NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="phoamslinger" data-source="post: 6496963" data-attributes="member: 2342">Ok, in the judgment between The Hatred of Ares (HoA) and Power Struggle (PS), I think I've got a pretty good idea of who took this one.  But let's go through the motions just the same and see where things turn out.  The six ingredients were Celebrated OrcDiseased AldermanDistant TerminusUniversal LanguageHeavy WaterGive or Takewhich I have changed the order because this was more or less the order they appeared in both adventures.Celebrated Orc; in HoA we had Tyndarus, a mythic heroic figure while in PS we had Ugzugg, famous inventor in a Steampunk setting.  In both stories the orc was Celebrated.  but were they both Orcs?  orcs had their origin before Mr Gygax brought them into 1st edition from Mr. Tolkein's trilogy.   Because of the movies, even younger generations now have a pretty good visual of what constitutes an orc and what doesn't.  While I liked the ying/yang of Ares and Athena bringing civilization, arts and passion to each race, the orcs in HoA ceased to be orcs.  Even the names of the orcs weren't terribly orcish.  So I could have substituted valley elves, gully dwarves, or even just different colored humans as the oppostion race in HoA and it wouldn't have impacted the adventure in any way.  In PS, Ugzugg may have been a great inventor, but his motivations were brutish and thug-like.  Other races could have been substituted here as well, but the characterization of a Celebrated Orc was stronger in PS than in HoA.  Diseased Alderman; in HoA we have Hegio and in PS we have Throckmorton Winfiddle.  Both characters are leaders within their cities, but an Alderman is a member of a city council.  Winfiddle fits this image as a possible revenue source for the Aloysius Urey and a person of note, but not necessarily a major leader of the town/city.  But Hegio, from the amount of power he projects, is he only an alderman?  Mayor, Ambassador, Governor, General, Prince, King.  All of these titles would seem to be more appropriate from the amount of influence that Hegio projects.  So I found it difficult to see Hegio in a minor funtionary role within the city's government. On the other hand, Diseased applied well to both NPCs, the Hatred and the tuberculosis.  So a slight edge to PS.Distant Terminus:  The end of a lengthy underground river journey and the end of a steampunk rail line.  Both worked ok in their stories.  In both it was a quest to a distant destination whereby the PCs could do whatever they needed to do to further the adventure.  I will give a slight edge to HoA on this one.  To get to a point where dead people hang out it makes a lot of sense that you'd have to travel a fair distance, otherwise you'd have dead things all over the place to have to deal with in normal life.  In PS, the Crystal Rose could have been placed anywhere.  It didn't have to be across the continent, UselessTriviaMan (UTM) just placed it there to satisfy one of the ingredients.  An edge to HoA.Universal Language:  this one goes to HoA.  Gradine gave use of the language of the Universe, either music or mathematics.  UTM gave us a universal translator.  Not the same thing.Heavy Water:  I will admit when this came up on the list of ingredients, I drew a blank on how I myself would have worked it into a story.  I was pleased that both DMs were able to find a workable definition, either the Styx or Deuterium enriched H2O that worked within the campaign settings they chose.  In fact, I wonder if both of them used this ingredient as the first one for building the rest of their adventures around.  There were still problems with both.  While it's used as a setting piece in HoA, the heavy water doesn't really impact the story that much, "Oh, look at the Water as we pass by it.  Don't interact with it, or else!"  But using D2O as a cure for radiation poisoning becomes techno babble, throwing scientific jargon as a solution that doesn't have a basis in reality.  The Styx river had to be the Styx river to get to the Underworld.  Bathing in Heavy Water in PS could have been replaced with Bathing in Orcish Bloodwine and achieved much of the same effect on the story.  I have to give this one to HoA.Give or Take: Give me a soul or two OR solve the riddle and take the one you want.   Give OR Take a life for the cure.  This idea was firmly developed ad an important device in HoA, but in PS, I would have liked to have gotten the actual quote from the crystal. "It says something about crystals and sympathetic bonds, but that goes right over everyone’s heads." regretably went, yes, right over my head.  And it was just sort of glossed over. So the justification for the give or take in PS just wasn't there in my mind.Problems I saw.[sblock]In The Hatred of Ares, the Orcs weren't really very orcish to me while I was reading and it kept throwing me while I was reading it.  But other than that, it's a pretty strong Iron DM submission.  The Orc is the solution to the war being caused by the Alderman which the party will have to travel on Heavy Water to a Distant Terminus to solve a riddle, the answer being Universal Language.  That's five ingredients tied well together.  The Give or Take wasn't as strong in either of the two adventures, but it was handled better in Hatred.In Power Struggle, I did like the fact that because the alderman had the disease, he wore a device on his face that allowed him to be impersonated by the scientist.  That's the sort of convoluted, out of the box thinking that makes an Iron DM ingredient into an essential ingredient.  If Winfiddle hadn't been diseased, a large part of the entire adventure would have come apart.  Even though you killed him off even before the adventure began, he was still a very necessary ingredient.  But there were a lot of things that I felt could have been developed some more to make a stronger entry.  Just because the assassin is an orc, the scientist automatically suspects Ugzugg?  Telepathic Gnomish Oracle wasn't an ingredient, but she/it is a major component tying the story together.  And she's an alien?  There were a lot of details in the Dramatis Personae that didn't make it into the actual adventure, which made me wonder, was the Power Struggle of the title between the orc and the scientist, between the oracle and the alderman, or between the gnome and the rose?  Maybe Power Struggles (plural) as a title could have been developed so that the adventure would have had a little more depth.  What was the actual comment made by the Crystal Rose?  And the use of the Codex Vox and also the Heavy Water, both macguffins.  For future reference, please keep in mind that ingredients that appear as macguffins are BAD, because like I illustrated above, they can easily be swapped out with a replacement ingredient and not have the slightest impact on the story.Sorry UselessTriviaMan, but Gradine's entry was better developed and had a stronger use of the ingredients.This round goes to Gradine.  Congratulations [/sblock]</blockquote>

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