Judgement for Round 1, Match 1: el-remmen vs. practicalm
The first one is always tough. The first time competing. The first match. It’s difficult to know what an entry should look like (generally) straight out of the gate and it’s pretty much impossible to know just how difficult the combined word- and time-limit challenges are going to be. The first judgement of a tournament is always tough, too.
I think I had better say something up front. The type of analysis that I offer each submission is going to manifest differently. I want to be clear that, where I am critical, I am not, in so doing, insinuating that the piece is bad. And I’m certainly not suggesting that the author is.
Let me explain. The nature of IRON DM is such that no entry is submitted in a “finished” state. The best among them are pretty close, but even the most inspired could benefit from an extra editing-pass. This means that every entry falls somewhere on the “needs more work” scale. Some need quite a bit, but that doesn’t make them bad.
I keep this in mind with every entry I analyze for judgement and I hope it doesn’t get lost in the communication of that judgement. Because it is a philosophical principal that I hold to be fundamentally true.
With that in mind, it is pretty clear from the outset that one of these two entries is further along the development-track than the other. I’ll start with the ingredients.
Ingredients:
In “Twinkle Twinkle Poison Star” (“Twinkle”, for short), all of the ingredients are presented as pieces of the adventure that the PCs will (probably) interact with directly. Three of them intersect in a clever way. I’m not so sure that the PCs will absolutely not bypass that intersection, but all-in-all, this is a fairly strong set.
The
measured step,
foreign coin, and
disguise kit all come together as a means of fooling the undead,
Sean of the Dead-style. Even better, all three pieces are necessary for the ruse to work.
Be that as it may, I think many (most?) D&D parties would probably just take the problem head-on. That’s not an adventure-design flaw, but it is a bit of a blow to the relevance of all three ingredients. (A quick note, though: a subsequent reading clarified for me that the measured steps are presented as more than just a zombie-shuffle; they are actually the only way to safely approach the silver star!)
I did really like the subtle meta-clue imbedded in the foreign coins’ otherworldly origins, though. That’s fun, especially as it points to the horror that awaits within the
silver star.
The unearthly chunk of
heavy metal that (it turns out) is radioactive really ratchets up the stakes of this adventure in a very satisfying way. But I was never really sure why the meteorite/pod/seed(?) had to be silver. Before the radiation reveal, I thought maybe it was going to turn out to be quicksilver, but the left turn really was more fun. Even so, it would have worked just as well in the adventure if it was glowing green, jet black, blood red, or rainbow-colored. Or anything else.
What’s left? Oh, right.
Dream surf. I must confess, I had hoped that one of you would come up with a noun for this ingredient, but that was really just curiosity on my part about what that would look like. The use as a kind of
Inception-tool was pretty interesting (and definitely unexpected from the way the adventure was set up prior). I do have to wonder what happens when the PCs inevitably get their hands on the device, but I’ll get back to that.
Now, we flip the coin:
The entry we have from pacificalm, “You Can Lead a Horse to Water” (“Horse”), struggles a bit with these ingredients.
In the case of
Silver Star and
Dream Surf, they manifest only as names. Which is to say, they could be replaced with other names and nothing in the adventure would be changed. That’s bad. Worse, these kinds of usages invariably call attention to themselves!
They’re like — I dunno — an internet argument; they don’t accomplish anything but they demand attention anyway.
(I had a “proud nail in the scaffolding of an adventure” analogy ready to go, but that didn’t work because proud nails at least still do their jobs.)
Moving on. The
measured step is, presumably, the attempt to lead “Silver Star” across the river on day 1. This is a very small part of the adventure, but it is relevant to the PCs in an interactive way and does lead them toward an important clue. So, we’re moving in the right direction.
The other three ingredients are all important to the plot of the adventure to varying degrees (or at least a sub-plot, in the case of the foreign coins).
In all three cases, I am given to wonder why the adventure didn’t focus more on the plots they were most relevant to, but I’ll get back to that when I talk about the structure. For now, it is sufficient to know that the
disguise kit and the
heavy metal are both directly responsible for the movement of the adventure’s events (although the PC-interactive part of the former is more the disguise than the kit).
The
foreign coin’s significance is a little harder to determine, but, presumably, the pirates are able to track down the PCs who took their booty because the coins the PCs will be spreading around are uncommon enough to make that possible. That’s not exactly spelled out, but it’s pretty clever.
Questions and Adventures:
“Horse” leaves me with a lot of unanswered fundamental questions as I read through it. From the very start, I wonder things like,
Why does this Wulfwin guy need to transport his prize horse so badly? (Addendum as I reread: This one is actually a good question to raise; the PCs should be wondering the same thing.)
Why does he need to send escorts to do it? Why doesn’t he go with him? Why should he trust them at all? And why is he so stingy with the recompense? Surely he knows offering to 25-50 sp per person is not a good way to get an adventurer’s attention. Assuming D&D, anyway, which the DCs suggest.
After that, we move linearly along the path to a new location, but, even so, there a lot of ways the PCs could miss the big reveal. They could miss the troll-tracks (either through poor rolling, or neglect). They very well may miss the gnome kids and thus never return to the bridge to (re-)meet the parents. Or they might meet the gnome kids, realize it’s all a trick and leave, still without meeting the parents. Even if they meet the parents and are gifted the brush, I’m not sure how likely it is that they’ll use it on “Silver Star.”
