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Also regarding Blocking, pg 27, it is lacking the paragraph at the end that Dodge has for flipping iniative cards a la Dragonbane, which i presume it also must have since it uses an action.

Read through the QS and played the first part of the scenario. Excellent, love it!

A few comments/questions:
- Initiative. p24 "A character is not allowed to immediately exchange their initiative when just given a new one. They may, however, exchange this new initiative in the following Round." But it is mentioned previously that the initiative is drawn at the start of each round.
- Combat. p27. Does the text box about extra successes only apply to Blocking? or could it be used with a normal attack?
- It would be great if there was a printer friendly versions of the pregens (and maps) and the corresponding crew sheet, it would greatly help in person testing.
- The blight level of the different rooms in The Structure are missing I think (not on the handout, not in the text). I don't think it is supposed to be 0.
- I don't think the number of supply points for this adventure is specified explicitly in the text. It is on the crew sheet though. Since one of the PC doesn't have any on his sheet, we were initially confused and unsure this was a typo until we found out the info on the crew sheet.

There are some spoilers on the QS scenario bellow.


- I'm not sure I understand how the sphere works. It was activated when removed from the pedestal by the prospectors. The text says that it will be deactivated if put back on it, but how can the players knows that it won't activate agains if they pick it up? How was it activated the first time by the prospectors if it was not the act of removing it that triggered it?
- Already mentioned, but the number of Black Toad members is not specified.
- Not sure what is the goal of the second handout: the prospecting claims. Is there any clue hidden in there or is it just a props?
- Not sure I understand why chief Kalvanetes tips of the Explorers at the supper. My understanding was that she sold the artifacts discovery to the Navigators and would prefers the Explorers not to retrieve it. Does she want to edge her bets?

Hi Free Leaguers!
First of all, thanks for doing everything you do. I’m really looking forward to see the next development for Coriolis and trying out The Great Dark with my weekly crew.
Great input from everyone so far. I’ve done my first read of the quickstart, notes summarized below (apologies for any repetition of previous comments):


P24 – Initiative: Compare to P40 Ferocity, last sentence. Rules for exchanging (waiting) allow NPC/Creatures to float to top of initiative order without possibility for PCs to regain initiative.

P24 & 26 – Retreat/Run: Why not able to combine run with retreat? (Currently impossible to retreat from an enemy with higher initiative that choses to pursue, e.g. blight crawlers)

P25 – Movement: Unclear if movement counts as an action or not. See also comment above.

P27 – Blocking: As others have noted, dodging is superior to blocking.

P27 – Blocking/Unarmed: Unclear on blocking when unarmed/with talent/against non humanoids. Compare also to Avoiding Creature Attacks on P41 regarding rule of thumb on blocking creature attacks.

P32 – Stabilizing: Last sentence doesn’t take stabilizing from categories shorter than Shift into account. Suggest: “Only one first aid action with LOGIC roll is allowed between each death save.”

P35 – Fire/Crits: “death save on your turn every round” – seems excessively lethal compared to regular crits (see P30-31).

P36 – Explosions: Seems to lack rules for crit. Also, requires roll to hit when already in blast radius (reoccurring nerf in FL-games which seems especially out of theme when delving). Suggest: similar rules as for falling.

P60 – Getting there: “Three hour drive”. P54 states that Moubarra 4 is 18 km across. Also inconsistent with P56 map.

Spelling and grammar:
P33 – Horror: spelling, plural “(ones)”
P48 – Bird’s Energy: spelling, last sentence missing “e” in “one”
P59 – Loading dock: spelling, last sentence should remove “s” in visits

The QS doesn't make it easy to know how many Delves markers the party need to go down until they arrive eirther at the auxiliary chamber or the antechamber. This was discussed at the Discord server, and the consensus was that each square in the map is a marker (12 markers total).

In the future, the Delves should directly state: "this is a Delve with N markers", so the GM knows (roughly) how many Supplies the party need to go down and come back safetely. As the Class points to the difficulty, the Depth should easily point how deep is the Delve - at least for the GM, since the PCs shouldn't/couldn't know how deep it is before a scan (and even so, the Delve could be deeper than the scanner can inform).

Hi, the only big issue I see for now which hasn't been already mentioned by my fellow Explorers is this:
The character sheets are not printer-friendly at all due to the pervasive dark background, which will drain my printer cartridge at once.
Well, actually it won't, because I'll copy the sheets by hand, but still...
Could we get a black-text-on-white-background sheet, please?

