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Iron dm summer champion announced!
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<blockquote data-quote="seasong" data-source="post: 998612" data-attributes="member: 5137"><p><strong>Exposition</strong></p><p></p><p>It all started with leach. Sure, I didn't use the ingredient much, but when I saw the word, I realized that Rune was planning something tricksy. So I carefully checked and thought about the definitions of each word, possibly TOO carefully - I definitely gambled badly on certain aspects of wuxia and fairy-tale land, for example.</p><p></p><p>I also hurt myself by not editting. My creative flow is <em>readable</em>, certainly, but there are a lot of mistakes in it that would have been corrected on a second pass (not giving the judge rope on heavy-handed cats, editting out jotted notes on stats, previewing the title, including the definition of fairy-tale land I was using, etc.). And it would have at least given me a chance to fix the lack of connection Oddir had to being a cat, and maybe giving him some heavy-handed dialogue that made sense for the character, instead of just saying "make him heavy-handed". It might have also been about 500-800 words shorter, just glancing over the stuff I would have cut right off the bat.</p><p></p><p>In short, this was a good <em>start</em> on an IronDM entry. I wish I'd finished.</p><p></p><p>Now for how it came about. Like I said, my entry was pretty close to my stream of consciousness, so I'll just comment on the entry linearly. You'll probably have a bit less respect for me when you see my patented "Make It Up As You Go Along" method of brainstorming, but what the heck.</p><p></p><p>It all started with the word 'leach'. When I went through the word list, I kept coming back to that one, and then I hit eyes. At that point, I knew that a bunch of eyes in a pumice cup would be in the scenario at some point. I think, with some work, I could have made it a <em>vital</em> part of the scenario, instead of just a logical consequence, but I'm still happy it was in there. But then I needed to know what a stone cup of eyeballs, and more specifically, what eyeball juice would be useful for.</p><p></p><p>At this point, I was still just looking over the ingredients, tossing them back to my Muse while she twirled a strand of hair around her finger and smiled mysteriously.</p><p></p><p>So I scanned back up the ingredients, and stared at the horn of Valhalla. Like I said, I'd forgotten (or never noticed) the magic item, so I was wondering what in the heck to do with it, when the eyes finally hit.</p><p></p><p>I started typing. I wanted the eyes to be some medical secret or some such, so I started with Thorsteinn, a Norse physician skilled in his craft. Eir only taught women, and only women were allowed to be healers ("real healers" in D&D), so that made Thorsteinn something of an abomination. Right there, I had my <strong>unfriendly physician</strong>, so I kept on that tack (writing Eir in), and the <strong>gifted apprentice</strong> sprang up.</p><p></p><p>If anyone's read <em>The Anvil of Ice</em>, it's a Norse-like novel about a gifted apprentice who throws down his master. In that novel, he's the Good Guy and the master is the Bad Guy, but the basic dynamic of the former apprentice and master is ages old, from Orpheus to Darth Vader. Anyway, I thought of it, and leapt onto the archetypal bandwagon. Ing was born.</p><p></p><p>Her name, incidentally, is a real but uncommon name - I wanted something vaguely exotic, long enough to be impressive (even though the name itself is humble in meaning), and it had to shorten (as the Norse often did) to Ing the Merciless <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />.</p><p></p><p>(er, humble in meaning: It is literally "Ingjalder's daughter", with Ingjalder itself having little in the way of strong background to it)</p><p></p><p>At this point, I realized I needed to explain where Thorsteinn learned his craft. I decided on Loki, for no other reason than he's the Norse whipping boy, and the only Asir who's not afraid to make MORE Asir if it will get in their teeth.</p><p></p><p>(This sometimes backfired on him, as with Sleippnir, but other than that, Loki has contributed more monsters and enemy gods to Ragnarok than all the other gods and giants combined)</p><p></p><p>Then I did something that I seem to do a lot in real life: I made up four Fairy Tale Powers ("able to drink the ocean", "transform men into animals", etc.), with the intent to figure out what to do with 'em later. Seeing the divine was inspired by the cup of eyeballs, although I wasn't sure why it would be useful to her yet; transforming men into animals was kind of a random link to other Powerful Women like Circe and Medusa who had the power to change (and thereby destroy) men (although I was thinking I might use it to get in a cat or spider monkey); and the mistletoe razor was inspired by Loki's presence (Loki tricked the blind god Hodur into using a mistletoe arrow to slay Baldur). The other one was originally "hear any person's name she listens for, where ever it may be whispered", to tie into the whole "see the divine" thing, and you can see that I kept that <em>fear</em> in Thorsteinn's mind, but ultimately gave it up in favor of my better idea <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />.