Iron DM 2012 -- R2 complete, Finals in Progress

Required Ingredients
Seared Seer
Desert Dessert
Knave's nave
Terraced Terrasque
Still Stiletto
Party Parity

Bonus Ingredients:
Rouge Rogue
Slippery Slippers
Demonstrable Demon's Trouble
Kings of Thieves Slippery Slippers
9-10th level Pathfinder Adventure
Synopsis
To win Infamy as the Kings of Thieves, is no easy matter. Every four years, many adventurers travel to the Dubious City- Kratas, to compete in the Knaves Nave; walking the Filthy isle of the God of Thieves to claim the Slippery Slippers. Few if any succeed this deadly competition to be known as the King of Thieves- will you?
Background
Kratas, the dubious city is famed and fabled as the richest and most powerful. The key to success is the nature of it’s ruling council- directly tied to the Vaults of Lokar, the high church of the god of thieves. Every four years, adventurers from far and wide are invited to compete in the Knaves Nave- the mysterious competition to the altar of the god of thieves, to be crowned as the Kings of Thieves, and the ruling council of Kratas for the next four years.
Hooks
The PCs wake up to find an invite on their table, made out of beautifully guilded paper. Upon opening the invite, an Imp pops out with wonderous salutations, exaulting the groups magnificence, announcing their “invitation” from the god of thieves themselves. The party may prepare however they wish, and the Imp will get impatient with the group, doing a random countdown. Regardless, once the party is ready (or not) they find themselves teleported to..
Part 1- Terraced Terrasque
The group finds themselves in a humongous cavern, with a large terraced hill in the center. Massive spikes jutting out form what appears to be Nave all the way to the top of hill where can be seen what looks to be a massive altar. There are 4 terraced levels that need to be traversed to get to the top. The Imp, will point to the top, smile, and say “Look upon the knaves Nave, traverse with care oh mighty ones, for the prize of ruling the golden Kratas, along with a stipend of 100,000 gold a year shall be yours! To the first party to get to the top of course!”
Developments:
- Looking around the party will see other competitors, including a group of 2 beautiful, rouged women and two beautiful rouged men (a knowledge local check will reveal them to the the infamous assassins, the Painted Lovers) amongst others at the GMs choosing. The rouge infact is applied to hide the devilish nature of these “lovers,” who are well versed in the art of disguise.
- The GM may add any other adventuring party that he sees fit as competition
- The magical nature of the Terrasque prevents any harm to it, and as such, any indirect approach such as tunneling. Flying PCs will find spikes that shoot out from the “hill” assaulting them
- The Shadow Assassin; as the groups proceed through the challenges at each terraced level, the sense a shadowy form following them, who will continuously sneak attack the group. The Shadow Assassin uses a Still Stilleto; the Still creating an infusion of Gorgon Powder, that turns any slacking PC or other competitor into stone.
Part 2- The Desert Dessert
The First Challenge is one of survival. As the PCs move into the first terraced area, they are confronted by an small sandy area from where they are, to the next terraced area. It appears barren and stark with nothing other than the burning sands. Traversing through the desert is difficult, as the heat and the “sun” above appears intense, and the longer the party travels, the hotter it gets.
- The other competitors harass the party.
-Travelling through the area, the surroundings continually change, yet the group does not get closer
-Eventually, the group comes upon a blind man, naked, chained to a large rock, who appears to be continually seered by the heat; he smiles wildly and mutters madly. He will look at the party and smile and greet them, laughing. “I have seen you and watched you, now you will cook like me, and die like me!” he mutters. Scattered about him are shattered glass and pieces of a distillery. “Free me and I will tell you the way!” he mutters.
Developments:
The Seared Seer is in fact, the Shadow Assassin; the High Priest of the God of Thieves. The broken pieces of the distilliary is a clue as to his true nature. Any PCs previously attacked, or examining any dead NPCs can clue the PCs to the nature of the Assassins Weapon; the Still Stilleto. Freeing the Seared Seer makes him cackle wildly, as he takes the sand in his hand, and mutters, “EAT! Eaaat,” as he dives into the sands and disappears.
The PCs can kill the Seared Seer without freeing him, thus unburdening themselves of the Assassin.Alternatively, they can also, with the appropriate knowledge check, puzzle out that the sand is infact, edible! Eating the sand, causes the desert to slowly disappear and gets the PCs to the next challenge

