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<blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 7508059" data-attributes="member: 60965"><p><strong>Round 2, Match 1</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Round 2, Match 1: hawkeyefan vs MortalPlague</strong></p><p></p><p>Here's how I judge:</p><p></p><p>My first pass will be literary: how well does it read? Are there typos? Is it coherent? Is the phrasing awkward, awesome, or ambivalent? Did the writing help or hurt the entry? Does the adventure tell a good story?</p><p></p><p>Second pass will be as a GM: would I want to run it? Is there a good hook? Does it flow? Do I have all the information I need? Is it mostly backstory or mostly adventure? If I bought this adventure to save prep, how much prep does it require? Is the conclusion satisfying?</p><p></p><p>Third pass will be as a player: would I want to play it? Are there any interesting choices? Do my actions matter? Does it have interesting things to do for different types of players? How about characters? Is the conclusion satisfying?</p><p></p><p>Fourth pass will be ingredients: how well were they used? Could any be removed or altered without changing the adventure in major way? Are they tied together tightly? Any particularly clever uses?</p><p></p><p>I'll finish with a conclusion that sums it all up and throws in anything else that doesn't fit into one of these categories such as logical breaks, major inconsistencies, or other elements that "break" the adventure as posted.</p><p></p><p>A final note before jumping in: I try to be entirely constructive and honest with my feedback since that's been the main benefit for me doing the half-dozen Iron DMs I've competed in and my ability to write has been drastically honed by them for all types of writing, not just adventures. Empty praise or skirting problems to be "nice" is pleasant and useless. If I like it, you'll know and if I think it could use work... you'll know. Feel free to discard it if you don't agree, my main goals are to be fair, honest, and critical. </p><p></p><p>Before I start, I had Catalyst at 1545 words. As such, I chopped off 45 words from the entry so it ends with "If the Agents fail, then".</p><p></p><p><strong>Literary Pass, Catalyst:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>The first paragraph derailed me. I immediately stopped and read a review of the Delta Green RPG to give myself a reference frame for what was going on, but still had questions.</p><p></p><p>First, after a fatal car accident there was DNA in "the corpse." My mind for some reason assumed there would be multiple deaths in the fatal car accident so "the corpse caused me to stop and reread a few times. Second, routine autopsies finding Deep One DNA make it sound like the local small town coroner finds it normal to find Deep One DNA. If it wasn't the local coroner, why was the Agency doing an autopsy on an HVAC contractor?</p><p></p><p>Aside from that, throwing Todd King undercover as the first sentence, then jumping to a car accident then who died then back to Todd King added to the confusion. Starting with the death THEN all the stuff about King would have cleared things up immensely.</p><p></p><p>When it came to local law enforcement, stating what the players "can ask about" struck me as odd. Do you not let them ask about anything else? What happens if they ask something aside from those three bits of information? Do the police not hear them or kick them out? Does the Agency give them a bulleted list of what to ask? What happens if they don't talk to the police?</p><p></p><p>Later in the same (long) paragraph, it said we learn Miranda "has gone mad" which... wait, HAS gone mad, not did? If he has gone mad, he's still alive, right? So is he not actually dead? Besides, wouldn't paranoids be the leastly likely to crash? Did I mention that these paragraphs are really long and really dense? Some white space would have been really, supremely helpful to get, retain, and relocate the many specific details, events, and happenings.</p><p></p><p>In "The Apartment", it says the "Agents will likely go to King's apartment" then follows with "when they go" assuming they will for sure. Do you mean "If they go"? What if they don't go or don't decide to break in? The adventure is rife with "musts", "have tos", and "needs" which make it sound like the GM is expected to constantly prompt, cajole, or railroad them into the appropriate actions. Since you start of with "the will likely go" can they still succeed at the scenario if they don't?</p><p></p><p>Cort Park starts assuming the characters talk to the police. While it may be an obvious move, players don't always follow obvious paths. A suggestion for writing investigation-based adventures: tell us what is where and who knows what rather than laying explicit pathways through the information. Not only does it make in more open-ended, it allows for multiple approaches and prevents the feeling of straight-jacket that yours creates. Otherwise it seems like there's a linear meta-path the PCs have to discover to solve it rather than through their character's detective work.