Round 1, Match 3 Judgement
This round might be difficult for reasons far different than Rune vs steeldragons; after reading both adventures, my initial response was not "interesting" like both of their entries, but instead "what?" Both felt like walking into a movie you've never seen before 30 minutes after it had started - I kept on feeling like I'd missed something important to be able to really grok what was going on. Maybe it was because when I skimmed them both last night I was bleary-eyed from staying up until 2am working on the last match since both got better on a subsequent re-reads, but more on that below.
That said, the same note from my last judgement: "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."
So let's wade in.
[sblock=Please Don't Eat the Preacher]
Appeal
Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
Hexslinging gambler. That term alone is cool enough to launch a book "Old West Wizard" series. Turns out,
it pretty much did. A vampire casino, reached by a secret underwater tunnel, is also pretty cool. Since two of those things are the core parts of the adventure, that's a pretty good start.
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
Let's pitch it: "How about a job stealing the holy book from a preacher stomping around alone in a vampire casino?" Its quirky, different, a bit silly. Not bad for a quick little side-adventure if your group isn't put off by how strange it sounds. Unfortunately, this adventure is 95% backstory with the whole meat of the adventure provided for the GM to run almost entirely summed up in the pitch sentence, like a "adventure hooks to get players to go to X" section of a campaign setting book.
This is essentially a cool location with a hook with a couple suggestions on how the GM can turn it into an actual adventure.
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
The first paragraph threw me off - most likely what my initial stumbling was about because today the rest read fine. Jumping in with "After the Change" threw me because, changing from what? By the end, I'd figured out this is probably Earth post-magipocalypse, but on my first read my brain was still trying to figure that out when it should have been focusing on hexslingers and meat-antes.
Also: "Mountains fell, rivers changed course, seas lowered or raised as they saw fit. Every day since has been pretty much the same."
I don't think it's intentional, but the second sentence made me think every day the mountains move, rivers change course, seas come and go. I think what you meant was "after the tumult, things settled to their current state" not "and the tumult continues unabated to this day."
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
Once you understand the river is probably not going to disappear, jump its banks, or turn to a lake, the rest makes total sense.
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
A heading here and there might have been helpful, but being so short it's not a major stumbling block. I didn't see any typos.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
If the PCs never show up, Mike hires some other armed band that wanders by to do his dirty work/be his blood buy-in and everything pretty much stays the same. The big effect the PCs have on the world is whether the mad preacher keeps his holy book or not.
Where this one kinda falls is that two player choices are the
whole of the adventure. There's a huge chunk of setting, then the adventure essentially is the players deciding "How do we get the book?" and "What do we do with it now?" That's the whole of the adventure, right there. Maybe that turns out to be pretty cool, but that's entirely on my shoulders as the GM running it since the adventure gives me so little else to work with.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
The backstory is vampires, a casino, a river, a preacher, a tunnel, a hexslinger. They see all of those things to some degree or another.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
It could be! If you are a great GM good at coming up with your own material with a bit of grist for the inspiration mill (like infiltrating a casino full of vampires to steal a holy book from a preacher) this could be awesome. Of course, if you are a GM good enough to come up with all the scenes, encounters, and NPCs that could make this adventure rock, do you really need pre-made adventures in the first place?
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
If you were a newer DM - which I'd guess are the most likely to buy and run pre-made adventures - you'd really struggle with this since you'll have to come up with most of it on your own.
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?
Where most adventures are a (preferably) branching road leading through interesting destinations, this one is a compass pointing towards adventure. It has a hook and a couple ideas on the sort of adventure you could make with it, but it's only and adventure in the most generous ways.
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 go through them individually:
Doomsayer –While he does a bit of doomsaying (is that a verb?), his primary role is that of mad preacher. His actual pronouncements actually hold no weight at all, the primary one damning the vampire to never cross starless water actually a statement of pre-established fact, not some new revelation and definitely of no power of its own. He does serve as the primary focus of the adventure, however.