Part 3- Party Parity
The group find themselves in a large courtyard with a fierce debate raging between two parties; both of the demonic persuasion. The two parties appear to be debating what kind of humanoids taste best. The group can be smart, and inflame demonic parties into further discord with the proper role playing. Also, if they take part in the debate and cause one side to win as they traverse the crowd. The other side concedes to the winner, and decides to make snack of the PCs. The PCs may fight their way through this or become dinner.
Part 4- the slippery slippers
The last challenge involves traversing the maw of the “hill.” Terrsaque drool appears to coat the entire lip making the area very difficult to traverse; there are some slippers here, that can be worn, that make it even more slippery. However, the extra slippers cause it to be easier to run and slide across the mouth of the beast [appropriate balance check]
Conclusion
The Winner is crowned the Kings of Kratas and get rulership of the city!(and all the intrigue that comes with such a large stipend).

For a moment, I didn't think you'd make it. Good job!

woot; the wierd my mind pours out when making up stuff in 45 minutes! I like it. Well done DT; great entry.

I've read 'em. I'll try and get to them tomorrow evening.

(space reserved for later judgement...)

I too have read them and will attempt to have my judgment posted by this evening or tomorrow morning.

Thread title might need adapting

Lwaxy said:

Thread title might need adapting

Click to expand...

Yeah, well, that's going to be tricky. It's Nifft's thread, and he's the judge that has dropped off the face of the interwebs. I hate to ask a moderator to adjust the title for us each time we hit a new stage.....

-rg

Fixed. I'm watching such threads anyway, I just don't want to change a title if the original creator could.

Finals Judgement: Rouge Blues (Deuce Traveler) vs. King of Thieves (Waylander the Slayer)

So, as we have in past years, for the finals the Judges came up with a goofy theme for the ingredients in the finals. I feel great personal shame that this year's theme ended up being painful wordplay, but there you go. We're not good people.

Anyway, on to the judginess.... RB = Rouge Blues KT = King of Thieves

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Ingredients:

First the required ingredients.

Seared Seer.
So, in RB we have a Stone Statue that a) is an oracle b) eats c) complains about it's lot in life d) wants mango custard. He's been blasted and nearly destroyed. I think he works for the ingredient, but I wonder about making him a stone statue -- so much of the rest of the details of the seer are very much the province of the living -- whining, eating, etc. Especially the eating. But, like I said, it works.

In KT, the Seared Seer is one of the guises taken on by the shadow assassin while the PCs are going through their challenges. But as far as I can tell, he doesn't really do much "seeing" -- he's in disguise as a blind prisoner who claims to have seen the PCs. Okay. It's there -- but feels a bit weak. Advantage RB.

Desert Dessert
In KT, the Shadow Assassin (in his Seer guise) tries to force feed sand to the PCs. This turns out to be a clue, one that will free them from the challenge -- they need to eat their way out. My issue with this use is that there's nothing I'm seeing that makes this a dessert. It's edible, but does it taste good?

In RB, the statue wants some vague rare dessert made with a desert fruit. I've taken to calling it mango custard in my head, for no good reason. It's nominally covering the ingredient, but the story doesn't need it at all. So, I don't see either entry has having succeeded with this ingredient. No advantage.

Knave's Nave
In RB the "nave" is a shrine on the back of the tarrasque built around where the stiletto had been jammed into the beast's skull to control it. Again, this feels like pretty thin, nominal coverage of the ingredient, and in this case the PCs don't seem to really interact with it very much (perhaps they'd go there to look for clues to track Farrah).

In KT, though, I'm very confused. As I read the entry, the "Nave" is the competition. I suppose it's possible that was not your intention, but it actually reads that way in two places:

• "many adventurers travel to the Dubious City- Kratas, to compete in the Knaves Nave"
• "invited to compete in the Knaves Nave- the mysterious competition to the altar of the god of thieves, to be crowned as the Kings of Thieves, and the ruling council of Kratas for the next four years."

Am I reading those wrong? I don't think so.
Which means that, in this case, the word "nave" is being used as a label for the competition, and in no way is a true nave (the central area of a church). I double checked with Dictionary.com to see if there was another definition of "nave" that was a sort of competition, but didn't find one.
So, advantage RB.

