Anyone play Iron DM @ GenCon

Hey guys, I attended the Iron DM event @ GenCon this year and was wondering if anyone could give me their experiences (as a DM or player). For those of you who are not familiar, this event (run by Nick Logue -- possibly the most awesome event organizer I saw at the Con BtW) is kind of spin on Iron Chef.

They take 10 DMs and give them three words -- this year it was "Minotaurs, Mistaken Identity, and Magma" -- from which they have 1 hour to make an adventure. The DMs also give their players three words which are guidelines to make characters for said adventure.

I played as a player and was very excited to play but have to say that our DM was horrendously bad. Not only did he have a weak grasp of the rules, but I could've probably crapped out a better adventure.

I am really curious to hear if anyone played w/ DM Dred who won this year (and last year) -- I'm sure it must've been an awesome experience.

Hey gfunk!

Thanks for playing!

I love running Iron DM cause it creates a lot of fun out of almost nothing. Sorry you got saddled with a less than satisfactory DM though, that's no good. We are trying to institute some sort of quality control for next year...some of these DMs just don't know what they are getting into I think...Remember: "It's called IRON Dungeonmaster, not pretty okay Dungeonmaster"...says I.

Hope you come back next year, and hope you get a solid DM of the Dreads/Ancient Sensei/Deathlock caliber. I was happy with most of the DMs this year, but we had a couple who were waaaaay out of their league, but hey, maybe it will inspire them to up their mad skillz!

Hey, this is IRon DM Dreads.

I've been in both years and will do it next year, its quite fun from the DM point of view. I'd say there were three or four iron dm quality dms there this year 3 pretty good ones and probably 3 or 4 ones that should have stayed at their home campaign.

It's a difficult tournament to DM. Its also a different style of DM'n than you do at home. At home I dont have time constraints and my players/friends are very forgiving. So you tend to really lax on rules in a home environment. At the Iron DM tournament the players look for you to be the definiative rules judge and to know everything or at least have the guts to rule on something and move the game along. YOu can have exciting campaigns at home, but it doesnt translate to an Iron DM. They are looking for you to perform and bring them into the world not sitdown and roll dice after dice checking for the AC.

You also go tto have an aura of cockiness and confidence in your dm'n style. Even if i dont know something (in either home or iron dm) I"ll say something and my players treat it as gold.

There are some aspects to the tournament that I find interesting now that I've played two years in a row. Finding a compatbile group is important. This may seem wierd, but I DM better with people closer to my old age or older first edition folks (they didnt need no stinkin aofo). I look for groups with one or two women, because women are more into roleplaying than pure hack and slash which is a style I enjoy running more.

ONce I pick the group, then you got to compile everything. I think of one way to use all of the things, then I chuck those things and use the second, this is because I know that half the other DMs are going to use the monsters in the most traditional sense (which is usually my first thought) so I don't do that. Players don't come to gencon to roleplay in something they can do at home.

The most important aspect in my games is that I try to vibe with the players, get theri names learn something about them. I'm crafting an adventure for them, it should be catered to them. It's very easy to pick up ingame hints at what they want to do if you're paying attention to hte party and not burying your nose in the dmg. Though speech before the tournament is limited to introductions and the three words, during the game is prime opportunity. In both tournaments I ended up crafting a third to half the adventure after the game started from listening to how the PCs reacted to things. For instance, I was in the middle of a way too long combat this time around and i found a couple people yawning so, note to self, these people don't want long too tactical combats.

The idea behind this is really interesting. How is the best DM of the bunch decided?

I'd like to do this - but with ten minutes to prep instead of an hour. I think that for me, over-planning would make my game less fun.

There was an EN World game run a few years ago at GenCon, where the game involved round-robin DMing; everyone at the table would steer the game for 20 minutes, moving around the table. It's fascinating to watch different DM styles.

Piratecat said:

The idea behind this is really interesting. How is the best DM of the bunch decided?

I'd like to do this - but with ten minutes to prep instead of an hour. I think that for me, over-planning would make my game less fun.

There was an EN World game run a few years ago at GenCon, where the game involved round-robin DMing; everyone at the table would steer the game for 20 minutes, moving around the table. It's fascinating to watch different DM styles.

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It's a blast, even if i didnt win I'd do it just to get better.

The players determine who the best DM is. Each one votes on three subjects on a scale of one to 5. I can't remembmer them but it relates to something like fun factor, rules and how commanding the DM was.

How do they handle ties?

DonTadow said:

At the Iron DM tournament the players look for you to be the definiative rules judge and to know everything or at least have the guts to rule on something and move the game along.

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Players don't come to gencon to roleplay in something they can do at home.

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In both tournaments I ended up crafting a third to half the adventure after the game started from listening to how the PCs reacted to things.

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You're the man Dreads!! This was what I was hoping for from our potential Iron DM. Truthfully, when Nick mentioned a few examples of what 3 word combos past DMs had used to guide character creation -- "Frost Giant Brothers" or "Half Dragon Cousins" -- I got really excited. Obviously, we don't often get to play monstrous PCs at home, certainly not in an extended campaign, and these are the most fun to toy with.

Sadly our DM said something like "10th Balanced Core," which is even more restricted than our home campaign! At least there we can use all official WotC stuff. I even tried to make a Minotaur PC since it was, technically, from the Core books but was voted down by the other players. WEAK!!

Seriously though Dreads, give us a quick synopsis of your adventure this year. I'm dying to know what playing Iron DM should REALLY feel like.

By the way Nick, our group loved playing Library of Last Resort (the link in my sig goes to the relevant Story Hour -- check out the Table of contents to go straight to LoLR). We had a great number of highs and lows in this module. The Night-twist and Nightmare Beast and Roc were quickly pwn3d by our group but we had tremendous challenges facing Darl Quethos' group (our DM pulled a nice disjunction on us) and especially the dream sequence at the end. Though I have to say my psion was quickly obliterated by invocations of the worm being flat-footed in the 1st round. Eating 52d6 of negative energy damage is pretty rough! At least I learned to get some negative energy protection though!

Is this unrelated to the online IronDM tournaments that used to be held here, at the RBDM's Club and at Nutkinland?

Sounds neat, though.

DonTadow said:

It's a blast, even if i didnt win I'd do it just to get better.

The players determine who the best DM is. Each one votes on three subjects on a scale of one to 5. I can't remembmer them but it relates to something like fun factor, rules and how commanding the DM was.

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1. Creative use of the three mystery ingredients

2. Mastery of the Game

3. Player Enjoyment and Dungeonmastering Puissance


Iron DM Dreads is a force to be reckoned with in all three.

Once a Fool said:

Is this unrelated to the online IronDM tournaments that used to be held here, at the RBDM's Club and at Nutkinland?

Sounds neat, though.

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Yeah, we are completely unrelated (though the online one sounds really cool too). Ours is live at Gencon and all about the fanfare (think Iron Chef). We have a lot of bluster and (good-natured) smack talking and chessy theatrics (mostly on my part... )

Come check it out next year if you hit Gencon. It's pretty much a guarnateed good time. Even if your DM is not super (which is rare, but as gfunk attests, it can happen) the overall madness of the event is pretty wild and fun.