I'm now writing this in OpenOffice so the Invalid Token monster doesn't eat another massive post. Ugh, so hard to get fired up to start writing when you've just spent hours on something and it is just gone. *Sigh* This will be much more concise, perhaps for the better as in case I was rambling in the last version.
Before I dive in to each adventure, know that these ingredients are... sub-optimal. This is my first time judging and my ingredients selection was bad enough that after I posted them and I thought about what I might do if it was me competing and realized just how hard (using a nicer word) they are. At least you both got to suffer equally.
Also, as a judge I will be expecting interesting, complete, and easy-to-run adventures even though as a past competitor, I know how brutal and limiting the 750 word count is and that what I'm expecting is practically impossible given how limiting that is. If I come across as harsh, it's because I'm expecting more than it is reasonable to expect from a couple pages.
[sblock=Bloodletting]
Appeal
Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
The first sentence is an amazing hook. The jack'o'lantern wards went from "neat" to "cool" when I looked up that people actually used them to ward off evil spirits. The wailing cracks along the road, the name Bloodsmith (the reality let me down somewhat), fighting in an acid-choked mine, all this was pretty neat.
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
The first sentence is an amazing pitch and would sell most groups right off. Let's see what the players get to do: they show up, ask some questions, end up halting (or leading, being PCs) a mob to execute a "vampire", they are contacted by naga druids (I'm assuming) that tell them to go get back the fang (I'm assuming), then they fight a dragonborn and a couple "spies" (their primary activity is kidnapping/abducting, not spying) in a mine full of deadly vapors. Sounds like a pretty fun session or two.
They might even face a tough decision trying to determine (and convince the villagers) whether there's enough evidence to kill a man, which makes for good gaming.
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
The poetic language is a great way to save words and mostly works well, though occasionally it comes off a bit stilted. It is generally a clean, straightforward read.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
And this is the major place the adventure seems to fall down. After the actor-saving (or -staking), do the druids contact the PCs? It's not a huge assumption, but it isn't explicit exactly how the druids meet up with the PCs. If the PCs don't help, does the adventure end? That one isn't too bad, compared to the next one.
The sentence where the adventure broke for me was "Compelled by geas, a condition of her mercy, to return ere a month has passed and compelled also to never be parted from the fang wrested from her maw." The villain is compelled (by whom?) to return the fang in a month taken from the naga as a condition of mercy... mercy for who doing what? And this villain subdued(?) the guardian naga (a creature of legend with a band of guardian druids bested by an alchemist and two spies) that a group of 2
nd level PCs are then expected to defeat in an acid-laced mine? If the fang is going to be returned anyway (in less than two weeks), why do the druids care that the PCs get it back now? If the druids care enough to return the bodies of the townsfolk, couldn't they drop a note that said "Ware the murdering kidnappers in the mine"?
I've read it about five or six times now and I still don't know what the hell happened between the Bloodsmith and the naga in the first place.
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
Editing is clear, headings split the space well, bullet points are used well. Didn't notice any typos.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
So let's see what happens if the players don't show up: everyone in town is killed (or run off – I don't know why people would stay after half the town has shown up dead), the actor is staked, the naga gets her tooth back, and the Bloodsmith is murdered by some warlock for messing up his rituals with crappy blood. Essentially, the PCs matter for keeping the town alive and (maybe) saving the actor, though being PCs they might stake him themselves. It would be a bit stronger if the tooth didn't already have a return clause and the Bloodsmith wasn't pretty much already doomed. Still, I've seen much worse.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
One advantage of 750 words its there's very little backstory to bury stuff in. The PCs presumably hear some version of the hook, get to see the jack'o'wards and most of the other stuff, so I think this is pretty solid.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
The PCs would probably have a blast, at least up until the point where they've saved (or murdered) the actor and the druids show up and let them know it had nothing to do with it. Some parties might think it's a cool twist, but others might just ask "so why didn't you show up to tell us this
before the actor was put on trial?" There's no real personalities to interact with in town aside from the actor, the naga is somewhat interesting, and a battle in acid mines amid a blood draining alchemy getup would probably be pretty cool.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
As short as it is, it seems pretty cut-and-dried. You'd have to make up some townsfolk, figure a personality for the naga, and make up your own story for whatever the hell happened between the Bloodsmith and the naga though.
