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[IRON DM] Spring 2004 Contest Thread FINAL JUDGMENT POSTED, CHAMPION ANNOUNCED!
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<blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 1492853" data-attributes="member: 94"><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>ROUND 1, MATCH 1: Zappo vs Spacemonkey JUDGEMENT</strong></span></p><p></p><p>It’s interesting how a genuinely random assortment of elements can come together in theme. </p><p></p><p>As I laid out before we started, an entry that uses six closely-tied and well-blended ingredients should carry the event. Some judges place other criteria ahead in their judging, but to this judge, that is the essence of the competition.</p><p></p><p>SM’s entry starts very strong, with an interesting setup, locations, and NPCs. I completely buy in to the core premise of his adventure: using the Tarantella to “smoke out” the dancing girl; as a competitor I appreciate the creative leap that tied the gnoll archer to the Tarantella through the desert setting and the dancing girl. The girl, though not an ingredient, forms the “bridge” between these two ingredients.</p><p></p><p>It is finding those bridges, those creative ties, that makes a good Iron DM competitor. </p><p></p><p>But when the bridges are weak, the whole thing can fall down—and Spacemonkey definitely has some weak bridges. Most entries do—you’ll always end up feeling like you’ve shoe-horned an ingredient in there somewhere.</p><p></p><p>The trick is to hide it from the judge.</p><p></p><p>I really like the Gnoll Archer, Garesk; he comes to life most vividly in my mind, and as I tend to craft adventures “cinematically,” looking for good “scenes,” Garesk is a fine foil. The “running battle” seems as if it could be particularly fun—a lanky, loping gnoll archer with Shot On the Run. Very cool. I wonder if the PCs will keep after him, or give up in frustration—leaving a potential recurring enemy.</p><p></p><p>The Tarantella is also well used, as I said before, as the method for finding Jareena. The crematorium is the next strongest element, a bit weak perhaps but saved by the use of the ashes as the vehicle for the dancing curse. Then we start to see problems.</p><p></p><p>I had also mentioned verisimilitude as an important factor in my judging. Why do Garesk’s arrows disappear? Sure, it makes a certain kind of sense for an assassin, but I couldn’t help feeling that they disappeared because, to make the scenario work, they simply <em>had to</em>. And even though they disappear, I just don’t buy that the villagers wouldn’t know an arrow wound when they saw one, even if it did come complete with the club-shaped marking of their dancing god.</p><p></p><p>Now we start to go around and around as you try to make the ingredients work together. You could have Garesk inflict the poison in other ways—he’s a trained assassin, after all. He could poison the well with the ashes. The blunt instrument was also poorly used-- perhaps Garesk could have used a blunt instrument to inflict the necessary wounds. Perhaps that blunt instrument could have been a beloved icon from the shrine—the dancing sticks?</p><p></p><p>Sure, you can buttress these ingredients to make them stronger, but at the risk of the judge starting to ask, “Why isn’t the “archer” aspect played up more strongly?” This is the frenzied dance that every Iron DM competitor must dance. I have to believe the entry would have stood stronger if the archery aspect was played down a bit to give better treatment to these other ingredients. I could have lived with Garesk’s archery being less important, if for no other reason than to preserve verisimilitude.</p><p></p><p>The blunt instrument was poorly used—particularly the club-shaped marking of the Dancing God. Although I hadn’t expressly mentioned it, I had told myself that one important judging criteria for me was No “Huh?” Moments. Using the blunt instrument as the dancing god’s marking was a major “Huh?” The dancing sticks, used to pound out a rhythm for the dancers, was a much better use (and in fact, if presented first, or more emphatically, would have made the mark make more sense, and I do appreciate an ingredient used multiple times in multiple ways). Used as the Beloved Icon and given a stronger, more vital role overall, it would have been a slam-dunk.</p><p></p><p>(I would like to note that it didn’t even occur to me, when placing ingredients, that the Beloved Icon and the Blunt Instrument could so easily do double duty.)</p><p></p><p>Most damningly, though, we have the Tunnel Vision. It wasn’t really mentioned in the entry at all, and while I can buy into the summary explanation, this ingredient needed to be more strongly presented in the entry itself.