Starless Stream – It is indeed starless, though it is only starless by fiat. By trope, vampires normally can't cross flowing water. Here, it was arbitrarily added that it had to be starless, then the river also made magically starless to provide an obstacle. This could be replaced by "Flowing Water", which was added anyway to make it fit. It is not necessary for the adventure and serves mostly as a lodging place for the Dry Water.
Hungry Darkness – this is the drow vampire, though her hunger serves only as a prelude to the adventure and isn't relevant to the course of things. She might be asleep for the whole adventure for all we care unless the PCs try to bargain with her. She is both dark-skinned and a force of darkness, so that part does apply fairly well. She is the reason everything is the way it is, so she is key for the back story, though she need not even appear in the adventure itself. This could also be the darkness shrouding the world, though its hunger could be better established by saying "the impenetrable clouds
devouring sun, moon, and starlight alike".
Forged Pardon – the preacher was never pardoned for his holy book in the first place, he was pardoned because he amused Belle, so there was no forgery. If she had let him live because she feared his (false) holy book, this one would have been perfect, but unfortunately it was not used this way. It is key to the adventure as obtaining it and doing something with it
is the whole adventure. Also, near the end it says "They could use the Holy Book to protect them and gamble themselves" but it seems Imonhotep even was forgetting that the book was a fake. If it said they could
try to use the book and learn to their chagrin that it is powerless, that would make more sense.
Dry Water – I read the tunnel as being a physical tunnel with the spell keeping water from flowing into it. If so, the tunnel is Dry
of Water, but it is not Dry Water itself. It also serves as a means to bypass the Stream which is not essential in itself. For both of these, if Belle was stated to have a huge desire to escape from her island and devour the whole world, both would be instantly more essential (and her ingredient made stronger) as it is all that is keeping her contained. I never really got that she was struggling or overly ambitious to escape.
Arcane Gambler – Hexslinger. Hexslinger.
Hexslinger. That word alone makes me want to play a mage next time I'm in a game just to wander around challenging other mages to duels. Mike is reasonably important, the ingredient fits well, but unfortunately his only real role is to be the adventure hook. If the adventure was actually written out so we could see him show up and betray the PCs to get to the big table, he would be more integral, but as is he mostly serves as a large gold exclamation point.
Tying them together: An Arcane Gambler provides a Dry Water path beneath the Starless Stream to steal the Doomsayer's Forged Pardon presumed to keep him safe from the Hungry Darkness. That's a pretty tight sentence which means, regardless of how well the ingredients are used individually, they are remarkably tightly knit together.
If I rewrite it with the less fixed elements modified: A Desperate Gambler provides an Underwater Tunnel beneath the Starless River to steal the Mad Preacher's False Symbol presumed to keep him safe from the Hungry Darkness.
Aside from their main use, were any ingredients used in other clever ways?
The Hungry Darkness as the clouds was a nice addition.
Summary
This is a setting with a few cool NPCs and an adventure hook, only marginally an adventure at all. This paragraph is pretty much the entirety of the part of the adventure that will actually be played:
"How the PCs obtain the book from Preacher is up to them. Publicly killing him is probably a bad idea. Making him quietly disappear alive or dead is better. They may double cross Mike for the reward money. They may attempt to bargain with Belle. They could use the Holy Book to protect them and gamble themselves, if they can arrange the cover charge."
There are no real explicit scenes, encounters, challenges, just a pile of suggestions on how you might turn this into an adventure. If I'm a first time GM, I have Mike pitching the PCs on helping him, a quick description of walking through the tunnel and... the rest is up to me.
Sure an experienced GM could make something really cool from it, but that's about the same as the fallacy that a difficult or flawed game mechanic is fine since an experienced GM can make it work. Just because I'm a legendary thief who can pick locks with a blade of grass doesn't make grass a lock pick. Someone out there could run a kick-ass session of Fatal, but that doesn't mean it's not still the worst RPG ever made.
