IRON DM 2014 Tournament
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
[MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION] said in the scheduling thread:
I just wanted to say that I thought Wicht's story was better written and seemed a bit tighter than [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION] 's story. Hotep will do much better next time if he tries to tighten up some of the quest plot threads. Wicht also had some elements that seemed shoehorned in, but I really like his use of Devious Machinations when it comes to the fake death threats giving way to serious death threats and the confusion the parallel plot lines brought. Also his use of Dwarven Tragedian was entertaining and better implemented. Hotep did use the Chicken Dance better than Wicht, but for both that ingredient seemed tossed in for flavor and not integral. Inscrutable Fey was a tie for me. The Anarchist's Castle leans more toward hotep, though that also seemed shoehorned. Magic moth was also a tie, but not in a good way, as both seemed not to use the ingredient in a way that was integral. So all in all, I agree with Wicht taking this due to his two winning ingredients being so well used and the tighter way he had written his adventure. But Hotep could have one by just improving on one of those ingredients he had tied Wicht on, or by tightening up the writing a bit.
I just wanted to say that I thought Wicht's story was better written and seemed a bit tighter than [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION] 's story. Hotep will do much better next time if he tries to tighten up some of the quest plot threads. Wicht also had some elements that seemed shoehorned in, but I really like his use of Devious Machinations when it comes to the fake death threats giving way to serious death threats and the confusion the parallel plot lines brought. Also his use of Dwarven Tragedian was entertaining and better implemented. Hotep did use the Chicken Dance better than Wicht, but for both that ingredient seemed tossed in for flavor and not integral. Inscrutable Fey was a tie for me. The Anarchist's Castle leans more toward hotep, though that also seemed shoehorned. Magic moth was also a tie, but not in a good way, as both seemed not to use the ingredient in a way that was integral. So all in all, I agree with Wicht taking this due to his two winning ingredients being so well used and the tighter way he had written his adventure. But Hotep could have one by just improving on one of those ingredients he had tied Wicht on, or by tightening up the writing a bit.
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
Round 1 Match 2: Deuce Traveler vs. Waylander the Slayer
[MENTION=34958]Deuce Traveler[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1830]Waylander the Slayer[/MENTION], you have you have 24 hours* to post your entries to this thread. Please include a list of ingredients at the beginning of the entry and please do not edit your post once it is submitted. Please refrain from reading your opponent's entry until after you have posted your own. You are on your honor to do so.
Your ingredients are:
Endless Quest
Dicey Situation
Obsessive-compulsive Otyugh
Void
Suspiciously Nice Village
Wolf in sheep's clothing
*I'm posting this a bit early because RL will have me away from my computer at 6 EST when this should start. You will have until 6 EST tomorrow to complete this round.
[MENTION=34958]Deuce Traveler[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1830]Waylander the Slayer[/MENTION], you have you have 24 hours* to post your entries to this thread. Please include a list of ingredients at the beginning of the entry and please do not edit your post once it is submitted. Please refrain from reading your opponent's entry until after you have posted your own. You are on your honor to do so.
Your ingredients are:
Endless Quest
Dicey Situation
Obsessive-compulsive Otyugh
Void
Suspiciously Nice Village
Wolf in sheep's clothing
*I'm posting this a bit early because RL will have me away from my computer at 6 EST when this should start. You will have until 6 EST tomorrow to complete this round.
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
Oooh... I really like these.
Wicht
Hero
You would in this case be mostly wrong...
While I do have some templates for creatures and magic items and such and they are very helpful, for adventures themselves, there is no pre-saved plug and play template I use. What I do, however is arrange my writing in the format used by Paizo and others with an introduction, adventure summary, hook, etc. The introduction is used for background. The adventure summary provides a rough outline of the expected chain of events in the adventure. The hook, of course, is to detail why the PCs should be involved. While alterations to the presentation can be made, these three parts should be more or less standard. Remembering to break it up this way also provides a visual reminder of just how much back-story to adventure you actually are providing in your entry.
In the end, I think that is a good thing to have done with any entry.
Imhotepthewise
Explorer
Hopefully, this is in a better spot. I will delete it from the scheduling thread.
Quote:
So, [MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION] and [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION], it would be enlightening to know how you both developed your entries out of a fairly quirky set of ingredients. Care to elaborate?
From Imhotepthewise:
Sorry it’s taken me some time to respond. I went with my son to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and then home to watch the nailbiter between the Ravens and the Patriots.
