phoamslinger
Explorer
I can step in as a replacement judge for Nifft if he needs some time away.
Iron DM 2012 -- R2 complete, Finals in Progress
Nifft
Penguin Herder
I did, now I'm mostly back. But please volunteer next time!
Currently digesting Waylander the Slayer vs Lwaxy. I'll post a judgment tomorrow evening.
Cheers, -- N
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
All -
Okay, just so everyone knows what's going on, we're going to move forward with Phoamslinger filling in for Wicht. Now that Nifft is back, we should be able to get Round 2 Match 2 judging done in the next few days, and then have the finals over the weekend.
Thank you all for your patience.
-rg
Okay, just so everyone knows what's going on, we're going to move forward with Phoamslinger filling in for Wicht. Now that Nifft is back, we should be able to get Round 2 Match 2 judging done in the next few days, and then have the finals over the weekend.
Thank you all for your patience.
-rg
Nifft
Penguin Herder
I am unable to give useful and insightful explanations for the numbers in my judgment tonight. I'll post a (hopefully) eloquent write-up tomorrow evening. In the mean time, in the spirit of music and the arts, a song to inspire us all:
"If music be the food of love... that was microwave pizza", -- N
A bard is a guy who can't cast fly
Also known as a busker
Always talkin' about how he buffs
And just sits on his broke class
So (no)
I don't want your role-play (no)
I don't want to show you mine (no)
I don't want to journey nowhere (no)
I don't want none of your rhymes (no)
I don't want no bards
A bard is a guy who can't get in my party
Hangin' off the damsel side
Of the Paladin's ride
Tryin' to inspire me
I don't want no bards
A bard is a guy who can't get in my party
Hangin' off the damsel side
Of the Paladin's ride
Tryin' to inspire me
Also known as a busker
Always talkin' about how he buffs
And just sits on his broke class
So (no)
I don't want your role-play (no)
I don't want to show you mine (no)
I don't want to journey nowhere (no)
I don't want none of your rhymes (no)
I don't want no bards
A bard is a guy who can't get in my party
Hangin' off the damsel side
Of the Paladin's ride
Tryin' to inspire me
I don't want no bards
A bard is a guy who can't get in my party
Hangin' off the damsel side
Of the Paladin's ride
Tryin' to inspire me
"If music be the food of love... that was microwave pizza", -- N
phoamslinger
Explorer
generally speaking, I think most birds are ridiculous looking running around on the ground on their little toothpick legs.
but I do like penguins...
(Standing in for Wicht)
Judgement of Master Piece (MP) vs The Curious Case of the Suspended Clergyman (CC)
before I get rolling too far on this, I generally assume that all of the ingredients are there in one shape or another. the criteria I use to judge are mostly based on three things;
1- sort of a catch-all, how creative was it, did I like it or not, etc
2- Ingredient usage and substitutability, and
3- Connections
I don’t really use a number scale or anything like that and my judgements can tend to be a bit subjective sometimes, but I will try and explain if and why I don’t like something, should it arise. personally, I could care less about length as long as you’re not rewriting War & Peace. I would prefer to have something complete in hand, even if your word count goes over by 30-50%.
[sblock]in MP, Lwaxy used all of the ingredients very creatively and built an interesting adventure that would be fun to run or play in any type of setting. the story included some very out of the box type thinking, but I was a little put off by some of the intuitive leaps that had me scrolling back up to re-read a few details. for instance, the assumption that the party would figure the Robe to be part of a trash composition of the artist. there were also a few minor grammatical errors in sentence construction that threw me off here and there (mom taught English: it rubbed off). I would have liked to have seen more information on the Last Dragon cult, history, geography, or whatever. the adventure was set in a modern-ish type setting (with a coffee shop) and yet the information on the cult seemed to be mainstream because information on it seemed to be common knowledge (all available at the local library/archive, including location of the Dragon cave – perhaps it’s a tourist spot?). when I think of cults they are usually secretive sorts of affairs. this dichotomy broke the rhythm of the story as I was working my way through it. Lwaxy, I would offer the suggestion that prior to writing you might try an outline or something. put everything down on paper or notecards or something to that effect. and then check what you've got for consistency. it might have exposed a few potential plot holes.
now we come to the fun (funner?) parts of judging, and what I consider to be the real meat of an Iron DM entry: usage and substitutions, and finally connections.
