Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
nemmerle said:Daniel, I could kiss you! (But if I do, I had better win).
I have long suspected that your prior wins were chiefly attributable to solicitation.
Wulf
Fall '03 Iron DM Tournament -- Wulf Ratbane is Iron DM!
- Thread starter Pielorinho
- Start date
I have long suspected that your prior wins were chiefly attributable to solicitation.
Wulf
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
nemmerle said:
I've been trying to convince you to do this for almost 2 years now; as most dreams are reflections of our waking thoughts and worries, I suspect that's the genesis of your dream.
So... Let's get it done already, and make it an ENworld "charity" special.
Wulf
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
First, Wicht vs. Rune:
These judgments are going to be shorter than my previous ones: I am utterly wiped out by the housebuying process, and still have work to catch up on. So I’ll give a brief summary.
Rune’s scenario had a few interesting pieces in it: the overgrown labyrinth is a fun adventure setting, especially if the PCs don’t have flight capability yet (if they do, you’ll need to explain why flight doesn’t act as an easy solution to the adventure). But the adventure had several flaws in it. The shifty smile was in both cases unconvincing – for the magic mouths, a smirk is both less plausible and less infuriating than a pious expression reciting a mystical (and meaningless) homily. And for the rat bastard, the shifty smile ruins his game: if he’s really that sneaky, he should look sincere, not sneaky.
I liked the awakened elephant as a literal ingredient use, and your divine intervention, while not very interesting, was superior to Wicht’s lame-o use. The calm before the storm was as irrelevant in yours as it was in Wicht’s adventure; no points to either of you for it. The potential of escorting a God’s weakened avatar back to its homeland was probably the coolest part of the adventure; I could definitely imagine using that in a game at some point.
Wicht’s scenario worked a lot better for me: although the circus with awakened animals had the potential to be precious and twee, it actually came off well. You didn’t do much of anything that I could see with the calm before the storm, and the divine intervention sucked – the God prevents the PCs from preventing the climax, but then doesn’t interfere to allow his servant to succeed during the climax? The players would hate me if I tried that, especially in a game like D&D where a god’s intervention on behalf of a cleric is well-defined in the rules. But the rat bastard was a clever ploy, and the shifty smile was appropriate (a bad cheat is a lot likelier to look like a cheat than a good cheat, and you capture that in the wanna-be fraud of a circus owner).
Overall, Rune’s adventure had some good points, but not enough to match the creative and original setting and feel of Wicht’s. Wicht, you’re in third place; congratulations!
These judgments are going to be shorter than my previous ones: I am utterly wiped out by the housebuying process, and still have work to catch up on. So I’ll give a brief summary.
Rune’s scenario had a few interesting pieces in it: the overgrown labyrinth is a fun adventure setting, especially if the PCs don’t have flight capability yet (if they do, you’ll need to explain why flight doesn’t act as an easy solution to the adventure). But the adventure had several flaws in it. The shifty smile was in both cases unconvincing – for the magic mouths, a smirk is both less plausible and less infuriating than a pious expression reciting a mystical (and meaningless) homily. And for the rat bastard, the shifty smile ruins his game: if he’s really that sneaky, he should look sincere, not sneaky.
I liked the awakened elephant as a literal ingredient use, and your divine intervention, while not very interesting, was superior to Wicht’s lame-o use. The calm before the storm was as irrelevant in yours as it was in Wicht’s adventure; no points to either of you for it. The potential of escorting a God’s weakened avatar back to its homeland was probably the coolest part of the adventure; I could definitely imagine using that in a game at some point.
Wicht’s scenario worked a lot better for me: although the circus with awakened animals had the potential to be precious and twee, it actually came off well. You didn’t do much of anything that I could see with the calm before the storm, and the divine intervention sucked – the God prevents the PCs from preventing the climax, but then doesn’t interfere to allow his servant to succeed during the climax? The players would hate me if I tried that, especially in a game like D&D where a god’s intervention on behalf of a cleric is well-defined in the rules. But the rat bastard was a clever ploy, and the shifty smile was appropriate (a bad cheat is a lot likelier to look like a cheat than a good cheat, and you capture that in the wanna-be fraud of a circus owner).
