Magellan 1: Race into the Great Unknown

I've been reading a lot of storygames this week, and the difference between an engaging start and a not engaging start is so obvious. This game throws me right it with clear story telling, a crisp narrative voice, and a fun character to play. A tough sea captain story told by a great story teller? Sold. The addition of a race, questionably reliable armaments, and the problem of finding and storing food creates additional adventure. I can see where I think this is going, and I'm excited.
The choices were well thought out to make me balance my varying needs and to put them in conflict with each other. Speed or safety? And also the unstated question of Speed or Morality? (will I seriously leave men to drown for the sake of winning a contest--turns out, yes, yes I will.) I think some choices might have been made more enticing (going to visit my friend's grave, for example--why would I do that?)

The game is sometimes hilarious, like an island "of quicksand" or the island "goverened by penguins"; the game plays this all with straight face, which is great.

There were a few times I expected a choice, like meeting Trevers with the woodworm. I expected to be give a choice about him instead of meeting him to be told he was out of the race. It felt funny to have Trevers suddenly out of the race without anything having happened yet. I suppose (as when I also met the wreck of the Dove of the Sea) I wondered whether I had done anything to affect these captains, or whether whenever you get to this part of the sea, you notice what's happened. I don't know what variables are at play here, but I wondered how reactive the other ships are.

Exciting, often with three choices on each page, and with real tactical choices to make, this game is excellent. Yes, there were times when I wasn't 100% sure why north was better than northeast as a choice, and a touch more guidance as to how each choice might affect rations and course would be useful (how good would a map be in this game!) But on the whole, I loved this game and am excited to play more in this world.

Language-wise, this game is so good that it needs to use sentence structure/commas right, because it's distracting.

"Gunpowder is a recent invention and though your ship is armed with four cannons and all your crew carry muskets these are slow to load and highly inaccurate making the sword your crew's primary weapon" is a pretty typical sentence that badly needs commas for clarity.

And dialogue gets punctuation in a special way with quotation marks--that's an issue throughout this whole game.

“Captains” he says quietly.

Here I am reading another storygame in the Magellan series. Two stories in two days. Why did I come back for more, you ask? Because I enjoy quality storygames. Don’t you?

As I left a pretty lengthy comment on Magellan III, I’ll try not to repeat myself especially when it comes to formatting. They both are formatted nearly identical. Makes sense as the series should have some sort of universality to it, but I’m still not a big fan of the ship names being bold text.

There is definitely a huge game aspect to the storygame. Will demonstrates his mastery of variables and uses them wonderfully to enhance the overall experience. Having to keep track of my men, food, and days made me consider each choice more carefully. It brought up the question “How will this decision affect my crew?”. It made me more involved and invested into the story which obviously is a huge plus.

Some thoughts generated by the story:

-It was a nice surprise to see Tobias Cuthrew mentioned. He was a huge part of M3.

-The text change after the first two pages is a bit distracting. It becomes less so after clicking a few links and getting used to the new font. I’d like to know what prompted the change since it was clearly done on purpose.

-As far as I can tell, the story doesn’t seem too linear. When faced with choices, it was more than A. Live B. Die.

-Speaking of choices, they do matter in the story. Don’t die of starvation, Cap’n.

It was very interesting to go from reading M3 to the first storygame in the Magellan series. I somewhat expected the quality to be worse based on sheer improvement over time. It wasn’t noticeably worse. In fact, I didn’t come across any part of the writing that seemed lower quality than in M3. It’s probably attributed to Will being one of the most prolific writers on the site. Anyways, I’m now officially a fan of the Magellan series (reading more than one earns you the right to say that) and on my way to read Magellan II. See you there, folks!

I enjoyed it, and it was a fun game.

It definitely felt more like a game than a story. My personal bias favors more of a story feel, but the map-able in-game-universe was a cool feature, even more so if you've incorporated it into the sequels.

Something like a subplot that focuses on your interactions, relationships, dynamics, etc. with your crew would be a nice addition for a storygame like this. Anything to make me care about them. Because from this framework, they're just a number that I can't let hit zero. Unless I'm mistaken, it makes no difference if I arrive with 30 happy crewmen or just me and one Mr. No Name that went through living hell.

I was a little confused about how I circumnavigated the globe on a north/south route without ever sailing south, though. I'll just picture it as a flat world that teleports you to the bottom of the map once you hit a certain point.

Overall, it was a fun and enjoyable experience.

I enjoyed this story! Died of starvation at first but that 'Due North' hint allowed me to reach Golden Sands ahead of everybody else.

Great game

What a good time. Thank you for lending us your time and creativity for this seafaring adventure. I'll definitely be embarking on another voyage for the new queen.

It's funny how the princess/new Queen was so nice to me at the end after she tried to kill me on the island lol. This game has a lot of replay value.

Good

This was an interesting storygame that had the qualities of a game but lacked some aspects that could’ve made it more real. There were little to no actual bonds created or fleshing out of characters and societies. It seemed like the tip of the iceberg for the potential of what it could have been. There were many good qualities too. It was engaging and as I said before, resembled a game more than a story

Trying to see my score