If it is linear, does it hide it well or will players complain about railroading? If it is more free-form, is there still enough structure that the GM can still run it without a ton of extra effort?
If you allow the PCs to investigate around town however they want, it will feel pretty open. After that (assuming you figure out how the druids work), its just a straight shot to the show down.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
Yes and yes.
Are any ingredients used in an especially creative way? Was it clear what each ingredient was or were any obscure or vague? How essential are the ingredients: if I changed the words in any ingredient, would they no longer work? How interwoven were the ingredients with each other and how essential was each to the adventure?
Let's tackle these all together by going through each ingredient, then all as a whole:
Bad Lead – this was used about how I'd expect it to be and it was clear where it was. This one is fairly immutable for word replacement, though you could potentially leave it out entirely and instead of the red herring have the PCs investigations lead them to the mine instead of being "saved" by the nagites.
Fang of Mercy – the fang itself used as a syringe was unexpected, though you could have had it be a hollowed bone for a similar effect. I have zero idea how the "Mercy" part fits in. It was pretty key in the adventure.
Cracked Road – aside from the town being on it, the road is pretty unimportant. We don't even know explicitly if the mine is on it, so theoretically the PCs could come cross-country, then head out away from the road to the mine. The fact that the road is degrading is presumably because of the corrosive vapors from the mines, though the lack of a line saying "the Cracked Road leading to the mines" makes it unclear what the road corrosion has to do with the mines. Again, I can figure out this is probably what was intended when it was written, but explicit is better than hopefully implicit. As is, you could leave this out entirely and only lose a bit of (albeit neat) flavor about the wailing rifts near it.
Leech Mining – at first I thought this was pretty clever and when I first saw Bloodsmith I hoped it was some mad alchemist using chemicals to extract blood iron to make stuff. Alas, there isn't really mining going on, and even if you use it as an analogy, mining is usually going for the useful bits, while this guy seems to be purposely removing the essence so the "tailings" can be sold as a scam instead. I guess the essence is being leeched out (changing the meaning slightly and removing it from mining), but it begs the question why doesn't this dude just sell legit "Blood of Innocents" if there's such a demand for it? This is the heart of the adventure, however, so it is at least pretty central.
Wax Seal – I'm assuming the "spies" are nicking the candles for this from the jack'o'lanterns (do they ever spy? It seems like they mostly steal and kidnap) to make this – another implicit that would be better explicit – and wax being used to seal liquids in has been done for ages. Interestingly, the other thing people used to use to seal stuff was Lead, and I wondered when I was first reading if there might have been "Bad Lead" in the mines that would hold up so they had to use candle wax instead. This ingredient would be a bit stronger if the "spies" were actually mentioned stealing candles – especially since people skimming this to prepare for the game might miss it. Otherwise, solid use.
Huge Pumpkin – while the pumpkin itself isn't super strong – it's just a thing that gets destroyed to show Things Are Bad (and why is it destroyed? Do the jack'o'wards actually work? Why was this a threat?) - it does bring in the cool jack'o'lanterns and handily tie this ingredient to the Wax Seal. Making them jack'o'lanterns make this pretty irreplacable, at least for the modern "pumpkin-only" conception of jack'o'lanterns. A better use than I originally thought.
As for tying them together, my favorite way I've seen judges do this is try to make the simplest sentence they can to tie them together. Assuming my assumptions of things not made explicit are correct, here's my go:
The PCs arrive on in a town where folk are being kidnapped, follow one
Bad Lead before following the
Cracked Road to an Bloodsmith
Leech Mining blood from villagers via the
Fang of Mercy patched with
Wax Seals made from candles purloined from jack'o'lanterns like the one that was to be made of the destroyed
Huge Pumpkin. Not the cleanest sentence ever, but at least you can make one... I've seen some where it's a stretch.
