Holiday Iron DM!!!! {Final Judgment Posted!}

[Quickbeam]

Congrat's quickbeam. Look forward to watching you in the final.

Thank you very much. To be honest, I expected that you'd win our round on the basis of your very clever use of the flying carpet alone. I'd have never thought of using it as a means for binding a devil...excellent!!

I feel truly fortunate to have advanced -- you did a fantastic job arwink . In my exposition, I'll respond to some of nemmerle's comments and criticisms.

Now, when do we battle Wicht?!?

 

[incognito]

Wow...Nem: You're right! This was a tough one to judge. No Question.

Arwink: whether it is a Pit Fiend or Gelugon, I don't really care. the brilliance of having a highly suspicious PC being exactly as useless as he seems, and having his MOUNT be the doppelganger - that's the part I was referring to.

Could the ingredients have been better integrated? Yes.
Could the resolution have been better? Yes.
Could the motivations of the devil have been more fleshed out? Yes.

Quickbeam: Congrats on the Win. Switching From Obad-Hai to Nerull is a big step, but other than that your adventure did have that element of cohesiveness than Nem allude's to.

I look forward to Mirthcard and Arwink in my round of IronDM in Jnuary - keep those pencils sharp in the Home game...

And Arwink - aren't I owed a critique over in the home game?

 

[Quickbeam]

Incognito:
I'd agree with you and Nem, that Arwink did a better job overall of incorporating the entire theme ingredient list than I did. I'm just glad that the "cohesiveness" and "continuity" of my story managed to earn the victory.

The primary reason that so many details (like climate, etc.) were left out of my adventure, is that I was trying to create something a bit closer to the 500 word limit. Next time, I'll be more thorough (like my entry from Round #1) and risk boring our fearless judge .

 

[arwink]

I figured I'd just post a quick exposition and reflection before I nip of for a good mornings sleep.

For starters, I'm inclined to agree 100% with Nem's judging and the comments on the round. As I discovered after the first round, cohesiveness is not my strong point in this sort of thing. My own games tend to be largely reactive affairs, where one or two stronger ideas and characters are set up to interact with the players, and everything else depends on the characters response. Works for me, but it's hell trying to convey the idea for adventures to others before hand. If you'd handed be both submissions out of the blue and said "here, run one of these" I'd have been going for Quickbeams too

My other problem is that I tend to come up with one integration of the ingredients I like, and build the rest fo them in a slip-shod method around them. In the first round, the images where the lonely treant and the clocktower in a flooded lake. This time round, I really wanted a evil, intelligent dinosaur and his unassuming owner and a flying carpet that was dangerous to use. Everything else was just an attempt to bridge those two things together, and it didn't work. To make matters worse, I started changing the idea and level of the adventure half way through, and obviously I missed a few elements.

It occured to me, while reading Nem's criticisms, that polymorph was the wrong choice there too. Book of Vile Darkness's possesion rules would have worked slightly better, as well as enabled a slightly lower class of devil get involved (and incorporating the devil as dinosaur and keeping the adventure at a level where it'd still be a challenge was a problem for me).

It's been fun, though, and I'll be poking my head into the homegame thread in the near future after sleep and the christmas season is done (so it may be a few days til I get around to offering incognito a critique, but it's coming). What's going to annoy me is that at least two of my players have read the thread, so I'm never going to be able to pull the stealth-dino on them.


Congratulations again to Quickbeam, and I'm looking forward to watching the finals (without the stress and cursing at the ingredients) .

 

[Wicht]

Congragulations Quickbeam. I have to say, I thought the Brontosaurus made the list quite a bit tougher than normal.

I can do the final round today or I can do it on Thursday, whichever is better for both my opponent and the good judge.

 

[el-remmen]

If Quickbeam is ready, I am ready.

 

[Wicht]

I will keep checking back then about once an hour. If Quickbeam speaks up you can just assume I am here.

 

[Quickbeam]

Congragulations Quickbeam. I have to say, I thought the Brontosaurus made the list quite a bit tougher than normal.

Thanks!! I silently cheered when I saw my first round ingredients, but shuddered at those posted for the semi-finals. Good luck in the upcoming battle !

Nemmerle:
I'm also ready to begin the Finals.

 

[el-remmen]

Okay . . . Since Wicht said he'd be checking in each hour - I will post the ingredients at 5 pm EST.

 

[Quickbeam]

Perfect.