Wicht
Hero
[MENTION=60965]Iron Sky[/MENTION] - reading your assessment of Imhotepthewise's adventure - I think that you might be very interested in Victoriana
Iron DM 2016 (The Complete Game Thread!)
- Thread starter Wicht
- Start date
Imhotepthewise
Explorer
My self-esteem in shreads, I slink off to my cave to await next year's game.
Congratulations to [MENTION=67]Rune[/MENTION], and an excellent primer on how Dungeon World should work.
Thank you to the judges for their time and meaty critiques.
Thanks to all the other participants, as well.
Congratulations to [MENTION=67]Rune[/MENTION], and an excellent primer on how Dungeon World should work.
Thank you to the judges for their time and meaty critiques.
Thanks to all the other participants, as well.
LongGoneWriter
Explorer
You and me both, brother. We'll get 'em next year and have a showdown at the finals.
Rune
Once A Fool
You've done yourself proud, I think. I honestly didn't expect to win this round, even before I read your entry. After reading it, I was less confident. I'll go into more depth later. For now, though...good show!
Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
The system and setting both look sweet. Thanks, Wicht!
Rune
Once A Fool
Just curious if [MENTION=53286]Lwaxy[/MENTION] still intends to post a judgement for R2M2. I've got commentary and analysis on my entry written before judgements, as well as some after the first two. I was going to incorporate commentary based on all three, but if that third one is not happening, I can just go ahead and post.
I mean, I get why it might feel like a waste of Lwaxy's time, but I don't personally think any thoughtful and constructive critique of an entry is ever wasteful. A lot of the learning that IRON DM fosters is through direct experience, sure, but a lot comes from that outside perspective.
Of course, I understand Lwaxy has been sick and busy, as well. I'm not trying to be pushy, or anything. I'm just saying that I (and probably also [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION], if not others) am still interested in what our third judge has to say.
I mean, I get why it might feel like a waste of Lwaxy's time, but I don't personally think any thoughtful and constructive critique of an entry is ever wasteful. A lot of the learning that IRON DM fosters is through direct experience, sure, but a lot comes from that outside perspective.
Of course, I understand Lwaxy has been sick and busy, as well. I'm not trying to be pushy, or anything. I'm just saying that I (and probably also [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION], if not others) am still interested in what our third judge has to say.
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
I'm just going to post some brief comments anyway and lwaxy will just have to skip this part below until he gets a chance to post his judgement:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ingredients, ingredients, ingredients. Imagination, fun, and cohesiveness are all vital to a good submission, but ingredients are where all judges are going to focus. I always go into drafting a submission by picking one or two ingredients to focus upon and trying to find ways to incorporate the rest in a cohesive way. If I have an ingredient that doesn't seem to fit, I will try to rethink of how the ingredient can be interpreted. If that doesn't work, I might rewrite the entire initial outline. When the outline is done, I start thinking of how integral each ingredient is to the submission, and whether removing an ingredient would cause the submission to have fall completely apart or be greatly diminished. Basically, is each ingredient vital. It's only when the outline is completed in this way that I start writing.
I do have a tendency to write longer passages then I need, and have limited combat encounters in my submissions. Rune, who I am going up against next, likes to use bullet statements with crisp and simple phrases at times to save room. As long as this is not misused, I find this a pretty good practice as he uses up less words in some areas, so he can put more adventure in others.
So some quick thoughts about my previous entry. A couple of the judges noted that they were not fans of the Underdark and the drow, and that my entry was not as imaginative as my opponent, and I completely agree. I grew up with BECMI and Mystara, and am unfamiliar with how the drow work past what I have heard from Drizz't fans and what I learned playing Baldur's Gate on the PC. Hence some of my errors. However, I was focused more on trying to make a cohesive and interdependent list of ingredients in Get Ye to the Underdark, and the Lazy Eye appeared to be an ingredient that would be tough to make integral in an entry... unless it was a main character. Hence making him into a beholder that hated expending effort in moving around or casting multiple teleport spells when one would do. That done, I remembered male drow had few rights, so I made the next character the Heir of Nothing and the fourth male in a minor noble family. Now, if I had known that males in drow society have no rights, I would have actually made him female, which would have made the ingredient better, and made for two female lovers. The silk wallpaper screamed spiderweb covered walls to me, so I threw in some driders setting up a wall trap and now was firmly set in making the Underdark an important element. The star-crossed book became something vital to two lovers since star-crossed seemed like a Romeo and Juliet reference to me, hence the second drow character.
