Radiating Gnome said:
Rune shouldn't have to defend the style of his entry -- he won, and his entry deserved it, no question there -- but the finals did seem to stretch to the limit the range of possibilities for the competition, and in the end comparing the entries seems to be like comparing apples and oranges.
Why, thank you, but there obviously
are questions about that...the difference in our styles was great enough to make sure of that. You are correct to say that the two entries were like comparing apples and oranges. However, I do not hold with the idea that one style should be prefered over the other in the Iron DM tournament. I would like to assume that Nemmerle gives less weight to the style of the scenerio than the other elements.
It might help, in the future, to have much clearer guidelines. After all, what I knew about the competition and what was appropriate I learned as I played, and from reading the other posts.
I'm not sure that this is necessary; the guidelines seemed pretty clear to me (he was even lenient and ignored his rule about editing the posts). The tricky part, as you indicate, was trying to determine what Nemmerle considered good and bad usage of elements. Like you, I only had past examples to learn from. But that's kind of part of the game. It's subjective, nobody ever assumed it wouldn't be. We all respect Nemmerle and his
nemmerlesque critiques; therefore, we trust in his ability to judge the competition.
Is it fair that the first pair to square off had no examples to go by (unless they happened to remember the last tournament)? Well, yeah. They weren't competing against anybody else at the time; they were similarly handicapped. And, hopefully, they learned much from it (as one of those was Radiating Gnome, I think it's safe to say that he certainly did!).
It would help to have much clearer guidelines for entrants. Rune and I differed, in this case, in one very fundamental way -- he was writing the outline of an adventure -- a sort of recipe he could give to other DMs, while I focused much more closely on the details of the adventure, writing it as best I could to represend the way I would DM the set of encounters myself, rather than what someone else might do with the same core ideas. Should entrants be approaching this from the point of view of someone writing source material for other DMs or for their own game? Is this a competition for scenario writers or DMs?
You and I differ, I think, on just what an adventure should do. You refer to my scenerio as more of a recipe to be given to other DMs, while yours is a focused and detailed adventure. It is my assertion that an adventure
should be a recipe to be given to other DMs--that's the point. That being the case, you (a creative writing instructor) should know better than to write the scenerio for yourself. Know your audience and write for it!
I'm not saying a DM shouldn't keep in mind what he would do while running the scenerio, but, as this is a public forum, I kind of figured that the scenerios should be written for the public--that is to say, a group of DMs with widely varying styles of play and players! I've seen no evidence that would make me change my mind on that point.
Is one approach more appropriate than the other? Should it be clear in the competition whether entries should lay out encounters, interludes, full adventures, or campaign-length productions?
I think that judging would be made a lot easier if Nemmerle did this, but I can't say that it would necessarily be as fun to follow (or participate in!).
Should there be other guidelines as well? Should it be permissable to morph an ingredient into something that works a little better for your story? (As I did in the first round, morphing ghouls into Lacedons) Are there there guidelines about the use of different game worlds and settings? Could I, for example, have written a Call of Cthulu version of the last entry?
The ambiguity of the guidelines in this area leaves the entrants free to be daring. I think that Nemmerle is pleased when he comes accross an ingredient, for which the author shows the initiative to creatively bend the concept, if it is well applied.
I'm not trying to say that if there had been strickter categories, the results would have been different. Far from it. But clearnly there were a variety of different expectation here, and it might help in the future if they were a bit more clearly laid out.
It might make things easier on Nemmerle, but, again, I don't think that it will make the contest any better. Limiting the scope of the contest can only limit the scope of the results.
[edit]And I see that I type too slowly! Many of my points have already been made for me!
!
