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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 8167668" data-attributes="member: 60965">[USER=5948]@humble minion[/USER], thanks for your kind words, even if my tendency to strive towards "ambition, originality" doesn't always serve me for Iron DM.Which, speaking of, I get what the judges say entirely. Skimming back over my entry this week-ish later, I winced. In my final edit, I actually went through and made the Norn's speeches more obscure and indirect. I also switched from calling everything by its cool Norse names when they were introduced then switching to English names for clarity afterwards and put in all Norse names. My hope was to make it seem more epic and evocative, but as [USER=221]@Wicht[/USER] said, beauty vs utility matters in an RPG and, considering how close the judgments were, that last "Edit of Obfuscation" I hammered in one keyboard rune at a time may have tipped the victory.I also definitely committed the sin I warned about in the scheduling thread by having multiple meanings for each ingredient. A friend told me over lunch one day he'd been cheated on 17 times. Once or twice, maybe it's the ladies, but 17? Maybe it's you, dude. Similarly, if one judge doesn't get the meaning I went for, maybe it's them. All three? Definitely me.Another cardinal sin nailed by spelling out mechanics in a system-agnostic Iron DM adventure: what if they're playing Shadowrun and only have 50d6 at the table? What if they have a rough initial "odd dice" encounter rolling high then will only roll d4s figuring losing the race is better than facing another "11"?  If I'd just said "getting the <speed McGuffin> gives you the option of traveling twice as fast for double the risk" it would probably have worked even if the none of the judges agreed that airship cars and chariot cars are listed in the definition of the world. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Less specifics, more demagoguery FTW (just like politics?)The Things were supposed to be political assemblies. I didn't think of this until now, but the closest analogy leaking from my brain might be a coup in Moscow under Communist rule. The Communists steer a vast geographical empire from Moscow but if the ruling heads in the capitol are replaced by a coup of naval officers or an anarchist collective, then the entire government changes. Replace Communists with Wyrd Thing, a vast geographical empire with the fate of the multiverse, naval officers with the "Progressive" Thing, and an anarchist collective with "Freedom" Thing.If this were a campaign I was running, the questions I'd be trying to answer for myself through play would be "what if all the major events on every world were actually political moves and/or shadow wars between fate-spinners fighting to control and keep in-power a totalitarian regime? What if everything we thought was important was only a tug on the a thread to keep the tapestry of fate on their single loom until the end of time?"If I'd stayed up the extra hour or two and gave it another objective read over as though I was someone who hadn't spent 2 days swimming in Norse vocabulary, I might have fixed it. If I'd taken my own advice and tightened the writing to bring out a single clear meaning and/or left out the dice mechanics which confused rather than clarified, maybe that would have done it. I could blame family and relationship stuff for getting in the way or my 60-hour work week, but when it comes down to it I got lazy and said "good enough" instead of putting in the little bit extra that might have tilted the finals my way.Might. [USER=59816]@FitzTheRuke[/USER]'s entry seemed to me almost too simple and straightforward to possibly win on first read but "simple" really means "clear" and straightforward means "usable". Not only that, but it promises something I often completely forget about when writing these: fun!I dumped everything on the entire store isle into a cart, sprayed a pretty can of paint over it, and shoved it towards the judges while he picked exactly the ingredients needed to make dinner. Clean, clear, efficient. Almost any DM with any group could sit down, play through, and have fun with Race while between the obscure terminology, philosophical meandering, wonky mechanics, and unclear stakes, Postmortem sits here cadaver-esque to be analyzed to death... after death.Thanks [USER=67]@Rune[/USER], [USER=221]@Wicht[/USER], and [USER=57112]@Gradine[/USER] (hope you're feeling better!) for the critiques! Having played on that end a few times, I know and greatly appreciate the amount of time, effort, and focus that goes into writing a judgment. I think you probably read through it more times than I did, Wicht!Congratz, Fitz! Good luck in the finals!</blockquote>

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