</p><p></p><p>All in all, Spacemonkey has what I consider to be a very creative start, with a very strong foundation for those essential creative bridges—the Gnoll Archer > the dancer > the Tarantella > the dancing god > the Crematorium/cursed ashes. The use of the Beloved Icon, Blunt Instrument, and Tunnel Vision would have to be made a lot stronger. It can be done, but they are just not there in this entry.</p><p></p><p>Now let’s see how Zappo fared.</p><p></p><p>Once again, the Gnoll Archer is the strongest ingredient, which I credit to the fact that he’s the only “actor” in the list of ingredients. No surprise there. I find spacemonkey’s assassin a more interesting character overall, though Giaia’s motivations are well-presented.</p><p></p><p>The Beloved Icon—once again used here as an object, rather than a person—pretty much falls right into the MacGuffin category. It’s a thing, doesn’t do anything, and the players have to retrieve it. </p><p></p><p>The Tarantella and the Tunnel Vision—in this case, a vision of a tunnel—are blended well together. I would have liked the Tarantella to be more strongly presented in the entry, but my mind can fill in the blanks here easy enough. Town fights off drow; do a little spider dance in celebration. Works for me. Tying that dance to bypassing the trap, as shown in the tunnel vision, is very well done, though I had a brief “Huh?” moment, here. Who left the trap in the crematorium? Presumably the drow—so why would the celebratory dance of the human victors bypass it?</p><p></p><p>Speaking of which, both the crematorium and the blunt instrument and are pretty weak. Zappo’s summary says the blunt instrument—the crazy priest’s staff—is the major clue that something’s going wrong in the crematorium. I beg to differ. If I know players, the crazy old hermit’s unsettling stare is pretty much all most PCs are going to need to draw steel. But maybe that’s just me—drawing steel on crazy old priests is a bad habit.</p><p></p><p>But, dear Lord! There’s a lot going on in Zappo’s entry. It feels like it’s all over the place, and worse yet, there’s a heavy whiff of railroading in the air. Does detect magic not detect spellcasting? I just don’t see how the Gnoll is going to win in the first place. And if he doesn’t win, what then?</p><p></p><p>These are the sort of questions I would have asked myself, and worked towards a solution. And I think there’s a solution that would eliminate a lot of my concerns with verisimilitude and railroading. If the gnoll can’t win the Icon, I could see him stealing back into the town to steal it, bludgeoning Theresa to death to get it; and most of the other elements still fall into place ok. A judge appreciates that kind of foresight that allows the PCs to at least feel like they aren’t being bum rushed through an adventure:</p><p></p><p>The gnoll is destined to win…</p><p>He’s destined to get away…</p><p>It starts raining the night he escapes…</p><p>Presumably to keep the PCs from following hot on his heels…</p><p>(Presumably so there’s time for Theresa to be bludgeoned to death AND burned…)</p><p>Yet after all that rain it’s somehow easier the next morning to track him…</p><p>Theresa’s ghost appears right on cue to deliver a major clue…</p><p>And the PCs bust in on the gnoll just in time to kill him.</p><p></p><p>This one has a lot of railroading moments, for a payoff that is, essentially, one good fight, and <em>I hate that</em>.</p><p></p><p>Why can’t the PCs win the tournament? Why can’t they foil the cheating? Why can’t they pursue the gnoll right away? These questions bug me.</p><p></p><p>What Zappo did, however, was present a lot of “options by incorporation.” He doesn’t go into great detail about the tournament/fair, and the sorts of things you can do there, but he does later come back and present options for the PCs <em>IF</em> they did certain things at the fair. That helps. </p><p></p><p>And while I’m no fan of perfumed foppery, giving a PC a chance to (God forbid) actually use Perform (dance) to evade a trap—well, that’s the sort of touch that the players of perfumed fops spend their entire adventuring careers waiting for.</p><p></p><p>Ultimately my decision doesn’t come down to any of that. There’s no balancing of ingredient vs ingredient, except to say that I think it’s obvious spacemonkey balked on the Tunnel Vision. Zappo made at least mediocre use of all the ingredients.</p><p></p><p>Yet my gut reaction goes against him. I am experiencing incredible empathy for past judges at this moment.</p><p></p><p>What’s a judge to do? If you ask two men to build you a house, do you reward the man who builds a ramshackle hut that puts a roof over your head, or do you reward the man that pours you the foundation of a beautiful palace—and stops there?