Terraced Tarrasque
Both entries have a Tarrasque. In RB, it's meandering towards towns that need rescuing by getting it back under control. In KT, it's part of one of the settings, the PCs climb around and over it in a couple of scenes. No advantage to either side.

Still Stiletto
Again, both entries have a Stiletto -- in KT, it's used by the Shadow Assassin and is filled with gorgon poison. In RB, it's the enchanted spike used to control the Tarrasque. They're different -- I struggle a little with each, in different ways, but I don't think either has a clear edge over the other.

Party Parity
So, this ingredient was not very nice. In RB, an ethereal tether (think you'll get bonus points for spitting word games back at the judges, do you? ) allows the PCs to catch up to the ifrit Farrah by taking advantage of it's special properties that enforce equal space between all figures tethered together. It's a little weird, but it sort of works.

In KT, the PCs walk in on a debate between two groups of demons trying to decide which humanoids taste best. This may be another situation where the execution of the scene will bring the ingredient into focus better, but I'm not quite seeing it. The PCs can enter into the debate (relying on their own experience eating humanoids, I presume) but really this is just a scene where the PCs interact a little and end up choosing one of two bands of Demons to fight with. I'm just not seeing any sort of parity in the scene. If there were an opportunity to do some sort of diplomatic skill challenge that would ramp up the two sides of the debate by supporting and inflaming both sides of the debate equally, until they fought each other, that might satisfy the ingredient, but in this case I'm not seeing it. So, once again, I need to give advantage to RB.

Bonus Ingredients.
Rouge Rogue, Slippery Slippers, Demonstrable Demon's Trouble

We have always talked about bonus ingredients as tiebreakers, but in this case I don't think the would be much help. Both entries have serviceable Rouge Rogues, both have significant Slippery Slippers, both have demons with troubles. Call all the bonus ingredients a wash.

So, for me anyway, Rouge Blues has made better use of several of the ingredients and comes out of this stage with a clear edge.

Playability -

I don't see strong differences between the two entries for playability. RB does, however, have a very specific path the PCs must follow -- if they can't get the Paleet to help them, and give them his ethereal tether, they basically have very little way to catch up to Farrah -- which would mean the secondary option kicks in, where they buy it back from the pawn show where she hawks it. Which isn't very exciting.

KT would be mostly playable, in that it winds up being a collection of combat encounters the PCs are transported between as part of the challenge. I've already discussed the problems I see with the demon debate scene, but other than that the playability of KT seems to be decent.

Creativity

I have a prejudice I'll come clean about -- I don't like scenarios like the one in KT where the PCs are magically transported from one setting to another to complete some sort of challenge. It feels really easy to me. It allows us to just throw together a collection of disparate elements in a way that feels cheap an easy in an Iron DM setting.

That's a prejudice. The whole thing could have been written as a camel race through several scenes, which essentially just replaces the word "transport" with "camel" and it would be more satisfying to me. At the same time, the "contest" structure makes it super easy to throw together a variety of unrelated challenges without really tying them up naturally.

So, on a gut level, I reacted poorly to KT because of the shortcuts I felt like it's using.

At the same time, in RB I'm also really feeling the strain to tie ingredients together. The jaunt into the ethereal plane for the sake of faster travel is clearly tacked into an adventure that really does not need it to serve two purposes -- satisfy a tough ingredient and make the ehter/tether joke. The desert for the statue is odd and doesn't really fit very well, given that we're talking about a stone head that can talk. I might have been happier if the stone head at something that stone might eat -- maybe something inedible to people, like sand...... but, anyway, there were problems.

Word games aside, I didn't expect that this set of ingredients would be as challenging as they seem to have been -- remove the descriptors and it looks fairly ordinary (seer/dessert/nave/tarrasque/stiletto/parity). But, the world looks a whole lot different from the judging seat.

Anyway.... I don't think either entry had clear creativity advantages over the other -- there were things I liked about both.

Conclusion.

For stronger ingredient use -- the one clear (to me) advantage I found in one entry over the other -- I'm going to cast my vote for Rouge Blues. We'll see how the other judges vote....

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-rg

Lwaxy said:

Fixed. I'm watching such threads anyway, I just don't want to change a title if the original creator could.

Click to expand...

Thanks very much!