Final Round
Here's how I judge:
My first pass will be literary: how well does it read? Are there typos? Is it coherent? Is the phrasing awkward, awesome, or ambivalent? Did the writing help or hurt the entry? Does the adventure tell a good story?
Second pass will be as a GM: would I want to run it? Is there a good hook? Does it flow? Do I have all the information I need? Is it mostly backstory or mostly adventure? If I bought this adventure to save prep, how much prep does it require? Is the conclusion satisfying?
Third pass will be as a player: would I want to play it? Are there any interesting choices? Do my actions matter? Does it have interesting things to do for different types of players? How about characters? Is the conclusion satisfying?
Fourth pass will be ingredients: how well were they used? Could any be removed or altered without changing the adventure in major way? Are they tied together tightly? Any particularly clever uses?
I'll finish with a conclusion that sums it all up and throws in anything else that doesn't fit into one of these categories such as logical breaks, major inconsistencies, or other elements that "break" the adventure as posted.
A final note before jumping in: I try to be entirely constructive and honest with my feedback since that's been the main benefit for me doing the half-dozen Iron DMs I've competed in and my ability to write has been drastically honed by them for all types of writing, not just adventures. Empty praise or skirting problems to be "nice" is pleasant and useless. If I like it, you'll know and if I think it could use work... you'll know. Feel free to discard it if you don't agree, my main goals are to be fair, honest, and critical.
Literary Pass, Writ in Blood:
Reading through, I really dug the tone and feel of this adventure. The subtle manipulations of the Dark Powers (totally stealing them changing writing and memory – is that canon or something you made up?) The writing is much better than previous though some paragraphs are still quite long and the amount that happens in one can be daunting.
There were also a few random errors: "the edict in paper called had been corrupted..." for example.
My original read-through of this, I made the mistake of not looking up the Ravenloft setting first. I know vaguely that it was the "D&D horror" setting, but didn't know exactly what the Dark Powers were or how they rolled. As such, this pass is two passes one pre-wikipedia, one post-.
After the second pass, with everything in context, it makes much more sense though I'm not sure I have the arc of the story or the relevance of all the information for the game. I have the sinking feeling that as dark and cool as this adventure is, it might be heavy on backstory and light on action.
Literary Pass, The Culling of Carriage Court:
The wordcounter gave 2005 words since it started at "A macabre adventure...". As such, I considered it to end at "If the heroes are foolish enough to listen, they will find great..."
I noticed the odd typo here and there, but otherwise the writing was very active and well written.
The first real hiccup was Shugo who is "They told Greel about Shugo, a revenant assassin who awaits orders, walled away from the ruins with cold iron." Whose orders is the revenant awaiting? What do revenants have to do with fey? What does "walled away from the ruins" mean? Is he trying to get into the ruins or is he in a separate cold iron walled enclosure? Are revenants fey?
At least some of that is answered in that apparently he won't do anything without orders, though it raises the question if Shugo will take orders from a random village girl, if he came to kill you and you said "oh god, no, stop!" would he obey that order too?
Moving on, "the wagon" comes once a week. What wagon? By inference I'm assuming it's a pie wagon, but there's nothing that connects the two in what you wrote except they were delivered and wagons can be used to deliver things. Also, since I'm in hyper analysis mode now, do the heroes have to ask around? What happens if they just look?
And then Annabelle disappeared at "the Swan". Is that a tavern? An inn? A palace? I read everything leading up to it again to see if I missed it, but nope.
Then the growing unease that something's stalking the nobility... who's uneasy? Given way nobles throughout history often treated the commons, I would think everybody else might be celebrating.
Jumping to Barric's perspective, my daughter went missing, a band of strangers/foreigners show up saying they heard she's missing and want to help (what's in it for them?), then show me her necklace and say it was found it a meat pie... I think I'd be a bit suspicious and maybe a bit afraid for myself. Reading on...
Ahah! The Swan's an inn! Wait, it's drafty due to the windows... are they unpaned? Unshuttered? Open holes?
So, after the long wait to see what Greel's doing with the bodies, she's turning them into zombies then having them carve themselves to be eaten? Do we have any hints she's a necromancer? Are hags normally necromancers now? It struck me as somewhat disjointed and non-obvious, like cops looking for missing persons and finding out a gang of street thugs has been kidnapping them and turning them into cyborg pets.
More answers to some of the questions above about Shugo's orders, all of which is pretty rad. One question that gets added though; if the Empire found Shugo such a useful tool for killing fey, why would they put his control unit right next to their abandoned prison? Like parking an Apache next to a maximum security prison.
