IRON DM 2023 Tournament Thread

[FitzTheRuke]

Congratulations, @FitzTheRuke. Always an honour to be beaten by the best.

Thanks! I thought you had me for a moment there!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

With the fourth ingredient, Celebrated Bard, Murder commits the classic blunder of relegating the ingredient to background text.

I killed the bard in honor of @Snarf Zagyg! Look what you did to me, Snarf!

Thanks for the judgement. Fair criticisms, all of them!

I was having so much fun writing the Flavor that I ran out of space for important things like Motive and Mystery.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Grandmaster, a 5E encounter​

Ingredients:

• Hypocritical Vegetarian
• Permanent Ink
• Unlikely Mutiny
• Living Chessboard
• Cheerful Melody
• Divine Triceratops

Kornoj’s Glade

The sound of a cheerful melody lures the adventurers into a quiet glade in the Feywild. (Those hearing the melody must make a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or be irresistibly drawn into the glade.)

There, they find Kornoj.

He’s an arrogant bespectacled triceratops wearing a three-piece suit complete with a pocket watch. He sits on the far side of a turf chessboard, awaiting a new opponent, listening to satyr musicians while he waits. He believes himself to be superior to meat-eaters, haughtily announcing that he would never consume flesh, when he inevitably brings the subject up. Proving his superiority by defeating strangers in chess is what he lives for.

Kornoj is either a god or an archfey, depending on whom you ask. (“I am Grandmaster Kornoj,” is all he’ll say about his nature.)

With a gesture from Kornoj, impenetrable hedges (stats equal to the wall created by a wall of thorns cast using a 9th level spell slot) surround the glade, trapping those who cannot fly, burrow or teleport away. He promises to release visitors after they defeat him in a game.

The chess pieces are all made of sentient living topiary. They will move as directed by Kornoj or his opponent, according to the standard rules of chess.

As pieces are removed from the board during play, Kornoj devours them, ignoring their screams of terror. At the end of the game, he transforms losing players into replacement chess pieces. At any given time, he has more than 16 prisoners standing by, already transformed into chess pieces, waiting to replace any pieces Kornoj devours. The chess pieces cannot leave the glade while transformed into living topiary.

Nearby is Komizo. A mournful dire mole dressed as a clerk, Komizo keeps detailed notes on all of the hundreds of games Kornoj has played so far in a log book. He also has a chess rulebook on hand, which he has written rules clarifications when questions have arisen in the past. Anything written in either book with his phoenix quill pen cannot be erased. Kornoj and all in attendance are magically compelled to follow the rulings.

Defeating Kornoj

Kornoj will not initiate combat, preferring to best opponents with his wits.

Kornoj is a CR 29 foe with AC 26, 600 hit points and a +18 Proficiency bonus. He makes five melee attacks per round — two gores with his horns, two slams with his fists and a tail slap — doing 59 damage (6d10+26) each.*

Defeating Kornoj at chess requires succeeding on a DC 30 Intelligence (chess set) check. (Players who would prefer to actually play chess can do so: The DM should use a computer or electronic chess game set at the hardest possible level to represent Kornoj.)

Kornoj can also be defeated in at least two more ways:

• The chess pieces are terrified of being devoured by Kornoj and could be inspired to rebel against him with a DC 15 Charisma (Persuasion) check. The satyr musicians and Komizo are also prisoners and could likely be inspired to rebel, although both are frightened of Kornoj, who keeps them in line through the threat of violence. (DC 20 and DC 25 Charisma (Persuasion) checks, respectively.)
• New rules can be written in Komizo’s rulebook that prevent Kornoj from playing or otherwise make him quit without winning.

If he’s thwarted in some fashion, Kornoj leaps to his feet in outrage, grips the edge of the turf chessboard and starts to flip it in anger. As he does so, Kornoj disappears in a flash, the hedges disappears and all of the topiary chess pieces are restored to their previous forms.

* Stats taken from the Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes.

 

[humble minion]

The Carnivore's Crown

Hypocritical Vegetarian
Permanent Ink
Unlikely Mutiny
Living Chessboard
Cheerful Melody
Divine Triceratops


A superhero sandbox murder mystery.

Hook: An attack/accident shoves PCs from Earth through a dimensional rift

PCs find themselves in a prehistoric jungle, with dinosaurs etc roaming. Home is visible briefly through the rift, before flicker-blurring, then being replaced by an alternate reality, then another, then another in ever-accelerating succession. Scientifically/magically knowledgeable PCs can deduce the portal is unstable because of fundamental undermining of the foundations of this reality. PCs can't return home via the rift until this has been stabilised.