Artist's Studio: I liked using a piece of artwork to hide the Robe in plain sight. but there is the missing detail of how Kadin obtained such an Artifact (note, capital “A”, because that’s what the Robe has been made into in this entry, usually artifacts are not found in the local dumpster…). if he builds his art with refuse and discards, then how he came into possession of the Robe is a really big question mark, unanswered.
what if, instead, the Robe were worked into a piece of art at a local museum? could the ingredient of the Artist’s Studio be tossed out without impacting the story much? so this ingredient is not all that strong.
The Final Dragon: in this case, the cult of. but this is a generic fantasy setting, no? so there are no dragons elsewhere then? or just not mountain dragons? I found this particular ingredient as a stand-alone to be a little bit weak. I can see the appeal of the cultists in resurrecting a dragon via their ceremony, but any sort of dragon cult would have the same interests, whether it was the last dragon or any dragon.
Battered Manuscript this ingredient is very weak. this is the sort of thing where substitution comes into how I judge things. yes the manuscript is there and yes it has some information, but Hanar could be running with a tome, or a scroll or a compact disk and it wouldn’t change anything in the story. and so what if it’s described as battered? Hanar could be running with a water-logged scroll case and there would be no impact. now if you’d had Hanar fending off his attackers with what looked to be a phone directory, that would have carried a lot better.
Suspended Clergyman: I liked this one. the rationale for Hanar’s suspension will make for entertaining DMing and will give the players the opportunity to try and figure out which paranoid delusion is the real plot hook.
Checks and Balances: this one I also liked. Lwaxy, you didn’t just assume the standard meaning of the term and made Hanar in charge of balancing the books for the temple. but why is D’Hal bouncing checks? and while I liked the “checks” and “balances” idea, a stronger usage would have been to both do it this way AND to put in a reason for the PCs to block the ceremony, to maintain a balance that was the reason that the last Dragon died so long ago.
Robe of Bones: ok, it’s a piece of apparel, meant to be worn, made out of bones. I typed that last sentence and had to fight the urge to put a question mark at the end. unless we’re talking komodo dragons, they (dragons) are usually described as being kinda big. usually. so a robe made from dragon bones is a bit hard for me to visualize. a robe of dragon pelt, or scales, or almost anything else would be a lot easier to work with. not the best ingredient.
lastly, how do all these things connect to each other? I’ll grant that it’s a very entertaining adventure idea, but as mentioned above, even though they are great flavor pieces in the story, four of the six ingredients are really not necessary. as I see it, there’s a strong connection between the Clergyman and the Checks and Balances. there's another strong connection between the Robe and the Dragon. but the Studio and Manuscript are pretty much stand-alones, and could be dropped or changed pretty easily. really there aren’t a lot of other connections, for example Hanar has no connection to the Robe or to the Last Dragon cult or to the Artist Studio. the story seems to focus more on D’Hal than it does Hanar. now if Hanar had been the unknowing “champion”, (perhaps amnesiac?) where would the story have gone?
so now let’s take a look at the Slayer’s entry and then I’ll sum up.
I find it interesting that both entries are set (or can be set) in a modern setting. I’m fairly old school about my D&D, but I liked reading both of them.
in CC, Waylander the Slayer has built a fairly cohesive adventure. PC and NPC motivations are clear and easy to understand, and therefore should be a breeze to GM. even with a much smaller word count, the plot holes that jumped out at me from Lwaxy’s MP were conspicuously absent from CC. the telling of the story was some tight writing. anyone interested in trying an Iron DM someday, should pay attention to this entry. it covers its bases concisely.
but a couple of minor points Waylander; remnant only has one E in it, and a couple other minor grammatical things. for instance, while I like the “Final” being used to define the dragon, are we talking the final note or the finale? just saying “final” was unclear as to which of the two very different interpretations you might have meant, and which wouldn’t have taken that much to be clearer on. as I was reading, it broke my train of thought (again, mom's fault).
so I suppose I’ll let that balance against some of the loose formatting / storyline of Lwaxy’s entry.
on to the fun stuff.
