Iron DM 2010 Discussion Thread

[InVinoVeritas]

My judgment is up.

That took longer to consider and write up than I thought.

 

[Pbartender]

Sorry for the wait, guys... It's a long story, but we were semi-nomadic until last night, when we finally finished closing on the new house. I've only got internet access at work, until sometime this weekend when the phones and net get hooked up at the new place.

I can post a super-short judgment, if you guys are impatient.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Pbartender:

RL comes first, so take the time you need. Also, we can survive with a super-short judgment if, once things settle down for you and your family, details can be discussed.

 

[Pbartender]

RL comes first, so take the time you need.

Oh, no worries, now.

Let me put it this way... Our house buying experience was like something out of a John Landis movie. Including, but not limited to, a madcap high speed dash all over town to collect each member of our family and arrive at the office to sign the final papers with only seconds to spare, before the deadline ran out and the contract was cancelled.

Crazy hijinks, I tell you.


EDIT: That said, my judgment is posted.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Oh, no worries, now.

Let me put it this way... Our house buying experience was like something out of a John Landis movie. Including, but not limited to, a madcap high speed dash all over town to collect each member of our family and arrive at the office to sign the final papers with only seconds to spare, before the deadline ran out and the contract was cancelled.

Crazy hijinks, I tell you.


EDIT: That said, my judgment is posted.

Don't worry, I've bought homes before. I know how those things work, how much pressure everything's under, and so forth. Congrats on getting it done!

 

[Iron Sky]

I seem to get to be the first to congratulate my opponent. Well done ajanders! Great entry, well deserved victory. The cabaret was especially well done - in mine one cabaret was the starting point of the adventure, another the ending point, in yours it was central. The "acts" were entertaining as well - I got a good chuckle out of several of them and I could see them being fun to play through as a player.

That said, I have a proposal for next year's judging.

[sblock=Proposal]I think it might be a service to competitors if there was a structured judging system that gave them an idea of what to aim for as they are making adventures, something like the following:

Ingredients: 10 points each, 0 being it wasn't used, 2 being it was used but just as a name-drop, 4 being it was weakly tied in, 6 being important to the adventure, 8 being crucial/irreplaceable in the adventure, 10 being inspired/inspiring.

Integration of ingredients: 40? points total, for a score of how well the ingredients were tied to each other and the story itself.

Creativity: 20? points: for overall creativity and originality when creating the adventure.

Presentation and layout: 10? points: for easy to-read formatting and presentation of the adventure. How hard would it be to go back and find info if you were running it?

Playability: 40? points: last year, playability seemed far less important than creative use in ingredients. This year, playability seemed to by the single most important factor. It being an adventure, it makes sense that it's important, but seeing a point value would help bring that point home.

Timeliness: 10? 20? points. So far, the one thing that I have disagreed with most about judgments in general between this year's and last year's competitions is that there seems to almost be incentive to post a late entry. From what I recall, late entries have had no mention of the fact that the entry was late in the judgments and it seemed to have no bearing to the judges when reviewing entries.

I'm almost OCD about being on time to things (just ask my roommate Sanzuo about it - I set alarms on my cell phone for everything) and so there being no penalty for being late troubles me somewhat.

Anyway, the points could be arranged so they make some neat total, 200 points for example. The judges each year could talk briefly before hand and set the totals themselves depending on their own personal preferences. For the finals and semi-finals, the final scores could be the average of the three judges individual scores.

I've already seen a pretty remarkable increase in the quality of entries in general from skimming back over past years and I think having these point guidelines could be useful in raising the quality of entries and giving judges a framework for more consistent judging as a whole, rather than self-invented, "edges" "advantage" "point" "nods" and the like.[/sblock]

Thank you to all the judges and all my fellow competitors for another great Iron DM. I look forward to next year's!

I think I'd like to try my hand at judging next time - I think I qualified as a RBDM, at least according to the "Are you an RBDM" thread that was kicking around here a while back - and I've got a couple years experience as a competitor in Iron DM itself. Can talk more about it next year though...

 

[ajanders]

I'd like to thank the judges for their kindness and Iron Sky for his graciousness.
There are a couple of times in this event when I would have disqualified myself if I was judging.

Big thanks to all: I hope you find these adventures enjoyable.

 

[CleverNickName]

And I'm back from Mexico!

Sorry about disappearing there; I had hoped to have Iron DM wrapped up before my trip to Cabo San Lucas. But I'm back, and we have a winner!

Congratulations, ajanders!

 

[ajanders]

I'm starting to play with some open-source desktop publishing tools. Would anyone object if I made a .pdf compilation of all the adventures and posted it somewhere under a Creative Common license?
Obviously, everyone would be appropriately credited.

 

[ender_wiggin]

That would be fine with me. And congratulations on your victory.