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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8160979" data-attributes="member: 5948">Match 2 thoughts and reflections, spoiler tagged for judges' benefit...[spoiler]Wow, that was tough.  My main problem was reconciling the different genres that the different ingredients obviously hinted towards - Binary Suns lends itself to epic sci-fi, stuck elevator to low-level modern-day, ogres and cursed swords towards fantasy.  I thought about a WH40K adventure for a while, but reluctantly discarded the idea because WH40K ogres are called by the more trademarkable name of 'ogryn', and I wasn't completely sure the judges would consider them the same thing.  [USER=11]@el-remmen[/USER]'s use of Spelljammer was clever - I didn't think of that at all, though I'm not familiar with the setting so I probably couldn't have done it justice anyway.As I posted in the other thread, I completely threw out my entry with about 5 hours to go and ended up writing a new one from scratch.  The discarded one was a D&D adventure marinated in obscure Realmslore - the Binary Suns were the intertwined and rival FR sun gods Lathander and Amanautor, a cursed sword had led a converted priest of one to lose her memory and regress to a time when she was the priest of the other, and her prior self's bardic associates included an ogre who was now redundant ... but after fighting with it for ages I realised I had 1200 words setting up an overly large and messy cast of different NPCs and their various goals and motivations and what actions they'd take if certain circumstances arose, but still had to write the actual adventure, and that looked like it would be over after one brief fight and possibly a conversation.  I slept on it on the last night, and woke up with the final entry pretty much fully-formed in my head.  It's not going to be as polished as I'd like unfortunately, and I can see some of the weaknesses of it very glaringly, but it's certainly better than the previous dog's breakfast.Dark Paragon - G'Qaroc, the Great Old One who exists where there is perfect darkness.  Not one of my stronger ingredients - it's a prominent feature of the adventure, and there's no shortage of darkness, but i needed to emphasise the Paragon bit moreName Level - I'm kinda proud of this one.  Level 5 in the old Department of Shakespearean Studies building.  A literal level of a building that has been converted into a name.Binary Suns - The twin suns of Praecipua.  I tried to use this in conjunction with Dark Paragon - one sun casts regular shadows, but under binary suns there's a special sort of darkness - a paragon of darkness - where the light of neither sun reaches.  I put in a line about starlight not reaching Praecipua either to try to emphasise the concept, but the writing here needed more polish and I'm not sure i got the message across adequately.Stuck Elevator - The elevator in the Department of Shakespearean Studies building that brings PCs to level 5 and then grinds to a halt.  I needed more word count to make this feel properly ominous, it was meant to be part of a weird and unnatural 'pull' directing the PCs towards the door to Praecipua.  But structurally, it does mean that the PCs are very likely to walk the Name and see Praecipua before meeting Ffoulkes, which is important.Cursed Sword - The alien sword that Pamir retrieves from Praecipua.  One of my weaker ingredients.  Sure, it's a sword and it's cursed, but its swordness isn't important to the adventure.  That's one of the things I would definitely have tried to fix up if this idea had come to me earlier and I'd had more time.Bardic College - Owlsley College and the Department of Shakespearean Studies.  This was one of the last pieces to fall into place for me to make this entry hang together - it was a hard fit for a Bardic College in a modern setting, but a college department devoted to study of The Bard ... that could work. Redundant Ogre - Professor Ffoulkes.  [USER=11]@el-remmen[/USER] and i both had the same idea here, the ogre being a redundant employee from the college.  Originally i was being metaphorical and Ffoulkes was merely an ogreish personality, and that part stuck around, but I ended up giving him a mutated ogrish form to go with it.[spoiler][/spoiler][/spoiler]</blockquote>

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