I'd say the Fang, Seals, Leeching are intricately tied together and fairly essential, the Huge Pumpkin itself is less so but for the jack'o association while the Cracked Road (as is) is decoration and the Bad Lead, while one of the better sets of scenes in the adventure (the only ones where players have to actually make a significant choice) is pretty much unrelated.
Aside from their main use, were any ingredients used in other clever ways?
Each one had a sole use, so this one is pretty cut-and-dried.
Summary
Given the word limit, the adventure is not bad. If it weren't for the unfortunately key backstory
and finale transition sentence being so crushingly unclear, this adventure would have been pretty rock solid, especially given how b̶a̶d̶ hard the ingredients were. The hook had me totally sold, but unfortunately, like a great trailer for an entertaining movie with a massive plot hole near the end, it left me disappointed that it didn't live up to its full potential.
And yes, this is the concise version. My original was almost double this length. Maybe losing everything wasn't a complete waste.
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[sblock=The Horror Harvest of Hoargath]
Appeal
Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
The writing of the hook isn't especially compelling, essentially "go to the place, find the dude, and get rid of him." Once you get past it however, the fighting a giant pumpkin mind-controlling villagers with its tentacle-creepers? Cool. Stumbling across lizardfolk harvesting leeches in a swamp? Also pretty cool.
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
Hey, how about hiking through a swamp to kill a wizard in a tower? Premise not especially compelling, but at least gives a pretty exact idea of what to expect. That said, I can see players enjoying the battling the puppeteer pumpkin or staring at leech-farming lizardfolk in utter bemusement and trying (with frustration at the language gap) attempting to figure out what they are doing. Getting over pits (cracks) is a staple for these presumably low-level PCs, and fighting vampires is good fun. It's general idea is pretty simple, but it probably has enough different bits to keep players interesting.
One significant drawback: while the adventure is simple, I believe any good game is about player choices, the more torturous the better. This adventure offers one significant choice: do we go on it or not? More on this later.
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
There are some good bits of description like the giant pumpkin vines and the weird leprechaun-in-suspension inside the huge squash. Using "you" instead of "they" was also somewhat off-putting as presumably the reader is the DM and not the players (cheaters!); why would the DM be seeing this stuff? That said, the writing is clear and it was a quick read.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
What's up with the leprachauns? I really have no idea. I even looked up leprachauns in an attempt to figure out what they meant. What do they have to do with vampires? The Squash Creeper is clearly related to the vampire via the leprachaun hint, but what is its purpose? Guard the edge of the swamp? As a GM I could use a sentence of backstory explaining that (the 10 words it would cost you would be worth it).
Otherwise, this adventure seems simple, clear-cut, and linear. Sometimes people say that word like it's a bad thing, but I think the d4 swamp gives it just enough of that exploration vibe that players probably won't notice or care. You don't watch formulaic sitcoms expecting startling new developments, but that doesn't stop billions of people from watching them.
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
The large headers are great for visually separating sections of the adventure.
However, the (likely) unintentional double-spaces between paragraphs - a common artifact when copying from a document - put a slight delay that probably isn't intended and give a couple bits unnatural emphasis that probably wasn't intended such as the Yellow Squash Creeper and giant leech sections. The giant gap in the middle of #2 breaks the flow of that section considerably.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
Okay, so what happens if the players don't show up? The Squash Creeper keeps collecting villagers, the lizardfolk keep collecting leeches from the swamp, and the vampire goes about her business. The last two don't seem very pressing (I'd think most people would be thrilled the vampire has settled for leeches over necrophying townsfolk!) though I guess since Mercy created the Squash, she might make more. Not a ton of real urgency once the killer pumpkin is put down, though if the players are determined to put down Hoargath, they'd probably go for it.
So they need to be present at least, but aside from what to do with the lizard folk, they PCs pretty much make no interesting (non-tactical) choices. If instead of rolling a d4 they had to choose a path, say, one on a cracked road swarming with stirges and the other through a seemingly empty swamp, at least they'd have the illusion of some control.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
The most interesting parts are the ur-pumpkin and the leech farmers, so, yes. There isn't much room for backstory here, though I could use a tiny bit about what Mercy's plans are with the squash and what's up with the damn leprechauns.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
It is fun in the way an action movie is fun. We're not going for anything momentous, just having some interesting fights in varied locations. I think it doesn't promise much, but what it does promise, it delivers almost exactly.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
Almost trivially easy. As long as your players are down to go kill an evil wizard in a swamp anyway.
