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IRON DM 2014 Tournament
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 6521128" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>First off, congratulations to MortalPlague for advancing. QUS is a hell of an adventure; just remarkably well-written with such great, evocative imagery and flavor. To read the judges struggling with the decision between it and DT (and especially Rune calling DT the greater adventure; I think my jaw literally dropped when I read that) honors and flatters me more than you could all know. I was sure I was a goner the moment I finished reading QUS. I’m a huge fan and I’m definitely going to be rooting for you in the championship! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p> </p><p>To speak a little of my process. While this is my first time competing I’ve lurked through a few these (back in the early days of 4th edition, so ‘06 & ‘07?) and did a little research, so I knew coming into this competition that one of the most important things was to weave the ingredients together, rather than leave them as distinct, disjointed elements within the adventure. So both times I looked to see where I could combine ingredients in interesting ways. In Hatred of Ares this started with combining Distant Terminus and Heavy Water to create the River Styx & the Realm of the Dead, while (Diseased Alder)Man and (Celebrated) Orc called to mind classic Humans vs Orcs settings. It was just a matter of tying those two together and the remaining ingredients into the puzzle the heroes needed to solve. With this match, what first struck me was Banal Competition and Athletic Airship. I couldn’t shake comparisons to the Race of Eight Winds from the Sharn supplement for Eberron, and so I ran with that. Infinite Loop seemed easy enough to tie into that competition, so I began to think of who would benefit from making a big, city-wide contest last indefinitely. This is where the heist scenario began to develop, though the first inspiration for that actually came from my wife. Ice as slang for diamonds was a particularly clever turn, I thought, and while “diamond frog” is the epitome of a dingus, I thought that cleverness (combined with how difficult I expected it to be for anyone to justify the use of “ice frog” and not “lightning elephant” or “magma lizard” or any other type of creature) might have been enough to save me on that particular ingredient. The animal motif seemed to fit well with astronomy, so I set up the Astronomer’s Husband as the client, and chaplain of the Chapel of Wings which I could tie as an important location for the race and the heist. Quentin is actually a former PC of mine (a professor of religious studies) and his husband Jonas was an NPC priest of a weather deity, so it was pretty easy to repurpose them for the adventure (Pearl was another PC in that campaign, a dwarven sky pirate played by my wife).</p><p> </p><p>I had never written a heist before, let alone anything quite so open-ended. I tend to write fairly linearly for my home game, and you read so much against linear adventures, but they seem to have an edge as far Iron DM goes, for reasons that should have been obvious (but I’ll get to that later). I actually read a few articles about writing heist adventures, and while they certainly helped me make a great heist that I’m extremely proud of, I think hewing too closely to that advice is what cost me the most.</p><p> </p><p>My biggest problem is that I combined three ingredients (Banal Competition, Athletic Airship & Infinite Loop) into a single, albeit extremely important, event. I really like how it ties into the adventure as a major distraction/background event, and in following the advice I was reading (that the most important elements were the Background, the Locations and the Players) I thought it was good enough to tie those ingredients as a major background event. The problem with DT as an Iron DM is that it ties three ingredients together and doesn’t let the PCs really interact with them much. As it stands the PCs really only interact with one of the three ingredients, and it’s by far the weakest of the three (the “Infinite” Loop). As obvious as “the PCs should really interact with all of the ingredients” may seem as Iron DM advice, it’s not something that really occurred to me, especially as I was expending so much energy to craft a good heist. Of course, now that it’s been pointed out what an issue this is, I think the solution for this is obvious. But again, it’s not something I think I could have come up with without the critiques that I got.</p><p> </p><p>I mean, obviously, as soon as I hit “post” I was kicking myself for not including a Silver Wing Airship as a getaway vehicle. It’s such an obvious thing and a total missed opportunity. It’s the one thing I think I would have fixed without the benefit of hindsight, but since I mostly won that ingredient anyway I don’t think it would have been enough to tip the scales. So here’s what I would change. Have somebody suggest hiring/bribing a team in the competition to serve as their getaway. It should be easy, considering the party would have the ability to determine who wins. A gang with contacts in the underworld shouldn’t have trouble finding a team short on scruples. Both the Academy and (obviously) the Chapel are on the race loop, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to drop both teams off, and then later pick up the party at the academy. Collecting the flag and the second team would require a bit of trickery as more eyes will be on that location. The second team might have to set up a distraction elsewhere in the Naval Yard or Chapel to cover their escape. This is all well and good until the day of the race, when the team shows up early to say that their Seeker (we’ve been reading a lot of Harry Potter to our daughter, sue me) is violently ill, likely poisoned by a rival team. The team doesn’t time to find a backup Seeker (dear JK Rowling, please don’t sue me) and needs somebody from the crew to take their place. This a great first wrench to throw as the team is already being split and now they’re likely losing their best lookout.