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="Gradine" data-source="post: 6501034" data-attributes="member: 57112">Great match, UselessTriviaMan. I'll admit I was sweating bullets for the bulk of it.As for my process, I focused on making sure each use of each ingredient was both integral to the plot and tied directly to phrasing of the ingredient. Phoamslinger was mostly correct in deducing that the first ingredient I started with was Heavy Water. In truth, it was a joint revelation with Distant Terminus. The connection between the River Styx and Hades was too good to pass up. I had run a Greek themed campaign before, so I drew heavily from that. Racism was a major theme in that campaign, and with Celebrated Orc on the list it was an easy choice to return to. Diseased Alderman was the perfect ingredient to incorporate that, as it allowed the Disease in question to pull double duty as both an actual affliction and as a societal disease. I had decided early on that Universal Language would involve math or music or both, and by the time I had worked out the backstories of Athena and Ares, I knew exactly how to use it. Give or Take was the weak link. I had wanted to work it in as its usual form (a margin of error given at the end of an estimate) but I just kept drawing blanks. The version I settled on works, but I definitely wish that I had been able to incorporate it more strongly into the adventure.I feel like I learned a lot from both the process and the judgment. Obviously the entire plot came together through the use of the ingredients. One lesson I tried to ingrain in my dramatic writing students is that guidelines enhance creativity, not hinder it, and this competition only helps to solidify that lesson. But I also had to make concessions to the guidelines for the sake of the story. The main example of this was with the orcs. I've long since grown tired of the "traditional" presentation of orcs, and I always prefer settings and stories that subvert the common tropes associated with the race. Here I used Eberron as a frame of reference to present a picture of orcs that were tribal, in touch with nature, fierce but also strongly passionate. Of course, by subverting the orcs and having them fill a niche more commonly associated with other races, I undermined the significance of Orc being part of the ingredient, which weakened my entry for the competition. Still, on the merits of the adventure itself, I stand by the decision I made. By hewing too close to Tolkien's orcs (or worse, Jackson's interpretation of them) I would have completely undermined the anti-racist sentiment of the adventure. Such orcs would have done nothing but confirm Hegio's suspicions. How many unequivocally good city leaders have sent unequivocally good parties of adventurers on missions to slaughter all the orcs? To me, they had to be orcs, they had to be that exact type of Orc, of the adventure doesn't work. Perhaps I could have done a better job conveying that. It's definitely something I will need to put a great deal more thought in for future rounds.I'm still mulling over how I improve upon the adventure given more time. I will try to add those thoughts later add they come.</blockquote>

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