Last time I entered, I started with an adventure in mind based on one of the ingredients and then muscled in the rest of them as best as they would fit. Needless to say, I did not win.
This time, I wrote each ingredient on an index card, put its Merriam Webster definition on it, and then cogitated on them.
Dwarven Tragedian. Since I consciously shied away from any theatrical tack, I developed the woeful path of Dunstan. He would have been a greater part of the scheme if I could have made him so, but it just didn’t come to me. He gave me a great vehicle to show Hogmin’s erratic nature, and to resolve the use of Chicken Dance without plugging in “Dancing Chickens”, which I mistakenly thought would tank me as too obvious. It also made someone the point of blame for Heglat’s wrath.
Chicken Dance. As I said, I thought it was Kryptonite to use the literal dancing chickens. And I couldn’t make a humaniod imitation of that work. It fell together to make Dunstan’s sorry life even more sorry by being Hogmin’s victim and a potential hazard on the battlefield.
Inscrutable Fey. I almost bit on the Fated to Die definition, but just couldn’t work it to my satisfaction.
Anarchist’s Castle. I wanted to have something other than a stone castle, and that drove me to look through the list of Fey to find one disagreable enough to make an anarchist of. The redcap is one I have never used in a game, but have wanted to for some time.
Devious Machinations. Not so much as what, but how. I needed to put enough manipulations of the unwilling and the unknowing to make it convincing as devious mechinations would have to be to be convincing.
Magic Moth. Kind of fell apart when I was reminded that pixies have improved invisibility, however, part of Heglat’s plans depended on being seen but being seen as something other than a pixie. It did not come off as strong as I would have liked.
Polishing. It was difficult to make it real purty in 24 hours minus so many hours of Real Lifetm in there. I suspect Wicht and others have a couple of templates handy to paste into to make their entries pop. I will have to review his and others entries to get a better handle on this. I also have to get better at posting to the forum, format wise.
So, the adventure kind of formed around the ingredients and the NPCs that evolved from them. It turned out to an adventure I’d really like to run. I love battles with plenty of chaos and unwilling participants.
See you all next time.
Quote:
So, [MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION] and [MENTION=976]Imhotepthewise[/MENTION], it would be enlightening to know how you both developed your entries out of a fairly quirky set of ingredients. Care to elaborate?
From Imhotepthewise:
Sorry it’s taken me some time to respond. I went with my son to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and then home to watch the nailbiter between the Ravens and the Patriots.
Last time I entered, I started with an adventure in mind based on one of the ingredients and then muscled in the rest of them as best as they would fit. Needless to say, I did not win.
This time, I wrote each ingredient on an index card, put its Merriam Webster definition on it, and then cogitated on them.
Dwarven Tragedian. Since I consciously shied away from any theatrical tack, I developed the woeful path of Dunstan. He would have been a greater part of the scheme if I could have made him so, but it just didn’t come to me. He gave me a great vehicle to show Hogmin’s erratic nature, and to resolve the use of Chicken Dance without plugging in “Dancing Chickens”, which I mistakenly thought would tank me as too obvious. It also made someone the point of blame for Heglat’s wrath.
Chicken Dance. As I said, I thought it was Kryptonite to use the literal dancing chickens. And I couldn’t make a humaniod imitation of that work. It fell together to make Dunstan’s sorry life even more sorry by being Hogmin’s victim and a potential hazard on the battlefield.
Inscrutable Fey. I almost bit on the Fated to Die definition, but just couldn’t work it to my satisfaction.
Anarchist’s Castle. I wanted to have something other than a stone castle, and that drove me to look through the list of Fey to find one disagreable enough to make an anarchist of. The redcap is one I have never used in a game, but have wanted to for some time.
Devious Machinations. Not so much as what, but how. I needed to put enough manipulations of the unwilling and the unknowing to make it convincing as devious mechinations would have to be to be convincing.
Magic Moth. Kind of fell apart when I was reminded that pixies have improved invisibility, however, part of Heglat’s plans depended on being seen but being seen as something other than a pixie. It did not come off as strong as I would have liked.
Polishing. It was difficult to make it real purty in 24 hours minus so many hours of Real Lifetm in there. I suspect Wicht and others have a couple of templates handy to paste into to make their entries pop. I will have to review his and others entries to get a better handle on this. I also have to get better at posting to the forum, format wise.
