselves) as the leader. I will see if I can adjust it to make it flow more clearly.

Thank you very much for all the notes, kind words and great ideas.

Edit to not misrepresent the system: I forgot also that in Shadowdark all PCs get the full XP for all treasure, not split, so really it's closer to a 1/40 or 1/50 ratio of B/X

 

[The1True]

Nice one!
I guess you're inquiry was about usability, but I'm going to lay in with all the impressions I got, because everyone here has an opinion ...
I'm a fan of the Impediment/Complication. The DM will either use it or they won't. It fits in the table on the page, so why not leave it!

ARTWORK! I love artwork! It breaks up the page, sparks the DM's imagination and prompts the Players in a jam. Original or AI?

The maps are well drawn and clear!

The hex map; you've got some white space on the drawing, why not put a short keyword/note beside the other four hexes alluding to the contents of those hexes as well.

Sorry man, I kind of hate the pop-culture references. I get what your going for; using cultural touchstones to draw an instant picture in the DM/Players' minds, and I'm a fan of using a casual/anachronistic writing voice, but this goes too far and starts to break immersion for me. It might be worth it to go back and try to do it with a couple of strong descriptive words instead. I know you're battling a page limit and I applaud the cunning trick, but it's impacting the story. Ditto for the movie references in the setup.

There's a lot of purple prose that could be cut back on (might even get you some more space to work with?). I love "smells like horseshit and a nosebleed" (kill the 'a' though maybe?) which fits right in with the mutant wild-west style, but I hate this word-soup: "Humanity has shrunken back from this once stalwart borderland like a wounded animal after a rending earthquake, inexplicable blitz-raid, and creeping desertification left it an undefended, uninhabitable scrubland." I spotted a couple better examples of overuse of flowery, descriptive adjectives and damned if I can't find them now, sorry...

Otherwise, I agree, the Merciless Merchant format is an excellent standard to aspire to. The eye quickly moves from the text needed to communicate information to the players to related text with more information for the DM if necessary. Thumbs up!

All in all, some good stuff and a fun read. Would fit right into our Vanished Wastes!

 

[Beoric]

It's not clear to me which waste location matches each hex on the map. In fact as far as I can tell at first glance there are only three locations on the map. I eventually understood the way the numbers are laid out but I suggest improving clarity. Does shadowdark include the terms for risky, safe, and unsafe? If not I suggest just writing why they are safe, unsafe, and risky.

I very much agree with this; it took me quite a while to understand that the numbers to the left were a range of numbers equating to keyed entries. If I had encountered this adventure in the wild, instead of trying to make sense of it for review purposes, I wouldn't have worked that hard and probably would never have figured it out.

Personal opinion, not sure how widely it is shared, but where your system diverges from typical D&D/OSR, as with the terms importing risk, I think there is value in spelling it out. I'm assuming the risk subsystem is relatively simple, something like a wandering monster check but using different dice for each risk level? If it is simple enough to explain, I think you should do so, because the OSR market is bigger than just the people using your system, and you want it to be useable by as many people as possible. (I have the same beef with a lot of ACKS modules.)

Sorry man, I kind of hate the pop-culture references. I get what your going for; using cultural touchstones to draw an instant picture in the DM/Players' minds, and I'm a fan of using a casual/anachronistic writing voice, but this goes too far and starts to break immersion for me. It might be worth it to go back and try to do it with a couple of strong descriptive words instead. I know you're battling a page limit and I applaud the cunning trick, but it's impacting the story. Ditto for the movie references in the setup.

I like the pop-culture references, so YMMV. I'm not sure I could pull off "Melissa McCarthy goes Adventuring," but I know exactly who that is, and I would try like hell to figure out how to run her.

 

[Maynard]

Personal opinion, not sure how widely it is shared, but where your system diverges from typical D&D/OSR, as with the terms importing risk, I think there is value in spelling it out. I'm assuming the risk subsystem is relatively simple, something like a wandering monster check but using different dice for each risk level? If it is simple enough to explain, I think you should do so, because the OSR market is bigger than just the people using your system, and you want it to be useable by as many people as possible. (I have the same beef with a lot of ACKS modules.)

We can be forgiving in this instance since it's a contest specifically to showcase the system. But this is a great idea and if you rerelease this for general audiences definitely implement it.

 

[Connor9120c1]

Original or AI?

The art is AI generated using Stable Diffusion. When I someday kickstart my hard cover anthology of all my adventures that everyone has fallen in love with (should I go with 4 or 5 bookmarks?) I will take advantage of the great artists the OSR scene has been blessed with, but for now my budget and skill are both 0.

The hex map; you've got some white space on the drawing, why not put a short keyword/note beside the other four hexes alluding to the contents of those hexes as well.

This is a fantastic idea. You're right, unlike the rest of the pages there is actually more whitespace there than I would like, I may as well make use of a portion of it for useful reference info.

There's a lot of purple prose that could be cut back on

Over-long, nearly run on sentences are one of my biggest writing weaknesses in pretty much all of my real life writing, from reddit replies to work emails. I will definitely go through it with a comb and see where I can cut out some adjectives but still hit the vibe.

I very much agree with this; it took me quite a while to understand that the numbers to the left were a range of numbers equating to keyed entries.

I will definitely be adjusting this to a more standard format. I liked the aesthetic of the number free map, but multiple experienced people finding it unituitive is not a good sign and not a usability sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Personal opinion, not sure how widely it is shared, but where your system diverges from typical D&D/OSR, as with the terms importing risk, I think there is value in spelling it out.

We can be forgiving in this instance since it's a contest specifically to showcase the system.

I actually don't find that subsystem super helpful or intriguing, and if it weren't an expected part of Shadowdark hexcrawling I probably wouldn't include it. It is just a measure of how many hours pass between wandering encounter checks, and I think it is too finicky to remember in real play. Incorperating everyone's feedback here has renewed my interest in sharpening this adventure, and inspired me to translate it into an OSE version, and I've already cut those terms from that version.

With regard to the RP sections, I think I am going to have to keep them and use them in future works, if for no other reason than they have been the most divisive and garnered input from every person so far haha. I'm going to have to refine and clarify the implementation though, because I think the way they are being interpreted is more than their intended use. In my own games I put a name or description next to NPCs to help me keep a consistent affect by impersonating that persona, but that is not supposed to bogart the entire NPC.
My notes might say "Sad batman" or "Bill from work" or "Natalie Portman", but that is not player facing, and isn't meant to define or even describe the NPC; it is just a note to help me more than "Irish Accent, lisp" or whatever, which I struggle to keep consistent. Ideally the players will never even recognize the inspiration, because I (like most people) am terrible at impersonations. So I am doing my best "Tweaked out Johnny Knoxville" but they only see a consistent "Irsen" from session to session.
I think one issue here is that for space sake I didn't include many physical descriptions, so the pop reference is lifting too much weight and doing double duty. In my own game that is not the case, it's just an accent and a cadence, so I will have to make sure to give the NPCs an identity outside of this singular note. And tables that don't use voices or "playacting" probably won't benefit from them much. A new name is probably needed too; RP isn't the right term, but it was the shortest way to get the jist across. I'll keep working on it.

Seriously thank you all very much for all of your time and effort. Every reply so far has helped me improve the module, and will help me on all my future stuff too. It's very much appreciated.