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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1177184" data-attributes="member: 259">Mythago vs. Wulf RatbaneThis is something of a difficult round to judge.  Not least because the entries come in so far apart; it's hard to hold them both in my mind with equal freshness.  Also, they're structured very differently, forcing any comparison to be apples-and-oranges:  Mythago's is a straightforward find-the-MacGuffin adventure, whereas Wulf's is almost a meta-adventure, describing mostly a set of plot threads to introduce over a long campaign, to be resolved over the course of a session or two.  Finally, each adventure pulls very heavily on a different source.  Wulf is obviously grooving on the Cthulhu mythos, while Mythago's is straight out of [spoiler]China Mieville's The Scar[/spoiler].  (I put that in a spoiler box because if you don't recognize the ideas in the adventure, it could literally spoil the excellent novel from which it came).Enough self-pity, and on to the overall themes and stuff:Characters:  Just about absent in each adventure.  Beyond the monsters, who are more entities than personalities, there's only one real NPC to interact with:  Mythago's Elizabai.  We know she's insane, and we know she'll kill herself once the PCs are done with her, but we get nothing else about her personality.  Is she regal?  Constantly terrified?  Does she giggle inappropriately in the middle of conversation?  Does she like to issue gruesome threats as a negotiation tactic?  The DM gets no help on her as a character.  That's still one more character than Wulf's adventure.  On the other hand, Wulf's lack of characters is explicable by the nature of the adventure:  most of it consists of little threads introduced into other adventures (where NPCs will surely exist), and the climactic scene is, in true Lovecraftian fashion, devoid of anything resembling a friendly, human, or recognizeably earthly face.Scenes:  Mythago's adventure has a couple of interesting scenes: the dragon turtle lifting the aboleth up for air, and a pitched fight aboard the floating city of the sea-elves.  The first scene, however, doesn't make any sense to me:  aboleths are clearly water-breathing creatures.  Did you mean the dragon turtle was surfacing for its own air?  I could buy that.  The second scene works, although it doesn't really go anywhere beyond the similar scene in the source material.  Wulf's scene, of a battle on the back of a dragon turtle, is again a classic scene; the element of waves crashing in and rearranging the battlefield, however, elevates it to something novel and interesting.  If I don't use the actual turtle in a game, I could easily see using the mechanic of the waves to make a battle deadly and unpredictable.Mood:  I don't get much in the way of atmosphere from Mythago's adventure.  Swashbuckling, sure, but I don't have nearly a clear enough idea of the culture of the sea-elves to be sure that they'd play like an Errol Flynn movie.  The destiny of the curse doesn't permeate the adventure very strongly; nobody cares about the destiny of an insane pirate-priestess, and the PCs are quite likely never to experience the curse themselves.Before I go on to specific ingredients, I want to comment on something Wulf did:  he combined the ingredients to a higher degree than I've seen previously.  The dragon turtle and the unstable platform were the same; the magic mouth spoke in a forgotten tongue.  Furthermore, he introduced very few elements beyond the ingredients.  We end up with three discrete Things in the adventure:  the aboleth, the dragon turtle, and the statuette.  I approve of such minimalist adventure design:  while there's no rule against introducing a lot of additional elements into the story (an atoll, sea elves, pirates, etc.), the fewer things you introduce, the more of the adventure's weight the ingredients must carry.  That's what you want.Unstable Platform:  Both authors used this well, and in ways I hadn't thought of.  At the same time, they were both standard fantasy tropes.  By virtue of the ruined city on the back of a monster, however, Wulf's platform became something I've not seen before, and wins the prize.Dragon Turtle:  Mythago's dragon turtle reminded me far more than I would have liked of an avanc (again, you'll either know the reference or you won't).While it fit the role of tugging along a city quite well, the resemblace to a certain bit of source material bothered me, and it didn't really add anything new to the concept.  Wulf's dragon turtle, again, was a twist on a familiar archetype.Crippled Aboleth:  Mythago's crippled aboleth works halfway:  I can easily imagine it wanting to steal the elves for slaves and/or food, and I can also imagine that they might have managed to fight it back.  However, its plan doesn't make any sense.  If it's enslaved the dragon turtle, why would it be trying to kill the beast in an effort to drag down the city above?  Why not simply tell the turtle to dive?  Wulf's aboleth, as one manifestation of an ancient evil, also works halfway.  Why would anyone unlock the aboleth from its tomb?  And what's up with that turn check vs. the aboleth - surely this keystone creature is going to have sufficient HD that a turn check won't work?  The first question can be answered by either PC stupidity or by having the creature already have freed itself; the second question is a mechanical one that can be fixed.Magic Mouth, Forgotten Tongue:  You both used these in almost identical ways, as magic mouths on magic items speaking in forgotten tongues.  Both were integral to the adventure - either as the central MacGuffin for Mythago, or as the central clue-toy for Wulf.  Wulf's use of Cthulhu-speak worked well for me (shameless panderer that he is), as did the intermittent and spooky nature of the magic mouth.  Mythago's, however, seemed a little forced:  why would a cursed item bother to have a magic mouth on it that spoke in a language nobody was likely to understand?  A much spookier effect would have been a deep thrumming from the shell, or ripples forming through the water in which it was immersed, or something like that; I thought the magic mouth was there solely because it was an ingredient, not because it was the best effect.Destiny:  Mythago's destiny was a curse, powerful and simply defined.  Wulf's was a sharply-described DM tool that I can definitely imagine using at some point, the reverse destiny of tricking your players into thinking that all their actions were foretold by ancients.Overall, I was disappointed by Mythago's entry:  half of it felt to me like it was lifted from the pages of an (admittedly excellent) novel, and the stuff he added onto it felt like he was having trouble getting it to fit.  Furthermore, most of the cool action happened in the backstory, with only a little bit of stuff involving the PCs.  Wulf's story, while not the best I've seen him do, presented a different sort of DM tool, a set of plot-threads to lay on top of several adventures, combined with a way to mimic PC destiny without sacrificing PC free will.Round goes to Wulf; congratulations!  Mythago, I hope to see you in future tournaments.Daniel</blockquote>

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