</p><p></p><p>In the park, it says "He says he thought if he got a pure specimen, the damage could be undone. But that’s not true. There’s nothing pure anymore. Maritime has just opened his eyes, and Delta Green’s just as much a part of the problem as any of the things they hunt." As written he only said the first sentence. Since there's no quotes around the next few, are the next few sentences you as the narrator talking or is that him still ranting? The latter makes more sense, but as written I don't know.</p><p></p><p>Why will they have to try to conceal the body and their involvement? Why can't they just leave the body and flee the scene? Or take the body with them? Also, as written they couldn't have ever FOUND the park without flashing credentials and talking to the police earlier so don't the police already know what they are doing?</p><p></p><p>After the Literary Pass, I actually don't know how good it is as there were so many flags and questions as I read through. Hopefully the adventure will be more clear in subsequent reads. Also, due to the word count cut off, I ended up with a cliffhanger. What does happen if they fail?</p><p></p><p><strong>Literary Pass, Mortality Index:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>The first few sentences are a bit choppy for my like (I think I said something similar in my last judgment?) They variety gets much better afterwards (again), but it feels like you're just getting your writing muscles warmed up at the beginning.</p><p></p><p>In The Approach, I found myself re-reading the previous heading to see if I'd missed what's at Jupiter. I think you needed the second paragraph first so there's some context.</p><p></p><p>There is an access point for maintenance tubes – are there any tubes attached to it? Or is it the access point to the maintenance tubes? I think I know what you meant, but it still jarred me a bit since I'm in hyper-analysis mode.</p><p></p><p>In the Bridge, you suddenly jumped to "only if Medusa is offline" which had me skim up again to see if I missed some mention of what Medusa was before. A little "Medusa (see below)" or something would help avoid that break to check.</p><p></p><p>In Engineering power can be routed to systems from here I think. Otherwise it sounds like you can only power engineering systems. Also, another reference to Medusa... what is it?</p><p></p><p>The first big "hagurk!" I hit was "her serpentine drones attempt to petrify the PCs". I know this is system agnostic, but you gave no ways of preventing this. Does armor resist it? Can you dodge it? Do mirrors reflect it? Can I just wear really strong sunscreen? Or is killing them before they lock-on the only way to survive?</p><p></p><p>This is more a note than critique, but when you said the chime bust be played within a meter, I immediately thought of musical meters and imagined a PC DJing it into a jingle with a beat or something. "Turning off her audio pickup" makes it sound like something PCs do and made me stop for a minute to think. I'd say "even if her audio pickup is off".</p><p></p><p>All in all the adventure is pretty clean, straight forward, and the writing helps rather than hinders.</p><p></p><p><strong>Literary Pass, Comparison:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>Both use headings to help format, both have good writing, though MortalPlague's raised less questions. If I was undecided, hawkeyefan's seeming distain for carriage returns would push it over the edge. Whitespace helps. "The Apartement" heading is one long paragraph with 16 sentences in it when 3-6 is far more normal.</p><p></p><p><strong>GM Pass, Catalyst:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>So... running the adventure. Right off the bat I'm a bit leery just because the paragraphs are so dense. The headings at least break it up somewhat, but if I want to find information in a paragraph I pretty much have to re-read the whole thing which is not super helpful.</p><p></p><p>Let's break it into scenes:</p><p>Hook (mission) → Apartment (likely) → Maritime Labs (likely) → Conclusion(purge)</p><p>Optional Sidepath: Police (probably) → Cort Part (maybe) </p><p></p><p>Here's the issue with the way you phrased things: rather than having four locations (police station, apartment, labs, cort park) that the PCs can bounce between as necessary, it is written as linear paths that make it feel railroaded. The way each section starts with something like "After the PCs do X, they can do this Y" makes it seem like PC has to herd them into making the right choices to unlock the next scene. If there were four locations that were interlinked by various clues, they could do it in whatever fashion and the whole thing would seem far more open.