PCs who can track dimensional perturbations, or who can somehow see over the forest, will spot on the horizon the only civilisation in this reality. A stupendous mountaintop palace, marble and gold - Karkostim, the Hall of the Dinosaur Gods.

How it works: Every dinosaur(/etc) has a representative God-Beast in Karkostim. Karkostim is built around a vast checkered gameboard. Periodically a bell tolls and the gods make their way to the board (living chessboard) to take a game turn. Gods move according to complex divine gamerules, and god-beasts ending up on the same square fight to the death. Losers are reborn outside the game and relegated to watch future turns from the sidelines. At the end of each day, the one god left on the board is crowned the King of Beasts. It's always God-T-Rex. The king is the king, the great cycle is eternal. God-Tortoise can explain this to PCs - he's always one of the first losers and is philosophical about it. Tortoises don't really want to rule anyway.

What happened: Saturnalia is a trickster entity who once saw Les Miserables on Broadway and now travels the multiverse inciting uprisings against tyrants. God-Triceratops (divine triceratops) had long been loudly critical of God-T-Rex's bloody dominion, and listened to Saturnalia receptively. He secretly murdered God-T-Rex outside the gameboard (unlikely mutiny), and ate the body (hypocritical vegetarian) to avoid detection and to absorb God-T-Rex's power. This is permanent, but God-T-Rex's death also results in death to all T-Rexes in this reality. The unnatural fall of the forever God-King of Beasts outside the Great Gameboard at the hands/horns of its eternal prey is what's destabilised dimensional reality.

Saturnalia also tempted the currently-minor gods of mammals and birds, talking of a time when dinosaurs disappear and they will rule.

Clues:

• rodents and birds are whistling/squeaking 'can you hear the people sing?' (cheerful melody), which culturally-aware PCs will notice and probably find suspicious (and, as time goes on, creepy)
• a couple of game-turns in, God-Triceratops discovers that usurping God-T-Rex's mantle means he's growing carnivore fangs. To conceal this, he'll start to head-down mumble when speaking, and then murder and eat God-Ammonite so he can black out the incriminating fangs with its divinely concealing permanent ink
• in the world outside, PCs notice a lack of T-Rexes, but also overgrazing etc due to herbivore overpopulation. Once God-Ammonite dies, the seas change colour, choked with algae. Other gods will start to fade/die as their embodied creatures suffer and dwindle.
• God-Rodent is a red herring - he believes PCs are emissaries from a mammal-ruled reality and updates them on Saturnalia's activities (he doesn't know about God-Triceratops). He views PCs as allies, and will be resentful if they don't agree. He's not particularly dangerous (as gods go - PCs will still find him tough), but his rodent children see and learn everything

Complications

• Saturnalia fights any attempt to disrupt his revolution.
• PCs joining the Game are deemed to be species representatives. If they die off the gameboard, so does their species.
• killing any God-Beast outside the gameboard makes the dimensional/ecological instability worse

Goals:

• defeat Saturnalia
• a God-T-Rex must return to the gameboard, and win the day's game
• convince the revolutionaries it's a bad idea (possibly by revealing how Les Miserables ended!), otherwise it'll all happen again.

Possible outcomes:

• solve the murder, then convince God-Triceratops to BECOME a new God-T-Rex to fill the metaphysical void. He can do this by fully and willingly embracing his newly-acquired predator side, and leaving his herbivore self behind. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. God-Beasts can't leave Karkostim, so PCs must find/capture and relocate a particularly mighty mundane triceratops to Karkostim to become the new God-Triceratops.
• find the divine clock that rings out the game turns and wind it back to when God-T-Rex is still alive, then prevent his murder
• somehow find/summon/become a T-Rex to defeat God-Triceratops on the gameboard for title of King of the Beasts

 

[humble minion]

Both entries completed over 12 hours ahead of the deadline. Yikes, is that a first?

Edif: and of course I immediately noticed that i forgot to bold unlikely mutiny. Oh well, too late now

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Edif: and of course I immediately noticed that i forgot to bold unlikely mutiny. Oh well, too late now

Have no fear. An unlikely mutiny is always bold!

Just ask Captain Bligh.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And here I was worried we'd have too much conceptual overlap!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is my first time doing this, so forgive the dumb question, but where do the prompts come from? The Tome of Adventure Design or a similar random generator?

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Thanks folks for your entries -- I plan to get my judgment out tomorrow.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

This is my first time doing this, so forgive the dumb question, but where to the prompts come from? The Tome of Adventure Design or a similar random generator?

I'll answer this, but let's take this over to the scheduling thread -- we like to keep this thread pretty tight and free of chatter. I'll meet you over there.
Edit: Here's the question in the other thread