Sorry, that went off on a bit of a tangential rant...[/sblock]
[sblock=The Wager's Corollary]
Appeal
Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
After reading this several times slowly, there are some neat bits. Rappelling down a waterfall, adventuring along a supernaturally cold, frozen river, taking a McGuffin to the bottom of a frozen lake, forging something(?) using a mold of ice and blood, and fighting a three-headed dragon are all cool.
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
The lack of transitions is pretty jarring, but let's see if I can figure out what happens:
In a tavern, the world lurches as a hole rips in the sky. A drunk wizard lurches over from a heated game of Arcribbage, spews a prophecy, the group hikes to a waterfall, rappels down it to an supernaturally cold frozen river, digs a sorcererscicle out of a pile of ice pebbles, forges a ring(?) from ice and blood to seal the sky, then fight a three-headed dragon to escape. That sounds pretty awesome, just too bad it took me ten minutes of reading, intuition, assumption, and analysis to figure that out.
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
This entry suffers from several major initial issues that make it extremely difficult to read.
The first paragraph is a massive, mangled comma-splice. I know you were rushing to get this posted, but that first paragraph is what draws us in and hooks us on your adventure. I read a
significant amount of a wide variety of print media and I had to read that paragraph several times, slowly, to get what it was trying to say.
The Investigation has a serious case of name-drop-osis; in five short sentences we learn of and supposed to remember the names of 4 places(two of which have two names) and the relations between them(one of which could be named Schr
ödingers Pardon). I'll change the names so you can see what I mean:
"The Bloodfeast is more formally, and mythically, known as the River of the Bloodfeast's Tears.
It flows past, or over, or by, a crystal prominence known as the Feasts Regret, or the Feast's Pardon.
The resulting waterfall (the Monster's Fall) marks the dividing line between the Bloodfeast and the Flatsheet River.
The Flatsheet River is so named because, even though it is placid and smooth, it reflects nothing."
Let me see if I have it straight: The Allmaiden – formally the River of the Allmaiden's Tears – flows in some proximity to the Maiden's Regret, also known as the Maiden's Pardon where it forms a waterfall known as the Hero's Fall, thereafter reflecting nothing causing its name to change to the Mirrorless River from there on.
Even if I have that right, how much of that do I need to know?
"The Allmaiden flows over a crystal formation called the Maiden's Pardon. Beyond the resulting waterfall, the river becomes the Mirrorless as, past the falls, it reflects nothing." Same information, clearer, less than half the word count.
Strange typos ("a large large of ice pebbles"), excessive commas, sudden jumps to different parts of the adventure with no transition, a lack of explanation of what exactly everything is... it's too bad, because I'm pretty sure there's a cool adventure here despite all attempts to keep me from figuring that out.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
No. How do we get from the tavern to the investigation? Why does this almost purely geographic information require investigation? Why do the characters decide to to this? What is the pardon for, extended from and to? Why is it a ring? Why would they go into the cave in the first place? Why is Pazkwel "freshly dead"? What killed him and what was he doing there? Why does he have the ring? Altar at the bottom of what lake? How do they get there? Was the dragon a threat? Right now he only seems to be a danger to people making Pardon's Seeds.
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
There are typos, tons of unneeded commas making things more difficult to read, and the first paragraph was run over twice by inadvertent carriage returns, to name a few issues.
Also, if you are going to have information that is to be read to the players, maybe put it in italics or something, otherwise "you" refers to the GM. I'm pretty sure the GM won't be relaxing with some palls at the Red Dragon's Inn when they read this (though right on if they are!)
