šŖ«ā°ļø Unreview: Now What Do I Do?
Oct. 21st, 2025 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solo_knightUnreview: Now what do I do?
What is it?
Itās a one page game about solving your own murder, in time for Halloween.
You go through all twenty rooms of a mansion, ask questions, find objects, scare people if you want to. Thereās a tracker and if you reach either end, your story is over, so thereās an incentive to do ābad thingsā so you can find out more about your story.
Is it playable out of the box?
Only if you can built the mystery AND the setting without any help whatsoever. If you find a physical object related to your death, you need to decide what it is, and it could be anything from an object you used to own, to bloodstains, to a news article. A clue about your past, a living person/creature, and another ghost are the other options, and only the ghost has a hint of random table (which era they were from). You can ask ghosts or living beings what they know about you, and then you need to make it all up.
Amendments:
A system to generate a mystery.
I donāt mind solving mysteries, I donāt even mind creating them, but when I have to do both at the same time, thatās a lot of work. A LOT of work.
Tools
d4, optional d6, d20. And a whole-ass story.
Price:
Name your own price
Verdict
š§ At some point, Iād like to try out the bad place/good place track mechanic, and I don't hate the concept, I just don't feel this is a good starting point.
šŖ«Very draining. I'd have to bring everything to the table here, and I donāt have the brain.
ā°ļø If you scare people or animals enough, they die. This is part of the gameplay.
My second DNF.
Pet death is a real possibility in this game, and itās probably inevitable. I donāt feel positive about that.
This is a game that demands that you create the whole story, everything. You find an object related to your death. Quick, quick, think of something. And eventually, you need to tie all of these together and make a story of who killed you and how.
This will be either draining or boring or unsatisfying, or all of them. I rolled one room and bailed.
Creating mysteries for TTRPGs is a Hard Problem, and most solutions either involve āthe GM knows but isnāt telling youā or āthe GM sets up a matrix of plausible events, whatever you work hard for turns out to be the solution.ā
This āgameā has no such resolution mechanic, so you need to bring *that* to the table as well.
Combined with the harm-to-pets and some dissonances in the random tables (your character can be from the Colonial era, but the game can take place in the modern day: How the fuck am I supposed to get revenge on my murderer by scaring them to death? Theyāre dead anyway.) I just donāt feel like spending hours and hours licking this into shape.
Iād love to try out the ātrackā mechanic at some point but maybe not in this game.
What is it?
Itās a one page game about solving your own murder, in time for Halloween.
You go through all twenty rooms of a mansion, ask questions, find objects, scare people if you want to. Thereās a tracker and if you reach either end, your story is over, so thereās an incentive to do ābad thingsā so you can find out more about your story.
Is it playable out of the box?
Only if you can built the mystery AND the setting without any help whatsoever. If you find a physical object related to your death, you need to decide what it is, and it could be anything from an object you used to own, to bloodstains, to a news article. A clue about your past, a living person/creature, and another ghost are the other options, and only the ghost has a hint of random table (which era they were from). You can ask ghosts or living beings what they know about you, and then you need to make it all up.
Amendments:
A system to generate a mystery.
I donāt mind solving mysteries, I donāt even mind creating them, but when I have to do both at the same time, thatās a lot of work. A LOT of work.
Tools
d4, optional d6, d20. And a whole-ass story.
Price:
Name your own price
Verdict
š§ At some point, Iād like to try out the bad place/good place track mechanic, and I don't hate the concept, I just don't feel this is a good starting point.
šŖ«Very draining. I'd have to bring everything to the table here, and I donāt have the brain.
ā°ļø If you scare people or animals enough, they die. This is part of the gameplay.
My second DNF.
Pet death is a real possibility in this game, and itās probably inevitable. I donāt feel positive about that.
This is a game that demands that you create the whole story, everything. You find an object related to your death. Quick, quick, think of something. And eventually, you need to tie all of these together and make a story of who killed you and how.
This will be either draining or boring or unsatisfying, or all of them. I rolled one room and bailed.
Creating mysteries for TTRPGs is a Hard Problem, and most solutions either involve āthe GM knows but isnāt telling youā or āthe GM sets up a matrix of plausible events, whatever you work hard for turns out to be the solution.ā
This āgameā has no such resolution mechanic, so you need to bring *that* to the table as well.
Combined with the harm-to-pets and some dissonances in the random tables (your character can be from the Colonial era, but the game can take place in the modern day: How the fuck am I supposed to get revenge on my murderer by scaring them to death? Theyāre dead anyway.) I just donāt feel like spending hours and hours licking this into shape.
Iād love to try out the ātrackā mechanic at some point but maybe not in this game.
