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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 5218555" data-attributes="member: 50987"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GGVeH1AB3Rg/R1_VQfKVuxI/AAAAAAAAAF4/oDbgb21N9fg/s400/alton_brown+cookie.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Whew!  What a weekend.  Managed to finish about a dozen loads of laundry and move about a ton of furniture.  Moving is never very much fun.  I think the worst part is not having reliable internet access...I am way behind on my Iron DM updates!But enough about me.  Let's check out the action in Round 2!-----We have two matches currently running in the Iron DM 2010 Competition.  In our first match, Chairman Radiating Gnome has served up a battle of centaurs, grottos, and bony needles for Ender Wiggin and Iron Sky.  Now as you will recall, Ender Wiggin narrowly defeated MortalPlague in the first round, with the creative use of an aerial swamp as the deciding factor.  Iron Sky, however, advanced to the second round by the disqualification of his opponent.  So while his entry was hands-down awesome, and his list of ingredients was (to quote another contestant) "insane," his skills remain unchallenged.In our second match, Sanzuo "The Plum Dumpling Master", is squared off against Matthew "Epic Level" JHanson, with a diabolical stack of Chairman PBartender's ingredients.  Sanzuo defeated HumbleMinion in Round 1 through superior use of time management, Oriental Adventures flavor, and rope bridge architecture.  MatthewJHanson was victorious over Pour, in an epic-level adventure writing competition that proved ebony flies aren't so lame after all.I wish I had time to do my usual page-long commentary on each list of ingredients, because they are absolutely wonderful!  But alas, it is Monday morning, and I have heaps of business to attend.  So I'm afraid I will have to give my abbreviated assessments.[Spoiler]For Match 1, we have a Centaur Hunter, an Ancestral Grotto, a Secretive Matron, a Torc of Fortune, some Polygamy, and a Bone Needle.Of all of these ingredients, I think the most difficult one to work with will be Polygamy.  It's not that this ingredient is all that uncommon in stories; it is just very hard to make this ingredient matter.  Polygamy is almost always occurs in the background, and always involves NPCs...two of the things that players tend to disregard between dice rolls.  Each contestant will have to work extra-hard to make Polygamy interesting to the players and important to the story.The ingredient I like the most?  The Secretive Matron, easy.  This ingredient has so much potential...as soon as I saw the ingredient in the list, my head started spinning a yarn about the dark secrets of a drow priestess.  (Okay, I admit, the Bone Needle might have influenced me a bit.)  Secrets are always awesome, and secretive powerful women are even moreso.-----For Match 2, we have A Girl With Pigtails, The Happiest Place on Earth, somebody's Half-Eaten Lunch, a Snoop, A Snake, A Snake!, and Matt, the Insstigater.  I wonder if it is by design or by coincidence, that the last ingredient has the same name as one of our contestants in this round?The challenge with this ingredient list will not be so much the inclusion of all of the components, as it will be the way in which they are presented.  "A Snake, A Snake!" is a very specific presentation of the ingredient, for example.  This should be a red flag to each contestant, that the judge will be looking for this exact useage in the entry.  Because if it didn't matter, Pbartender would have simply listed "snake."I think the last ingredient will be the hardest for our contestants.  For starters: why the apparent misspelling with the word "Insstigater?"  The contestants have no choice but to assume that the judge did this on purpose.  So each will have to decide why the word is misspelled, then either correct or explain it within the context of their story.My favorite ingredient here is the girl with pigtails.  But that's probably because I read too much anime.  Come to think of it...with a little bit of elbow grease, we could easily have our first BESM adventure in an Iron DM Competition![/Spoiler]</blockquote>

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