</p><p></p><p>(This was also another aspect of Fairy Tale Land which, had I taken time to edit, would have been pointed out more explicitly)</p><p></p><p>(And what I was thinking, but never wrote in, was that all high-level spells should be this much of a pain in the ass to develop <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />)</p><p></p><p>(One more thing <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />... Four? Not THREE powers? Norse mythos was often square rather than triangular, and although they had threes in their myths, twos and fours were also very common. I don't clearly remember which myth I was thinking of at the time, but I was trying for a Four Corners of the World kind of power, or the Four Elements, with sight as air, transformation as fire, hearing as water, and mistletoe for earth)</p><p></p><p>I then went ahead and transformed Thorsteinn into Oddir, and, with yet MORE links to fairy tales that I should have explicitly mentioned, made it a transformed curse, and had him escape with the Book of Secrets locked behind his sealed lips. <em>Sigh</em>.</p><p></p><p>Then I had to quickly hash out what the secrets were, so I started writing them up, and I suddenly realized that Ing didn't have to be <em>merely</em> ambitious enough to steal her master's secrets. What if she wanted the <em>whole enchilada</em>?</p><p></p><p>So I started thinking about how she could become a god. Gjöll came up (the River in Hel) as a possibility, so I googled for Gjöll... and turned up the horn of Valhalla I'd been worrying about. Heroes who drank dragon's blood and Gjöll and Hel and divine sight all kind of mixed for a moment, and I got giddy. This was also where I realized how I could pull Asgard into the mix (thinking it was perfect fairy-tale land <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />).</p><p></p><p>I skimmed back through the text I'd already written, added in Gjöll where appropriate, updated her plans, and realized what use the mistletoe had for an ambitious, powerful, willful woman who felt she'd been mistreated by the gods. Oh yes, I was giddy.</p><p></p><p>As you can see in the text, when I finished the Secrets, I wrote what was next on my mind: Ing's Plan. Then I wrote up hooks, with the intent that they would need to meet Oddir, wrote up Oddir, made a reference to a Hiding In Plain Sight section I intended to write up (but never did), and scattered various locations, events, etc. about.</p><p></p><p>Then I reorganized the whole batch, went through to make sure that there were plenty of options for the PCs (as soon as I knew she wanted to be a goddess, I knew I wanted to have a long-term, strategic war of attrition waged between her and the PCs), commented on things Oddir would "realize" just in time...</p><p></p><p>Added a cast list when I realized I'd put together numerous NPCs on the fly, and that folks might get confused with all the Oddirs and Thornsteinns and Ings and Hrists and Eirs...</p><p></p><p>Wrote up a quick overview, told myself I'd finish editting in the morning, and went to bed.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="seasong, post: 998612, member: 5137"] [b]Exposition[/b] It all started with leach. Sure, I didn't use the ingredient much, but when I saw the word, I realized that Rune was planning something tricksy. So I carefully checked and thought about the definitions of each word, possibly TOO carefully - I definitely gambled badly on certain aspects of wuxia and fairy-tale land, for example. I also hurt myself by not editting. My creative flow is [i]readable[/i], certainly, but there are a lot of mistakes in it that would have been corrected on a second pass (not giving the judge rope on heavy-handed cats, editting out jotted notes on stats, previewing the title, including the definition of fairy-tale land I was using, etc.). And it would have at least given me a chance to fix the lack of connection Oddir had to being a cat, and maybe giving him some heavy-handed dialogue that made sense for the character, instead of just saying "make him heavy-handed". It might have also been about 500-800 words shorter, just glancing over the stuff I would have cut right off the bat. In short, this was a good [i]start[/i] on an IronDM entry. I wish I'd finished. Now for how it came about. Like I said, my entry was pretty close to my stream of consciousness, so I'll just comment on the entry linearly. You'll probably have a bit less respect for me when you see my patented "Make It Up As You Go Along" method of brainstorming, but what the heck. It all started with the word 'leach'. When I went through the word list, I kept coming back to that one, and then I hit eyes. At that point, I knew that a bunch of eyes in a pumice cup would be in the scenario at some point. I think, with some work, I could have made it a [i]vital[/i] part of the scenario, instead of just a logical consequence, but I'm still happy it was in there. But then I needed to know what a stone cup of eyeballs, and more specifically, what eyeball juice would be useful for. At this point, I was still just looking over the ingredients, tossing them back to my Muse while she twirled a strand of hair around her finger and smiled mysteriously. So I scanned back up the ingredients, and stared at the horn of Valhalla. Like I said, I'd forgotten (or never noticed) the magic item, so I was wondering what in the heck to do with