The gutted machine was always going to be a teleport device, but at first I had it being something that keyed itself to the users and teleported them to a set location. When the drow gutted it, it keyed to them and kept teleporting the drow's forces and the beholder's forces somewhere random. They would briefly skirmish, then separate for a time before being randomly teleported again. This would have made for a more imaginative and epic entry as the heroes would have to find a means to anticipate the next jump in order to stop the chaos these two were causing along the surface, but I wasn't able to incorporate things like the silk wallpaper easily if I went that route, so unfortunately I had to go with a straighter piece for the benefit of ingredient cohesion. Again, ingredients also need to trump any good idea faeries that come up. Except in the final round or rounds, where you better show up with your A game in everything. Hence why you are given more time to write.
Glue is sticky, so the useless glue was connected to the drider webbing. It was useless because something strong kept getting loose. That something strong ended up being the beholder's vehicle, a headless hunter becoming a headless iron golem. I stole the iron golem idea wholesale from an official 2nd edition kill-all-players adventure module where the beholders traveled in such suits and attacked the party both physically and with their rays in the same rounds. Nasty stuff. That adventure module was designed to kill off entire parties in imaginative ways.
My main point is this. You might have the greatest idea for an adventure ever, but if you can't make the ingredients work with it, you are going to lose. I had tons of great adventure ideas in my head prior to ingredients being posted, and every time I tried to shoe horn the ingredients to go with my great adventure idea I lost. Every time. So keep those ideas by writing them down somewhere so you don't lose them, but make the ingredients the priority.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ingredients, ingredients, ingredients. Imagination, fun, and cohesiveness are all vital to a good submission, but ingredients are where all judges are going to focus. I always go into drafting a submission by picking one or two ingredients to focus upon and trying to find ways to incorporate the rest in a cohesive way. If I have an ingredient that doesn't seem to fit, I will try to rethink of how the ingredient can be interpreted. If that doesn't work, I might rewrite the entire initial outline. When the outline is done, I start thinking of how integral each ingredient is to the submission, and whether removing an ingredient would cause the submission to have fall completely apart or be greatly diminished. Basically, is each ingredient vital. It's only when the outline is completed in this way that I start writing.
I do have a tendency to write longer passages then I need, and have limited combat encounters in my submissions. Rune, who I am going up against next, likes to use bullet statements with crisp and simple phrases at times to save room. As long as this is not misused, I find this a pretty good practice as he uses up less words in some areas, so he can put more adventure in others.
So some quick thoughts about my previous entry. A couple of the judges noted that they were not fans of the Underdark and the drow, and that my entry was not as imaginative as my opponent, and I completely agree. I grew up with BECMI and Mystara, and am unfamiliar with how the drow work past what I have heard from Drizz't fans and what I learned playing Baldur's Gate on the PC. Hence some of my errors. However, I was focused more on trying to make a cohesive and interdependent list of ingredients in Get Ye to the Underdark, and the Lazy Eye appeared to be an ingredient that would be tough to make integral in an entry... unless it was a main character. Hence making him into a beholder that hated expending effort in moving around or casting multiple teleport spells when one would do. That done, I remembered male drow had few rights, so I made the next character the Heir of Nothing and the fourth male in a minor noble family. Now, if I had known that males in drow society have no rights, I would have actually made him female, which would have made the ingredient better, and made for two female lovers. The silk wallpaper screamed spiderweb covered walls to me, so I threw in some driders setting up a wall trap and now was firmly set in making the Underdark an important element. The star-crossed book became something vital to two lovers since star-crossed seemed like a Romeo and Juliet reference to me, hence the second drow character.