Artist's Studio: this is the room that Arian Bold lives in. he is the high priest of a temple devoted to music, so it naturally follows that he is a talented artist. and it is the investigation of this room that holds the clues that initiate the adventure. the room makes sense in the context of the adventure and thus becomes a necessary part of the entry.
The Final Dragon: this one… yes. it makes sense and would be hard to switch out without losing the context of the entire adventure. again a necessary ingredient.
Battered Manuscript: when I read this one, I laughed. not a ROFL, or a ha ha ha, that’s funny, but a ho! ho! ho! of a “damned, that’s clever. wish I’d thought of it.” the manuscript MUST be battered, for it to be ingested. that's even better than using it as a weapon. kudos.
Suspended Clergyman: when I was looking over the ingredient list, this was actually the image that first came to mind. but the question of WHY is very much there. I can see the similarity between the two high priests and the idea that the power of the ancient language chanting is holding Arian up in the air. I can even see a possible “ahah!” coming when the PC’s find the hanged dark priest. but even though I recognize the story telling elements, they are only story telling elements. Thalidan hanging there is the usage that best covers this ingredient, giving the story some more history and explaining why he is where he is.
Checks and Balances: the more traditional definition, but again the entire adventure is backed by the idea of upnotes/downnotes, lights/darks, goods/evils in opposition. so while not terribly original, still another good ingredient.
Robe of Bones: this is the only weak one. it’s a killing magic item. the cook could have been found asphyxiated in his quarters and a section of his carpet missing and it wouldn’t have changed the story all that much.
regarding connections, the Suspended Clergyman lives in an Artist Studio where a trusted servant fed him a Battered Manuscript causing him to summon the Dragon with a whole light/dark Balance plot running through the whole story. the Robe is not much more than a mcguffin and really doesn’t connect to the other ingredients all that well. now if the robe had somehow been crafted from the suspended clergyman Thalidan’s bones, it might have been a stretch storywise, but it would have pulled the last ingredient into the story better.
***
when I’m reading an entry, a big part of my decision really comes down to two questions that are constantly running through my head. first, WHY does this ingredient HAVE TO BE this ingredient? if I were to change it to something else, what would be the impact to the rest of the adventure? and second, WHAT are the connections between the ingredients? are they just items strung together or do they all interconnect?
reading back over what I’ve written, I find I’m much more critical of Lwaxy’s entry than I am of Waylander’s. I liked both entries, and found some solid out-of-the-box thinking in parts of Master Piece. but really, the Curious Case did a better job on both of those two questions, strongly enough to outweigh other potential judging factors.
so I’m going to say that Waylander the Slayer wins this round (at least from my point of view).
by the way Waylander, you mentioned in your following post, the time crunch in writing. just as an fyi, the first Iron DM I participated in (and won) we had three hours from the time of the ingredients being posted to put everything together and post.
fun times…[/sblock]
but I do like penguins...
(Standing in for Wicht)
Judgement of Master Piece (MP) vs The Curious Case of the Suspended Clergyman (CC)
before I get rolling too far on this, I generally assume that all of the ingredients are there in one shape or another. the criteria I use to judge are mostly based on three things;
1- sort of a catch-all, how creative was it, did I like it or not, etc
2- Ingredient usage and substitutability, and
3- Connections
I don’t really use a number scale or anything like that and my judgements can tend to be a bit subjective sometimes, but I will try and explain if and why I don’t like something, should it arise. personally, I could care less about length as long as you’re not rewriting War & Peace. I would prefer to have something complete in hand, even if your word count goes over by 30-50%.
