loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
Though on Hail, Caesar:
I'm officially running this.
IRON DM 2021 Tournament
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
Just for the sake of setting expectations -- I've got a home game this afternoon, so I won't be able to write my review of the match 4 entries until this evening. Sorry it can't be sooner.
FitzTheRuke
Legend
Man, these entries are all great. I don't know if I could have found time to do one as good as these. I'm kind of mixed - on the one hand, I wish I was part of it; on the other I'm glad I don't have to be judged against any of these!
Rune
Once A Fool
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
Iron DM 2021 Round 1 Match 4: Neurotic vs Loverdrive
Hey All -- I'm just sitting down to do my judgement of these two entries, after reading them over a few times (and letting them work at the edges of my mind all afternoon while saying "Sigh, yes, that's a hit" to my D&D group.....)
These are two very different entries -- in fact, about the only thing that seems to connect them is the ingredients, and practically nothing else. And they're both cool as hell, in their own way. So, you know, my job sucks. Pity me, gentle reader.
So, we have Loverdrive's entry, which doesn't have a name, and Neurotic's entry "What (could be) a Beautiful World". The lack of title is an inconvenience for me -- an important value in the writing of these responses is to rigorously refer to the entry specifically, and not the author. This is something I got in the habit of doing decades ago in my MFA writing program -- we always talk about the story, because the story is not the author, and any faults are it's own and are no reflection on the author. So, I find myself needing to give a title to an untitled entry. The big initial section heading, Drow, might be useful, but I feel like that's actually a lousy title for this entry. I'm going to go with "A Sky with a God-shaped Hole." And, then I'll shorten them both for convenience to "God-shaped Hole" and "Beautiful World." And those two nicknames for these entries feel representative of the tones of each piece.
All that work, and I haven't even started yet.
God-Shaped Hole is a setup for a whole game -- it is setting and rules (rules-light story game of some variety). A setting where a mad scholar has connected two machines (one that exists and one that does not) to bridge the gap between the worlds of gods and men, and tied to it the "fine science of causality reversal" and out of that comes a connection to the noosphere (I had to look this up, it's the "highest stage of biosphereic development, its defining factor being the development of humankind's rational activities." This is philosophy and faith and science, all with a dice mechanic and entities that are trying to balance control and humanity to achieve some sort of success. Inventive, crazy, and the sort of thing I'd scour Youtube for actual play videos of before I decided to talk anyone into trying to play it with me.
Meanwhile, Beautiful World is coloring mostly within the lines of a coloring book. The colors that BW uses are vibrant and unusual and interesting, the plot is open to a variety of creative solutions, and would clearly be fun to play. The execution, especially given the word limits and format, is excellent.
So, lets get started.
Ingredient Use
I like to start with a point by point examination of the ingredients, so I'll start there.
Empty Treasury
In Beautiful World, the Empty Treasury is the starting point of the adventure -- the Terrible Bard has spent all of the kingdom's wealth to arrange for his beautiful-world-creating ritual. I think this use of the ingredient is serviceable but not great -- it's a detail tacked onto the prologue to the piece, and it never presents a problem for the party or even a detail they're doing to deal with -- and if the reward for success includes money, then the treasury can't be all that drained.
In God-Shaped Hole, on the other hand, the Empty treasury is one of the titles of one of the gods in the setup. Also know as The End, or The Grim Reaper. This being will come in the end and erase all memories of those that dream of him. This is an example of a thing that I tend to find frustrating in Iron DM entries -- the ingredient is being used as a label to cover a base, and the thing it's labeling would probably not make a natural choice for that label if it were not being pressed into service by the needs of the competition. Giving this god the name "the empty treasury" does not appear to add anything to the portfolio of the god, or it's personality. It could have been, perhaps, if we were talking about a death god of a people who are devoted to wealth as a measure of a good life, but perhaps because of the sacrifices we make for word count, that doesn't appear here for me.