The gutted machine was always going to be a teleport device, but at first I had it being something that keyed itself to the users and teleported them to a set location. When the drow gutted it, it keyed to them and kept teleporting the drow's forces and the beholder's forces somewhere random. They would briefly skirmish, then separate for a time before being randomly teleported again. This would have made for a more imaginative and epic entry as the heroes would have to find a means to anticipate the next jump in order to stop the chaos these two were causing along the surface, but I wasn't able to incorporate things like the silk wallpaper easily if I went that route, so unfortunately I had to go with a straighter piece for the benefit of ingredient cohesion. Again, ingredients also need to trump any good idea faeries that come up. Except in the final round or rounds, where you better show up with your A game in everything. Hence why you are given more time to write.
Glue is sticky, so the useless glue was connected to the drider webbing. It was useless because something strong kept getting loose. That something strong ended up being the beholder's vehicle, a headless hunter becoming a headless iron golem. I stole the iron golem idea wholesale from an official 2nd edition kill-all-players adventure module where the beholders traveled in such suits and attacked the party both physically and with their rays in the same rounds. Nasty stuff. That adventure module was designed to kill off entire parties in imaginative ways.
My main point is this. You might have the greatest idea for an adventure ever, but if you can't make the ingredients work with it, you are going to lose. I had tons of great adventure ideas in my head prior to ingredients being posted, and every time I tried to shoe horn the ingredients to go with my great adventure idea I lost. Every time. So keep those ideas by writing them down somewhere so you don't lose them, but make the ingredients the priority.
Rune
Once A Fool
I guess I had better go ahead and post this before getting into my next match. If I seem particularly critical of my entry, there's s reason for that. I really was not expecting to win the match when I posted it. Less so after I read [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION]'s (though the first section below was written before I did).
[sblock=Self Analysis and Commentary Written Before Judgements]I had forgotten what it feels like to run out of time. No time for a typo-check. No time to rework the formatting. No time to check multiple word-counts (had to rely on the one built into the writing app). No time to clean up transitions. No time to clarify system expectations and jargon.
Why? Because I spent too much time working those ingredients together into an adventure that seemed fun without glaringly obvious holes, that's why. I hope it was worth it.
I blame "Triple Agent." From the moment knew I didn't want to do a spy thriller, I knew I was going to have to make this ingredient the lynchpin of the adventure. If I could create a character that represented the interests of three competing entities, I could have an interesting character that could sometimes be ally and sometimes adversary. That seemed interesting to me. But it required the invention of three other NPCs, whom PCs would never meet, and, yet, needed to be not buried in backstory. Lots of time and space consumed. (The PCs also kind of become Triple Agents in that their quest for Death has three goals, but this is simply a thematic echo that I didn't want to call out in the piece.)
Originally, the "Blood-Red Star" was intended to be a link to the zombies in a "Night of the Comet" kind of way, but it didn't really fit in well with the rest of the ingredients, so I tightened things up by also connecting it to the souls and their puzzle box. But that required inventing a cosmology for what was not initially intended to be a setting. Oh, and also, I had to explain why a plane was bleeding. More time consumed. More space used up.
"Demonic Coin", "Zombie Merchant", "Balancing Act" and "Puzzle Box" all fit together pretty well in my head. "Demonic Coin" actually played a larger role earlier on, but I had to scale it back, both for space and for the sake of the adventure.
My sticking point was "Horseless Carriage." I knew I wanted the visual of a carriage pulled by zombies (and, hopefully, a combat with said zombies). But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the carriage needed to be horseless, or a carriage at all. I went out to a birthday dinner (not mine). And then it hit me. Lethal blood raining down from the star would give the PCs reason to stay protected from it while also making it impossible to use horses to pull it. Cool. Sure, the PCs likely will balk at the terms and may figure out some other way to traverse the Bloodmire, but that's okay.
So, now I had all these pieces of the puzzle. Time to write. But why Dungeon World? Dungeon World is surprisingly jargon-heavy for such a fiction-driven system, so assuming familiarity would be risky. I would have to clarify some of it in the adventure. (Alas, no time.)
Dungeon World formats its adventures (and campaigns) differently than traditional adventures. Its system strongly encourages sandbox-style play with a heavy emphasis on improvisation. As such, the format is flexible, but also very lean. A more traditional presentation would require some fleshing out, as well as transitions between concepts. Frankly, I had no idea if I could do it in 1500 words. I still don't, because, unfortunately, I never did get a chance to fix those transitions. Oh well. There's a pretty good adventure in there. Hope it reads well enough to make sense.