it, when the eyes finally hit. I started typing. I wanted the eyes to be some medical secret or some such, so I started with Thorsteinn, a Norse physician skilled in his craft. Eir only taught women, and only women were allowed to be healers ("real healers" in D&D), so that made Thorsteinn something of an abomination. Right there, I had my [b]unfriendly physician[/b], so I kept on that tack (writing Eir in), and the [b]gifted apprentice[/b] sprang up. If anyone's read [i]The Anvil of Ice[/i], it's a Norse-like novel about a gifted apprentice who throws down his master. In that novel, he's the Good Guy and the master is the Bad Guy, but the basic dynamic of the former apprentice and master is ages old, from Orpheus to Darth Vader. Anyway, I thought of it, and leapt onto the archetypal bandwagon. Ing was born. Her name, incidentally, is a real but uncommon name - I wanted something vaguely exotic, long enough to be impressive (even though the name itself is humble in meaning), and it had to shorten (as the Norse often did) to Ing the Merciless :). (er, humble in meaning: It is literally "Ingjalder's daughter", with Ingjalder itself having little in the way of strong background to it) At this point, I realized I needed to explain where Thorsteinn learned his craft. I decided on Loki, for no other reason than he's the Norse whipping boy, and the only Asir who's not afraid to make MORE Asir if it will get in their teeth. (This sometimes backfired on him, as with Sleippnir, but other than that, Loki has contributed more monsters and enemy gods to Ragnarok than all the other gods and giants combined) Then I did something that I seem to do a lot in real life: I made up four Fairy Tale Powers ("able to drink the ocean", "transform men into animals", etc.), with the intent to figure out what to do with 'em later. Seeing the divine was inspired by the cup of eyeballs, although I wasn't sure why it would be useful to her yet; transforming men into animals was kind of a random link to other Powerful Women like Circe and Medusa who had the power to change (and thereby destroy) men (although I was thinking I might use it to get in a cat or spider monkey); and the mistletoe razor was inspired by Loki's presence (Loki tricked the blind god Hodur into using a mistletoe arrow to slay Baldur). The other one was originally "hear any person's name she listens for, where ever it may be whispered", to tie into the whole "see the divine" thing, and you can see that I kept that [i]fear[/i] in Thorsteinn's mind, but ultimately gave it up in favor of my better idea :). (This was also another aspect of Fairy Tale Land which, had I taken time to edit, would have been pointed out more explicitly) (And what I was thinking, but never wrote in, was that all high-level spells should be this much of a pain in the ass to develop ;)) (One more thing ;)... Four? Not THREE powers? Norse mythos was often square rather than triangular, and although they had threes in their myths, twos and fours were also very common. I don't clearly remember which myth I was thinking of at the time, but I was trying for a Four Corners of the World kind of power, or the Four Elements, with sight as air, transformation as fire, hearing as water, and mistletoe for earth) I then went ahead and transformed Thorsteinn into Oddir, and, with yet MORE links to fairy tales that I should have explicitly mentioned, made it a transformed curse, and had him escape with the Book of Secrets locked behind his sealed lips. [i]Sigh[/i]. Then I had to quickly hash out what the secrets were, so I started writing them up, and I suddenly realized that Ing didn't have to be [i]merely[/i] ambitious enough to steal her master's secrets. What if she wanted the [i]whole enchilada[/i]? So I started thinking about how she could become a god. Gjöll came up (the River in Hel) as a possibility, so I googled for Gjöll... and turned up the horn of Valhalla I'd been worrying about. Heroes who drank dragon's blood and Gjöll and Hel and divine sight all kind of mixed for a moment, and I got giddy. This was also where I realized how I could pull Asgard into the mix (thinking it was perfect fairy-tale land ;)). I skimmed back through the text I'd already written, added in Gjöll where appropriate, updated her plans, and realized what use the mistletoe had for an ambitious, powerful, willful woman who felt she'd been mistreated by the gods. Oh yes, I was giddy. As you can see in the text, when I finished the Secrets, I wrote what was next on my mind: Ing's Plan. Then I wrote up hooks, with the intent that they would need to meet Oddir, wrote up Oddir, made a reference to a Hiding In Plain Sight section I intended to write up (but never did), and scattered various locations, events, etc. about. Then I reorganized the whole batch, went through to make sure that there were plenty of options for the PCs (as soon as I knew she wanted to be a goddess, I knew I wanted to have a long-term, strategic war of attrition waged between her and the PCs), commented on things Oddir would "realize" just in time... Added a cast list when I realized I'd put together numerous NPCs on the fly, and that folks might get confused with all the Oddirs and Thornsteinns and Ings and Hrists and Eirs... Wrote up a quick overview, told myself I'd finish editting in the morning, and went to bed. [/QUOTE]
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