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IRON DM 2020 Tournament Thread
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<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8174012" data-attributes="member: 5948"><p>[SPOILER="comments"]Yeah, i continually make the mistake of focusing a bit too much on the adventure rather than the ingredients once I've gotten the general shape of things sorted, and it continually costs me.</p><p></p><p>Nua'ir being a former parrot (rather than a random other bird) was entirely planned around him retaining his parrot-like memory and mimicry abilities, and the PCs being able to leverage that parrot-like quality to learn more about the hags. But I tossed that off in half a sentence where it could easily be missed. And of course the setup had so many moving parts that the PCs could easily get the info elsewhere (fromthe unicorn, for instance) which drew the focus off the whole parrot plot. I should have given Nua-ir a parrot girlfriend who tried to enlist the PCs to restore him. Same with the turtles - I spent so much wordcount on planning out the various iterations of Uzmah's turtle shape that I didn't spell out my actual use of the ingredient enough, how Ghomollod tricked Uzmah into assuming that he meant the figurative meaning of 'turtles all the way down' (the infinite unbounded series) whereas what he actually gave her sprang from a literal reading.</p><p></p><p>And yeah, I knew there were plot holes and permutations i hadn't accounted for, but the possibility PCs not killing Uzmah in her first reincarnation simply didn't occur to me. That incarnation only existed so the PCs could learn the ground rules for the rest of the adventure - she reincarnated, she still has her intellect in her new form, and she crumbles to dust and is reborn when the current form dies. Didn't even cross my mind they might pick her up and stuff her in a terrarium!</p><p></p><p>Swoop was - by far - the hardest ingredient for me here. It's a single discrete action, so it can't be a recurring theme through the adventure. It isn't really a word that has any ambiguity or multiple meanings ('scoop', or 'sweep', or even 'steep' would have given so many more options!). So damn hard to use. I eventually tried to make <em>swooping </em>a theme of the adventure - rather than a singular swoop. The game Swoop is entirely centred around the act of swooping so i was hoping for some understanding and leniency around this slight re-interpretation, but still i know the judges hate it when you invent something and call it by the name of the ingredient, so all i could do was cross my fingers there.</p><p></p><p>As for of Pike Place Paradox, if i was to run it, I'd run it as something like a convention one-shot with pre-written characters. It lets your PCs arrive with pre-existing ties to the significant NPCs and each other, and lets you give them additional linkages to the weirder ingredients (turtles, pteranodons...) which'd strengthen the integration of the adventure as a whole. But having to write up a few PCs as well as all Fitz's wonderful NPCs, and still stay within an Iron DM word count? Reeeeaaal hard. Though you could MAYBE pull it off if you made it a solo (or 2-PC adventure). Has there ever been an Iron DM entry that included pregen PCs? It'd be an interesting option, if word count was kind.[/SPOILER]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 8174012, member: 5948"] [SPOILER="comments"]Yeah, i continually make the mistake of focusing a bit too much on the adventure rather than the ingredients once I've gotten the general shape of things sorted, and it continually costs me. Nua'ir being a former parrot (rather than a random other bird) was entirely planned around him retaining his parrot-like memory and mimicry abilities, and the PCs being able to leverage that parrot-like quality to learn more about the hags. But I tossed that off in half a sentence where it could easily be missed. And of course the setup had so many moving parts that the PCs could easily get the info elsewhere (fromthe unicorn, for instance) which drew the focus off the whole parrot plot. I should have given Nua-ir a parrot girlfriend who tried to enlist the PCs to restore him. Same with the turtles - I spent so much wordcount on planning out the various iterations of Uzmah's turtle shape that I didn't spell out my actual use of the ingredient enough, how Ghomollod tricked Uzmah into assuming that he meant the figurative meaning of 'turtles all the way down' (the infinite unbounded series) whereas what he actually gave her sprang from a literal reading. And yeah, I knew there were plot holes and permutations i hadn't accounted for, but the possibility PCs not killing Uzmah in her first reincarnation simply didn't occur to me. That incarnation only existed so the PCs could learn the ground rules for the rest of the adventure - she reincarnated, she still has her intellect in her new form, and she crumbles to dust and is reborn when the current form dies. Didn't even cross my mind they might pick her up and stuff her in a terrarium! Swoop was - by far - the hardest ingredient for me here. It's a single discrete action, so it can't be a recurring theme through the adventure. It isn't really a word that has any ambiguity or multiple meanings ('scoop', or 'sweep', or even 'steep' would have given so many more options!). So damn hard to use. I eventually tried to make [I]swooping [/I]a theme of the adventure - rather than a singular swoop. The game Swoop is entirely centred around the act of swooping so i was hoping for some understanding and leniency around this slight re-interpretation, but still i know the judges hate it when you invent something and call it by the name of the ingredient, so all i could do was cross my fingers there. As for of Pike Place Paradox, if i was to run it, I'd run it as something like a convention one-shot with pre-written characters. It lets your PCs arrive with pre-existing ties to the significant NPCs and each other, and lets you give them additional linkages to the weirder ingredients (turtles, pteranodons...) which'd strengthen the integration of the adventure as a whole. But having to write up a few PCs as well as all Fitz's wonderful NPCs, and still stay within an Iron DM word count? Reeeeaaal hard. Though you could MAYBE pull it off if you made it a solo (or 2-PC adventure). Has there ever been an Iron DM entry that included pregen PCs? It'd be an interesting option, if word count was kind.[/SPOILER] [/QUOTE]
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