</p><p></p><p>Question: if the PCs fail their rolls and they police won't speak with them, do they not "unlock" Cort park and never find King and fail the mission due to some bad rolls? There's no other hints to his whereabouts so do they fail or does the GM have to improvise? (Avoiding the latter is why they got your adventure in the first place).</p><p></p><p>Hm...</p><p></p><p>As the GM, I get to feed some clues, run a fight with an alien jellyfish (or three), a fight with an axe-wielding madman, and the corrupted population of a medical facility. That part, at least, sounds pretty fun.</p><p></p><p><strong>GM Pass, Mortality Index:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>Hook → Quarters | Bridge | Engineering | AI Core.</p><p>The scenes can be done in pretty much any order from what I understand. This is a strength since lets the PCs go any order.</p><p></p><p>As a GM, I basically have a spooky ship, a crazy dude with a ton of coats, and ambushes by medusa tentacles. Pretty cool.</p><p></p><p><strong>GM Pass, Comparison:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>Again, the unnecessary linearity of Catalyst hurts it somewhat. I think there's actually more "meat" in Catalyst but it's been stuffed into a straightjacket. The running fight in the spooky corridors of Mortality Index are rad too, but that's mostly all there is for challenge in the adventure.</p><p></p><p>The poor structuring of Catalyst pushes Mortality Index ahead here.</p><p></p><p><strong>Player Pass, Catalyst:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>The PCs have to figure out the right order to do things and a few failed rolls seem to fail them out of the adventure. Assuming they succeed, however, they get to bully some details out of the local cops, find clues in a creepy apartment and fight an alien monster, track a crazy dude to a park where he attacks them with an axe, ditch a body, and then fight a bunch of genetically-altered scientists then clean all the mess.</p><p></p><p>Pretty cool.</p><p></p><p><strong>Player Pass, Mortality Index:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>In Mortality Index, the PCs explore a ship full of crumbly statues, meet a crazy dude with a bunch of coats, power up some systems and all while fighting snake-tentacles. Finally, they disable a cyborg guardian with a music tone, likely after sneaking into a sealed compartment and also with a self-destruct on countdown. Pretty cool. I could see the PCs maybe getting lucky and disabling Medusa the first time the see her (critting, getting close enough to use tone, etc).</p><p></p><p>Still solid.</p><p></p><p><strong>Player Pass, Comparison:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>I actually think Catalyst seems like there's more going on. However, it has the oft-mentioned accidental structure issues. I think this comes up as a draw.</p><p></p><p><strong>Ingredients Pass, Catalyst:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>♦ High Toll – I think this is the mutated staff members? Or maybe Dr. Sayer's plans for humanity? I'm not totally sure, which is not a great thing for an adventure.</p><p>♦ Time Bomb – The bomb in the apartment that the PCs might find if they happen to search it and may use to destroy the facility. Since they may not search the apartment, may not find the bomb, and may not use it, it's pretty weak.</p><p>♦ Affluent Panhandler – King. Not sure what makes him affluent... maybe the water in his tub? His panhandling is also entirely incidental. Clever alternate meaning, but not sure how it applies. </p><p>♦ Phobic Medusa – the Dread Viragos. Cool use, especially since they cause fear. Solid.</p><p>♦ Indignant Retort – the message King sends to spark the investigation or maybe his rant. Neither seem to be key to the adventure.</p><p>♦ Dirty Secret – the Dread Viragos in the facility. </p><p>♦ Pure Sample – the sample taken from the Dread Viragos to mutate people</p><p></p><p>A note; the giant blocks of text made re-reading to find each of these ingredients really a pain. Skimming is difficult with such dense paragraphs and there may be meanings I missed just due to fatigue in having to re-read most of it for each ingredient.</p><p></p><p>A missing Affluent Panhandler's Indignant Retort triggers an investigation into the<strong> Dirty Secret</strong> of the <strong>Pure Sample</strong> taken from a <strong>Phobic Medusa</strong> causes a High Toll which might be handled with a Time Bomb.</p><p></p><p>The bolded elements are tightly woven and essential, nothing else seems critical.</p><p></p><p><strong>Ingredients Pass, Mortality Index:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>♦ High Toll – the high pitched deactivation tone. While clever, there's no reason it had to be a tone that did it. That it works even with the Medusa's audio pickup disabled weakens it more.