</p><p> </p><p>Now you’ve got a PC actually involved in the race. While the race itself is probably a dull experience for the player in question (a series of perception checks to spot flags, probably easy enough if the the party has sent a decent enough lookout along) there are plenty of wrinkles to throw in there. First, there’s that aforementioned rival team (spoiler: they totally poisoned the first Seeker) throwing all sorts of subtle sabotage their way. It’s the Seeker’s responsibility to catch and counteract such sabotage (the team can quickly brief them on what to expect). The Seeker’s also probably in the best position to notice the pirates heading the Chapel and Observatory. They’ll have to figure out a way to warn the other teams that they’ve got company coming. But now the party is involved with all of the elements, including the Race itself (and it’s important the Seeker do his job well, because the team doesn’t do well enough they could be cut from the competition, costing the other heist teams their cover and getaway).</p><p> </p><p>And the main reason I didn’t even think to go in that direction was the advice I had read about giving the Player’s as much autonomy as possible to come up with their own plan. Live and learn.</p><p> </p><p>Some other things random thoughts or changes as a response to the critiques:</p><p> </p><p>Given a little more time and energy I probably would have fleshed out the puzzle locks in the Observatory, and actually tie the puzzles and their solutions to the unique astronomy of the setting. This ties Quentin’s astronomy into the adventure more strongly and also helps flesh out his character, who would otherwise likely never even be met by the party. He’s totally arrogant enough to lock his prized possessions with puzzles he thinks he’s the only one smart enough to figure out, and obtuse enough to place such puzzles in a location where they are literally surrounded by the answers. Maybe I’d tie an actual infinite loop into one of the puzzles/solutions? It’s a stretch but it’d be better than the not really infinite loop I’ve got now.</p><p> </p><p>I really don’t know what else I’d do with the Ice Frog. Every good heist needs a good McGuffin and it’d be a shame to not tie it to an ingredient. Like I said, I thought I’d done enough with the turn on Ice = DIamond and tying the animal motif to astronomy, but as has also been mentioned the constellation itself could have been anything and in the end it’s still just a dingus. But it’s my dingus, and I still love it so (otherwise I wouldn’t have named the adventure after it). Maybe this is a place where “Kill Your Darlings” is appropriate advice but where else would I use the ingredient? I’ve been thinking about this for over a week now and I’m still coming up blank, so it’s not like I could say with the benefit of hindsight I’d have done this any differently.</p><p> </p><p>My first thought with Athletic Airship was also “giant flying animal.” But then I thought, when is an airship not an airship? When it’s not an airship. So I had to sit down and really think of how to make the airships in question both airships but also athletic. I feel pretty happy with how they came out. I especially like how out-dated they are at this point in the setting, so the only real use they have left is in ridiculous athletic competition. The crew team is a pretty huge deal at the university I went to, and we all liked to joke “Who actually rows anywhere anymore?” “Crew.” This is what ultimately inspired the design of the Silver Wing Airships.</p><p> </p><p>There was one comment about tying the Chapel to the history of the race and I thought I’d done that (it’s by far the most common location for the victory flag, I think I said 4 times in the past decade and the place most people were expecting it to turn up). I guess I could have been clearer about that. Or at least made it stronger.</p><p> </p><p>I actually had to look up the dictionary definition of Chapel to make sure I wasn’t just using it as a generic synonym for Church. This is why I attached it to the Naval HQ (that and having to sneak through the Navy was a great additional complication for the second team). I would like to say that I kept calling it a Navy and not an Air Force because this particular civilization would have considered the crafts still primarily ships, but the truth was I just really, really nervous about the word limit. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p> </p><p>My greatest wish was that I could have tied the pirates to one of the ingredients. They’re such a great, important complication to the adventure and it really bummed me out that I couldn’t tie any of the ingredients into this element. Maybe this is where I could have Ice Frog turn up in some way but I really couldn’t think of any way to do that without it seeming so incredibly forced and out of place.</p><p> </p><p>An idea that just now strikes me; a twist on the client-job offer scenario, where the party of thieves hears about Jonas’s plot the same way the pirates do (the guy just has no subtlety whatsoever) and instead of waiting for Jonas to come them, they seek Jonas out with an offer to take the job. This way they might better expect complications from other groups who might have heard similar rumors.</p><p> </p><p>In any case I want to thank the judges for the excellent feedback. As my first time I feel really good about how far I managed to get and I really look forward to competing in future competitions with what I’ve learned from these two rounds. And again, congratulations to MortalPlague. Like I said, I’m a huge fan and I’ll be rooting for you in the next round.