Feedback please

[ingysledge]

Shane and I have been working on our blurb for Pheno. The original one which is currently on the Pheno website The Sacrifice of Immortality was bit of a rush job. I like the meter of this new one, and it (we think) holds the feel of the game better, but maybe it's a bit long

Comments

[silvermoon_wolf]

Actually I have to admit to preferring the original blurb. To me it's less twisty, and sets up conflict better.

However, neither blurb resolves my confusion over the 'Dark Queen'. Is it Ulthua (meaning the daughter has just won), Iovir (meaning the daughter won but has recently been defeated herself in some new uprising of Ulthua's supporters or some new third army) or is it Iovir who never won but styled herself as the 'Dark Queen' anyway?

What it makes me think of?
*We're all elves of the same family "tree"
*We're nominally immortal (ignoring removing important body parts)
*We're all haunted by a past now so convoluted that we may not remember it correctly
*We were probably on different sides of the conflict
*We have a chance of making things right, but possibly at the cost of our (or perhaps the entire races') immortality.

Would it make me want to play? Yes, but moreso from blurb 1 than blurb 2.

[travisjhall]

I didn't find mention of "the Dark Queen" confusing - to me, the context is enough to allow me to figure it out, and I always believed from the original blurb that Iovir was the Dark Queen. Adding "the Blessed" to "Queen Ulthua" in the new version reinforces this.

However, there's a resonance to repeated words in this sort of context. "Queen" is such a repeated word here, and the resonance is contrary to the situation being described. (In the original, we see the word again in the tagline: "A tale of queens and warriors...") It's not the best, as you imply, silvermoon_wolf. Perhaps if one use of the word was eliminated somehow, the issue would be resolved.

I also want to play, from either blurb (and might or might not be able to, as I'll be running a game myself) but I agree that I prefer the original blurb to the new one. The new blurb seems to be trying to explain a lot more, and while many blurbs provide way too little explanation, it doesn't seem to me that this blurb is explaining the right things. (That goes for both versions, but it's more

[kingtheseus]

Also have to agree that I like the original blurb much better. the original convinced me to play, this one is leaving me pretty cold.

In my experience, only a line should be devoted to history, unless it directly conjures images about the setting. The orignal blurb does this quite well. It's also punchy.

The blurb above actually feels more like rambling and highly abstract. Also watch the use of verbs, I don't quite know how to describe it, but passive voice comes close. It's like the verbs are all abstract concepts and not directed enough. For me it creates a distancing of emotional involvement.

[aeduna]

The revised blurb appears to be talking from an outside perspective, not as an elf? If the pcs are meant to be elves, I think the blurb should be more about "us" and not "them"?

I like "at the dawn of this age" tho rather than "One thousand years ago" - I'd merge some of the turns of phrase from the revised blurb with the perspective of the first one...

I'm afraid the last line of the poem grates on me much more than anything else tho - "give it all up" doesn't fit imho.
"Tell me why you would relinquish all"?

[ingysledge]

Ooh - I like your last line ;)
Thanks!