[sblock]in MP, Lwaxy used all of the ingredients very creatively and built an interesting adventure that would be fun to run or play in any type of setting. the story included some very out of the box type thinking, but I was a little put off by some of the intuitive leaps that had me scrolling back up to re-read a few details. for instance, the assumption that the party would figure the Robe to be part of a trash composition of the artist. there were also a few minor grammatical errors in sentence construction that threw me off here and there (mom taught English: it rubbed off). I would have liked to have seen more information on the Last Dragon cult, history, geography, or whatever. the adventure was set in a modern-ish type setting (with a coffee shop) and yet the information on the cult seemed to be mainstream because information on it seemed to be common knowledge (all available at the local library/archive, including location of the Dragon cave – perhaps it’s a tourist spot?). when I think of cults they are usually secretive sorts of affairs. this dichotomy broke the rhythm of the story as I was working my way through it. Lwaxy, I would offer the suggestion that prior to writing you might try an outline or something. put everything down on paper or notecards or something to that effect. and then check what you've got for consistency. it might have exposed a few potential plot holes.
now we come to the fun (funner?) parts of judging, and what I consider to be the real meat of an Iron DM entry: usage and substitutions, and finally connections.
Artist's Studio: I liked using a piece of artwork to hide the Robe in plain sight. but there is the missing detail of how Kadin obtained such an Artifact (note, capital “A”, because that’s what the Robe has been made into in this entry, usually artifacts are not found in the local dumpster…). if he builds his art with refuse and discards, then how he came into possession of the Robe is a really big question mark, unanswered.
what if, instead, the Robe were worked into a piece of art at a local museum? could the ingredient of the Artist’s Studio be tossed out without impacting the story much? so this ingredient is not all that strong.
The Final Dragon: in this case, the cult of. but this is a generic fantasy setting, no? so there are no dragons elsewhere then? or just not mountain dragons? I found this particular ingredient as a stand-alone to be a little bit weak. I can see the appeal of the cultists in resurrecting a dragon via their ceremony, but any sort of dragon cult would have the same interests, whether it was the last dragon or any dragon.
Battered Manuscript this ingredient is very weak. this is the sort of thing where substitution comes into how I judge things. yes the manuscript is there and yes it has some information, but Hanar could be running with a tome, or a scroll or a compact disk and it wouldn’t change anything in the story. and so what if it’s described as battered? Hanar could be running with a water-logged scroll case and there would be no impact. now if you’d had Hanar fending off his attackers with what looked to be a phone directory, that would have carried a lot better.
Suspended Clergyman: I liked this one. the rationale for Hanar’s suspension will make for entertaining DMing and will give the players the opportunity to try and figure out which paranoid delusion is the real plot hook.
Checks and Balances: this one I also liked. Lwaxy, you didn’t just assume the standard meaning of the term and made Hanar in charge of balancing the books for the temple. but why is D’Hal bouncing checks? and while I liked the “checks” and “balances” idea, a stronger usage would have been to both do it this way AND to put in a reason for the PCs to block the ceremony, to maintain a balance that was the reason that the last Dragon died so long ago.
Robe of Bones: ok, it’s a piece of apparel, meant to be worn, made out of bones. I typed that last sentence and had to fight the urge to put a question mark at the end. unless we’re talking komodo dragons, they (dragons) are usually described as being kinda big. usually. so a robe made from dragon bones is a bit hard for me to visualize. a robe of dragon pelt, or scales, or almost anything else would be a lot easier to work with. not the best ingredient.
lastly, how do all these things connect to each other? I’ll grant that it’s a very entertaining adventure idea, but as mentioned above, even though they are great flavor pieces in the story, four of the six ingredients are really not necessary. as I see it, there’s a strong connection between the Clergyman and the Checks and Balances. there's another strong connection between the Robe and the Dragon. but the Studio and Manuscript are pretty much stand-alones, and could be dropped or changed pretty easily. really there aren’t a lot of other connections, for example Hanar has no connection to the Robe or to the Last Dragon cult or to the Artist Studio. the story seems to focus more on D’Hal than it does Hanar. now if Hanar had been the unknowing “champion”, (perhaps amnesiac?) where would the story have gone?
so now let’s take a look at the Slayer’s entry and then I’ll sum up.