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 6521128, member: 57112"] First off, congratulations to MortalPlague for advancing. QUS is a hell of an adventure; just remarkably well-written with such great, evocative imagery and flavor. To read the judges struggling with the decision between it and DT (and especially Rune calling DT the greater adventure; I think my jaw literally dropped when I read that) honors and flatters me more than you could all know. I was sure I was a goner the moment I finished reading QUS. I’m a huge fan and I’m definitely going to be rooting for you in the championship! :) To speak a little of my process. While this is my first time competing I’ve lurked through a few these (back in the early days of 4th edition, so ‘06 & ‘07?) and did a little research, so I knew coming into this competition that one of the most important things was to weave the ingredients together, rather than leave them as distinct, disjointed elements within the adventure. So both times I looked to see where I could combine ingredients in interesting ways. In Hatred of Ares this started with combining Distant Terminus and Heavy Water to create the River Styx & the Realm of the Dead, while (Diseased Alder)Man and (Celebrated) Orc called to mind classic Humans vs Orcs settings. It was just a matter of tying those two together and the remaining ingredients into the puzzle the heroes needed to solve. With this match, what first struck me was Banal Competition and Athletic Airship. I couldn’t shake comparisons to the Race of Eight Winds from the Sharn supplement for Eberron, and so I ran with that. Infinite Loop seemed easy enough to tie into that competition, so I began to think of who would benefit from making a big, city-wide contest last indefinitely. This is where the heist scenario began to develop, though the first inspiration for that actually came from my wife. Ice as slang for diamonds was a particularly clever turn, I thought, and while “diamond frog” is the epitome of a dingus, I thought that cleverness (combined with how difficult I expected it to be for anyone to justify the use of “ice frog” and not “lightning elephant” or “magma lizard” or any other type of creature) might have been enough to save me on that particular ingredient. The animal motif seemed to fit well with astronomy, so I set up the Astronomer’s Husband as the client, and chaplain of the Chapel of Wings which I could tie as an important location for the race and the heist. Quentin is actually a former PC of mine (a professor of religious studies) and his husband Jonas was an NPC priest of a weather deity, so it was pretty easy to repurpose them for the adventure (Pearl was another PC in that campaign, a dwarven sky pirate played by my wife). I had never written a heist before, let alone anything quite so open-ended. I tend to write fairly linearly for my home game, and you read so much against linear adventures, but they seem to have an edge as far Iron DM goes, for reasons that should have been obvious (but I’ll get to that later). I actually read a few articles about writing heist adventures, and while they certainly helped me make a great heist that I’m extremely proud of, I think hewing too closely to that advice is what cost me the most. My biggest problem is that I combined three ingredients (Banal Competition, Athletic Airship & Infinite Loop) into a single, albeit extremely important, event. I really like how it ties into the adventure as a major distraction/background event, and in following the advice I was reading (that the most important elements were the Background, the Locations and the Players) I thought it was good enough to tie those ingredients as a major background event. The problem with DT as an Iron DM is that it ties three ingredients together and doesn’t let the PCs really interact with them much. As it stands the PCs really only interact with one of the three ingredients, and it’s by far the weakest of the three (the “Infinite” Loop). As obvious as “the PCs should really interact with all of the ingredients” may seem as Iron DM advice, it’s not something that really occurred to me, especially as I was expending so much energy to craft a good heist. Of course, now that it’s been pointed out what an issue this is, I think the solution for this is obvious. But again, it’s not something I think I could have come up with without the critiques that I got. I mean, obviously, as soon as I hit “post” I was kicking myself for not including a Silver Wing Airship as a getaway vehicle. It’s such an obvious thing and a total missed opportunity. It’s the one thing I think I would have fixed without the benefit of hindsight, but since I mostly won that ingredient anyway I don’t think it would have been enough to tip the scales. So here’s what I would change. Have somebody suggest hiring/bribing a team in the competition to serve as their getaway. It should be easy, considering the party would have the ability to determine who wins. A gang with contacts in the underworld shouldn’t have trouble finding a team short on scruples. Both the Academy and (obviously) the Chapel are on the race loop, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to drop both teams off, and then later pick up the party at the academy. Collecting the flag and the second team would require a bit of trickery as more eyes will be on that location. The second team might have to set up a distraction elsewhere in the Naval Yard or Chapel to cover their escape. This is all well and good until the day of the race, when the team shows up early to say that their Seeker (we’ve been reading a lot of Harry Potter to our daughter, sue