IRON DM 2021 Tournament

[Rune]

Round 1, Match 3: Wicht vs humble minion

@Wicht and @humble minion you have 24 hours to post your entries to this thread. Please limit your entry to a title, a list of the ingredients used and 750 additional words. Be aware: if you include descriptions of your ingredients with the ingredients list, those descriptions will count against your word-limit! Entries that exceed their word-limits will be considered to end once they reach that limit; everything after will be ignored.

The judges will be using Wordcounter.net to ensure that our counts are consistent.

Please include your list of ingredients at the beginning of the entry and please do not edit your post once it is submitted. Please refrain from reading your opponent's entry until after you have posted your own. You are on your honor to do so.

Entries that are between 1 and 59 minutes late will have their word-limits reduced to 675. Later entries that are at less than 1 day late will have their word-limits reduced to 525. Entries that are at least 1 day late will have their word-limits reduced to 375. Entries that are at least 2 days late may be disqualified at the discretion of the judge with consent from the match's opposing competitor.

Your ingredients are:

Ghost Mushrooms
Rotting Utopia
Bear Necessities
Armored Lizard
Rootless Tree
Broken Angel

 

[Imaculata]

My thoughts on Hail Caesar!

Spoiler

Wow.. just... wow. Of all the adventures you expect to read, I still wasn't ready for something this wacky and original. Without going into the finer details of how ingredients were used, or the structure of the adventure itself, I'm just delighted by the variety in the types of adventures that this contest spawns. And I am so pleasantly surprised when one of the entries just totally subverts all expectations.

 

[Gradine]

Speaking of ingredients that I wish were mine...

 

[humble minion]

I'm having a legit terrible time with these ingredients, and I've competely thrown out two part-written entries already. It's the bear necessities that are killing me, the simple bear necessities...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm having a legit terrible time with these ingredients, and I've competely thrown out two part-written entries already. It's the bear necessities that are killing me, the simple bear necessities...

Why let those ingredients order you about? Why let the bear necessities tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots?

Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace!

Don't be a slave of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees... down with the Ticktockman!

 

[Fenris-77]

Huh. With those I actually could have managed a pretty cool Trophy Incursion, which was my first choice for format. Good luck peeps. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

 

[Rune]

Huh. With those I actually could have managed a pretty cool Trophy Incursion, which was my first choice for format. Good luck peeps. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Out of curiosity, what is a Trophy Incursion?

 

[Fenris-77]

Out of curiosity, what is a Trophy Incursion?

Trophy Dark is a very rules-light fantasy horror game, usually played as a one-shot. It's like horror tinged deconstruction of wilderness adventure in more traditional games. Here's the SRD. It was my first choice because it's super-evocative when done well and there aren't many rules to actually deal with on the adventure writing side so it works well for low word-count projects. There's another version called Trophy Gold that's got some campaign elements built in and is to the Dungeon Crawl what Dark is to wilderness exploration. Trophy (both versions) has been where I've been spending my design time lately.

[Edit: sorry, the word Incursion is their word for adventure or module, or whatever.]

 

[Rune]

Trophy Dark is a very rules-light fantasy horror game, usually played as a one-shot. It's like horror tinged deconstruction of wilderness adventure in more traditional games. Here's the SRD. It was my first choice because it's super-evocative when done well and there aren't many rules to actually deal with on the adventure writing side so it works well for low word-count projects. There's another version called Trophy Gold that's got some campaign elements built in and is to the Dungeon Crawl what Dark is to wilderness exploration. Trophy (both versions) has been where I've been spending my design time lately.

[Edit: sorry, the word Incursion is their word for adventure or module, or whatever.]

Cool. Using an obscure system that the judge(s) might not be familiar with is always a risk in IRON DM (since the judges won’t follow links in an entry). That doesn’t mean it can’t be done and done well, of course. The trick is to make the shape of the adventure clear instead of focusing overmuch on the mechanics. Which should be the case, anyway.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Cool. Using an obscure system that the judge(s) might not be familiar with is always a risk in IRON DM (since the judges won’t follow links in an entry). That doesn’t mean it can’t be done and done well, of course. The trick is to make the shape of the adventure clear in stead of focusing overmuch on the mechanics. Which should be the case, anyway.

Darn it!

I thought the trick was to make obscure references to 1980s movies. @Gradine !!!!!!! You Kevin Bacon'd me!