I find it interesting that both entries are set (or can be set) in a modern setting. I’m fairly old school about my D&D, but I liked reading both of them.
in CC, Waylander the Slayer has built a fairly cohesive adventure. PC and NPC motivations are clear and easy to understand, and therefore should be a breeze to GM. even with a much smaller word count, the plot holes that jumped out at me from Lwaxy’s MP were conspicuously absent from CC. the telling of the story was some tight writing. anyone interested in trying an Iron DM someday, should pay attention to this entry. it covers its bases concisely.
but a couple of minor points Waylander; remnant only has one E in it, and a couple other minor grammatical things. for instance, while I like the “Final” being used to define the dragon, are we talking the final note or the finale? just saying “final” was unclear as to which of the two very different interpretations you might have meant, and which wouldn’t have taken that much to be clearer on. as I was reading, it broke my train of thought (again, mom's fault).
so I suppose I’ll let that balance against some of the loose formatting / storyline of Lwaxy’s entry.
on to the fun stuff.
Artist's Studio: this is the room that Arian Bold lives in. he is the high priest of a temple devoted to music, so it naturally follows that he is a talented artist. and it is the investigation of this room that holds the clues that initiate the adventure. the room makes sense in the context of the adventure and thus becomes a necessary part of the entry.
The Final Dragon: this one… yes. it makes sense and would be hard to switch out without losing the context of the entire adventure. again a necessary ingredient.
Battered Manuscript: when I read this one, I laughed. not a ROFL, or a ha ha ha, that’s funny, but a ho! ho! ho! of a “damned, that’s clever. wish I’d thought of it.” the manuscript MUST be battered, for it to be ingested. that's even better than using it as a weapon. kudos.
Suspended Clergyman: when I was looking over the ingredient list, this was actually the image that first came to mind. but the question of WHY is very much there. I can see the similarity between the two high priests and the idea that the power of the ancient language chanting is holding Arian up in the air. I can even see a possible “ahah!” coming when the PC’s find the hanged dark priest. but even though I recognize the story telling elements, they are only story telling elements. Thalidan hanging there is the usage that best covers this ingredient, giving the story some more history and explaining why he is where he is.
Checks and Balances: the more traditional definition, but again the entire adventure is backed by the idea of upnotes/downnotes, lights/darks, goods/evils in opposition. so while not terribly original, still another good ingredient.
Robe of Bones: this is the only weak one. it’s a killing magic item. the cook could have been found asphyxiated in his quarters and a section of his carpet missing and it wouldn’t have changed the story all that much.
regarding connections, the Suspended Clergyman lives in an Artist Studio where a trusted servant fed him a Battered Manuscript causing him to summon the Dragon with a whole light/dark Balance plot running through the whole story. the Robe is not much more than a mcguffin and really doesn’t connect to the other ingredients all that well. now if the robe had somehow been crafted from the suspended clergyman Thalidan’s bones, it might have been a stretch storywise, but it would have pulled the last ingredient into the story better.
***
when I’m reading an entry, a big part of my decision really comes down to two questions that are constantly running through my head. first, WHY does this ingredient HAVE TO BE this ingredient? if I were to change it to something else, what would be the impact to the rest of the adventure? and second, WHAT are the connections between the ingredients? are they just items strung together or do they all interconnect?
reading back over what I’ve written, I find I’m much more critical of Lwaxy’s entry than I am of Waylander’s. I liked both entries, and found some solid out-of-the-box thinking in parts of Master Piece. but really, the Curious Case did a better job on both of those two questions, strongly enough to outweigh other potential judging factors.
so I’m going to say that Waylander the Slayer wins this round (at least from my point of view).
by the way Waylander, you mentioned in your following post, the time crunch in writing. just as an fyi, the first Iron DM I participated in (and won) we had three hours from the time of the ingredients being posted to put everything together and post.
fun times…[/sblock]
Lwaxy
Cute but dangerous
[MENTION=2342]phoamslinger[/MENTION]
[sblock]Because you overlooked some obvious details
I'll see how quickly the players in my SR game figure it out this week.
That's the point. How else could it expand into a dragon again? It's called magic
[/sblock]
[sblock]Because you overlooked some obvious details
Simple, because the power figure behind it all had donated it to the guy to hide it from the assassin. It's rather clear from the bounced checks which had the address info for the artist's studio. Why else would the assassin know where to look for it? So, no, it's not unanswered, it's not a plot hole either. How would the one behind it all manage to get something in a museum and then have the assassin get it out again? It had to be a place with an artist who doesn't ask questions and where D'Hal could easily get to. I do not think a museum would have made any sense.
