Marek
Golonka seems like a very nice person. Many Tabletop Role Playing pundits will
not publish even mildly negative reviews. They make you enemies, they discourage authors from sending you free stuff and they depress fellow hobbyists who
are generally doing something creative for love while forced like most of us to
still work dull jobs to pay the rent. Marek Golonka is the first person I know
of to go forward and publish professional mysteries for Monster-of-the-Week besides Michael
Sands and she submitted them to me for my “expert” approval. I should have made
excuses and written up a review praising Gardens
of Ynn like everybody else and simply noted her chutzpah. I didn’t. I
published lukewarm reviews of her first two Monsters
of Europe mysteries.
I found
her first two mysteries were professional but uninspired. A European write-up of
their version of the Bell Witch incident (The
Haunted Case of Eleonore Zugun) is simply not terribly meaningful for Americans.
It was followed by Blood in Budapest;
a valentine of sorts to that city. I wondered why did she use tired Romanian
inspired vampires instead of something from Hungary’s own rich mythology
instead? Both mysteries also suffered from the fact that they were long and
overstuffed with material the writer dearly loved but foreign to the lean and
mean appeal of Monster-of-the-Week’s usual two to five page mystery format. I
felt like I should have received at least a small mystery arc or thematic mystery collection for this length and price. My general reaction was guilty
indifference.
Marek Golonka bravely sent me her third mystery for review.
I am happy to say indifference was not my reaction.
It appears that the third time is the charm.
Most of her basic problems are now
solved. Marek
Golonka’s third mystery is a wildly creative adventure sending the hunters on a
quest into classical myth. It is sort of like a Supernatural episode where Sam
and Dean travel back in time to the Old West or an alternate reality. The
length of the mystery and additional material is justified by the strangeness of the setting: the
players are not in Kansas anymore!
If you want to send your hunters into the world of greek mythology this
is your ticket to ride. I still think she would be better served in the future by writing mystery arcs in a more compact format and adding additional game
material like a new playbook with each mystery; the crushing reality of
Tabletop RPG PDF supplements is the current price point is still arguably too high.
Very few authors make any real money in this market. A Patreon or Kickstarter
publishing model for a bigger product "might" serve the author better. My review
copy also had no art; I don’t know if this is the case in the finished product.
However, anything with content this wildly creative deserves “kudos” and is
inspiring. Maybe my desire to send my hunters the Planet of the Apes is doable after all!
You can find copies of Its
Still Sparta here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250707/Its-still-Sparta
Many thanks for your review and for all suggestions!
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad to see that you liked this mystery. Our discussion about the last two ones was very inspiring for me and, following your advice and criticism, I tried to make something that would fill the pages not with a setting but with a unique gameplay mode. It’s really good to hear that you like the result and I hope others will as well.
I'm still not convinced that the approach I took before is wrong, I've heard some positive comments about the Eleonore and Budapest mysteries and it seems to me that MotW is a nice borderland between story games and traditional RPGs where both detailed settings and sketchy ideas can work great. However, this new, more compact mode of writing I used in "It's still Sparta!" probably lies closer to an average MotW player's expectations.
For example, "Blood in Budapest" is so long and detailed not because I wanted to write so much about the city (but yes, it is one of my favorite cities in the world) but because I wanted do give the hunters many nice people and places to care about. I’m writing a similar save-a-city mystery now, but I’m doing it in a completely different manner - writing a few paragraphs about what is considered most charming and attractive about the setting and asking the players themselves to invent the bystanders and locations their hunters can save. It saves space and makes the setting more cooperative – in PbtA games the more gets created at the table and not in books, the better. Maybe it will even fill into the five pages you suggest ;)
As for the price, my publisher has to sell his products for prices quite standardized over various games and settings so my PDFs can’t go cheaper (save for seasonal sales – and Halloween’s not too far away!). The only thing I can do about it is publish 2 or 3 mysteries more so that making a bundle out of them with substantial price reduction will be profitable for him. As for Patreon or Kickstarter, I’ve tried Patreon once among Polish players and discovered it needs regularity and devotion I can’t give to games right now. Maybe after I finish my Ph.D. research, so hopefully – soon!
I also have two questions. The first one is – you wrote that Eleonore’s story “is simply not terribly meaningful for Americans”. Is it simply because it didn’t happen in the US or is there something about this mystery that feels “un-American” to you for other reasons?
The last thing that got me really curious is - why did you assume I'm female? I'm not but it's an extremely common mistake among people I met. I always assume it's about my long hair (considered extremely unmalny in Poland) and you're probably the first person to make this mistake without meeting me in real life. So, with sheer interest and no hard feelings I ask - why :) ?