So, given those challenges, why Dungeon World? Is it because Dungeon World is a good fit for my approach to running games? Is it because DW is my favorite edition of D&D?
It's because I was hooked on my hook. In most settings, the hook would be absurdly specific and rare. In Dungeon World, bargaining with Death isn't even that uncommon (there is a DW Magic item with lore that tells of a woman who died and met Death so many times they fell in love). Obviously, this would also need clarification--if I only had the time. But what can I say? The ingredients pointed me toward an extra-planar crisis with hijacked souls and the bargain with Death just grabbed me and wouldn't let go.
TL;DR: This may be a case where I actually spent too much effort getting the ingredients to mesh well. I took a lot of very big gambles in this piece and I completely ran out of time to offset or minimize their risks. [/sblock]
[sblock=After reading Iron Sky's Judgement![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
First, [MENTION=60965]Iron Sky[/MENTION], hook me up with that streamlined Front format! I also find the default to be sometimes cumbersome.
On to my entry: In my head, it was completely obvious that the blood raining down actually was the blood of Death's Kingdom spurting through the star-portal from a series of wounds that bled constantly because they weren't allowed to heal. My use of the word ichor (which, admittedly, has more than one possible application) was merely flavor intended to break the monotony of reading "blood" a bajillion times. Ideally, this is one of the many things that would have been cleaned up, if I had only had the time.
I don't think I can claim the star-as-hole-in-the-sky concept as uniquely mine. I'm pretty sure I saw something similar somewhere in the past, but I haven't the faintest recollection where. It might even have appeared in some earlier IRON DM entry. Either way, the concept has just sort of floated around in the back of my head for years. Until this entry, when I absolutely needed to incorporate the fundamental premise to make things work. I think I built on and adapted the concept sufficiently that I was comfortable including it without feeling completely derivative, but, as the lesson of Wicht's ghost-dryad/ship's-mast IRON DM entry teaches us, opinions vary about such things (short version for those who weren't around in 2001= the Judge felt the scenario was too similar to an idea presented in an AD&D core book. The resulting decision against the entry was...largely unpopular, let's say).
Next, the Balancing Act: While it's true that the triumvirate has a balancing act going on, the intended PC-relevant one (that is, the one they definitely would have to find out about to achieve their goals) would be the one(s) they perform to release the wards on Sagacity. All other appearances were merely echoes of a theme (which is why I generally did not try to call them out). As for the actual trigger on the puzzle box, it is presented as a list of possible things the PCs could do (with multiple interpretations, as well) precisely because the nature of Dungeon World can see the adventure unfold in so many directions. Regarding balancing of power among the demons: it is not explicitly stated that they start on equal levels, but each of their (mutually exclusive) Impending Dooms does make it explicit. Of course, this does require familiarity with how Fronts work to make sense of--something I very badly wished I could make time to explain.
Making the puzzle box an actual puzzle for the players: Oh, I only wish I could have. But spending the time and the words on fleshing its riddle into a more fully-fledged puzzle for the players was not a luxury I could afford, especially since it would not actually further the adventure in any way. As consolation for myself, I focused on making the whole adventure into a puzzle. The Front format assisted in this, providing pieces for the players to arrange as they saw fit (hence the title of the piece, which otherwise would have been named "Under a Blood-Red Star").
On the relevance of Demonic Coin: the specific currency is more important to the Rotten Prince's plans than may be apparent at first. By requiring the demonic coin or favors, he ensures that customers are corrupted before they can pay. By spreading zombies through the land, he corrupts the society that increasingly accepts them. And by turning living (especially innocent) folk into zombies, he is literally corrupting them (while also making more product to sell). The Rotten Prince gets 'em comin' and goin'--and in between, as well. By attaching the coin to both ends of this scheme, Cerberus ensures that buy-in always advances the Rotten Prince's agenda.