Speaking in general, I love the new rules, the Delve mechanic above all!
Maybe you should better clarify what a marker is on Delve maps (and add missing Blight values on the Structure map from The Sky Machine as already reported).

Alright. I've gotten a chance to read through the whole quickstart ... and there's quite a bit that needs to be discussed beyond just my defensive reactions reply above. Please note that while I am critical about some aspects of the rules, I also understand that this is essentially a "pre-alpha" and I firmly believe by the time this project goes to print, once we go through the comments and revision process like we have in other kickstarters, we'll end up with something truly amazing and unique. Note that a lot of this has already been discussed in great length on the Coriolis channel of the Free League Discord.

Pages 15, 16, and many more - Attributes/Talents/Gear: This is a BIG departure from previous Year Zero games. In those games, Attributes never changed past character creation, and advancement was for skills and talents. But in Great Dark, many more dice are added to Attributes and Gear, with only a small amount on Talents. The reason this concerns me is that this seems to limit character advancement if it follows the path put forward by previous games since there’s so much more emphasis on Attributes and Gear than on Talents. Are we able advance Attributes in Great Dark? Note that I have nothing against changing things up. I’m just worried that players will feel disenchanted by lack of meaningful advancement.

Page 16 - How to Use Talents: The box states that talents can be used with multiple applicable Attributes, which I think is great … but then, in the pregen characters, there are several talents that specifically say they are used with specific attributes. There are also talents, like Sharpshooter, that could only be used by one attribute even if not stated. So there’s a lack of consistency here? Because of how niche Talents are compared to skills in past games, I think there’s going to need to be a lot of tuning involved to make sure they can be used in more than just one specific way if that is the dev goal for them.

Page 17 - Supply: I’ll cover that in the delving section as there’s a lot to discuss here.

Page 27 - Blocking and Dodging: Just to go into more detail, I see now that it appears that the Blocking section was copied from previous Year Zero games (with fast and slow actions), and Dodging from Dragonbane (with only a single action). Was wondering why Blocking was so weak. Here, devs need to make a decision. Either they bring back the Slow/Fast action economy and use that defensive system where blocks and dodges are called *before* an attack is rolled, or stick with Dragonbane’s style where blocks and dodges use up the one only action but are called *after* the attack hits. You cannot have a system where blocks and dodges use up all action but are called before the attackers attack roll as that would make defending utterly useless from an action economy perspective. No one would ever ever defend.

Page 28 - Reload: It doesn’t seem to be mentioned here, but does Reloading cost an action?

Page 29, 33, 37: Recovering from damage, despair, blight: I think there’s a line in here about resting rules coming later, but this is really important to know now as we need that for this quickstart adventure. Right now, all we know is that we recover one each per shift, but we don’t even know if it’s a shift resting or a shift of action.

Page 43 and onwards into the adventure - The Delve: There’s A LOT to talk about here. I’ll just list these in bullet form:
- There’s a comment about the number of supplies used being the average for a 4 person party, without actually saying what’s used on a per person basis. Right now, the system punishes small groups and buffs large groups simply because the total supply count, and the amount that needs to be carried, doesn’t change regardless of group size.
- Supply includes food and water. But taking off a helmet to eat and drink while wading through Blight infested areas does not seem like a terribly good idea. I’m guessing we only eat when we rest in a safe area, or when protected by Bird?
- Running out of supplies states that PCs take damage/despair/blight every marker without supplies. But it doesn’t state if it’s one PC at a time or all of them at once each marker.
- When Scanning through the markers, is the scanner and Bird doing the entire delve at once or just sections at a time? Just to clarify, the Logic roll is to map the area, and the Insight roll is to see if the Bird detects all Blight? What happens if the Insight roll is failed? Can you try again like you can with scanning? Also, while we now there’s a penalty for moving through a marker without knowing the Blight, what about moving through the marker without having mapped it?
- Just for clarification for future content, terms like “down the hole” and “down into the abyss” seem to indicate that delving is always a vertical drop. Is that just the case in this adventure? Are some delves horizontal journeys like going into a cave in a mountain?
- Are all delves linear and straight forward? Will there be mechanics for dealing with maze like structures?
- Are players rolling for blight at each and every marker of a delve? Or after the number of markers the delver passed by rolling? I get the impression it’s the latter.
- How LONG does the delving process take. I can’t seem to find any indications of time here. Maybe I missed it? This is really critically important here as explorers need to eat, drink, and rest. Also, since events can happen where the Bird is involved, we need to know due to Bird’s energy recharge rate.