Also, that the fey want to be entertained above all else seems a bit odd. Most things in prison seek freedom above all else. Maybe that lack of seemingly-obvious prioritization is why they lost the war.
Literary Pass, Comparison:
I think MortalPlague's writing was more active and compelling, yet Carriage also raised far more questions.
Writ in Blood's setting was evocative while Carriage's was fairly generic. That said, I had to read up on Ravenloft and reread Writ in Blood to get sufficient context to not find it bewildering.
I'm tilting slightly in favor of Carriage here.
GM Pass, Writ in Blood:
There's no clear hook to bring the PCs onboard here. I know it says "intrepid investigators" will jump into solving the crime, but Gradine must have a much more selfless and self-motivated group of players than most of the ones I've played with. It seems like as a GM my primary way of hooking the PCs is by ensuring that nothing else interesting is happening to be sure the PCs care about a missing persons case after they've just suffered a planar abduction.
Breaking it into scenes:
Hook(players hopefully decide to investigate) → Investigation (PCs tracking the pie wagon) → Confrontation (Pan-ya confesses) → Taneka's reveal (PCs exposited and asked to determine what the Beast is) → Meet Qi'lin → Resolution (Let Qi'lin do his thing OR tell Ooma to move on)
A few problems here, the first being with the hook that I mentioned previously. Second, I'm not sure how to get players to the pie wagon without seemingly leading them by the nose to it. Sure it is strange that none of the 150 missing people came from Atakakune, but I'm not sure how I, as GM, would help the find the wagon, then convince them to search the wagon of a well-loved, gregarious man.
There's no mention of tracking him as he kills people and disposes of their bodies or any clues that might make them think that this dude out of all the many markets and eateries in the district did it. It seems like this section would go like this:
PC: "So, people said only one district hasn't had anyone killed?"
GM: "Yep."
PC: "What's in that district?"
GM: "Markets and eateries, none so treasured by the people of the district as Pan-ya's famous Meat Pies. A Shodō institution for generations, Pan-ya’s meat pie recipe is a closely guarded family secret. Pan-ya himself is a well-loved, gregarious man; his pies aren’t cheap, but he never turns away a hungry stomach, whether they can pay or not... and, um, there are a lot more places you might check too run by... other people."
PCs: "Um, yeah, we go to that one."
Then they are hired by a dude to walk with a lady who dies on her own, then a unicorn says he's trying to escape using symbols written in her blood. No worries, she'll resurrect and be back and you all can probably come through the portal with me to get back to your own world.
I'm pretty sure at that point most PCs would say "that sounds great!" Well, that or kill him because he's a unicorn that's red and so must be bad and xp. Then the PC wizard or scholar will be tracing blood runes once a month until they're free. Not sure how they'd ever know that Ooma can be laid to rest and everything will be hunky-dory since that's not established anywhere previously.
Unless I'm misreading, this seems like a GM chore to steal the PCs from what they were doing, lead them by the nose through an investigation, drop some (admittedly cool) backstory on them, then show them the exit.
Hrm.
GM Pass, The Culling of Carriage Court:
Scenes:
Hook (necklace pie) → House Daleen (clues to Swan) → Swan (Daniel leaks secret tunnel/Elsie suspiciouns) → Ruins (dungeon crawl) → Greel (fight or talk) | Shugo (Elsie secrets revealed) | Fey (free us) → Resolution
The clues are fairly obvious, but the PCs do have to do a bit of snooping around to get to them. They lead to a bit of a dungeon crawl which houses all three of the main villains and they get to decide how it ends.
This seems fairly fun to run. The zombie pies is fun, bizarre scene, dungeon crawls are almost always entertaining, and watching PCs piece through an investigation is fun. The coolest NPC doesn't do anything but kill, though getting to tempt the PCs via the fey could be entertaining.
GM Pass, Comparison:
Writ in Blood seems both short and linear. It also seems to require the GM to do most of the work to guide the PCs through it instead of the players navigating it.
Culling of Carriage Court never excited me (Shugo was cool and I'm stealing him), but offers a quick, simple investigation, a dungeon crawl, and the PCs decide how it ends.
Carriage on this one.
Player Pass, Writ in Blood:
So we're hunting down the orcish raiding party that sacked the fort, chasing them through the forests of... wait we're in a town and people are going missing. How do we get back to the orcs? Wait, there's some monster called Nagato, can we kill it? No one knows what it is? Okay, so we're obviously supposed to look into these missing people, obviously this Atakukune place has some relevance.