Overall, Rune’s adventure had some good points, but not enough to match the creative and original setting and feel of Wicht’s. Wicht, you’re in third place; congratulations!
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Nemmerle vs. Wulf
For the championship!
This is, appropriately, the hardest of all the matches for me to judge. Even as I’m posting this, I still don’t have a gut favorite between the two adventures.
Nemmerle’s adventure, true to form, clocks in at eight pages of text. I stopped reading it several times, getting distracted and bored. Bad sign! That said, there were some great scenes in it, some fantastic politics. All the ingredients were used fairly well, except for the queen bee – I never did get a good sense of danger from the bee-men. Perhaps it is my fault for picturing them like the only bee-man I know of, the guy from the Simpsons, but they just didn’t scare me. Regular bees would have been more effective, IMO, or else some other creature entirely.
The contagious madness is very cool, but I’m not sure I buy the whole “redemption” explanation – you stretched that word just past the point of no return, according to my dictionary. Even if you could twist such that you were technically correct on the redemption, the ghost talks about “not seeking redemption for my sake.” Nobody would ever use the work like that, and the PCs know it as well as the players, as well as the DM.
Mammoth harp? Good stuff. Magical sand? Works very well. Paragon of perfumed foppery? A fantastic character, one I’ll yoink for a game of my own some day.
Wulf’s adventure was a lot shorter, a lot more engaging to read. Again, the bees didn’t have a strong reason to be bees – but the scene with them did hold to a fae feel, and I love the trick of getting the PCs to play music accompanying the faerie dance. When the faeries sing their curse, the Excellent DM will take a big hit from a helium balloon and then sing the song.
Magical sand wasn’t nearly as well developed in this adventure as in Nem’s, but it was thematically appropriate. Silent killer was, of course, woven throughout the adventure, in a very cool way – while some of those killers were goofy (mime of death? I giggled, sure, but c’mon), others were pretty cool, especially the wight musician.
Overall, we see the strength of each of the semifinalists in these two entries: Nem develops a complicated political and historical setup filled with magic and a couple great characters, while Wulf gives a set of quick, evocative scenes oozing with mood. Even as I write this, it’s hard for me to choose between them.
Ultimately, it comes down to two related facets: Wulf’s entry was pithy, and almost all its major aspects were derived from the ingredients. Nem’s entry was long and dragging in places, and contained many more aspects unrelated to the ingredients (giants, for example). By a single hair, Wulf’s elegance and simplicity of design wins him this tournament
Congratulations, Wulf, the new Iron DM!
For the championship!
This is, appropriately, the hardest of all the matches for me to judge. Even as I’m posting this, I still don’t have a gut favorite between the two adventures.
Nemmerle’s adventure, true to form, clocks in at eight pages of text. I stopped reading it several times, getting distracted and bored. Bad sign! That said, there were some great scenes in it, some fantastic politics. All the ingredients were used fairly well, except for the queen bee – I never did get a good sense of danger from the bee-men. Perhaps it is my fault for picturing them like the only bee-man I know of, the guy from the Simpsons, but they just didn’t scare me. Regular bees would have been more effective, IMO, or else some other creature entirely.
The contagious madness is very cool, but I’m not sure I buy the whole “redemption” explanation – you stretched that word just past the point of no return, according to my dictionary. Even if you could twist such that you were technically correct on the redemption, the ghost talks about “not seeking redemption for my sake.” Nobody would ever use the work like that, and the PCs know it as well as the players, as well as the DM.
Mammoth harp? Good stuff. Magical sand? Works very well. Paragon of perfumed foppery? A fantastic character, one I’ll yoink for a game of my own some day.
Wulf’s adventure was a lot shorter, a lot more engaging to read. Again, the bees didn’t have a strong reason to be bees – but the scene with them did hold to a fae feel, and I love the trick of getting the PCs to play music accompanying the faerie dance. When the faeries sing their curse, the Excellent DM will take a big hit from a helium balloon and then sing the song.