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
What happens if they don't show up? Um... I'm not sure actually. There's a big hole in the sky? It might be getting closer, but that could just be because the PCs are traveling towards it. Unfortunately, we don't know the stakes. They also don't have much for choices either: go to the waterfall, climb down, dig out ring, go to altar, put ring in slot, forge new ring, fight dragon, put ring in waterfall box(?), end. Entirely linear.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
The coolest part of this adventure is what the PCs actually do – which is great!
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
I'm about 75% sure it would be. I'm not totally sure due to the exact scenes and structure being so mangled by the writing.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
It's linear and spelled out, if some transitions were added along with a bit more editing and explanations of what is going on, yes.
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?
It's pure linear. This seems high-level, so magic will handle most of the parts that otherwise would have required the PCs to think (rappelling down a waterfall, surviving the crazy cold, digging out the ring). It's a railroad.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
No and yes, respectively.
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?
Ingredients:
Doomsayer: A
floating gold exclamation point drunk wizard that vomits out a quest then fades away. He does at least give a doom... except we're never told what makes it so terrible. "Death walks" and all that, but it seems like the only death we see is the dragon who seems content to mind her own business until the PCs start making bloody ice-pops. He does deliver a doom, but it could just as easily have been on a scroll or something.
Starless Stream: This actually would have been stronger if there was no Mirrorless River, because that's just Starless by fiat. If it was the Allmaiden now starless because it now flows underground, it would have been great. It is the main setting of the adventure (which is a pleasant change from the usual dungeon fare), but since it was already starless by decree before the tear in the sky its starlessness is irrelevant.
Hungry Darkness: I'm pretty sure the hungry dark is the rift in the sky, though maybe it's the dragon chilling inside. Ah, it's a double use, so the cave mouth that opened below the rift is the hungry darkness, devouring the river. That's a bit better, though it's the
thirsty darkness not hungry. It is dark, because it's underground, though it could be "Hungry Cave" or "Hungry Mouth" and work just as well.
Forged Pardon: This one is forged as in crafted on a forge, which is clever, unfortunately I don't see how it's a pardon. This could be a bit of missing backstory on how the hungry dark is the punishment for some previous offense held in abeyance by the Maiden's Pardon. As such, Pardon could be replaced by just about any object (a ring in this case).
Dry Water: The river is so cold it sucks the water from you. Smart. The water is also needed to be forged into the ring. It is also is the Starless Stream (assuming it is the falls that renders the river starless) which ties them together well.
Arcane Gambler: The Doomsayer at the beginning. The gambling is irrelevant to the adventure and the only reason they are wizards is by fiat. They could have been praying zealots instead and it would have worked as well. Also the frozen corpse of the (randomly atheistic) wizard in the ice. He also is both arcane and a gambler only by fiat – we have no evidence he was either. It could just as easily have been "the dried-out husk of a little-known cheese critic and paganist known as Lewkzap the Jogger" and the adventure wouldn't have changed a bit.
For a sentence: A Doomsayer tells of a Forged Pardon lost, bringing the Hungry Darkness to devour the Starless Stream, requiring the body of the Arcane Gambler to be found locked in the Dry Water.
It seems fairly strong, but since several are only what they are by fiat, it could just as easily be: A Musty Scroll tells of a Forged Ring lost, bringing the Thirsty Mouth to devour the Icy Stream, requiring the body of the Cheese Critic to be found locked in the Dry Water.
Aside from their main use, were any ingredients used in other clever ways?
The rift and the sky and the cave I think were both intended to be the Hungry Darkness, though I'm not sure.
Summary
Though completely linear, buried beneath the layers of obfuscation of problematic editing, overly, excessive, comma, use, and a large number of sudden confusing jumps where transitions should be there is a pretty cool adventure (pun not intended).