I'll see how quickly the players in my SR game figure it out this week.
That's the point. How else could it expand into a dragon again? It's called magic
[/sblock]
phoamslinger
Explorer
Lwaxy
[sblock]you're right. I did miss that. and the reason I missed it is because there's almost no information on the power broker...
By now it should dawn on them that the Robe of Bones is part of an artwork. Kadin has no remembrance where it might be, as he forgets about what parts are in where to be able to "see the pure art." If his memory is helped a bit, he can remember who dropped the robe off – the same person giving orders to D'Hal.
this is the only mention of "someone giving orders to D'Hal". who is this mysterious power broker? because there is no other mention of him anywhere in your adventure, other than that last sentence. and now I have even more unanswered questions about your entry. for instance the thugs chasing Hanar, are they cultist from D'Hal or are they the minions of this power broker?
another question; sure this is a major clue, but how in the heck does Kadin know who is giving orders to D'Hal?
Kadin is a courier. he either knows he's a courier or he doesn't. if he knows, then why is the boss sending an assassin at him? if he's an unknowing courier, how does he know who D'Hal's boss is? you're playing it both ways and it doesn't make sense.
another, if the bounced checks have the studio's address on them, that means that it's Kadin who is writing them. they're his checks. why is the artist writing checks to Hanar's temple? as a method to give the information to an assassin to come and kill him (Kadin)???
or if as you say, this is a method of giving target info to an assassin (which doesn't make a lot of sense), wouldn't a phone call be easier and leave less of a paper trail?
ok, the robe is magic. then it should adjust to the wearer. why is it heavy? some more description text on the item would have helped, because your mcguffin (in the nature of mcguffins) is unclear.
and if being a dragon is so cool, why give it to D'Hal? wouldn't the power broker want it for himself? some info on possible behind the scene motivations might make this clearer.
yes, there are a lot of holes there. I think your entry would have been stronger if maybe you had started with a background of what was going on behind the scenes or maybe a synopsis, not so much how the adventure plays out, but why some of the things that happen are happening.
Lwaxy, I actually found your entry more interesting in a lot of ways than I did Waylander's. your's had more of an air of a spy thriller with lots of things going on behind the scenes and whatnot. but as a GM, I should know and need to know what those 'behind the scenes' things are, and you didn't do a good a job of making them clear to me.
there is a well known problem that a lot of new authors have, of assuming that the symphonies you hear when you are humming to yourself are heard by the people around you. when I write something up, I go back and re-read it about a dozen times (including this post), because what I think I'm writing and what actually ends up in text, don't always mesh 100% of the time. there are dozens of little details missing from your entry. and quite probably, they are all safely there in your head. when you run this adventure for your group, you will probably bring all those extra little details out and it will be a fine game. but if you were to print out your adventure and hand it to the player on the left and let him run it for your group, it wouldn't go nearly as well. go back and read your entry from the perspective of it being someone else's writing, not yours, and you might see what I'm trying to explain. another method that works is to read it aloud, because hearing it is different from just seeing it.
but even more importantly, Iron DM is about the ingredients, not the best story. I felt that Waylander used the ingredients better. for example, his manuscript had to be battered. what the dragon became finally became the final dragon. etc.
therefore he won.
therefore I stand by my judgement.[/sblock]
[sblock]you're right. I did miss that. and the reason I missed it is because there's almost no information on the power broker...
By now it should dawn on them that the Robe of Bones is part of an artwork. Kadin has no remembrance where it might be, as he forgets about what parts are in where to be able to "see the pure art." If his memory is helped a bit, he can remember who dropped the robe off – the same person giving orders to D'Hal.
this is the only mention of "someone giving orders to D'Hal". who is this mysterious power broker? because there is no other mention of him anywhere in your adventure, other than that last sentence. and now I have even more unanswered questions about your entry. for instance the thugs chasing Hanar, are they cultist from D'Hal or are they the minions of this power broker?
another question; sure this is a major clue, but how in the heck does Kadin know who is giving orders to D'Hal?