Of course, the PCs could think of some other way to traverse the Bloodmire, or some other means of acquiring the carriage and zombies to pull it (or some other means to pull it, entirely). If they do, good for them! They need not personally ever acquire or use demonic coin (although owing a favor seems unlikely; in my experience, PCs will go to extreme lengths to avoid owing unspecified favors to untrustworthy and powerful entities). But they will still be faced with the decision that involves the demonic coins and their response to that decision will certainly shape events to come.
Running Cerberus: Yes. He most certainly is a character with a lot to keep track of. I hoped his potential for interesting interaction (sometimes helpful and sometimes antagonistic toward the PCs) would be enough to help the GM make him work. I slipped in a suggestion that Cerberus resented his masters to help facilitate this (which is why he's willing to do things that will sabotage his masters' efforts and also why the Overseer doesn't trust him to always have possession of the box), but making it explicit was far down on the list of things to fix. Running Cerberus might be easier if he was treated essentially like multiple characters in one body (like the movie version of Smeagol/Gollum, but with a third personality), rather than the implied single personality with sometimes conflicting motivations (as with the book version of Smeagol/Gollum, plus one more set of motivations). I personally think the second approach would be more rewarding, but also probably harder to pull off. [/sblock]
[Sblock=After reading Wicht's JudgementI must confess to a small degree of confusion about how harshly both judges (so far) have come down on my use of the Horseless Carriage ingredient. Yes, it is something that the PCs can avoid using, but its availability still triggers a hard decision (likely more than one) that the PCs will need to resolve. Added to that, I'm not sure that avoiding the use of the carriage is all that likely, even if it is desirable for the PCs. (And, as a side-note, if it does get used, it also sets up a fun encounter when its zombies turn on the PCs while they're in the carriage.)
At the very least, the fact that it absolutely could not be anything else other than a horseless carriage seems to have been undervalued somewhat. But maybe I'm just being defensive because so much of my time went into that particular ingredient.
With that out of the way, I suppose I should talk about the adventure/campaign issue. This is one of the problems I knew I was going to have when I gambled on Dungeon World. The difference between adventure fronts and campaign fronts is sometimes more one of pacing than scope; as such, they are designed to be switched from one to the other fluidly. That's one of many Dungeon World-specific issues I needed, wanted, and intended to spend some words explaining, but was entirely unable to due to spending such a large portion of my time working the ingredients.
Granted, I could have pulled back on the scope, but, given the cosmology and demonic political structure presented, it was really just easier to ride it out rather than fight the pull toward world-changing events. Best leave the decision about whether to pace events on an adventure- or campaign-scaled timeline to the GM. I hoped. [/sblock]
[sblock=Self Analysis and Commentary Written Before Judgements]I had forgotten what it feels like to run out of time. No time for a typo-check. No time to rework the formatting. No time to check multiple word-counts (had to rely on the one built into the writing app). No time to clean up transitions. No time to clarify system expectations and jargon.
Why? Because I spent too much time working those ingredients together into an adventure that seemed fun without glaringly obvious holes, that's why. I hope it was worth it.
I blame "Triple Agent." From the moment knew I didn't want to do a spy thriller, I knew I was going to have to make this ingredient the lynchpin of the adventure. If I could create a character that represented the interests of three competing entities, I could have an interesting character that could sometimes be ally and sometimes adversary. That seemed interesting to me. But it required the invention of three other NPCs, whom PCs would never meet, and, yet, needed to be not buried in backstory. Lots of time and space consumed. (The PCs also kind of become Triple Agents in that their quest for Death has three goals, but this is simply a thematic echo that I didn't want to call out in the piece.)
Originally, the "Blood-Red Star" was intended to be a link to the zombies in a "Night of the Comet" kind of way, but it didn't really fit in well with the rest of the ingredients, so I tightened things up by also connecting it to the souls and their puzzle box. But that required inventing a cosmology for what was not initially intended to be a setting. Oh, and also, I had to explain why a plane was bleeding. More time consumed. More space used up.
"Demonic Coin", "Zombie Merchant", "Balancing Act" and "Puzzle Box" all fit together pretty well in my head. "Demonic Coin" actually played a larger role earlier on, but I had to scale it back, both for space and for the sake of the adventure.