</p><p>♦ Time Bomb – the self-destruct system on the ship. If the PCs take Medusa out early enough it may not activate, however.</p><p>♦ Affluent Panhandler – Binjin and his coats. He seems completely irrelevant, however, and I kept wondering why else he was in the scenario.</p><p>♦ Phobic Medusa – the medusa android. Key and cool, though there was no particular reason the things had to socket to her head. It could have been a phobic porcupine instead.</p><p>♦ Indignant Retort – Binjin's complaints about the PCs messing up his "good thing". Since he seems to be completely irrelevent, so is this.</p><p>♦ Dirty Secret – Delphi Corp trying to keep the glitchy guardian a secret.</p><p>♦ Pure Sample – a sample of code from the AI core.</p><p>A company hires the PCs to cover up their Dirty Secret: a Phobic Medusa that can be disabled with a High Toll so a Pure Sample of Code can be extracted – hopefully before it turns the ship into a Time Bomb. There's also a random Affluent Panhandler who gives and Indignant Retort.</p><p></p><p>That two of the ingredients seem to be completely unconnected to anything else is a big hit against the scenario in spite of the fairly strong connections between the others.</p><p></p><p><strong>Ingredients Pass, Comparison</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>Both adventures center around the Dirty Secret – Pure Sample – Phobic Medusa triad. Both have weaker uses of most of the others, some of which can be left out entirely. I think Catalsyt eeks this one out, however, due to the Phobic Medusa and the complete irrelevance of Mortality Index's Panhandler + Retort combo.</p><p></p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>Okay, so we have Mortality Index taking Literary and GM, a tie for Player, and Catalyst winning out ingredients. On the surface it looks like Mortality Index takes it and in thinking about it, I think that's how it goes. If nothing else, it took me 2-3 times more times reading through Catalyst due to the density of the paragraphs. If it took that long to read it to judge it, it probably would take a GM similar time trying to look for details when running it.</p><p></p><p>And that seals it.</p><p> </p><p>@<em><strong><u><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6785785" target="_blank">hawkeyefan</a></u></strong></em>, with a little better formatting/layout and breaking the scenes out of their arbitrarily linearity I think you probably would have taken it. The adventure seems fun, cool, and creepy, but my brain is tired from rereading it so many times to find information in it.</p><p></p><p> @<em><strong><u><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=62721" target="_blank">MortalPlague</a></u></strong></em> advances to the next round (if the other judges agree). This wasn't your strongest adventure (your stellar first round entry would have beaten it, for example) and if Catalyst had been edited and cleaned up a bit I don't know that you would have won. It's still a cool adventure that was well-written and would be fun to play, just not as good as I've come to expect from you.</p><p></p><p>Note: due to busyness this judgment was cobbled together in five chunks whenever I could steal time away. Probably not my best or most focused judgment, but hey, you got it equally.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iron Sky, post: 7508059, member: 60965"] [b]Round 2, Match 1[/b] [B]Round 2, Match 1: hawkeyefan vs MortalPlague[/B] Here's how I judge: My first pass will be literary: how well does it read? Are there typos? Is it coherent? Is the phrasing awkward, awesome, or ambivalent? Did the writing help or hurt the entry? Does the adventure tell a good story? Second pass will be as a GM: would I want to run it? Is there a good hook? Does it flow? Do I have all the information I need? Is it mostly backstory or mostly adventure? If I bought this adventure to save prep, how much prep does it require? Is the conclusion satisfying? Third pass will be as a player: would I want to play it? Are there any interesting choices? Do my actions matter? Does it have interesting things to do for different types of players? How about characters? Is the conclusion satisfying? Fourth pass will be ingredients: how well were they used? Could any be removed or altered without changing the adventure in major way? Are they tied together tightly? Any particularly clever uses? I'll finish with a conclusion that sums it all up and throws in anything else that doesn't fit into one of these categories such as logical breaks, major inconsistencies, or other elements that "break" the adventure as posted. A final note before jumping in: I try to be entirely constructive and honest with my feedback since that's been the main benefit for me doing the half-dozen Iron DMs I've competed in and my ability to write has been drastically honed by them for all types of writing, not just adventures. Empty praise or skirting problems to be "nice" is