As with most 750 word entries, there is clearly much missing here. This could use a couple editing passes to eliminate unessential stuff (don't give us multiple names for things, it not only confuses, but wastes precious words too), fix typos and layout errors, and add transitions and a clear hook. Some drunk dude spouting a vague prophecy with no obvious threat made me wonder why the PCs ever headed to the falls in the first place.[/sblock]
[sblock=Comparison]Again, I'm not sure how this is going to go. Before getting to specific comparisons, I know Imhotepthewise's
Please Don't Eat the Preacher (hereafter Preacher) is much more readable, clear-cut, and is only marginally an adventure. I likewise know that
The Wager's Corollary: If the Gods are real, so are their Myths: 5+1 Wizards (hereafter Wager) is a royal pain to read, has sudden jumps in action with no transition and tons of unanswered questions, but it also is undoubtedly an adventure.
Appeal
Cool factors – Preacher has a vampire casino island and a hexslinger (HEXSLINGER!). Wager has forging a ring out of blood and ice on an underground frozen river before fighting a three-headed dragon. I'm leaning towards Wager a bit.
Other Appeal – Preacher steals it right here because you can read it once (well, twice if you get hung up on the first paragraph) and get everything. There are so many mental full-stops due to sudden jumps and unclear information in Wager that I doubt most people would even finish reading it. Sounds harsh, but I had a sinking feeling from the extra return in the first sentence that this would be a difficult one.
Preacher takes it overall on appeal as the cool stuff is so hard to get to in Wager.
Playability
Players matter and have choices – In Preacher, the players have tons of choices, but they are in the same way you have tons of choices in a park. We can play hide-and-seek, tag, capture the flag, eat a picnic, whatever! - because it's a setting, not really an adventure. If the PCs show up, it's still a cool setting, but nothing really changes.
In Wager, the adventure is a straight-up railroad. There might be a bit of creativity with some of the environmental challenges, but otherwise it's pretty limited. If they don't show up, I'm not sure what is at stake... the dragon chills in her rift or what?
This part is a wash as one is pure structure and no choices, the other is only choices with no structure and if the PCs never show up, I'm not sure anything of discernible importance really changes in either. (Wager hints at big things, but never reveals them).
Other playability – This is a tough call since in Preacher the GM has to come up with almost the whole adventure in the setting provided while in Wager the GM has to decipher what the adventure is, but once they do, it's pretty cut and dried. I'll call this part a wash as well.
Rules
Time and word count – Both had correct word counts, but Wager was late. It was only 2 minutes, but remember where I warned in advance I was a stickler for the rules? This is that.
Preacher takes this part for being on time.
For future competitors: if you are late with a judge that is OCD about time limits, might as well take 15 more minutes to do another editing pass since you're late anyway. I've seen win (and lost to) adventures turned in as much as half-a-day late. Once it's already late, might as well make the most of it.
Ingredients – Preacher didn't have a single rock-solid, irreplaceable ingredient, but the ingredients were woven together about as well as I could hope for.
Wager had a couple solid ingredients on the other hand, but the weave was much, much looser.
I think Preacher gets a slight edge on this one.[/sblock]
[sblock=Conclusion]Closing thoughts (tl;dr of the above):
This was a tough match between a well-crafted, tight
adventure setting with a hint of adventure smeared on at the end and a pretty cool – if linear – adventure presented like a half-built puzzle; it's probably good, you just have to figure out what it is first.
If Wager was cleaned up and clarified in a few places, some extra fluff stuff (like alternate names of things) removed, I'm pretty sure it would have beaten Preacher just on the merits of being 80% adventure and 20% backstory/setting vs Preacher's 20% adventure and 80% backstory/setting.
Thanks for playing, @
GuardianLurker. I'm looking forward to reading any follow-up you have on this as I can tell there was a huge amount that was slashed from this one to smash it into a 750-word box and it deserves an unpacking to fill in the details as I can see the bones of something really cool jutting out of said box.
Congrats @Imonhotepthewise, you advance to round 2.
Last note, read through any of the winning
first round entries from last year if you want ideas on how to make a 750 word adventure work. None of them were perfect, but pretty much all of them managed to lay out a complete adventure within the word limits.[/sblock]