My sticking point was "Horseless Carriage." I knew I wanted the visual of a carriage pulled by zombies (and, hopefully, a combat with said zombies). But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the carriage needed to be horseless, or a carriage at all. I went out to a birthday dinner (not mine). And then it hit me. Lethal blood raining down from the star would give the PCs reason to stay protected from it while also making it impossible to use horses to pull it. Cool. Sure, the PCs likely will balk at the terms and may figure out some other way to traverse the Bloodmire, but that's okay.
So, now I had all these pieces of the puzzle. Time to write. But why Dungeon World? Dungeon World is surprisingly jargon-heavy for such a fiction-driven system, so assuming familiarity would be risky. I would have to clarify some of it in the adventure. (Alas, no time.)
Dungeon World formats its adventures (and campaigns) differently than traditional adventures. Its system strongly encourages sandbox-style play with a heavy emphasis on improvisation. As such, the format is flexible, but also very lean. A more traditional presentation would require some fleshing out, as well as transitions between concepts. Frankly, I had no idea if I could do it in 1500 words. I still don't, because, unfortunately, I never did get a chance to fix those transitions. Oh well. There's a pretty good adventure in there. Hope it reads well enough to make sense.
So, given those challenges, why Dungeon World? Is it because Dungeon World is a good fit for my approach to running games? Is it because DW is my favorite edition of D&D?
It's because I was hooked on my hook. In most settings, the hook would be absurdly specific and rare. In Dungeon World, bargaining with Death isn't even that uncommon (there is a DW Magic item with lore that tells of a woman who died and met Death so many times they fell in love). Obviously, this would also need clarification--if I only had the time. But what can I say? The ingredients pointed me toward an extra-planar crisis with hijacked souls and the bargain with Death just grabbed me and wouldn't let go.
TL;DR: This may be a case where I actually spent too much effort getting the ingredients to mesh well. I took a lot of very big gambles in this piece and I completely ran out of time to offset or minimize their risks. [/sblock]
[sblock=After reading Iron Sky's Judgement
First, [MENTION=60965]Iron Sky[/MENTION], hook me up with that streamlined Front format! I also find the default to be sometimes cumbersome. On to my entry: In my head, it was completely obvious that the blood raining down actually was the blood of Death's Kingdom spurting through the star-portal from a series of wounds that bled constantly because they weren't allowed to heal. My use of the word ichor (which, admittedly, has more than one possible application) was merely flavor intended to break the monotony of reading "blood" a bajillion times. Ideally, this is one of the many things that would have been cleaned up, if I had only had the time.
I don't think I can claim the star-as-hole-in-the-sky concept as uniquely mine. I'm pretty sure I saw something similar somewhere in the past, but I haven't the faintest recollection where. It might even have appeared in some earlier IRON DM entry. Either way, the concept has just sort of floated around in the back of my head for years. Until this entry, when I absolutely needed to incorporate the fundamental premise to make things work. I think I built on and adapted the concept sufficiently that I was comfortable including it without feeling completely derivative, but, as the lesson of Wicht's ghost-dryad/ship's-mast IRON DM entry teaches us, opinions vary about such things (short version for those who weren't around in 2001= the Judge felt the scenario was too similar to an idea presented in an AD&D core book. The resulting decision against the entry was...largely unpopular, let's say).
Next, the Balancing Act: While it's true that the triumvirate has a balancing act going on, the intended PC-relevant one (that is, the one they definitely would have to find out about to achieve their goals) would be the one(s) they perform to release the wards on Sagacity. All other appearances were merely echoes of a theme (which is why I generally did not try to call them out). As for the actual trigger on the puzzle box, it is presented as a list of possible things the PCs could do (with multiple interpretations, as well) precisely because the nature of Dungeon World can see the adventure unfold in so many directions. Regarding balancing of power among the demons: it is not explicitly stated that they start on equal levels, but each of their (mutually exclusive) Impending Dooms does make it explicit. Of course, this does require familiarity with how Fronts work to make sense of--something I very badly wished I could make time to explain.
Making the puzzle box an actual puzzle for the players: Oh, I only wish I could have. But spending the time and the words on fleshing its riddle into a more fully-fledged puzzle for the players was not a luxury I could afford, especially since it would not actually further the adventure in any way. As consolation for myself, I focused on making the whole adventure into a puzzle. The Front format assisted in this, providing pieces for the players to arrange as they saw fit (hence the title of the piece, which otherwise would have been named "Under a Blood-Red Star").
