Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

Moon Rings is a 57 page solo game by Chris Schneztler with art and layout by Tyson Whiting, where you play a witch who ventures into a deadly labyrinth to end the reign of a cursed moon.

I’ll start with layout. This is a striking game, with a bold black and red palette, strong visual aids and striking digital art, and it uses clever visual inversions and turnarounds to keep the layout interesting even when the pattern is mostly words and more words. Each page is 2 column in landscape, with a low word to page ratio for an easy read, and whats more all versions of a single rank of card are on a front/back spread, so it should be easy to navigate. It’s really good stuff, although it doesn’t quite scream “brave witch venturing into a labyrinth” in the way I wish it would – it feels extremely modern a layout.

I’ve played a game based on the Carta system before – Tea and Toadstools. The basic gist is that you generate a grid of cards, and move around the grid, experiencing prompts that drive your journaling experience. In Moon Rings, the grid represents a labyrinth, and as you explore it, you’re finding Moon Rings to complete your ritual, and the events are affecting your blood, which will kill you if you go over 20 or are reduced to 0. When you encounter something, you have to roll higher or lower than the card number on a 12-sided die (under if it’s 6 or lower, higher if it’s 7 or higher). You get a chance to roll again, but each time you’ll suffer a worse penalty, such as losing a finger and hence not being able to hold as many rings. You can also use magic to change the outcome of an encounter, but you have a limited number of uses. The game ends when you have 5 moon rings and reach the ritual site, which is the Ace of Hearts.

The bulk of the game are the prompts for each playing card, as well as what occurs when you succeed or fail at the roll. I’m kind of mixed on these prompts – they’re really surprisingly prescriptive, which makes it feel as if this is a game of wandering through a portion of a very intentionally constructed dungeon. I had expected more evocative, vaguer prompts, but it’s stuff like this: “You come across a marble wellspring overflowing with replenishing mana. It enticed you. A pack of moon goblins splash and fight in the cool liquid.” One nice touch is that the ritual you’ll complete is randomly generated from the first 5 moon rings you complete. I’m not sure how much replay value this game will have, but that personalisation is nice and thoughtful. The problem with this prescriptive approach, for me, this leaves me with very little to actually journal, particularly when the game is quite prescriptive in terms of its’ outcomes mechanically. But were this a dungeon, I’d like these locations! For me, then, Moon Rings feels like it’s a success as a solo dungeon crawl, but less so as a journaling game, because it feels like I want a little more space for my imagination to run wild if I’m trying to journal.

As a solo dungeon crawler? This is honestly a blast. I like the goals, I like the descriptions. Played without the journaling, it will feel a little more mechanical, and reminds me of Cavern Shuffle, a solitaire dungeon crawler that I keep in my bag at all times to play if I’m waiting at a cafe or whatever. The main reason I’d bring Cavern Shuffle rather than Moon Rings is because Moon Rings is a print and play booklet and not a deck of cards. There are, in fact, Moon Rings playing cards – but they don’t contain all the information in the booklet. I’m certain you could fit the entire text of these locations onto a Tarot-sized card. If that was the approach, rather than to have a book and a deck of playing cards, I think this would be more likely to get play for me.

Moon Rings is a good game. It’s a very good looking game. For me though, it doesn’t make me want to journal, it makes me want to explore. And for that, I want it to be in a different format – not a booklet or a pdf, but a deck of cards. I haven’t tried playing this on playingcards.io, but I suspect that would be the best way to experience the game as it stands, the way I respond to it. But it feels like a bring with you everywhere kind of game, not a sit at my computer and play kind of game. That said, if you bounce of more evocative, vaguer prompts, this more prescriptive approach might be exactly what you need to get into journaling games, and Moon Rings is interesting, compelling, and appealing to spend a few hours with. Moon Rings might be precisely the journaling game for you.

Idle Cartulary

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