There's like fifteen restaurants here? Great, well, the GM seemed to talk about the pie wagon thing the most so lets go there. This guy seems super nice, let's go check another place... no the GM keeps on hinting stuff, I guess let's search his wagon or just see if he knows something. Oh, he just confessed? You found a recipe with humans in it? Gross, but I guess we win? How do we get back to hunting orcs?
So, this guy from the court seems to be important, for some reason we need to know about the dead noble guy and a curse and stuff. He wants us to follow this chick and see what happens to her? Sounds easy. Um, red unicorn, probably bad. Ah, he's just trying to get home too? And the princess resurrects? Yeah, let's just help him out and get out of here.
Player Pass, The Culling of Carriage Court:
OMG, there's a necklace in my pie! WTF? Where the hell did these pies come from? A wagon across town? Anyone know who this belongs to, looks kinda special. Oh some noble lady with a secret lover and a swan? Wait, nobles have been killed and their bodies are missing? Related? Maybe we should check out her house?
Hello, my lord, we found this necklace in a pie. Yes, we know it's your daughter's, we think maybe... oh, you want to show us her room? Um... strange but sure. Anyone find anything? A bloody iron throwing star? Yo, what did the maid tell you while we were searching the place? Maid said she was meeting some Daniel guy at the Swan? And she said they are underground troll pies? Okay... I guess we go to the Swan? Wait, there's a reward? Hell yeah!
This is the Swan? Place is a dump. Anyone else get a weird vibe about the young lady that runs this place? Where did she go anyway? Oh, you talked to the Daniel dude? What'd he say? Annabelle never showed up and Elsie has a secret tunnel in the cellar? Pretty sure I know where we're going.
<1.5 floors later>
I'm so sick of those damn oozes. Wait, what's that light ahead? <sneak> Anyone else creeped out by these zombies? Are they making pies out of.. themselves? Crap, guys, that's a hag. Anyone know how high level they are? She's just staring at us, maybe she's not hostile? Bard, go talk to her.
Right, so Elsie's been using a monster named Shugo to kill nobles and this hag will pay us to capture her? How's it compare to that noble's dude's reward? She said this Shugo think lives north of here, let's check it out. <dungeon>
I don't think we can fit through this hole with armor on, let's send the bard in since he's expendable, I mean, unarmored. Whoa, undead assassin? I guess lets squeeze in. Yep, written right here, this guy kills whoever's name you write in it and somebody's been using him forever. I say we write Greel's name here, wait for Elsie, capture her and turn her in to Deleen for the reward, get some zombie xp, then set up a base here with our badass undead assassin.
<once that is done>
We should clear the bottom level.
Anyone else hear creepy voices talking through those holes in the floor. Yeah, I think the third level is off-limits, permanently.
Player Pass, Comparison:
Carriage it is.
Ingredients Pass, Writ in Blood:
♦ Byzantine Schemes: the plotting of Ooma's court. Only tangentially related and mostly unseen by the PCs except for Taneka whose main feature is that he has managed to avoid them.
♦ Elder Signpost: I think this is the iron edict? The contract signed in blood? Not sure what makes it either elder and neither seem to be sign posts. I half-read/half-skimmed the whole thing again to find this ingredient and don't think I did. Was there supposed to be and old sign noting Atakakune or something?
♦ Dread Ninja: Nagato whose main feature now is that he's a dead ninja. I guess the people still fear his whispers?
♦ Pie Wagon: The meat-pie wagon the PCs need to search for the investigation.
♦ Red Unicorn: Qi'lin who is red due to blood, though that he's a spirit is more important. He does have a maiden he is guarding that does make him more unicorn like.
♦ Deadly Ink: Jinsui's blood, deadly since she dies to make it and ink as it's used to write the portal sigils. Strongest ingredient so far.
♦ Iron Law: Okay, this is the iron edict. It's less a law than a statement of what she's doing however. It's ironness is important mostly since it was decided that the Dark Powers can't manipulate iron. I looked it up and don't think that's canon, so it could just as easily have been ivory they couldn't manipulate. If it was explicitly stated that the iron in blood was what made them not able to mess with it it would be stronger....
♦ Traitor: Nagato who started all this, but whom the PCs will likely never meet.
Let's try a sentence.