On the relevance of Demonic Coin: the specific currency is more important to the Rotten Prince's plans than may be apparent at first. By requiring the demonic coin or favors, he ensures that customers are corrupted before they can pay. By spreading zombies through the land, he corrupts the society that increasingly accepts them. And by turning living (especially innocent) folk into zombies, he is literally corrupting them (while also making more product to sell). The Rotten Prince gets 'em comin' and goin'--and in between, as well. By attaching the coin to both ends of this scheme, Cerberus ensures that buy-in always advances the Rotten Prince's agenda.
Of course, the PCs could think of some other way to traverse the Bloodmire, or some other means of acquiring the carriage and zombies to pull it (or some other means to pull it, entirely). If they do, good for them! They need not personally ever acquire or use demonic coin (although owing a favor seems unlikely; in my experience, PCs will go to extreme lengths to avoid owing unspecified favors to untrustworthy and powerful entities). But they will still be faced with the decision that involves the demonic coins and their response to that decision will certainly shape events to come.
Running Cerberus: Yes. He most certainly is a character with a lot to keep track of. I hoped his potential for interesting interaction (sometimes helpful and sometimes antagonistic toward the PCs) would be enough to help the GM make him work. I slipped in a suggestion that Cerberus resented his masters to help facilitate this (which is why he's willing to do things that will sabotage his masters' efforts and also why the Overseer doesn't trust him to always have possession of the box), but making it explicit was far down on the list of things to fix. Running Cerberus might be easier if he was treated essentially like multiple characters in one body (like the movie version of Smeagol/Gollum, but with a third personality), rather than the implied single personality with sometimes conflicting motivations (as with the book version of Smeagol/Gollum, plus one more set of motivations). I personally think the second approach would be more rewarding, but also probably harder to pull off. [/sblock]
[Sblock=After reading Wicht's Judgement
I must confess to a small degree of confusion about how harshly both judges (so far) have come down on my use of the Horseless Carriage ingredient. Yes, it is something that the PCs can avoid using, but its availability still triggers a hard decision (likely more than one) that the PCs will need to resolve. Added to that, I'm not sure that avoiding the use of the carriage is all that likely, even if it is desirable for the PCs. (And, as a side-note, if it does get used, it also sets up a fun encounter when its zombies turn on the PCs while they're in the carriage.) At the very least, the fact that it absolutely could not be anything else other than a horseless carriage seems to have been undervalued somewhat. But maybe I'm just being defensive because so much of my time went into that particular ingredient.
With that out of the way, I suppose I should talk about the adventure/campaign issue. This is one of the problems I knew I was going to have when I gambled on Dungeon World. The difference between adventure fronts and campaign fronts is sometimes more one of pacing than scope; as such, they are designed to be switched from one to the other fluidly. That's one of many Dungeon World-specific issues I needed, wanted, and intended to spend some words explaining, but was entirely unable to due to spending such a large portion of my time working the ingredients.
Granted, I could have pulled back on the scope, but, given the cosmology and demonic political structure presented, it was really just easier to ride it out rather than fight the pull toward world-changing events. Best leave the decision about whether to pace events on an adventure- or campaign-scaled timeline to the GM. I hoped. [/sblock]
Wicht
Hero
[MENTION=67]Rune[/MENTION] - I suspected the formatting was specific to the rules set of Dungeon World but am/was unfamiliar with it. Its one of the dangers of relying on mechanics others are unfamiliar with.
Regarding the Horseless Carriage, it just "felt" weak. Can't really explain it other than that. I know that when we write these things, in our heads we know how it is meant to be, and one assumes that the point is made. It's a bit like editing your own work for grammar, I suppose. You know what it should say, and so, its easy to read over it and assume that is what it does say.
Regarding the Horseless Carriage, it just "felt" weak. Can't really explain it other than that. I know that when we write these things, in our heads we know how it is meant to be, and one assumes that the point is made. It's a bit like editing your own work for grammar, I suppose. You know what it should say, and so, its easy to read over it and assume that is what it does say.
