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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 7852058" data-attributes="member: 150">Round 2 Match 2: Rune vs Lowkey13It seems like we are plagued with delays in this round of IronDM. I’m sorry for my part of that. So, let’s get cracking:This is a review of Lowkey13’s adventure “Mad Mages and Grognards” and Rune’s “The Long Day”. (Mad and Day for short).These are a pair of exceptionally creative, mind bending adventures. It’s great, once again, to see such creative entires.Mad takes characters in a 5e game and regresses them back to 1e. This seems fun and meta and creative, and at the same time it’s a huge gamble — an adventure that is so meta it may not actually work as a playable experience.Meanwhile, the risks in Day are subtler. The adventure takes the players to a setting where they will interact with deities in a way that feels more like a fairy tale and less like a typical D&D game.So, risks all around. Let’s review the ingredients.The Sun's ConsortIn Day, the Sun God’s consort is the god of reflection and tranquility. Her pool is an important location, and is critical to the story. In Mad, celebrants in Greyhawk symbolically wed a donkey to the sun god Pelor. This is a cute moment, but is not as integral to the adventure as it was in Day, so this point goes to Day.Inverted TowerBoth use the inverted tower as an adventure location — although it’s a bit of a stretch to squint and see tower in a ziggurat, as it is used in Mad. With that exception, I don’t see much advantage in either entry. Call it a wash.Divine  CultureI’m not getting a solid sense of divine culture from Mad, while DayIs about tensions between the sun god and his consort. And about patching those things up. So. Day gets this point.Swollen VillageIn Mad, the village of Hommlet is swollen with refugees from other editions. And in Day, the plant folk villagers are swollen because of the excessive daylight.  So, even here again.Malfunctioning TeleporterBoth have this ingredient. For Mad, it’s how the adventure starts, but for Day, it’s the Modron who brings the party to the adventure.Unlucky VampireBoth stories have important unlucky vampires, but while Sir Fang joins the party and tags along, Halpess is the focus of the adventure and is much more integrated into the story. So, another point for Day here.Rings a BellThis one is clearly Mad’s advantage. The bells tolling and regressing the party, the bell as the final goal to put a stop to it — that is the lynchpin. The bell in Day is the tuning fork — another squinty one — and it’s just not so important to the story.Creativity/playabilityBoth Mad and Day are very creative, as I’ve already said.Both, though, sacrifice some playability for that creativity.In Mad, the game appears to be much more about the meta-level edition twisting part of the game than about the story. The stakes are not so much that the characters will die as they are that the players would have to play first edition for the rest of the campaign. It’s conceptually fun and an interesting way to explore the way the game has evolved, but is it playable? I’m not sold that it is.Day is less risky, but it’s certainly a setting and an idea that is off center. The difference is that the characters experience the difference, not the players.RG Final Judgement:[spoiler]I think it won’t surprise anyone that I found Day stronger than Mad. So, for my part, I’m giving the win to The Long Day and Rune.Lowkey13 — well done and thank you for the fun read. You’re facing off against one of the best.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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