Page 48 - The Bird: First off, I absolutely LOVE the idea of the Bird. I can guarantee that everyone will love the Bird. Forum threads will be started for people talking about their birds, lol. Just a couple of questions:
- I believe it says the Bird recharges energy per shift? Just like the Recovery question in the combat section, does Bird need to ‘rest’ to recover energy, or is it automatic each shift? Also, does it charge ALL its energy or just one per shift?
- I don’t remember if it’s in the QS or was brought up in interviews, but it looks the Bird will have an advancement system much like group advancement systems in other Free League games like that of the castle in Vaesen. This is AMAZING. People will love this. BUT … the Bird has HP, which means it can get hurt and possible killed. So what happens to Bird advancement in the instance where we then have to get a new Bird for the group?

Page 82 (I think) - the Doctor Talent: It says this talent allows you stabilize someone with Logic. Does that mean that no one BUT a Doctor can do so? Past Free League games have always had a Medicine skill, but people could still roll base attributes if they didn’t have any points in there. But this Talent seems to infer it can’t be done without it? If so, this game suddenly gets a whole lot more lethal. So some clarification here will be needed. Or the talent reworked so that it gives a bonus instead.

Alright, that’s all I can think of right now. Thanks for reading and I look forward to further discussions about Great Dark during it’s crowdfunding development.

Having read through the rules part, a few quick comments.

- It really needed another copyedit/proofread - there are a lot of fixes. I think you were in a hurry to get it out to us, which is a good reason!

- Maybe say a bit more clearly what the Bird -is-. (Because players will ask.) That can have uncertainties in it, eg 'they're somewhere between a living creature and a biological construct'.

- Pushing (p19) - maybe tweak layout to avoid the disconnection between Hope loss on base dice and gear damage on gear dice.

- The difference between a form of damage and the points that resist that damage was confusing in places. Eg I was initially looking for where points of despair are recorded. (You could do some reframing, eg label tracks as mounting points; or just label eg 'Damage/Health'.)

- Add 'Move: a short distance (see below)' to the free actions list - I think.

- The thing others have mentioned about dodge being mechanically superior to block.

- A defence burns an action, but an opportunity attack doesn't - not sure that holds up in the narrative.

- Include an alternate initiative system for people who aren't playing face to face. Eg all roll a d10, on ties PCs go first.

- In the full version, maybe give alternate systems for damage and despair for people who don't want to use old-style critical tables, with their randomness and potentially problematic entries. You could do something very simple using conditions.

- For the various forms of damage, especially Blight, consider a similar idea to panic in Alien, where potential results get worse the more you accumulate. (In particular, a 1 in 36 chance that the character and everything they did is forgotten doesn't fit well if hope is important.)

pg. 47, "The Bird companion (or any other Explorer) rolls for
INSIGHT modified by any appropriate Talent and lets the
Bird go. As the Bird returns the Explorers can see where the
Blight is located through a special Garuda device and mark
it out on the scan map."
As written, the INSIGHT roll doesn't have any effect.

Also: "If the Explorers don’t have a Bird they will have to venture
forward without knowing, exposing them to a higher degree
of Blight. Any Blight Levels of 1 or more is increased by +1."
is a different meaning than the table "DELVE MODIFICATIONS" on the right hand column has: "Delving Without a Blight Scan by the Bird"

The table entry however explains how the aforementioned rule was intended:
If the INSIGHT role for the bird is failed, or the Explorers don't have a bird, Blight levels are increased by +1.

pg. 46 "To delve blindly modifies all delving rolls with −2 penalty and consumes
double the amount of supplies during
events as well as per marker delved."
is not the same as the corresponding entry on the DELVE MODIFICATIONS table on pg. 47: "Delving Blindly: −2 AGILITY"

pg. 21 "Other Explorers or NPCs can help you succeed at a dice roll." in combination with the Delve... can help be applied to the LOGIC, INSIGHT, and AGILITY rolls for the Delve? Narratively, it seems reasonable... another Explorer could help by calibrating the power levels of the scanner, fixing the bird's flux compensator, and supporting the rope... however, table THE DELVE IN SHORT on pg. 48, item #4, suspiciously leaves out a modifier for Help.