pleasant and useless. If I like it, you'll know and if I think it could use work... you'll know. Feel free to discard it if you don't agree, my main goals are to be fair, honest, and critical. Before I start, I had Catalyst at 1545 words. As such, I chopped off 45 words from the entry so it ends with "If the Agents fail, then". [B]Literary Pass, Catalyst: [/B] The first paragraph derailed me. I immediately stopped and read a review of the Delta Green RPG to give myself a reference frame for what was going on, but still had questions. First, after a fatal car accident there was DNA in "the corpse." My mind for some reason assumed there would be multiple deaths in the fatal car accident so "the corpse caused me to stop and reread a few times. Second, routine autopsies finding Deep One DNA make it sound like the local small town coroner finds it normal to find Deep One DNA. If it wasn't the local coroner, why was the Agency doing an autopsy on an HVAC contractor? Aside from that, throwing Todd King undercover as the first sentence, then jumping to a car accident then who died then back to Todd King added to the confusion. Starting with the death THEN all the stuff about King would have cleared things up immensely. When it came to local law enforcement, stating what the players "can ask about" struck me as odd. Do you not let them ask about anything else? What happens if they ask something aside from those three bits of information? Do the police not hear them or kick them out? Does the Agency give them a bulleted list of what to ask? What happens if they don't talk to the police? Later in the same (long) paragraph, it said we learn Miranda "has gone mad" which... wait, HAS gone mad, not did? If he has gone mad, he's still alive, right? So is he not actually dead? Besides, wouldn't paranoids be the leastly likely to crash? Did I mention that these paragraphs are really long and really dense? Some white space would have been really, supremely helpful to get, retain, and relocate the many specific details, events, and happenings. In "The Apartment", it says the "Agents will likely go to King's apartment" then follows with "when they go" assuming they will for sure. Do you mean "If they go"? What if they don't go or don't decide to break in? The adventure is rife with "musts", "have tos", and "needs" which make it sound like the GM is expected to constantly prompt, cajole, or railroad them into the appropriate actions. Since you start of with "the will likely go" can they still succeed at the scenario if they don't? Cort Park starts assuming the characters talk to the police. While it may be an obvious move, players don't always follow obvious paths. A suggestion for writing investigation-based adventures: tell us what is where and who knows what rather than laying explicit pathways through the information. Not only does it make in more open-ended, it allows for multiple approaches and prevents the feeling of straight-jacket that yours creates. Otherwise it seems like there's a linear meta-path the PCs have to discover to solve it rather than through their character's detective work. In the park, it says "He says he thought if he got a pure specimen, the damage could be undone. But that’s not true. There’s nothing pure anymore. Maritime has just opened his eyes, and Delta Green’s just as much a part of the problem as any of the things they hunt." As written he only said the first sentence. Since there's no quotes around the next few, are the next few sentences you as the narrator talking or is that him still ranting? The latter makes more sense, but as written I don't know. Why will they have to try to conceal the body and their involvement? Why can't they just leave the body and flee the scene? Or take the body with them? Also, as written they couldn't have ever FOUND the park without flashing credentials and talking to the police earlier so don't the police already know what they are doing? After the Literary Pass, I actually don't know how good it is as there were so many flags and questions as I read through. Hopefully the adventure will be more clear in subsequent reads. Also, due to the word count cut off, I ended up with a cliffhanger. What does happen if they fail? [B]Literary Pass, Mortality Index: [/B] The first few sentences are a bit choppy for my like (I think I said something similar in my last judgment?) They variety gets much better afterwards (again), but it feels like you're just getting your writing muscles warmed up at the beginning. In The Approach, I found myself re-reading the previous heading to see if I'd missed what's at Jupiter. I think you needed the second paragraph first so there's some context. There is an access point for maintenance tubes – are there any tubes attached to it? Or is it the access point to the maintenance tubes? I think I know what you meant, but it still jarred me a bit since I'm in hyper-analysis mode. In the Bridge, you