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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 4971950" data-attributes="member: 150">Judgement, Round 7, Felipe Real vs SparkySo, you've seen Iron Chef, right?  Or at least you understand the concept.  A group of cooks are given a platter of ingredients that they must use to create a meal for the judges.  Let's imagine, in an Iron Chef competition, the contestants are given Eel as one of their ingredients.  It's a tough ingredient, to be sure -- hell, most of us have never eaten eel (except perhaps as sushi), and would have no idea how to prepare it.  But, the contestants are supposed to be inventive and expert, and they go to work.  Now, lets imagine one of the contestants decides to bake a cake, and rather than acutally use the Eel in the cake, he just drapes the eel across the top -- or, even better, he just shapes the cake like an eel and frosts it with eel-colored frosting, tossing the actual eel down the garbage disposal.  "It was too hard cooking with Eel, so I baked a cake and named it Eel.  Do I win?"Now, that's an exaggeration of what I'm seeing in this round, but it's not much of one.  Bottom line, the competition is about the ingredients, and it's possible that my judgement in the fourth round for CleverNickName undermined the importance of the ingredients -- so lets make this clear for future rounds.  The Ingredients, and how they are used, are the primary piece of this competion.  CleverNickName had the better round, IMO, despite the problems with a couple of his ingredients. Obviously, not all ingredients are created equal.  And that's why we judge these entries in head-to-head rounds -- you both have the same ingredients, and one of you will advance.  This round had a pretty challenging set, no question.  Anyway, enough posturing, lets get to the tale of the tape: Vengeance is Mine by Felipe Real vs Woes in Niadelaar by Sparky. Ingredients:  Inside the Walls.  In Vim, we have the Pcs trapped within the walls of the town . . . but they're not really, they're trapped by the magical matrix used to enforce the quarantine . . . and even then, that doesn't seem to extend below ground.  Even worse, while the PCs delve below ground and search for the flying dagger, the second act starts with "After escaping the City" . . . .but wait?  When did they do that?  They were just getting the riddle about the dagger two lines above, when did they escape?  As for WiN . . . .the jar is stashed in the peat wall, yes.  That works, but it isn't very interesting.  The entry also claims several other lousy excuses to cover this ingredient -- Talons-like-Steel moves thorugh the walls, isn' inside them, for example.  So, they're both pretty weak.  WiN's use is a little better, so advantage WiN.Flying Dagger - In WiN, we have an artifact called the flying dagger, and it does actually fly, and it is a dagger.  It has nominal connection to the plot, but it's not super. ViM, on the other hand, has an item called the flying dagger, but as far as I can tell from the entry, it's neither flying nor a dagger -- just a dingus that is needed to fight off the plague.  It could have been the "Strappy Sandal of Life" or the "Gnawed Number 2 Pencil of Life" for all the difference it makes in this entry.  So, again, advantage WiN. Childhood Avenger This is another tough ingredient -- many of them in this list were pretty tough.  I'm not very excited about how either entry used it, though.  In ViM, the big bad is avenging the death of it's mother . . . in WiN, Morja is avenging herself on those who replaced her in the service of the local priest.  Both cover the bases, so this ingredient got better treatment than many, but I'm not giving either entry an advantage on this one. Talons Like Steel.  Not sure what to say about this one.  Using the ingredient as the name of a character -- especially a character that does not have talons that are like steel (in the case of WiN) really doesn't cut it.  The steel talons that turn up in and around the town like arrowheads are a weak but workable treatment for the ingredient.  Meanwhile, in ViM talons like steel show up as a line in a prophecy, and then  . . . . okay, this one I just have to quote: "the most important part of the story in this act is to face the Heroes with a monster with “talons like steel”. After the creature’s defeat—but before its death—it will offer the Heroes the Flying Dagger of Life in exchange for the forgiveness of its Life."  So . . . this entry doesn't even pick out the monster for us, just says make sure it has those talons.  Really?  Whose creative powers are we judging here, anyway? Ahem.  Anyway, advantage WiN.  Unending Plague -Yeah, both entries had diseases.  ViM, actually has a plague that is sort of important to the setting of the adventure.  WiN, on the other hand, isn't really a plague at all -- a magical disease that isn't transmittable from one victim to the next doesn't quite qualify as a plague.  The other problem with both is that neither disease is unending.  Anyway, ViM actually has the advantage here.  Jar of Steam. At least the jar of steam in WiN is a jar that actually produces steam, among other things.  ViM doesn't quite get that far -- once again naming the item "Jar of steam" isnt' quite the same as actually making it's jar-of-steam-ness important to the adventure.  Anyway, at this point, having worked through the ingredients, there's a solid advantage for WiN here.That advantage bears out through the other parts that are important, mostly because of the weaknesses in ViM, not particular strengths in WiN.  For example, the hooks in ViM describe a whole other adventure or series of adventures that the heroes have been on . . . but what if my PCs have not played that adventure? This isn't just something class specific, like "one PC must be a Paladin" -- this indicates that the adventure MUST follow a previous one.  very hard to just drop it into my home game.  ViM also lost ground on the the evocative writing/creativity front -- a prime example of which is the quote I grabbed above.  It's one thing to handwave some minor encounters on the way to the big stuff in your, but in ViM we have a couple of acts where the key, important encounters and opponents are not even named or described for us -- the reader must come up with them on his or her own.  Maybe, in a quick blurb to another DM to help them get started on a home game, you can get away with that, bur Iron DM is about showcasing your talents . . . so you really need to show them off. Meanwhile . . . the whole plot in WiN goes back to some lord trying to seduce a harpy?  And the two of them seduce each other?  Improbable doesn't really cover it.  Nevermind the confusion about who seduces who . . .they're both seduced, but the Talons finds out what the lord's planm had been, and she goes ballistic?  really ?  I thougth she had been seduced, too?  It just doesn't work for me. I'm feeling espcially cantankerous after this round.  In the previous round, CleverNickName blew off a couple of ingredients -- he suffered for it, but he also produced some wonderful, creative, surprising uses for the others.  In this round, both contestants are not paying enough attention to the ingredients and making them an intrinsic part of the adventure. What both entries lacked for me was that creative surprise and excellence that helped CNN get past his shortcomings in that entry.   So, anyway, Sparky advances. Now I need a drink. And to everyone else . . . if you get dealt Eel, cook with the eel.  And make it taste like pizza.Felipe_Real . . . . I wanted to say one last thing -- I have been very hard on both entries here, but it's clear to me that you're not working in your mother tongue, and I have to say that I don't think I could have pulled anything like what you did out of my butt in any of the other languages my resume says I can speak a little of.  I think it's very cool of you to enter, and I think that a less challenging set of ingredients might have given you a better chance.</blockquote>

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