In the end, I'm not excited about either use -- they're paying lip service, not much more.
Wonderful World
In God-shaped Hole, the wonderful world is the goal of Akhilesh, the mad scholar, when he cobbles together his machines and hooks everything up to the noosphere. (Now that I know that word I'm going to wind up using it a lot for the next week, I can tell.) I could quibble that the wonderful world doesn't happen -- that it's there as the ideal that the scholar was working towards, but we are immediately told that he was wrong, and this world did not get created. But, even as a motivation it works.
In Beautiful World, the wonderful world is also the goal of the madman at the heart of things -- what does it say about us that we think that a wonderful world is necessarily the goal of a madman? Anyway, this is a world of beautiful people and beautiful things -- basically the perfect blend of the CW, the Bachelorette, and HGTV. And, of course, that way leads to madness.
They're both good. I don't think I have a preference for one's use over the other here.
Terrible Bard
This one is going to score points for Beautiful World -- the terrible bard at the heart of that story is terrific, and terrible, and it matters that he's a bard -- it's important to both the kind of new world he's trying to build and the insanity of his methods.
God-Shaped Hole, on the other hand, has a similar problem on this ingredient as it did with Empty Treasury. It's a name given to a god. The Fifth Trumpet. The one who paints. These are the names given to "their own doom" as created by the minds of the drow. In this case, I like that "Fifth trumpet" and "One Who Paints" are also bardic in nature -- they stick to the theme -- but I'm again left wondering what is it that makes this terrible? What makes this horror especially bard-like?
So, advantage to Beautiful World on this one.
Historic Bridge
In God-Shaped Hole, this is the bridge between the world of the drow to the noosphere (see, still using it) and it's labeled "historic". I'm struggling with this one, too -- it's a problem for this entry that the setting that has been created feels very un-historic -- this is not a world that history matters in -- your character may have a backstory, but it doesn't matter. How is the bridge historic in a world that is all causality reversal and void? It's a bridge, sure. But... it's complicated.
In Beautiful World the Historic Bridge is exactly what it sets out to be -- a historic bridge, site of a heroic deed by a great knight whose family continues to protect the king, even beyond the grave. It's solid.
Advantage to Beautiful world on this one too.
Uncivil War
In beautiful world, the uncivil war is the war fought by various families trying to position their daughters for the big event, the big reality show at the heart of this adventure. It's not the best-used ingredient in the Beautiful World entry, but it's serviceable.
In God-Shaped Hole, on the other hand, uncivil war is another part of the mad scholar's goal for the wonderful world -- a world without uncivil war (civil wars being acceptable in our utopia?). It's weak, feels tacked on and not really baked into the whole entry. I prefer Beautiful World's active uncivil war.
Spectral Lion
In God-Shaped Hole, the spectral lioness is another name of the One Hungers, the Bitch With Many Teeth. She who will eat the sun. Like many of the other ingredients, this one feels like it's been tacked onto an element that didn't need another name, and the use of "lioness" to describe this deity doesn't add anything to my understanding of the god's personality.
Meanwhile, in Beautiful World, the Spectral Lion are the ghostly knights who protect the king beyond the grave. Are they lions? Even figuratively? The name works in general, but there's nothing particularly leonine in the deed that the original knight did to protect the king from the horde. The spectral part, in this usage, matters more than the lion part, and it would be better if both really connected, but this is serviceable.
Overall Ingredient Use
Really focusing on the ingredients is always a fascinating discipline as I sit down to judge, because it draws a reader's attention to the central conceit of the contest -- it's about creative use of these ingredients. In this case, I find that Beautiful World did more with the ingredients at almost every turn -- and there were no ingredients that I felt like God-Shaped Hole did a better job than Beautiful World. So, based solely on ingredients, Beautiful world has a strong advantage.