Does this ruin the adventure? It might actually be kind of fun if the PCs are the last ones to know the horse is a fraud. But it also could backfire horribly if the players feel like the rug is getting pulled out from under them in a more-or-less unavoidable way. Handle with care.
I don’t understand Dream Surf’s purpose in this adventure at all. Clearly, she’s an obstacle, but she doesn’t have any discernible motivation. Even when confronted by the PCs about it!
And when the PCs finally get back to town to find that Wulfwin has fled and they are (for some reason) suddenly accountable for his misdeeds I have to wonder if the whole poison-leaching subplot would be a more interesting focus for the adventure? It, at least, has clear and compelling stakes.
There were some things that simply needed clarification in order to pull the threads of this adventure together. It is entirely unclear to me why the identity of the horse was of any interest to the townsfolk, at all. Or why they felt they had a claim in the business deal that they don’t seem to have a good reason for even knowing about.
Other than that, I’m not sure what to make of the accusation that the PCs are affected by the poisoned water (apparently as some form of dismissal?) when the townspeople’s own anger is a direct (and justified) result of their own poisoning by same.
There was some good meat on this bone, but it seems like the final act was tacked on to the end of the adventure to quickly tie a bow on the whole thing. The entire adventure could have been strengthened if this material had been given a bit more focus. At the very least, it would have been less confusing.
And I think it would have addressed another issue. I never was quite able to understand why the PCs should go on this seemingly pointless escort mission for very little promised reward. Add to that the very little
actual reward that the adventure presents and I am left with the impression that the point of this adventure is to punish the PCs for playing along. (The pirate’s treasure’s value
is unspecified, but it’s really more of a down-payment on future adventure than an actual reward.)
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do not have a problem with rewards that come with strings attached, but they can’t all be like that, or your players will quickly lose interest in the game. And, frankly, it doesn’t look like the players should bother returning to town. If they do (because how would they know?), they probably shouldn’t (and probably won’t) stick around to repay a debt they almost certainly won’t feel responsible for.
Adventure and Questions:
In contrast, “Twinkle” gives us two very entertaining halves of a doubly-entertaining whole. The investigative half has an interesting twist to discover and is set up to keep leading the PCs forward. Its hooks are also good. They draw heavily on curiosity, a little less on altruism, and leave room for greed to reel the selfish PCs in. Those are the big three for hooks, with curiosity being chief among them.
(I do have to wonder if the buildings of Ashtown are taller than most in D&D. But, let’s see...1d6 per 10 ft means a two- or three-story building would probably kill a commoner.)
So, what about that
Orb of Dreams falling into PC hands? First, cool. That has lots of fun-potential. Second, hot. As in, it probably won’t take too long for the PCs to discover that it’s radioactive. So, it’s kind of a self-limiting problem. As is Huxley, when you get down to it. But, as with many self-defeating problems, he could still do a lot of damage on his way out. Thus, the need for PCs to act.
The stakes are present and, while not fully understood in the first half of the adventure, still clear enough.
The second half is more adventurous fun. A horde of radioactive zombies (and company) is going to be a fun challenge no matter your approach. I’m still not absolutely sure I understand Huxley’s underlying motivation in all of this, though.
Does he know about the zombies? Is he using them for labor? Is he an opportunist? An aspiring necromancer? A cultist? A slave to the star-beast’s will? Does he know that the Orb is killing him? Does he care?
These are all big questions, but they are the kind that might best be left to the DM to figure out. The answers might suggest future adventures, or an empty hole in the world where knowledge should go. Which, of course, could lead to future adventures.
All in all, a very good entry from the old-timer.
Winding Down:
@practicalm , I know my analysis can’t make it clear enough, but I actually found a lot of good in your submission. The fundamental conceit of it all was inspired and, frankly, refreshingly different from the typical adventure-fodder I think most games fall into. Also, your grasp of fundamental concepts of rat-bastardry is impressive (I’m thinking particularly of the pirates, here). You might find them more effective if used a little more sparsely, but you’re on the right track, there.
I believe if you had more time to play around with the structure, you’d have found one that shuffled around the elements you created in a way that fit together a bit more smoothly. You could get away from the linearity by trusting the players to figure their own way through the scenarios you create and you can empower the DM to trust the players by providing a strong structural framework that can support the flexibility.
As far as incorporating ingredients goes, treat them like the most integral of NPCs in a scenario (even when they aren’t people); they need to have a role and a reason within the adventure, and they may as well not exist if the PCs never interact with them in any way. Also, the specific words that they are made up from matter, so factor that in!
All of these things take time and practice to hone, though. You’ve got the fundamental creativity and that is absolutely the most important foundation for this type of exercise. I hope you choose to give this another try in a future tournament, because I genuinely believe you’ve got the goods to be competitive with your submissions.
And, don’t think I’m saying that just to soften the sting, here; I’m not really one to waste my time with hollow niceties. It’s on you whether or not you want to try again, but, if you do, I expect we’ll see an impressive improvement. No pressure, though!
This time,
@el-remmen advances to Round 2.
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