Magical sand wasn’t nearly as well developed in this adventure as in Nem’s, but it was thematically appropriate. Silent killer was, of course, woven throughout the adventure, in a very cool way – while some of those killers were goofy (mime of death? I giggled, sure, but c’mon), others were pretty cool, especially the wight musician.
Overall, we see the strength of each of the semifinalists in these two entries: Nem develops a complicated political and historical setup filled with magic and a couple great characters, while Wulf gives a set of quick, evocative scenes oozing with mood. Even as I write this, it’s hard for me to choose between them.
Ultimately, it comes down to two related facets: Wulf’s entry was pithy, and almost all its major aspects were derived from the ingredients. Nem’s entry was long and dragging in places, and contained many more aspects unrelated to the ingredients (giants, for example). By a single hair, Wulf’s elegance and simplicity of design wins him this tournament
Congratulations, Wulf, the new Iron DM!
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Congrats, Wulf. After all this time you most assuredly deserve the win.
Thanks for running this thing Pielorinho. I had a whole lot of fun.
I have to say though that I thought my use of "Redemption" was great and I was certain it was oh so clever - using the conceit of players to think that someone cursed to be a ghost needs to be redeemed in a spiritual sense, but the ones doing the redeeming were the fiends, cashing in on the favor they did the artist - kind of like paying a deposit on a can of soda and then geting your nickel back. Maybe I wasn't clear enough - but I was trying to be brief.
Anyway, good job to all the contestants - and I look forward to running the Holiday Iron DM over at Nutkinland some time in December.
Congrats, Wulf. After all this time you most assuredly deserve the win.
Thanks for running this thing Pielorinho. I had a whole lot of fun.
I have to say though that I thought my use of "Redemption" was great and I was certain it was oh so clever - using the conceit of players to think that someone cursed to be a ghost needs to be redeemed in a spiritual sense, but the ones doing the redeeming were the fiends, cashing in on the favor they did the artist - kind of like paying a deposit on a can of soda and then geting your nickel back. Maybe I wasn't clear enough - but I was trying to be brief.
Anyway, good job to all the contestants - and I look forward to running the Holiday Iron DM over at Nutkinland some time in December.
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Naw, it was clever, and I got what you were doing -- but I think it was too clever, if you get me. Nobody would say "Do not seek redemption for my sake," when what they really mean is, "Do me a favor, bud, and don't try to get those evil demons to cash in the favor I promised them eons ago."nemmerle said:
The demons weren't redeeming a coke can: they were collecting on an unpaid debt. That activity doesn't actually fit under any of the definitions of redemption, I think: it's not recovering something mortgaged, and it's not paying an obligation, and it's not rescuing, and it's not salvation from sin through Jesus's sacrifice.
So my problems with it were twofold: even a crazy guy isn't going to use the word that way in conversation, and in writing it doesn't fit exactly under a definition of the word. It was a cool set of scenes, and a good backstory; I just didn't think redemption described it adequately.
Daniel
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Pielorinho said:
I sure do like the way that sounds! Wheeeeee!
So now for my exposition (actually the second time I am typing this after a computer crash, so it is much more brief):
What I feared would be a weakness turned out to be the strength I intended: None of my ingredients were covered too closely or too literally. As a result, they all seemed to fit very nicely together, within the "mood" of the piece. Note to future contestants: Judge Daniel likes mood.
I wish I had more time to polish up the entry (as usual) and to make some connections more evident (Faerie Queen > Queen Bee > Narcissus, for example).
I think my second round entry was my strongest of the tournament; while it may not be my strongest ever (as an entry) I think it's the most fun I've had writing and putting together an entry.
I had a great time with this tournament... Winning probably has something to do with that.
Thanks much to the judge and my fellow competitors!
Wulf
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Actually, I thought both your second-round and Nem's second round entries were stronger than either entry in the final round. I assumed that was because the ingredients were harder in the final round.
Daniel
Daniel
