Rune
Once A Fool
Off the record, I was very disappointed that @el-remmen never even referenced a dryad-ghost. I mean, come on! It was right there!
I thought of it, but wanted to avoid leaning on an idea that was already potentially cribbed from somewhere else.Off the record, I was very disappointed that @el-remmen never even referenced a dryad-ghost. I mean, come on! It was right there
Feel a bit like Rob Stark... win every battle/ingredient then lose the war. Especially since I seem to have lost over... hypothetical equipment options?
In fantasy games where enemies fly dragons and wield staves of power and PCs can pick their starting gear, why don't PCs just start with that equipment? In a modern campaign where enemies might have Apache attack helicopters and nerve gas, why don't the PCs just start with those? In scifi games where enemies have command sentient nanoswarms and Star Destroyers and PCs get to pick their starting gear, why don't the PCs start with those?
I've lost in many more judgments than I can even count, but this is by far the one that puzzles me the most, especially with a 5-0 ingredient lead which I think is the best ratio I've ever gotten on any IronDM.
Maybe I misread and the actual question is: what happens if the PCs get that lucky critical-hit headshot on the captain in the first encounter? If that's the problem, I totally get it and it's the main reason I run games that are completely improvisational/sandbox games but equipment?
Okay. I’ll clarify my position. Despite the 5-1 ingredient split, i didn’t find that most of them were significantly better (although a couple definitely were). It’s a deceptive 5-1. In context, very nearly 3-3.
And when I weighed that against the structural issues I found in your entry, it made things tough. Those issues would (very likely, in my estimation) be pretty impactful to the experience of running the game. To be clear, the technological assumptions I called out are not the root of those issues, they are just one of the ways things could get derailed.
Fundamentally, your entry was very linear through a large part of it and there were a lot of points where things could easily go off course. And I’m talking about things that need to happen to get the adventure to it’s next step, like the pirates succeeding in their initial raid, the pirate captain surviving the raid, the steamship surviving the raid, the life raft surviving the escape, the pirate captain’s dino surviving long enough for a chase to happen.
(The laser sword and gatling guns seem like they would make each of those things more likely to get derailed, but it could still happen without.)
No doubt that would all get cleaned up with a second draft, but this version offers the DM nothing in the way of guidance if any one of those things happens. So, yeah. I had to go the other way.
Nevertheless, I remain sincere in expressing my admiration for the entry you put forth. Its cinematic and exciting through-line still looks like it would be a blast; I just know I’d have to prepare some contingencies.
And, I’m going to reiterate this more for the peanut gallery than for you, but I’m serious when I say, I do not believe I could do anywhere near as good a job as you did in one hour, let alone twenty-five minutes!
I am impressed.