So, the adventure kind of formed around the ingredients and the NPCs that evolved from them. It turned out to an adventure I’d really like to run. I love battles with plenty of chaos and unwilling participants.
See you all next time.
Rune
Once A Fool
From the scheduling thread:
Go Pats!
The tragedy you built around him was superb and had the potential to carry the the whole adventure, if only you had followed through with making the character central. And if you hadn't had so much of the action occur before the adventure started.
Your usage of the Chicken Dance ingredient was far superior to Wicht's, but not because he took a more literal definition. His interpretation was really good--flavorful and evocative.
Your actual implementation of it beat the pants off of his, however. You made it a game-changer and something the PCs would have to both deal with and first figure out how. In contrast, Wicht's was either a roadblock standing in the way of the adventure, or meant to be glossed over with a die roll or handwaved away. Which, of course, means the best purpose it could serve would be not bringing the adventure to a dead stop.
Too bad (as it could have strengthened your theme). Still, your version of the ingredient was better than Wicht's, anyway.
While I can't speak for Wicht, I can say that I also always edited as I wrote (and still do), but I don't think having a set template would have been very helpful. Keeping things well-organized and well-formatted is crucial for clarity and brevity, but it really is as simple as reading it to yourself to make sure it flows and no important information is lost.
But that's me. I'm what (if memory serves) Kurt Vonnegut called a "plodder." If you are a "swooper," I imagine you should probably alot a specific amount of time for revision at the outset.
That's a great place to start! If you tighten up your premise a little more and move more of the action from the background into the adventure, you'll make a formidable opponent in future tournaments.
Hope so!
Go Pats!
The tragedy you built around him was superb and had the potential to carry the the whole adventure, if only you had followed through with making the character central. And if you hadn't had so much of the action occur before the adventure started.
Your usage of the Chicken Dance ingredient was far superior to Wicht's, but not because he took a more literal definition. His interpretation was really good--flavorful and evocative.
Your actual implementation of it beat the pants off of his, however. You made it a game-changer and something the PCs would have to both deal with and first figure out how. In contrast, Wicht's was either a roadblock standing in the way of the adventure, or meant to be glossed over with a die roll or handwaved away. Which, of course, means the best purpose it could serve would be not bringing the adventure to a dead stop.
Too bad (as it could have strengthened your theme). Still, your version of the ingredient was better than Wicht's, anyway.
While I can't speak for Wicht, I can say that I also always edited as I wrote (and still do), but I don't think having a set template would have been very helpful. Keeping things well-organized and well-formatted is crucial for clarity and brevity, but it really is as simple as reading it to yourself to make sure it flows and no important information is lost.
But that's me. I'm what (if memory serves) Kurt Vonnegut called a "plodder." If you are a "swooper," I imagine you should probably alot a specific amount of time for revision at the outset.
That's a great place to start! If you tighten up your premise a little more and move more of the action from the background into the adventure, you'll make a formidable opponent in future tournaments.
Hope so!
Last edited:
phoamslinger
Explorer
greetings DMs. I've posted in several tourneys, what MY judging criteria are, but they mostly come down to three things.
1 if an ingredient is an ignorant ogre, and I could swap out a ignorant lizardman or a scholarly ogre, and have no change to your story, that's not a good thing. if the ingredient is ignorant ogre, it HAS TO BE an ogre, and he HAS TO BE ignorant. I'll be looking for that on all six ingredients.
2 each ingredient needs to tie in to the other 5. without linking them together, they are not a good thing.
3. tell me a good story. formatting is always nice, but a good story goes a long way.
btw, ingredients for round 1, match 3 are waiting in the wings to delight and amaze you (or is that dismay and confound? so confusing sometimes...)
1 if an ingredient is an ignorant ogre, and I could swap out a ignorant lizardman or a scholarly ogre, and have no change to your story, that's not a good thing. if the ingredient is ignorant ogre, it HAS TO BE an ogre, and he HAS TO BE ignorant. I'll be looking for that on all six ingredients.
2 each ingredient needs to tie in to the other 5. without linking them together, they are not a good thing.
3. tell me a good story. formatting is always nice, but a good story goes a long way.
btw, ingredients for round 1, match 3 are waiting in the wings to delight and amaze you (or is that dismay and confound? so confusing sometimes...)
Rune
Once A Fool
For what it's worth, I will be delighted and amazed when you dismay and confound your victims with them.
Oh, what could they be? What could they be?
