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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5228548" data-attributes="member: 150">Round 3 Match 1: Iron Sky vs. SanzuoThe Roommate Special Edition*This is the first round that will have three judges rather than one.  Each judge will drop in his or her judgement for the round, with the third judge also writing a summary of all three and making the final declaration.  I believe we've used a best practice in the past of putting our individual judgements in spoiler blocks to help make sure that our individual judgements are not influenced by what other judges may have already put online.  I'll continue that practice.  [sblock]Okay, the two entries are Eat it, Sanzuo (EIS) and Iron Sky Sucks (ISS).I should say that I had considered an ingredient that was "your opponent's username" or something like that, so the idea that you guys chose to make your entry titles a jab at each other tickles me.  Well played, gentlemen.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> All right, with some trepidation due to the nature of the ingredients I posted in a moment of poor judgement, lets see what you guys have cooked up . . . .Ingredients:cyclopsIn EIS, the cyclops is Eyevan, the Cyclops-turned-djinn who has tricked Pan into becoming a Djinn in order to take over the arena and free himself from wish-granting duties.  The name is cute, and I like the personality . . I have a few reservatiosn about how much of the story of Eyevan is just exposition for the adventure, and his nature as a cyclops never really becomes relevant (he could have been just about any type of being), but he's good fun.  In ISS, the cyclops is the gladitorial champion that the players must earn their way up to face, and then defeat.  He works for the sake of inclusion, but lacks the color and texture of the cyclops in EIS, so EIS wins this ingredient. celestial arenaThis ingredient was meant to be intentionally ironic and tricky -- an arena in a celestial (heavenly) setting.  In EIS the arena has been move to Mt. Celestia, which works, but the arena as described doesn't doi a great job of being the celestial version of an arena -- it just happens to be there.  Meanwhile, ISS has the arena set in Chernoggar, a plane of eternal war found in the astral sea -- and that's celestial in that it's in the heavens -- but if anything that usage is just about as thin as EIS -- it's an arena, it's someplace that is arguably celestial, but that's as far as it goes.  No advantage here. reformed satyrAt first blush, EIS appears to have a pretty strong advantage here.  Pan is developed, very much a satyr, and has a strong, connected role in the adventure.  I did have a few misgivings about Pan -- given his unwelcome advnaces on the male members of the party, he seems to not be so much reformed as he is "playing for the other team." There's a real trick here -- once you include the next ingredient.  Pan is both reformed and the source of unwelcome advances?  Then, how is he reformed?  In ISS, the unnamed satyr has a role to play, but he's not as well developed or integral to the story.  He's not really a reformed satyr either -- he's a reformed slavemaster who happens to be a satyr . . . In the end, I'm not super satisfied with either application of the reformed satyr.  No advantage to anyone. unwelcome advancesI'm amused by the application of this in EIS -- using "advnace" to mean the powerups that are such a huge part of making monsters in 3.5.  Making them unwelcome is pretty cool.  The addition of the flirtatious advances of Pan -- which undermine his "reformed" status, add another layer here.  In ISS, the unwelcome advances are a vague threat made by the cyclops should they lose the battle.  Given that these are not likely to be something the party actually encounters, I don't think this works as well as the advances do in EIS.  So, Advnatage EIS. carpenter's malletBoth entries use the mallet in a signifigant way.  The hammer is again a bit stronger in EIS thanks to some more development, so advantage EIS.Two djinn one bottleHee hee hee.  I'm a dirty boy.  Ahem.  Anyway, in EIS the two djinn are "converted" djinn, the former cyclops Eyevan and the former satyr Pan. They're both bound to a single bottle, but not concurrently -- if Pan can get the party to help him, he will be restored to normal satyrdom and Eyevan will become a djinn again.  To my eyes, this skirts the edges of the ingredient a little -- they're both not really djinn, they're never djinn at the same time, etc.  But its still pretty cool. In ISS, the djinn are actual djinn, and they're actually bound to the same bottle.  The ingredient is used in a letter-perfect way (they are djinn, they're both in the same bottle at the same time), but . . . there isn't anything in the adventure that builds on the situation they are in -- the pair of them could have been a single djinn in the possession of the cyclops, hoping for rescue and freedom at the hands of the party.  So, advnatage EIS. Overall, EIS has several ingredients that it's using better than ISS, so EIS is ahead on ingredients.  Creativity -The much more in-depth development of the EIS entry has really helped push that entry over ISS. Characters have names and personalities, etc.  Well come.  ISS is solid, but EIS is better. Playability -I actually think that ISS may have an edge here.  EIS depends a whole lot on backstory, both to develop the ingredients and set up the adventure for the party. And once the party gets involved in the adventure, their role is prety straightforward and they aren't going to be doing much that really impacts the direction the story takes. ISS, on the other hand, gives the party a lot of room to explore the arena set on the plane of eternal heavy-metal warfare.  The major combats involve important ingredients (unlike the three battles the PCs face in EIS, which are funny but don't engage any of the ingredients). So, advantage to ISS here.  Conclusion -IN the end, while ISS has strong points, I think EIS really digs into the ingredients better and gets my vote for winning the match.  So, one vote for Iron Sky. [/sblock]</blockquote>

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