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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 4989876" data-attributes="member: 150">And it falls upon me to sum up, after presenting my own.  First, My take. Pernicious Quarrel (PQ) vs. Unnamed Entry (UE)[sblock]Let me just get right to the meat of this -- I want to pay some attention to the ingredients and the form, despite the unusual circumstances. So, the ingredients.  Exhumed Grave.  I frankly had to go hunting through PQ to find this ingredient.  It's there, but I really had to hunt for it, and it could really have been anything.  In UE, on the other hand, the dracolich's grave was being exhumed by the beholder . . . it works.  It's not all that strong, but it's there a little better than the one in PQ.  Point to UE. Tail EndAgain, the tail end of the gold mine in PQ is there, but not really in an interesting, evocative way.  The exhumed end of a tail of a Dracolich is pretty cool . . . clever, even.  Edge to UE. Unmentionable Services. Well, the unmentionable services in UE were funny, and certainly unmentionable.  I laughed at the idea.  In PQ, the services are not really unmentionable at all -- it's a trivial thing, but asking someone not to mention something is not the same as that thing being unmentionable, at least in my head.  And, certainly, the PCs had the OPTION to mention those services to either party in the exchange . . . so . . .they were not quite unmentionable at all. I'm imagining 4e skill challenge version of those unmentionable services . . . .  Edge to UE. Unhappy Goatherd.  I like Kip a lot -- it's a real shame that he's not an ingredient per se, because if he were, I think he could have carried a lot of the weaker stuff in PQ.  The goatherd guise is okay, but it's sort of weak, even with the flock of polymorphed duegar goats.  With UE, the goatherd is an actual goatherd, and as campy and weird as his role in the story is, at least he's tied to the story by an ingredient that calls for that sort of camp (unmentionable services).  The idea that a goatherd has a set of gloves of arrow snaring . . . well . . . anyway, that's another ingredient.  I'll be back on that horse in a sec. But, if we focus on the unhappy part . . . in UE, the goatherd is unhappy; in PQ she's only pretending to be unhappy.  I dunno.  It's pretty thin.  Call it a wash. Cross-Eyed BeholderHonestly, I'm not excited about either of the uses of this.  In PQ, the beholder is crosseyed because of a curse, in Ue because of the trap which has caught his eyes and pointed them at each other.  Both of those are weak, but I have to say that the idea of a mechanical trap -- one that was not designed specifically to catch a beholder -- has this one caught with his eyes all facing each other is just too much to swallow.  Point to PQ. Gloves of Arrow Snaring I'm really struggling with the idea that the goatherd in UE has the gloves -- if he has a magical item of such value (and of so little use in his everyday life), why the heck hasn't he sold it and given up being a goatherd?  Point to PQ. (and, really, the girdle of masculinity/femininity?  Where does he get these wonderful toys?)So, it's very close, with 3 ingredients swaying towards IVV, and two for Wulf, with a split decision on the goatherd.  Usability I don't really know what sort of players either of you play with, but my groups don't do well with this sort of delicate negotiation sort of adventure, especially when they are so far fetched.  In PQ, depending upon whether the DM tips his hand, may well believe Kip and head off into the mines to look for the maw, but the PCs will "know" at that point that they're facing the bad guy.  They see a painted boulder and hear a voice, they stop sweating the "real" beholder and start attacking.  And the rest of the adventure falls apart from there.  In UE . . . well, my PCs would just killed the helpless beholder in the trap, then go looking for the goatherd who has some loot.  Maybe some further development would create a situation where combat is ill-advised because it might actually wake the dracolich, but that's not here now.  Evocative Writing/Creativity.  I wasn't very excited by much in either entry.  I liked Kip a lot.  I think he has potential.  And in a very different way, I liked the unmentionable services in UE, even though they're based on magic items that are improbably in the kit of a lowly goatherd. Overall -Man, this is a lot harder than I expected when I sat down with these two, given the circumstances.  And I find that I'm leaning towards an answer I did not expect to come up with before I started to look closely at the way ingredients were being used.  PQ should have been an easy winner, given the time and development of the adventure.  Everything about it is more fleshed out, more developed, more complete than UE.  But in the key areas of the ingredients, UE is still edging out PQ, despite the anorexic development, because the ideas behind the use of those ingredients are better.  And that's an interesting place to be.  But look at Kip -- so much has been done in this adventure to develop the Rhakshasa Kip -- and the only thing that pays off for the competition is the unhappy(?) goatherd guise he uses to get the PCs to help him.  It certainly makes for a more complete entry, and that helps, but does it help the entry cross the finish line?  I'm torn.  UE has better, if campy, use of the ingredients. It lacks hooks, and all the window dressing that we want from a good Iron DM entry.  But I still am drawn to that adventure more -- that's the one I would rather play.  I think if IVV had been able to develop this entry better, it would have been the hands-down winner.  No question in my mind.  I find myself in a place where I'm on the hooks between giving one entry my nod because it was more complete, but not because I liked it better -- or, giving the other entry my nod because I liked the ideas better despite the lack of completeness of the entry.  In the end, Iron DM is about creativity and inventiveness -- and I don't necessarily like the trend towards entries that have included complete stat blocks for monsters, etc.  Those are nice, but to me they're not the heart of the matter.  So, I'm going to tip towards IVV.  I'm sure it's a minority position, but that's where I'm standing.  [/sblock]-rg</blockquote>

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