Writing, Presentation, and Playability
On my first read, I can remember encountering the rich poetry of the opening of God-Shaped Hole. I was knocked out by the writing, the creativity, the energy, and at the same time I worried that the luxury of that writing would end up meaning difficult sacrifices later. When word count is a part of the challenge, taking time out for this kind of writing is a risk. A compelling, beautiful risk.
Normally I would also think that the words spent on laying out the game mechanics would be a risk, too, but I find that the simple give and take of the system, the dichotomy of control pitted against humanity is perhaps the clearest thing about the game to come from this entry, and the thing that most makes me want to play it. So, can't fault that at all.
As I said earlier, setting off to run this I would want to watch others play first. After several reads I still find that I don't clearly know who the PCs are or what their role is in the adventure. The players are there to try to reach and obliterate the machine of machines and bring on the apocalypse. Presumably, the gods will take turns standing in the way of the players, creating scenes from the stuff of creation to bedevil them, but that's not here. The PCs are meant to be drow, and that's important because this story somehow explains the nightmares that forced all elves to develop meditation to avoid the need to sleep. I find that I really need more to go on from the entry to help me scaffold the gameplay for my players.
Beautiful World takes far fewer risks. It's an entry that depends a lot on backstory, which is often a problem, but it manages the risk there well enough. It presents a playable, fun, interesting scenario, and I don't know that I would need a lot more to feel like I could sit down and play without needing to watch someone else do it first. It's less poetic, less dangerous, less experimental. But it gets the job done, and does it well.
Conclusion
-rg
Hey All -- I'm just sitting down to do my judgement of these two entries, after reading them over a few times (and letting them work at the edges of my mind all afternoon while saying "Sigh, yes, that's a hit" to my D&D group.....)
These are two very different entries -- in fact, about the only thing that seems to connect them is the ingredients, and practically nothing else. And they're both cool as hell, in their own way. So, you know, my job sucks. Pity me, gentle reader.
So, we have Loverdrive's entry, which doesn't have a name, and Neurotic's entry "What (could be) a Beautiful World". The lack of title is an inconvenience for me -- an important value in the writing of these responses is to rigorously refer to the entry specifically, and not the author. This is something I got in the habit of doing decades ago in my MFA writing program -- we always talk about the story, because the story is not the author, and any faults are it's own and are no reflection on the author. So, I find myself needing to give a title to an untitled entry. The big initial section heading, Drow, might be useful, but I feel like that's actually a lousy title for this entry. I'm going to go with "A Sky with a God-shaped Hole." And, then I'll shorten them both for convenience to "God-shaped Hole" and "Beautiful World." And those two nicknames for these entries feel representative of the tones of each piece.
All that work, and I haven't even started yet.
God-Shaped Hole is a setup for a whole game -- it is setting and rules (rules-light story game of some variety). A setting where a mad scholar has connected two machines (one that exists and one that does not) to bridge the gap between the worlds of gods and men, and tied to it the "fine science of causality reversal" and out of that comes a connection to the noosphere (I had to look this up, it's the "highest stage of biosphereic development, its defining factor being the development of humankind's rational activities." This is philosophy and faith and science, all with a dice mechanic and entities that are trying to balance control and humanity to achieve some sort of success. Inventive, crazy, and the sort of thing I'd scour Youtube for actual play videos of before I decided to talk anyone into trying to play it with me.
Meanwhile, Beautiful World is coloring mostly within the lines of a coloring book. The colors that BW uses are vibrant and unusual and interesting, the plot is open to a variety of creative solutions, and would clearly be fun to play. The execution, especially given the word limits and format, is excellent.
So, lets get started.
Ingredient Use
I like to start with a point by point examination of the ingredients, so I'll start there.
Empty Treasury
In Beautiful World, the Empty Treasury is the starting point of the adventure -- the Terrible Bard has spent all of the kingdom's wealth to arrange for his beautiful-world-creating ritual. I think this use of the ingredient is serviceable but not great -- it's a detail tacked onto the prologue to the piece, and it never presents a problem for the party or even a detail they're doing to deal with -- and if the reward for success includes money, then the treasury can't be all that drained.