</p><p></p><p>I give this round to [spoiler]ZAPPO, though I don’t do it with any fanfare. I think that spacemonkey had all the elements of the superior entry, he just didn’t tie them up as tightly as he should have, and the lack of the Tunnel Vision ingredient is too obvious an oversight to forgive. [/spoiler]</p><p></p><p>Were I a current competitor, I wouldn’t want to predict what bearing this judgement will have on future judgements.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wulf Ratbane, post: 1492853, member: 94"] [size=4][b]ROUND 1, MATCH 1: Zappo vs Spacemonkey JUDGEMENT[/b][/size] It’s interesting how a genuinely random assortment of elements can come together in theme. As I laid out before we started, an entry that uses six closely-tied and well-blended ingredients should carry the event. Some judges place other criteria ahead in their judging, but to this judge, that is the essence of the competition. SM’s entry starts very strong, with an interesting setup, locations, and NPCs. I completely buy in to the core premise of his adventure: using the Tarantella to “smoke out” the dancing girl; as a competitor I appreciate the creative leap that tied the gnoll archer to the Tarantella through the desert setting and the dancing girl. The girl, though not an ingredient, forms the “bridge” between these two ingredients. It is finding those bridges, those creative ties, that makes a good Iron DM competitor. But when the bridges are weak, the whole thing can fall down—and Spacemonkey definitely has some weak bridges. Most entries do—you’ll always end up feeling like you’ve shoe-horned an ingredient in there somewhere. The trick is to hide it from the judge. I really like the Gnoll Archer, Garesk; he comes to life most vividly in my mind, and as I tend to craft adventures “cinematically,” looking for good “scenes,” Garesk is a fine foil. The “running battle” seems as if it could be particularly fun—a lanky, loping gnoll archer with Shot On the Run. Very cool. I wonder if the PCs will keep after him, or give up in frustration—leaving a potential recurring enemy. The Tarantella is also well used, as I said before, as the method for finding Jareena. The crematorium is the next strongest element, a bit weak perhaps but saved by the use of the ashes as the vehicle for the dancing curse. Then we start to see problems. I had also mentioned verisimilitude as an important factor in my judging. Why do Garesk’s arrows disappear? Sure, it makes a certain kind of sense for an assassin, but I couldn’t help feeling that they disappeared because, to make the scenario work, they simply [I]had to[/I]. And even though they disappear, I just don’t buy that the villagers wouldn’t know an arrow wound when they saw one, even if it did come complete with the club-shaped marking of their dancing god. Now we start to go around and around as you try to make the ingredients work together. You could have Garesk inflict the poison in other ways—he’s a trained assassin, after all. He could poison the well with the ashes. The blunt instrument was also poorly used-- perhaps Garesk could have used a blunt instrument to inflict the necessary wounds. Perhaps that blunt instrument could have been a beloved icon from the shrine—the dancing sticks? Sure, you can buttress these ingredients to make them stronger, but at the risk of the judge starting to ask, “Why isn’t the “archer” aspect played up more strongly?” This is the frenzied dance that every Iron DM competitor must dance. I have to believe the entry would have stood stronger if the archery aspect was played down a bit to give better treatment to these other ingredients. I could have lived with Garesk’s archery being less important, if for no other reason than to preserve verisimilitude. The blunt instrument was poorly used—particularly the club-shaped marking of the Dancing God. Although I hadn’t expressly mentioned it, I had told myself that one important judging criteria for me was No “Huh?” Moments. Using the blunt instrument as the dancing god’s marking was a major “Huh?” The dancing sticks, used to pound out a rhythm for the dancers, was a much better use (and in fact, if presented first, or more emphatically, would have made the mark make more sense, and I do appreciate an ingredient used multiple times in multiple ways). Used as the Beloved Icon and given a stronger, more vital role overall, it would have been a slam-dunk. (I would like to note that it didn’t even occur to me, when placing ingredients, that the Beloved Icon and the Blunt Instrument could so easily do double duty.) Most damningly, though, we have the Tunnel Vision. It wasn’t really mentioned in the entry at all, and while I can buy into the summary explanation, this ingredient needed to be more strongly presented in the entry itself. All in all, Spacemonkey has what I consider to be a very creative start, with a very strong foundation for those essential creative bridges—the Gnoll Archer > the dancer > the Tarantella > the dancing god > the Crematorium/cursed ashes. The use of the Beloved