Scheduling Thread for the IRON DM 2020 Tournament!

[el-remmen]

A "map" can be textual only. A place, its features, occupants, fauna, flora, weather, etc. .. can be developed and described.

 

[Gradine]

A "map" can be textual only. A place, its features, occupants, fauna, flora, weather, etc. .. can be developed and described.

Yes, I would consider this more of a setting than a map, design-wise. Possibly a "location", were it self-contained enough

 

[Neurotic]

I think my longest entry was "Bakra's Bond," back in 2009. It weighs in at 2,880 words. It had riddles and poems and everything.

I had riddles and traps and only few words to describe them.

 

[CleverNickName]

It’s not arbitrary though. It’s designed to test discipline. And creativity. But discipline first. That’s why the second and third rounds open the word-limits up.

If the purpose is to test discipline, it seems backwards to me. The higher word count should be toward the front of the competition, so that the contest gets more difficult and the writing requires more discipline the further you advance. Unless the first round is intended to be a "weed-out" round, I suppose.

This is just food for thought; don't change it on my account. I will hate a word limit of any size in a creative writing contest.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd be in for any of that. While I'd be fine with making maps and putting monsters in stat-blocks (etc), I agree that on here, it's best left as a writing thing, and would work best as summaries, just like the Iron DM adventures.

Using X Ingredients, describe an interesting NPC, Villain, Monster, Location, Encounter, Magic Item, Trap.

We could follow it up with having a volunteer take the winners and do art or proper stat-blocks.

 

[CleverNickName]

A "map" can be textual only. A place, its features, occupants, fauna, flora, weather, etc. .. can be developed and described.

Yes, I would consider this more of a setting than a map, design-wise. Possibly a "location", were it self-contained enough

A "map" can be anything: something you draw on paper or a battlemat, something you build out of minis and terrain, something you rig up in your favorite VTT program, a detailed description that you read to your players ala "theater of the mind." We are all DMs, we all use maps in some way or another...so I think people should just submit their best version of whatever they would normally use.

In GBBO parlance, it could be a "signature challenge."

My two cents, anyway.

 

[Wicht]

I'm a bit leery about going too far into the weeds on a game-mechanical front too. Marrying your system mastery with creativity is certainly a relevant skill when DMing, but it'd really restrict the sort of entries we'd get.

Personally, I would stay away from running a contest that judges game mechanics.

 

[Gradine]

Personally, I would stay away from running a contest that judges game mechanics.

Yes, as would I, now that I give it some thought. Perhaps instead of homebrewery, what we're more looking for is interesting and exciting world building. Monster design would thus be less about stat blocks and more about ecology, for instance.

 

[el-remmen]

Does it make sense to start up a general "IRON DM DISCUSSION" thread?

Maybe it is just that I am uncovering neat tidbits and patterns as I archive the early tournaments, (a third of the way through Fall 2002, my second), but I keep finding things I want to talk about and consider as we move forward. A lot of the same discussions were taking place back then but also some have been forgotten and others are no longer relevant but still interesting from a historical/culture of the game perspective. (Or maybe I am just taking this all too seriously, which is a thing I do)

Anyway, in Fall 2002 I found the first references to problems of entry length with two second round entries of 2100 and 2400 words going head to head. The writer of the shorter one even included an apology: "I apologize ahead of time for the length of my post. This is the shortest I could see myself making it without cutting something important."

Edit to add that the other entry had a note too! It was just buried in the text, but reads, "I really apologize for the length of this. The scenario got out of hand at about 2am this morning, and I just couldn't stop writing. If I lose for that, 'I regret nothink!'"

 

[Gradine]

A "map" can be anything: something you draw on paper or a battlemat, something you build out of minis and terrain, something you rig up in your favorite VTT program, a detailed description that you read to your players ala "theater of the mind." We are all DMs, we all use maps in some way or another...so I think people should just submit their best version of whatever they would normally use.

In GBBO parlance, it could be a "signature challenge."

My two cents, anyway.

This reminds me of that "Dungeon on a Page" contest that happened a few years, which theoretically could have looked like anything, and there were quite a few grid-and-text entries, but the winner was a masterfully created handdrawn image of an island. As soon as you open up the contest to text or art, I fear that it becomes difficult to not take artistic talent into account, and the playing field becomes much less level.