In God-Shaped Hole, on the other hand, the Empty treasury is one of the titles of one of the gods in the setup. Also know as The End, or The Grim Reaper. This being will come in the end and erase all memories of those that dream of him. This is an example of a thing that I tend to find frustrating in Iron DM entries -- the ingredient is being used as a label to cover a base, and the thing it's labeling would probably not make a natural choice for that label if it were not being pressed into service by the needs of the competition. Giving this god the name "the empty treasury" does not appear to add anything to the portfolio of the god, or it's personality. It could have been, perhaps, if we were talking about a death god of a people who are devoted to wealth as a measure of a good life, but perhaps because of the sacrifices we make for word count, that doesn't appear here for me.
In the end, I'm not excited about either use -- they're paying lip service, not much more.
Wonderful World
In God-shaped Hole, the wonderful world is the goal of Akhilesh, the mad scholar, when he cobbles together his machines and hooks everything up to the noosphere. (Now that I know that word I'm going to wind up using it a lot for the next week, I can tell.) I could quibble that the wonderful world doesn't happen -- that it's there as the ideal that the scholar was working towards, but we are immediately told that he was wrong, and this world did not get created. But, even as a motivation it works.
In Beautiful World, the wonderful world is also the goal of the madman at the heart of things -- what does it say about us that we think that a wonderful world is necessarily the goal of a madman? Anyway, this is a world of beautiful people and beautiful things -- basically the perfect blend of the CW, the Bachelorette, and HGTV. And, of course, that way leads to madness.
They're both good. I don't think I have a preference for one's use over the other here.
Terrible Bard
This one is going to score points for Beautiful World -- the terrible bard at the heart of that story is terrific, and terrible, and it matters that he's a bard -- it's important to both the kind of new world he's trying to build and the insanity of his methods.
God-Shaped Hole, on the other hand, has a similar problem on this ingredient as it did with Empty Treasury. It's a name given to a god. The Fifth Trumpet. The one who paints. These are the names given to "their own doom" as created by the minds of the drow. In this case, I like that "Fifth trumpet" and "One Who Paints" are also bardic in nature -- they stick to the theme -- but I'm again left wondering what is it that makes this terrible? What makes this horror especially bard-like?
So, advantage to Beautiful World on this one.
Historic Bridge
In God-Shaped Hole, this is the bridge between the world of the drow to the noosphere (see, still using it) and it's labeled "historic". I'm struggling with this one, too -- it's a problem for this entry that the setting that has been created feels very un-historic -- this is not a world that history matters in -- your character may have a backstory, but it doesn't matter. How is the bridge historic in a world that is all causality reversal and void? It's a bridge, sure. But... it's complicated.
In Beautiful World the Historic Bridge is exactly what it sets out to be -- a historic bridge, site of a heroic deed by a great knight whose family continues to protect the king, even beyond the grave. It's solid.
Advantage to Beautiful world on this one too.
Uncivil War
In beautiful world, the uncivil war is the war fought by various families trying to position their daughters for the big event, the big reality show at the heart of this adventure. It's not the best-used ingredient in the Beautiful World entry, but it's serviceable.
In God-Shaped Hole, on the other hand, uncivil war is another part of the mad scholar's goal for the wonderful world -- a world without uncivil war (civil wars being acceptable in our utopia?). It's weak, feels tacked on and not really baked into the whole entry. I prefer Beautiful World's active uncivil war.
Spectral Lion
In God-Shaped Hole, the spectral lioness is another name of the One Hungers, the Bitch With Many Teeth. She who will eat the sun. Like many of the other ingredients, this one feels like it's been tacked onto an element that didn't need another name, and the use of "lioness" to describe this deity doesn't add anything to my understanding of the god's personality.
