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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5967667" data-attributes="member: 150">Finals Judgement: Rouge Blues (Deuce Traveler) vs. King of Thieves (Waylander the Slayer)So, as we have in past years, for the finals the Judges came up with a goofy theme for the ingredients in the finals. I feel great personal shame that this year's theme ended up being painful wordplay, but there you go. We're not good people.  Anyway, on to the judginess....  RB = Rouge Blues  KT = King of Thieves [sblock]Ingredients:First the required ingredients.  Seared Seer.  So, in RB we have a Stone Statue that a) is an oracle b) eats c) complains about it's lot in life d) wants mango custard.  He's been blasted and nearly destroyed. I think he works for the ingredient, but I wonder about making him a stone statue -- so much of the rest of the details of the seer are very much the province of the living -- whining, eating, etc.  Especially the eating.  But, like I said, it works. In KT, the Seared Seer is one of the guises taken on by the shadow assassin while the PCs are going through their challenges.  But as far as I can tell, he doesn't really do much "seeing" -- he's in disguise as a blind prisoner who claims to have seen the PCs.  Okay. It's there -- but feels a bit weak.  Advantage RB.Desert DessertIn KT, the Shadow Assassin (in his Seer guise) tries to force feed sand to the PCs.  This turns out to be a clue, one that will free them from the challenge -- they need to eat their way out.  My issue with this use is that there's nothing I'm seeing that makes this a dessert. It's edible, but does it taste good? In RB, the statue wants some vague rare dessert made with a desert fruit. I've taken to calling it mango custard in my head, for no good reason. It's nominally covering the ingredient, but the story doesn't need it at all. So, I don't see either entry has having succeeded with this ingredient.  No advantage. Knave's NaveIn RB the "nave" is a shrine on the back of the tarrasque built around where the stiletto had been jammed into the beast's skull to control it. Again, this feels like pretty thin, nominal coverage of the ingredient, and in this case the PCs don't seem to really interact with it very much (perhaps they'd go there to look for clues to track Farrah). In KT, though, I'm very confused.  As I read the entry, the "Nave" is the competition. I suppose it's possible that was not your intention, but it actually reads that way in two places:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"many adventurers travel to the Dubious City- Kratas, to compete in the Knaves Nave"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"invited to compete in the Knaves Nave- the mysterious competition to the altar of the god of thieves, to be crowned as the Kings of Thieves, and the ruling council of Kratas for the next four years."</li> </ul>Am I reading those wrong? I don't think so. Which means that, in this case, the word "nave" is being used as a label for the competition, and in no way is a true nave (the central area of a church). I double checked with Dictionary.com to see if there was another definition of "nave" that was a sort of competition, but didn't find one. So, advantage RB. Terraced TarrasqueBoth entries have a Tarrasque. In RB, it's meandering towards towns that need rescuing by getting it back under control. In KT, it's part of one of the settings, the PCs climb around and over it in a couple of scenes. No advantage to either side. Still StilettoAgain, both entries have a Stiletto -- in KT, it's used by the Shadow Assassin and is filled with gorgon poison.  In RB, it's the enchanted spike used to control the Tarrasque.  They're different -- I struggle a little with each, in different ways, but I don't think either has a clear edge over the other. Party ParitySo, this ingredient was not very nice.  In RB, an ethereal tether (think you'll get bonus points for spitting word games back at the judges, do you?  <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=";)" /> ) allows the PCs to catch up to the ifrit Farrah by taking advantage of it's special properties that enforce equal space between all figures tethered together. It's a little weird, but it sort of works.  In KT, the PCs walk in on a debate between two groups of demons trying to decide which humanoids taste best.  This may be another situation where the execution of the scene will bring the ingredient into focus better, but I'm not quite seeing it.  The PCs can enter into the debate (relying on their own experience eating humanoids, I presume) but really this is just a scene where the PCs interact a little and end up choosing one of two bands of Demons to fight with. I'm just not seeing any sort of parity in the scene. If there were an opportunity to do some sort of diplomatic skill challenge that would ramp up the two sides of the debate by supporting and inflaming both sides of the debate equally, until they fought each other, that might satisfy the ingredient, but in this case I'm not seeing it. So, once again, I need to give advantage to RB.  Bonus Ingredients.  Rouge Rogue, Slippery Slippers, Demonstrable Demon's TroubleWe have always talked about bonus ingredients as tiebreakers, but in this case I don't think the would be much help.  Both entries have serviceable Rouge Rogues, both have significant Slippery Slippers, both have demons with troubles.  Call all the bonus ingredients a wash.  So, for me anyway, Rouge Blues has made better use of several of the ingredients and comes out of this stage with a clear edge. Playability -I don't see strong differences between the two entries for playability. RB does, however, have a very specific path the PCs must follow -- if they can't get the Paleet to help them, and give them his ethereal tether, they basically have very little way to catch up to Farrah -- which would mean the secondary option kicks in, where they buy it back from the pawn show where she hawks it.  Which isn't very exciting.  KT would be mostly playable, in that it winds up being a collection of combat encounters the PCs are transported between as part of the challenge. I've already discussed the problems I see with the demon debate scene, but other than that the playability of KT seems to be decent. CreativityI have a prejudice I'll come clean about -- I don't like scenarios like the one in KT where the PCs are magically transported from one setting to another to complete some sort of challenge.  It feels really easy to me.  It allows us to just throw together a collection of disparate elements in a way that feels cheap an easy in an Iron DM setting.  That's a prejudice. The whole thing could have been written as a camel race through several scenes, which essentially just replaces the word "transport" with "camel" and it would be more satisfying to me. At the same time, the "contest" structure makes it super easy to throw together a variety of unrelated challenges without really tying them up naturally. So, on a gut level, I reacted poorly to KT because of the shortcuts I felt like it's using.  At the same time, in RB I'm also really feeling the strain to tie ingredients together. The jaunt into the ethereal plane for the sake of faster travel is clearly tacked into an adventure that really does not need it to serve two purposes -- satisfy a tough ingredient and make the ehter/tether joke.  The desert for the statue is odd and doesn't really fit very well, given that we're talking about a stone head that can talk. I might have been happier if the stone head at something that stone might eat -- maybe something inedible to people, like sand...... but, anyway, there were problems.  Word games aside, I didn't expect that this set of ingredients would be as challenging as they seem to have been -- remove the descriptors and it looks fairly ordinary (seer/dessert/nave/tarrasque/stiletto/parity). But, the world looks a whole lot different from the judging seat. Anyway.... I don't think either entry had clear creativity advantages over the other -- there were things I liked about both.  Conclusion. For stronger ingredient use -- the one clear (to me) advantage I found in one entry over the other -- I'm going to cast my vote for Rouge Blues.  We'll see how the other judges vote....[/sblock]-rg</blockquote>

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