suddenly jumped to "only if Medusa is offline" which had me skim up again to see if I missed some mention of what Medusa was before. A little "Medusa (see below)" or something would help avoid that break to check. In Engineering power can be routed to systems from here I think. Otherwise it sounds like you can only power engineering systems. Also, another reference to Medusa... what is it? The first big "hagurk!" I hit was "her serpentine drones attempt to petrify the PCs". I know this is system agnostic, but you gave no ways of preventing this. Does armor resist it? Can you dodge it? Do mirrors reflect it? Can I just wear really strong sunscreen? Or is killing them before they lock-on the only way to survive? This is more a note than critique, but when you said the chime bust be played within a meter, I immediately thought of musical meters and imagined a PC DJing it into a jingle with a beat or something. "Turning off her audio pickup" makes it sound like something PCs do and made me stop for a minute to think. I'd say "even if her audio pickup is off". All in all the adventure is pretty clean, straight forward, and the writing helps rather than hinders. [B]Literary Pass, Comparison: [/B] Both use headings to help format, both have good writing, though MortalPlague's raised less questions. If I was undecided, hawkeyefan's seeming distain for carriage returns would push it over the edge. Whitespace helps. "The Apartement" heading is one long paragraph with 16 sentences in it when 3-6 is far more normal. [B]GM Pass, Catalyst: [/B] So... running the adventure. Right off the bat I'm a bit leery just because the paragraphs are so dense. The headings at least break it up somewhat, but if I want to find information in a paragraph I pretty much have to re-read the whole thing which is not super helpful. Let's break it into scenes: Hook (mission) → Apartment (likely) → Maritime Labs (likely) → Conclusion(purge) Optional Sidepath: Police (probably) → Cort Part (maybe) Here's the issue with the way you phrased things: rather than having four locations (police station, apartment, labs, cort park) that the PCs can bounce between as necessary, it is written as linear paths that make it feel railroaded. The way each section starts with something like "After the PCs do X, they can do this Y" makes it seem like PC has to herd them into making the right choices to unlock the next scene. If there were four locations that were interlinked by various clues, they could do it in whatever fashion and the whole thing would seem far more open. Question: if the PCs fail their rolls and they police won't speak with them, do they not "unlock" Cort park and never find King and fail the mission due to some bad rolls? There's no other hints to his whereabouts so do they fail or does the GM have to improvise? (Avoiding the latter is why they got your adventure in the first place). Hm... As the GM, I get to feed some clues, run a fight with an alien jellyfish (or three), a fight with an axe-wielding madman, and the corrupted population of a medical facility. That part, at least, sounds pretty fun. [B]GM Pass, Mortality Index: [/B] Hook → Quarters | Bridge | Engineering | AI Core. The scenes can be done in pretty much any order from what I understand. This is a strength since lets the PCs go any order. As a GM, I basically have a spooky ship, a crazy dude with a ton of coats, and ambushes by medusa tentacles. Pretty cool. [B]GM Pass, Comparison: [/B] Again, the unnecessary linearity of Catalyst hurts it somewhat. I think there's actually more "meat" in Catalyst but it's been stuffed into a straightjacket. The running fight in the spooky corridors of Mortality Index are rad too, but that's mostly all there is for challenge in the adventure. The poor structuring of Catalyst pushes Mortality Index ahead here. [B]Player Pass, Catalyst: [/B] The PCs have to figure out the right order to do things and a few failed rolls seem to fail them out of the adventure. Assuming they succeed, however, they get to bully some details out of the local cops, find clues in a creepy apartment and fight an alien monster, track a crazy dude to a park where he attacks them with an axe, ditch a body, and then fight a bunch of genetically-altered scientists then clean all the mess. Pretty cool. [B]Player Pass, Mortality Index: [/B] In Mortality Index, the PCs explore a ship full of crumbly statues, meet a crazy dude with a bunch of coats, power up some systems and all while fighting snake-tentacles. Finally, they disable a cyborg guardian with a music tone, likely after sneaking into a sealed compartment and also with a self-destruct on countdown. Pretty cool. I could see the PCs maybe getting lucky and disabling Medusa the first time the see her (critting, getting close enough to use tone, etc). Still solid. [B]Player Pass, Comparison: [/B] I actually think Catalyst seems like there's more going on. However, it has