If it is linear, does it hide it well or will players complain about railroading? If it is more free-form, is there still enough structure that the GM can still run it without a ton of extra effort?
Aside from the minor variety in the swamp "exploration" this adventure is completely linear. It would still make for a good one-shot in the way delves do, but it is one d4 away from a complete railroad.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
Yes and yes.
Are any ingredients used in an especially creative way? Was it clear what each ingredient was or were any obscure or vague? How essential are the ingredients: if I changed the words in any ingredient, would they no longer work? How interwoven were the ingredients with each other and how essential was each to the adventure?
One-be-one:
Bad Lead – this was fairly creative, an evil lead golem. Unfortunately, it could have just as easily been an iron golem. Its "lead-ness" is recursive – it's lead because it's slow and heavy because it's lead. There's nothing in the adventure that makes it
have to be lead. It also could be removed from the adventure without anyone knowing it was ever supposed to be there.
Fang of Mercy – this one is kind of a cop-out. Both of the words are proper nouns, the names of things, neither of which are exceptionally related to their owners. Sure the tower is kinda like a fang and Mercy's seal has wolf fangs on it, but there is no actual fang and no actual mercy. They are the final destination of the adventure which makes them somewhat essential, but there's no requirement even that it be a tower in the swamp – it could just be a cave, a big rotten tree, whatever.
Cracked Road – the main path to the tower, it is both a road (easier path than natural terrain to a destination) and cracked (enough that it is inconvenient). It's also decently interesting (who builds a road into a swamp?) This one is rock solid (no pun intended).
Leech Mining – this one was pretty clever and creative, but one slight quibble is that the mining was no more mining than you would mine apples to make apple juice. Leech Harvesting would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, while it is a cool episode, you could remove it without even noticing (if you roll the Road before the lizardfolk, you would, too).
Wax Seal – the seal links the pumpkin to the tower, letting the players know that they've gotten to the root of things. On the pumpkin it also seals it closed, making it more essential that it be a seal and not, say, a banner. You could leave it out, but at the detriment of tying the first and last encounters together (though the damn leprechauns perform the same function).
Huge Pumpkin – as much as I like how this ingredient is used and that it is referred to as a pumpkin, it is called a
Yellow Squash Creeper – yellow squash being significantly different from pumpkins. There is no essential pumpkinness to it that couldn't be replaced by any other large, rinded, vined plant (other squash types, watermelon, etc). There's also not a clear link between what squash and vampires have to do with each other.
So let's try a sentence: The party heads into a swamp looking for the Fang of Mercy, on the way facing a Huge Pumpkin bearing Mercy's Wax Seal, then maybe encountering some Leech Mining before they find the Cracked Road and fight a Bad Lead golem at the Fang. Herein lies a difficulty – none of these ingredients really tie together well. I know that is partially an issue with the p̶o̶o̶r̶ difficult ingredients I selected, but this sentence is essentially an "and then" plot (like the new Star Wars, incidentally). They fight a big pumpkin
and then they find some leech harvesters
and then they find the road, etc. None of these necessitates the next one or even usually ties into it in any indelible way.
Aside from their main use, were any ingredients used in other clever ways?
As far as I could tell, they were all single use.
Summary
This adventure's linearity makes it simple, easy, and yet lacking depth, like a B-action movie you can watch in the background while doing your homework, texting your significant other, or working on your taxes. You don't have to think which, for many TV-watchers may be a plus, but for games removes much of their underlying game-ness. While many ingredients are clever and interesting, they do it almost entirely in isolation from one another. At least it never makes itself out to be anything but.
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[sblock=Comparison]
When I said I lost the whole judgement, I lied somewhat in the heat of the moment: I lost everything above this when I tried to preview it to make sure my sblocks were working. So, as of right now, I have no idea which adventure won.