Kadin is a courier. he either knows he's a courier or he doesn't. if he knows, then why is the boss sending an assassin at him? if he's an unknowing courier, how does he know who D'Hal's boss is? you're playing it both ways and it doesn't make sense.
another, if the bounced checks have the studio's address on them, that means that it's Kadin who is writing them. they're his checks. why is the artist writing checks to Hanar's temple? as a method to give the information to an assassin to come and kill him (Kadin)???
or if as you say, this is a method of giving target info to an assassin (which doesn't make a lot of sense), wouldn't a phone call be easier and leave less of a paper trail?
ok, the robe is magic. then it should adjust to the wearer. why is it heavy? some more description text on the item would have helped, because your mcguffin (in the nature of mcguffins) is unclear.
and if being a dragon is so cool, why give it to D'Hal? wouldn't the power broker want it for himself? some info on possible behind the scene motivations might make this clearer.
yes, there are a lot of holes there. I think your entry would have been stronger if maybe you had started with a background of what was going on behind the scenes or maybe a synopsis, not so much how the adventure plays out, but why some of the things that happen are happening.
Lwaxy, I actually found your entry more interesting in a lot of ways than I did Waylander's. your's had more of an air of a spy thriller with lots of things going on behind the scenes and whatnot. but as a GM, I should know and need to know what those 'behind the scenes' things are, and you didn't do a good a job of making them clear to me.
there is a well known problem that a lot of new authors have, of assuming that the symphonies you hear when you are humming to yourself are heard by the people around you. when I write something up, I go back and re-read it about a dozen times (including this post), because what I think I'm writing and what actually ends up in text, don't always mesh 100% of the time. there are dozens of little details missing from your entry. and quite probably, they are all safely there in your head. when you run this adventure for your group, you will probably bring all those extra little details out and it will be a fine game. but if you were to print out your adventure and hand it to the player on the left and let him run it for your group, it wouldn't go nearly as well. go back and read your entry from the perspective of it being someone else's writing, not yours, and you might see what I'm trying to explain. another method that works is to read it aloud, because hearing it is different from just seeing it.
but even more importantly, Iron DM is about the ingredients, not the best story. I felt that Waylander used the ingredients better. for example, his manuscript had to be battered. what the dragon became finally became the final dragon. etc.
therefore he won.
therefore I stand by my judgement.[/sblock]
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Waylander the Slayer
Explorer
I will likely be gone through the 6th. So if you don't hear from me, that is the reason. Have a happy 4th of July everyone.
Lwaxy
Cute but dangerous
Of course not, that's up to the GM to decide. After all, the adventure should fit in anywhere, and the GM knows who of the villains would fit best.
From the cultists.
He doesn't. He has no idea what is going on at all.
They have numbers and letters adding to them forming the address, they do not come from the studio. Kadin is just an artist with a different agenda.
It's part of the cultist's test, and making it too technology based prevents it to be used in a fantasy setting.
It does, but condensed dragon bones won't lose that much weight. We were told not to bother with stat blocks so I didn't go into detail.
Not everyone wants to be a dragon, I guess, but the main point is that everyone believes just the cult's best man can use it anyway.
With a higher word count, probably. Considering most GM's round my area prefer less background so they can fill it themselves I guess I'm also used to not going into detail.
There are three ways to present base adventures as I look at it. Either you throw a lot of background and some hooks at the GM for him to make his own idea work, or you give an adventure and let the GM fill in the background for their world (which is what I usually do. And then of course you could do a full adventure, which is not what we were supposed to do.
Our SR GM had no issues with it save from the indeed present thug confusion. I'm playing the NPCs currently, as my PC died a few sessions ago. We aren't done yet (just found the robe) but up to now it ran rather smoothly, although the church almost got burned down.
This group, of course, is used to barebone adventures as we have a super strange SR setting (not in any of the standard places).
Oh that is not my issue. Winning or not is never something I care much about, it's the creativity that is the fun. But I need to point out when obvious clues get overlooked. We'll run his adventure next btw, as it ties wonderfully into the backstory of my soon-to-be new PC.
Or the GM lets me keep Hanar.
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