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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5632624" data-attributes="member: 150">Round 2 Match 1:Waylander the Slayer vs HowAndWhy99I'm late, as usual, so no farting around....Days of the Dragon (DD) by Waylander the Slayer vs. DragonChess (DC) by Howandwhy99NOTE: All three judges chime in on this round; my opinion is just one vote of the three, so just ignore my grouchiness......[sblock]Ingredients Breeding Ground In DD, according to the ingredient guide, the "breeding ground" is the plague and the dragonspire. Because it happens a lot, I'll say this once and be done with it -- when I see reports ingredients being used in a couple of different ways in an entry, that practically never means something good is going on -- usually it telegraphs that the ingredients are weak and the entry is claiming multiple ones to make up for that weakness.  In this case, the hatchery in the spire works, although it's not really very important to the adventure that there are drakes breeding there.  I wish the plague hadn't been mentioned, it just feels off center.  In DC, there's a breeding ground -- and much like the one in DD, it's there, but I didn't get a lot of razzle dazzle out of it being there. It's there, the adventure passes through.  There's some breeding going on, but it doesn't feel like an important part of the plot.  No advantage here.Disreputable Dragon - Yeah, there are dragons. Yeah, they've been labeled disreputable, but once again, I'm not sold on that detail in either entry. Slapping the label on is not good enough.  Cryazxx (DD) is a treaty-breaker, which is one of the catalysts for the adventure, but the flavor of that isn't really disreputable, and I'd been hoping for more.  Much the same, Teraxus (DC) is unpopular, and in most ways is a sort of absentee landlord of the city, but I was disappointed here, too. No advantage here. Lost - Hey, here's a fun one, in DD we don't just have two reported applications of the ingredient, there are three!  DC has one. But Livingstone and the Stolen Basilisk are both decent uses.  No advantages there. Wounded Pet - I've been riding pretty hard so far, but in this case we have an ingredient that's used pretty well in both.  In DD, Wulfang is one of the two survivors of the lost expedition, and in DC Stonetooth is the object of the quest, blinded and stolen from his Dragon master. Actually, though, I'm not seeing any mention that Stonetooth is blinded -- or the effect of that blindness -- except in the ingredient summary.  I'm sure that's just a product of time problems related to this entry, but still, I need to give an advantage to Wulfang and DD.Witchlord - I found myself confused in DD.  Lorathin is labeled "witchlord" in the ingredient summary. And he seems to be served by a coven of folks called witchlords, but he himself is some sort of dragonlord too? instead? And the other witch lords are just powerful spellcasters.  I was hoping for something that made them specifically witchlords and not just the Lorathin's Mage Posse.  SSlaritha, the witchlord of the lizardmen in DC is not especially "witchy" either, but she at least seems to have a little more witch flavor to her.  Slight advantage to DC. Institutionalization - in DD, aaya's confinment because she's been driven mad is a sort of institutionalization, and although that use of the term is a bit of an anachronism, it sort of works.  Aaya, though, isn't especially important to the play of the adventure -- she's part of the backstory more than anything else, and I'm not sure that the adventure would miss her if she were not there.  In DC, the term is applied to the PCs becoming the lords of Teraxus -- again, a bit of a stretch, but at least it's part of the play of the adventure.  So, another slight advantage to DC. Overall, I was not real excited with the way either batch of ingredients were used. Nothing terrible, nothing left out, but a lot of opportunities feel like they were missed, and a lot of the ones that are there feel sort of blah. Some felt like they were sprinkled on as garnish, rather than being the meat of the meal.  Playability and CreativityDC has some obvious problems caused by the timeframe stuff -- it's a laundry list of ideas and nuggets, not necessarily presented in a way that makes it easy to unravel. That, in the end, hurts -- it's hard to appreciate brilliance when you're just trying to fathom. Also, the big plot arc used by DC feels like a bit of a problem to me, too -- it's more small campaign than big adventure, and that means covering details and stuff less carefully in the writeup.  DD is a smaller, more manageable entry, and it would be a bit easier to drop into an ongoing campaign.  It has some strengths, too -- adventure elements that are more than just hack and slash, etc.  Conclusion -In the end, I think DD squeaks past DC on the clarity of the presentation of his entry and the more manageable scale.  Ingredients didn't make much difference for me in judgement -- I found both entries left a lot of potential on the table there.  So, one vote for Waylander the Slayer.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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