Rune's Bloodletting (hereafter Blood) offers a compelling hook leading to a decent adventure with surprisingly well-connected ingredients then explodes near the end due to the most important sentence in the adventure being devastatingly unclear.
Meanwhile, steeldragon's Horror Harvest of Hoargath (hereafter Horror) never sets itself out to be anything more than a little side-jaunt, exactly fulfills its expectations, while leaving its ingredients standing apart with only the faintest threads connecting them.
Let's see how it plays out:
Appeal
Cool factors – Blood's hook was great and the jack'o'lanterns were pretty neat with a bit of research but players don't directly interact with either. Horror's battle-pumpkin and leech farmers they PCs run into first-hand (assuming correct dice rolls). Blood had a few other decent bits that were interesting, but not enough to bump this above a draw.
Other Appeal - Blood had great formatting, an interesting "trial" and atmospheric boss fight, and an excellent hook. Then it trips and falls flat right near the crescendo with a naga-fight-fang-theft-misuse-villain-geas-mercy-mine-hunt. Got it? Me neither.
Horror's formatting was not as clean, had a decent hook, a cool fight and a few other set piece battles, a strange swamp scene, and jogs on seamlessly right to the boss fight.
So Blood had easier formatting, a better hook, and overall more interesting language. Yet it also had the nega-naga debacle that stymies up the backstory, the key to understanding what the whole thing is about, so...
Blood had most of the cards, then dropped them at a key moment. On first glance, it would be the one I'd pick to run... except for the parts I have to intuit and the little part where I have no idea what the hell the back story is. That major tripping point almost gives it to Horror, but then I realize that one of my two favorite scenes is only going to happen 50% of the time or so. The naga confusion is still strong enough to give this section to Horror.
Playability
Players matter and have choices – In Blood, the players are saving villagers and the rest sorts itself out. However, they do a decently interesting choice and a few minor ones.
In Horror, if the PCs do nothing, the psychic pumpkin steals more villagers and the vampire presumably just keeps doing her thing. They get only minor choices at best.
Other playability – Horror is much more linear, but also much easier to run. Horror does pack more drama in simply by having more scenes (pumpkin, lead golem, vampire, 2-3 of quicksand, leech, stirge, road) vs (investigate, actor, naga, mine).
Players are about equally essential in both adventures, though Blood does (for some reason) build in the naga-fang-return and Bloodsmith-comeupance automatically into the adventure, reducing the role of the PCs. I like the extra scenes in Horror, though most are just quick filler battles and one of the most interesting scenes might be missed. I'll give this section to Blood by a slice since there is almost a complete absence of meaningful player choice in Horror.
Rules
Time and word count – Yes.
Ingredients – It comes down to this.
I think Blood's ingredients about half were both strong and key to the adventure, with the others a mix of strong and removable or weak and key.
While Horror's ingredients were weaker individually (though generally more creative), it is their lack of interconnection that really cinches this one. Blood had the Fang, Seal, and Mining that were all heavily intertwined, with the pumpkin also vaguely connected. Horror had a weak link between the pumpkin and the seal.
Blood takes this section by a decent margin.
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[sblock=Conclusion]
Closing thoughts (tl;dr of the above):
Blood was generally the more interesting (from DM and player standpoint), more richly worded, and more vague and unfinished-feeling adventure. If it weren't for the (perhaps unintentional) bit of player freedom gained by the Bad Lead/actor hunt, even the much stronger usage of ingredients wouldn't have saved it from that one crippling sentence that stopped me cold every time I read it. I was impressed by how well Rune tied the ingredients together.
Horror was clear-cut, simple, and felt absolutely complete as is – a significant statement given the 750 word limit. However, the lack of interconnection between ingredients made them individually dismissable. If there had been even one significant player choice (even a semi-informed path A or path B through the swamp) you probably would have taken it, steeldragons.
Well done to both of you either way. It was brutally close on both Appeal and Playability and another judge might have called it differently. In all the years of IronDM, I've only had one set of ingredients that left me totally cold at first glance and these were worse than that.
Well-played @
steeldragons, congratulations @
Rune!
Rune advances to round 2.
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Yeah, this is the shorter version.
I'm going to bed.