Pass the first (hopefully fast skim for cool bits and readability):
D&D 3e? Oddly specific and, nowadays, super niche. Edit: there's a reason.
Called out the heavy crown without saying why it's heavy.
"The rules for these combats are obscurant, reinforced as religious doctrine, and to be respected without compromise, lest the world fall back into chaos, and men are forced to fight their own wars." 5 commas? Also, obscurant is a new word for me. Cool.
More extraneous commas inserting themselves to chop up sentences.
Heavy crown again without why it's heavy.
Now a hyphen to weld another awkward sentence together.
Jumping to a description of the behemoth seems out of place here since we're just told it was vanished.
Limbless beast not capitalized, then capitalized. Here a description of it seems useful as to what it is, but we don't have one.
At this point the coolness of the kaiju city-state battles clicked with me. I have no idea yet what any of this has to do with the PCs (not a great thing this far through the adventure).
"Nations thrive while common people suffer." My favorite sentence so far summarizing how this works; paints the whole system with an epic, brutal brush. Imagining a continent full of city states like this who war with kaiju brawls instead of armies.
So, rebels split between city folk and country folk? Trying to figure out what the city folk's plan is since they're doomed.
Ah, the PCs are them. This is a cool campaign start: "You've overthrown and murdered Beastmaster Xovorax the Vile. His hot blood drips from your hands and splatters the Ivory Throne. As the palace guards flee, the cheers of the battered rebel remnant tatter to silence as the realization of the city's impending doom crushes down upon you. What do you do?"
Wanting to jump into ingredients here with the mechanical subparness but restraining myself.
Morale checks are awesome and tie nicely into the "Nations thrive while people suffer" bit: a ton of you are probably going to die, but if you live not only will your fields come back richer than ever, but here's a stimulus check to help get you going again. Cut off the stimmys, cut off any hope and good will of people being crushed by the system (no comment about any RL similarities).
The Sophie's Choice-nature of these options is also too real (hyperinflation vs deflationary collapse vs zombie economy anyone?) Anything they pick will result in somewhere between hardship to disaster with anything involving war and violence. This setting is about the most grim and brutal I've seen since Dark Sun.
That they have choices is helpful, even if they are pre-set. What if the PCs want to somehow unite the two city states into one then form cells to infiltrate all other city states to break this dystopic cycle or something else they come up with?
Pass the second (GMing this thing):
Here enters the big weakness of "choose one of these options" adventures: even with the disclaimer of "PCs are free to choose whatever course of action they deem best" that three options are then detailed will push most GMs towards one of the them.
If players channel into one, discard roughly two-thirds of the actual adventure you've just read and prepped. If they go their own way, now you're improvising. Having done this myself, another note to self for future competitions. If you've never judged and plan on playing again, I highly recommend slipping to this end of the contest to see everything in a different light.
This isn't any sort of put down on the options themselves: infiltrating and overthrowing a city, hijacking a wagon of runestone cash, or playing King of the Monsters with a tarrasque all sound great fun and any would provide an entertaining sub-adventure of its own.
#3 would be strengthened if the PCs were forced to pass the crown between them during the match; I think this may have been your intention but it's not clear. It also skews the adventure pretty highly for non-participants: you get to pilot Godzilla vs Manda while making save vs Death rolls while you get to herd peasants and maybe get crushed to death. Gritty and harsh, yes. Fun? Dunno.
Pass the third (ingredients):
Slippery Slope: the risks if the players take option 2; maybe things fall apart. That the slippery slope might not occur if the PCs take another option weakens this greatly even if the slippery slope itself is cool (and awful).
Morale Check: I love this ingredient for reasons given above. That said, it also suffers from the same big weakness of this adventure (choice-dependent content irrelevance).
Limbless Beast: The amputated rival kaiju. A huge threat looming over the entire adventure yet also an ally they could flip. Strong.
Heavy Crown: A crown heavy in reality and also crushing in what they must do with it. Also strong and cool (and terrible). And might be skipped; see big weakness.
Subpar Hero: The players. Subpar mechanically to make them actual commoners (the election of 3e makes sense now) yet they must try to save their city in spite of their frailty. Pretty cool.
Vanished Behemoth: Their Kaiju, to be summoned by the Heavy Crown. That the PCs could actually run it makes it better. That it's gone and all that's protecting them from the Limbless Beast better still.
Tomorrow’s Match: An inexorable pressure cooker of inevitable death and destruction lurking just over the horizon. Literally since it comes with the new day. Excellent use, best I could have hoped for with this ingredient.
Summary:
When watching Netflix or Prime with my wife, the highest praise I can give a move or show is "this makes me want to write." She sighs and goes to bed while I stay up until 2am scribbling down ideas, arcs, characters, and situations.
This setting is terrible in all the best ways. Life is cheap, overlords sacrifice the best-and-brightest to giant monsters keep the other monsters at bay, and the PCs best hope is to choose a path of destruction that might leave them alive atop the smoking rubble heap piled at the end. Though initially pretty skeptical due to grammars, this one grew on me, sparked my imagination, and makes me want to write.