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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5250956" data-attributes="member: 150">Iron Sky vs. AjandersThe Dada Finals.  Judgement Straight from Doo-dah.  Lookout, here it comes =>[sblock]The Song of the Prophets (SoP) vs. Have a Heart, PLease? (HaHP)So, like, this was intentionally one of the weirdest, most esoteric sets of ingredients, all taken from Dadaist art, if you hadn't spotted the theme yet.  Sounds like fun, right?  Lets see how the ingredients got used:Exquisite Cadaver - Both used this one pretty well as a prop -- a dingus held ransom, a playing piece in a game.  No advantage.Festooned Cabaret - Again, the cabaret is an important location in both entries.  I did like the fey feel of the cabaret that the PCs return to over and over again in HaHP, so I'm going to nod in that direction. Advantage HAHP.The Girl with the Prefabricated Heart - SoP wins this one, with a much more significant, important application of the ingredient.Dreams that money can buy - In SoP, the dreams are part of the setting -- and they're a cool element, but they're pretty much backstory only.  In HaHP, though, the idea of the dream is more of a desire, not an actual dream . . .and it just doesn't work as well.  Advantage SoP    Prestigious Urinal - I have to give an advantage to HaHP on this one.  The Gaming Table is, in my experience, the natural habitat of all sorts of dick jokes and other profanities, and the idea of an actual pissing contest is great fun.  In SoP, the prophet's recepticle is okay, and works, but I prefer the application in HaHP.Handkerchief of Clouds - In HaHP, the encounter with the handkerchief feels tacked on -- the adventure doesn't need it to be there, it's just a bit of fluff.  In SoP, the handkerchief is one of the items the PCs need to recover . . . it's a dingus, but it's an important one.  Advnatage SoP.And the bonus tiebreaker ingredient: Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear - Actually I'm going to call this one a wash, too -- both used this one very well.  So, for ingredients, I'm stuck with a slight advantage to SoP. CreativityIs it just me, or did everyone readying SoP read "ash-shtat" as "asshat"?  <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=";)" /> I really liked both of these entries -- this is the finals, and there's a reason these contestants got where they are.  Song of the Prophets has a lot going for it -- it's an interesting story, and there's a whole culture behind the story.  Very cool stuff.  Have a Heart, Please, blends together infernal and fey faustian bargains into a complex web that I find very interesting.  I especially like the way the adventure evokes the fey nature of the feywild.  The infernal-fey concept feels to me like a good, flavorful approach to the ingredients.  It's a very new thing, but I like the flavors in HaHP better.  PlayabilityBoth adventures are very playable, no doubt about that.  There is a difference, though, and it goes back to the distinction I made in the creativity above.  The fey flavor of HaHP is something that the players will experience and play with in an important way while they play through the adventure.  They travel through woods and keep coming back to the same cabaret -- but while it's the same cabaret, it's different every time.  And so on.  It's not just background flavor -- it's played flavor.  Not that SoP is without flavor, but a lot of that flavor is backstory.  The player experience is going to be pretty straightforward -- they get hired to do something to save a little girl, they travel from place to place and either bamboozle, plead, or fight to get the ingredient they need and move on to the next place.  It's pretty good, and very playable, but it's just not as strong as HaHP.  So, advantage HaHP. Dadaism I don't know if this should be considered or not -- certainly I don't think it's a requirement.  But all of the ingredients were taken from Dadaist art -- some are the names of art objects, and so on.  Dada, as a movement, was intended "to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchistic in nature." (wikipedia) I am have been interested to see if either entry felt like it was using this philosophy as an influence on the entry.  SoP gets close -- at least it has a body of space-amish that eschew technology.  But that's not quite the same tone as the Dada stuff has.  I don't really think either entry got any sort of advnatage over the other for working with this tone and idea.  Conclusion.  This is a tough call -- I'm glad I'm not the only voice deciding this.  In the end, I find that the fey flavors and textures of HaHP are strong enough to overcome a slight disadvantage in ingredients and put it over the top, but it's a very near thing.  So, my vote is cast for Have a Heart, Please. -rg[/sblock]</blockquote>

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