Icon, Blunt Instrument, and Tunnel Vision would have to be made a lot stronger. It can be done, but they are just not there in this entry. Now let’s see how Zappo fared. Once again, the Gnoll Archer is the strongest ingredient, which I credit to the fact that he’s the only “actor” in the list of ingredients. No surprise there. I find spacemonkey’s assassin a more interesting character overall, though Giaia’s motivations are well-presented. The Beloved Icon—once again used here as an object, rather than a person—pretty much falls right into the MacGuffin category. It’s a thing, doesn’t do anything, and the players have to retrieve it. The Tarantella and the Tunnel Vision—in this case, a vision of a tunnel—are blended well together. I would have liked the Tarantella to be more strongly presented in the entry, but my mind can fill in the blanks here easy enough. Town fights off drow; do a little spider dance in celebration. Works for me. Tying that dance to bypassing the trap, as shown in the tunnel vision, is very well done, though I had a brief “Huh?” moment, here. Who left the trap in the crematorium? Presumably the drow—so why would the celebratory dance of the human victors bypass it? Speaking of which, both the crematorium and the blunt instrument and are pretty weak. Zappo’s summary says the blunt instrument—the crazy priest’s staff—is the major clue that something’s going wrong in the crematorium. I beg to differ. If I know players, the crazy old hermit’s unsettling stare is pretty much all most PCs are going to need to draw steel. But maybe that’s just me—drawing steel on crazy old priests is a bad habit. But, dear Lord! There’s a lot going on in Zappo’s entry. It feels like it’s all over the place, and worse yet, there’s a heavy whiff of railroading in the air. Does detect magic not detect spellcasting? I just don’t see how the Gnoll is going to win in the first place. And if he doesn’t win, what then? These are the sort of questions I would have asked myself, and worked towards a solution. And I think there’s a solution that would eliminate a lot of my concerns with verisimilitude and railroading. If the gnoll can’t win the Icon, I could see him stealing back into the town to steal it, bludgeoning Theresa to death to get it; and most of the other elements still fall into place ok. A judge appreciates that kind of foresight that allows the PCs to at least feel like they aren’t being bum rushed through an adventure: The gnoll is destined to win… He’s destined to get away… It starts raining the night he escapes… Presumably to keep the PCs from following hot on his heels… (Presumably so there’s time for Theresa to be bludgeoned to death AND burned…) Yet after all that rain it’s somehow easier the next morning to track him… Theresa’s ghost appears right on cue to deliver a major clue… And the PCs bust in on the gnoll just in time to kill him. This one has a lot of railroading moments, for a payoff that is, essentially, one good fight, and [I]I hate that[/I]. Why can’t the PCs win the tournament? Why can’t they foil the cheating? Why can’t they pursue the gnoll right away? These questions bug me. What Zappo did, however, was present a lot of “options by incorporation.” He doesn’t go into great detail about the tournament/fair, and the sorts of things you can do there, but he does later come back and present options for the PCs [I]IF[/I] they did certain things at the fair. That helps. And while I’m no fan of perfumed foppery, giving a PC a chance to (God forbid) actually use Perform (dance) to evade a trap—well, that’s the sort of touch that the players of perfumed fops spend their entire adventuring careers waiting for. Ultimately my decision doesn’t come down to any of that. There’s no balancing of ingredient vs ingredient, except to say that I think it’s obvious spacemonkey balked on the Tunnel Vision. Zappo made at least mediocre use of all the ingredients. Yet my gut reaction goes against him. I am experiencing incredible empathy for past judges at this moment. What’s a judge to do? If you ask two men to build you a house, do you reward the man who builds a ramshackle hut that puts a roof over your head, or do you reward the man that pours you the foundation of a beautiful palace—and stops there? I give this round to [spoiler]ZAPPO, though I don’t do it with any fanfare. I think that spacemonkey had all the elements of the superior entry, he just didn’t tie them up as tightly as he should have, and the lack of the Tunnel Vision ingredient is too obvious an oversight to forgive. [/spoiler] Were I a current competitor, I wouldn’t want to predict what bearing this judgement will have on future judgements. [/QUOTE]
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[IRON DM] Spring 2004 Contest Thread FINAL JUDGMENT POSTED, CHAMPION ANNOUNCED!
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