A Dread Ninja turns Traitor, killing a noble's family and causing the noble's daughter to write an iron edict that she will offer herself to a Red Unicorn who will use the Deadly Ink of her blood to escape while an agent who is not involved in Byzantine Schemes hears of the PCs uncovering a murderous Pie Wagon and asks them to follow her. Also an Elder Signpost... somewhere?
That was... difficult to compose.
Ingredients Pass, The Culling of Carriage Court:
♦ Byzantine Schemes: Pretty sure this is the Fey's manipulations of Greel and Elsie. Byzantine seems to imply vast and convoluted while they are mostly manipulating a young woman and a hag for chuckles.
♦ Elder Signpost: The monolith in the center of town warning of the Fey. Who knows if the PCs find it or if they do, decipher it.
♦ Dread Ninja: Shugo, dread since his a revenant murder, which would be stronger if people know about him. They dread something nameless which happens to be Shugo. Also my favorite thing in this round and totally stolen.
♦ Pie Wagon: The wagon that delivers the pies. Doesn't seem to be important at all and the adventure would run the same if it didn't exist.
♦ Red Unicorn: The unicorn necklace found in the pie. I don't see any reason why the pie has to have red juice or that this has to be a unicorn. It is the hook though so at least it's used.
♦ Deadly Ink: The ink used to give Shugo his murderous orders.
♦ Iron Law: The cold iron flagstones that keep the Fey contained in their prison. Cool, but not as strong as I'd like.
♦ Traitor: Elsie, commanded to get Shugo but using him for herself. She's really more of an opportunist since traitors most commonly betray someone to another side.
Sentence:
A Red Unicorn necklace discovered by eating a pie recently off a Pie Wagon leads the PCs to track a murderous Traitor who uses Deadly Ink to command a Dread Ninja as part of the Byzantine Schemes of fey bound by Iron Law and warned of by an Elder Signpost.
It seems like the Fey could be ignored by the PCs and Elsie and Greels drama could just as easily have been free of their involvement which weakens the last three ingredients significantly.
Ingredients Pass, Comparison:
The ease or difficulty of composing a sentence to encompass the ingredients says a lot to me about how essential they are. Writ in Blood's ingredients seem somewhat weaker over all and they are also mostly backstory. The PCs will only interact with the Pie Wagon, the Red Unicorn, and the Deadly Ink.
In Carriage, they may use the Deadly Ink to command the Dread Ninja to capture the Traitor, all started by a Red Unicorn (that could have been a Brown Griffon or a Unique Necklace). The Fey are lurking in the background always but it could easily transpire that the PCs never interact with or even know of their existence which weakens the ingredients tied to them.
I was already leaning a bit towards Carriage, but that I can't find what the Elder Signpost is in Writ in Blood seals the deal.
Conclusion:
Both entries seemed to suffer from a glut of backstory that the PCs will likely never touch on and both had many ingredients buried in this backstory.
[MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION], Writ in Blood was much more readable than your previous entry but I have several critiques that are similar. On the plus side, while I did slow down a few times in some of the longer, denser paragraphs none stopped me cold in an onslaught of names. The cursed feudal Japan-flavored setting was also great.
The lack of a hook, again, makes me wonder if you just are used to really proactive players with good-aligned PCs that jump right in to solving things on a hint vs the vast majority of players in my experience that are mostly interested in doing their own thing in various shades of gray.
There also is a sea of backstory and a brook of action. I don't know completely what was supposed to happen in your last adventure (better now after reading the others' judgment of it), but this one I do and it seems like the PCs are mostly unnecessary.
In future contests, in might be helpful to ensure all of your ingredients are interacted with by the PCs – touched, handled, hunted, killed, walked through, etc. Also, frontstory (if that's a thing). Have the story of the adventure mostly to do with what the PCs do instead of what has already happened before they get there.
As with all criticism, take what I have to say with a grain of salt. You won last year, after all and won last round in spite of my inability to grok your adventure. It's entirely possible I'll be the odd opinion again.
[MENTION=62721]MortalPlague[/MENTION], I'll admit after the great initial setup, this adventure didn't inspire me flavor-wise in spite of being quite solid, gameplay-wise. A quick investigation tracking clues leading to a dungeon crawl and a choice of actions was cool. I think making the Fey stronger and somehow forcing the PCs to interact with them would have made all their related ingredients stronger.
I'd imagine their "Byzantine-ness" had you pushing them to the background, but they went perhaps to far.
Your writing remains active, rich, and varied and Shugo is awesome.
I vote MortalPlague for IronDM 2018, we'll see what my compatriots think.