the oft-mentioned accidental structure issues. I think this comes up as a draw. [B]Ingredients Pass, Catalyst: [/B] ♦ High Toll – I think this is the mutated staff members? Or maybe Dr. Sayer's plans for humanity? I'm not totally sure, which is not a great thing for an adventure. ♦ Time Bomb – The bomb in the apartment that the PCs might find if they happen to search it and may use to destroy the facility. Since they may not search the apartment, may not find the bomb, and may not use it, it's pretty weak. ♦ Affluent Panhandler – King. Not sure what makes him affluent... maybe the water in his tub? His panhandling is also entirely incidental. Clever alternate meaning, but not sure how it applies. ♦ Phobic Medusa – the Dread Viragos. Cool use, especially since they cause fear. Solid. ♦ Indignant Retort – the message King sends to spark the investigation or maybe his rant. Neither seem to be key to the adventure. ♦ Dirty Secret – the Dread Viragos in the facility. ♦ Pure Sample – the sample taken from the Dread Viragos to mutate people A note; the giant blocks of text made re-reading to find each of these ingredients really a pain. Skimming is difficult with such dense paragraphs and there may be meanings I missed just due to fatigue in having to re-read most of it for each ingredient. A missing Affluent Panhandler's Indignant Retort triggers an investigation into the[B] Dirty Secret[/B] of the [B]Pure Sample[/B] taken from a [B]Phobic Medusa[/B] causes a High Toll which might be handled with a Time Bomb. The bolded elements are tightly woven and essential, nothing else seems critical. [B]Ingredients Pass, Mortality Index: [/B] ♦ High Toll – the high pitched deactivation tone. While clever, there's no reason it had to be a tone that did it. That it works even with the Medusa's audio pickup disabled weakens it more. ♦ Time Bomb – the self-destruct system on the ship. If the PCs take Medusa out early enough it may not activate, however. ♦ Affluent Panhandler – Binjin and his coats. He seems completely irrelevant, however, and I kept wondering why else he was in the scenario. ♦ Phobic Medusa – the medusa android. Key and cool, though there was no particular reason the things had to socket to her head. It could have been a phobic porcupine instead. ♦ Indignant Retort – Binjin's complaints about the PCs messing up his "good thing". Since he seems to be completely irrelevent, so is this. ♦ Dirty Secret – Delphi Corp trying to keep the glitchy guardian a secret. ♦ Pure Sample – a sample of code from the AI core. A company hires the PCs to cover up their Dirty Secret: a Phobic Medusa that can be disabled with a High Toll so a Pure Sample of Code can be extracted – hopefully before it turns the ship into a Time Bomb. There's also a random Affluent Panhandler who gives and Indignant Retort. That two of the ingredients seem to be completely unconnected to anything else is a big hit against the scenario in spite of the fairly strong connections between the others. [B]Ingredients Pass, Comparison [/B] Both adventures center around the Dirty Secret – Pure Sample – Phobic Medusa triad. Both have weaker uses of most of the others, some of which can be left out entirely. I think Catalsyt eeks this one out, however, due to the Phobic Medusa and the complete irrelevance of Mortality Index's Panhandler + Retort combo. [B]Conclusion: [/B] Okay, so we have Mortality Index taking Literary and GM, a tie for Player, and Catalyst winning out ingredients. On the surface it looks like Mortality Index takes it and in thinking about it, I think that's how it goes. If nothing else, it took me 2-3 times more times reading through Catalyst due to the density of the paragraphs. If it took that long to read it to judge it, it probably would take a GM similar time trying to look for details when running it. And that seals it. @[I][B][U][URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6785785"]hawkeyefan[/URL][/U][/B][/I], with a little better formatting/layout and breaking the scenes out of their arbitrarily linearity I think you probably would have taken it. The adventure seems fun, cool, and creepy, but my brain is tired from rereading it so many times to find information in it. @[I][B][U][URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=62721"]MortalPlague[/URL][/U][/B][/I] advances to the next round (if the other judges agree). This wasn't your strongest adventure (your stellar first round entry would have beaten it, for example) and if Catalyst had been edited and cleaned up a bit I don't know that you would have won. It's still a cool adventure that was well-written and would be fun to play, just not as good as I've come to expect from you. Note: due to busyness this judgment was cobbled together in five chunks whenever I could steal time away. Probably not my best or most focused judgment, but hey, you got it equally. [/QUOTE]
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