me) is violently ill, likely poisoned by a rival team. The team doesn’t time to find a backup Seeker (dear JK Rowling, please don’t sue me) and needs somebody from the crew to take their place. This a great first wrench to throw as the team is already being split and now they’re likely losing their best lookout. Now you’ve got a PC actually involved in the race. While the race itself is probably a dull experience for the player in question (a series of perception checks to spot flags, probably easy enough if the the party has sent a decent enough lookout along) there are plenty of wrinkles to throw in there. First, there’s that aforementioned rival team (spoiler: they totally poisoned the first Seeker) throwing all sorts of subtle sabotage their way. It’s the Seeker’s responsibility to catch and counteract such sabotage (the team can quickly brief them on what to expect). The Seeker’s also probably in the best position to notice the pirates heading the Chapel and Observatory. They’ll have to figure out a way to warn the other teams that they’ve got company coming. But now the party is involved with all of the elements, including the Race itself (and it’s important the Seeker do his job well, because the team doesn’t do well enough they could be cut from the competition, costing the other heist teams their cover and getaway). And the main reason I didn’t even think to go in that direction was the advice I had read about giving the Player’s as much autonomy as possible to come up with their own plan. Live and learn. Some other things random thoughts or changes as a response to the critiques: Given a little more time and energy I probably would have fleshed out the puzzle locks in the Observatory, and actually tie the puzzles and their solutions to the unique astronomy of the setting. This ties Quentin’s astronomy into the adventure more strongly and also helps flesh out his character, who would otherwise likely never even be met by the party. He’s totally arrogant enough to lock his prized possessions with puzzles he thinks he’s the only one smart enough to figure out, and obtuse enough to place such puzzles in a location where they are literally surrounded by the answers. Maybe I’d tie an actual infinite loop into one of the puzzles/solutions? It’s a stretch but it’d be better than the not really infinite loop I’ve got now. I really don’t know what else I’d do with the Ice Frog. Every good heist needs a good McGuffin and it’d be a shame to not tie it to an ingredient. Like I said, I thought I’d done enough with the turn on Ice = DIamond and tying the animal motif to astronomy, but as has also been mentioned the constellation itself could have been anything and in the end it’s still just a dingus. But it’s my dingus, and I still love it so (otherwise I wouldn’t have named the adventure after it). Maybe this is a place where “Kill Your Darlings” is appropriate advice but where else would I use the ingredient? I’ve been thinking about this for over a week now and I’m still coming up blank, so it’s not like I could say with the benefit of hindsight I’d have done this any differently. My first thought with Athletic Airship was also “giant flying animal.” But then I thought, when is an airship not an airship? When it’s not an airship. So I had to sit down and really think of how to make the airships in question both airships but also athletic. I feel pretty happy with how they came out. I especially like how out-dated they are at this point in the setting, so the only real use they have left is in ridiculous athletic competition. The crew team is a pretty huge deal at the university I went to, and we all liked to joke “Who actually rows anywhere anymore?” “Crew.” This is what ultimately inspired the design of the Silver Wing Airships. There was one comment about tying the Chapel to the history of the race and I thought I’d done that (it’s by far the most common location for the victory flag, I think I said 4 times in the past decade and the place most people were expecting it to turn up). I guess I could have been clearer about that. Or at least made it stronger. I actually had to look up the dictionary definition of Chapel to make sure I wasn’t just using it as a generic synonym for Church. This is why I attached it to the Naval HQ (that and having to sneak through the Navy was a great additional complication for the second team). I would like to say that I kept calling it a Navy and not an Air Force because this particular civilization would have considered the crafts still primarily ships, but the truth was I just really, really nervous about the word limit. ;) My greatest wish was that I could have tied the pirates to one of the ingredients. They’re such a great, important complication to the adventure and it really bummed me out that I couldn’t tie any of the ingredients into this element. Maybe this is where I could have Ice Frog turn up in some way but I really couldn’t think of any way to do that without it seeming so incredibly forced and out of place. An idea that just now strikes me; a twist on the client-job offer scenario, where the party of thieves hears about Jonas’s plot the same way the pirates do (the guy just has no subtlety whatsoever) and instead of waiting for Jonas to come them, they seek Jonas out with an offer to take the job. This way they might better expect complications from other groups who might have heard similar rumors. In any case I want to thank the judges for the excellent feedback. As my first time I feel really good about how far I managed to get and I really look forward to competing in future competitions with what I’ve learned from these two rounds. And again, congratulations to MortalPlague. Like I said, I’m a huge fan and I’ll be rooting for you in the next round. [/QUOTE]
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