Meanwhile, in Beautiful World, the Spectral Lion are the ghostly knights who protect the king beyond the grave. Are they lions? Even figuratively? The name works in general, but there's nothing particularly leonine in the deed that the original knight did to protect the king from the horde. The spectral part, in this usage, matters more than the lion part, and it would be better if both really connected, but this is serviceable.
Overall Ingredient Use
Really focusing on the ingredients is always a fascinating discipline as I sit down to judge, because it draws a reader's attention to the central conceit of the contest -- it's about creative use of these ingredients. In this case, I find that Beautiful World did more with the ingredients at almost every turn -- and there were no ingredients that I felt like God-Shaped Hole did a better job than Beautiful World. So, based solely on ingredients, Beautiful world has a strong advantage.
Writing, Presentation, and Playability
On my first read, I can remember encountering the rich poetry of the opening of God-Shaped Hole. I was knocked out by the writing, the creativity, the energy, and at the same time I worried that the luxury of that writing would end up meaning difficult sacrifices later. When word count is a part of the challenge, taking time out for this kind of writing is a risk. A compelling, beautiful risk.
Normally I would also think that the words spent on laying out the game mechanics would be a risk, too, but I find that the simple give and take of the system, the dichotomy of control pitted against humanity is perhaps the clearest thing about the game to come from this entry, and the thing that most makes me want to play it. So, can't fault that at all.
As I said earlier, setting off to run this I would want to watch others play first. After several reads I still find that I don't clearly know who the PCs are or what their role is in the adventure. The players are there to try to reach and obliterate the machine of machines and bring on the apocalypse. Presumably, the gods will take turns standing in the way of the players, creating scenes from the stuff of creation to bedevil them, but that's not here. The PCs are meant to be drow, and that's important because this story somehow explains the nightmares that forced all elves to develop meditation to avoid the need to sleep. I find that I really need more to go on from the entry to help me scaffold the gameplay for my players.
Beautiful World takes far fewer risks. It's an entry that depends a lot on backstory, which is often a problem, but it manages the risk there well enough. It presents a playable, fun, interesting scenario, and I don't know that I would need a lot more to feel like I could sit down and play without needing to watch someone else do it first. It's less poetic, less dangerous, less experimental. But it gets the job done, and does it well.
Conclusion
This is a tough one because the two entries are so different, and because there's baggage that goes with them. Do I select the entry that shows the most daring and creativity with the form? Or the one that gave me something that looks a lot more like what I expected to be reading. Do we want to discourage creativity, or say that creativity matters more than the expectations of the competition?
In the end, for me, I come back to the ingredients. For me as a judge this is always the core of the question. The competition is not for raw creativity, but for creativity with the challenge of working with the frustrating mix of ingredients the judges whip up.
And there's where I lose it for God-Shaped Hole. The creativity and the passion and the writing don't do enough to make those ingredients an integral part of the whole. The ingredients used as alternative names for the gods -- empty treasury, spectral lioness, terrible bard -- only the bard felt like it was a real expression of that divine being, not just a named added where it sort of fits. Wonderful world, uncivil war -- these are brief concepts in the motivation of the mad scholar. And the historic bridge -- well, there is at least a bridge, and I suppose if there is a new reality after the Apocalypse there might be someone who can record it for some sort of history.... but that's not the feeling I get from the entry.
I've talked so much about God-Shaped Hole, and I am doing a disservice to the fine work that went into Beautiful World. This is an entry that works, and the level of completeness and connection for ingredients makes it a textbook case in making the ingredients part of the story. It wasn't perfect -- we can see, for example, that the empty treasury is weak, but others work very well, and connect to multiple parts of the story.
In the end, as excited as I am at the potential of God-shaped hole -- and as much as I really want to play in that game -- for this competition I feel like the best entry is Beautiful World -- also a game I very much want to play in, and I feel like I could also run for my table. And we would have a blast.
So, that means that Neurotic, you will advance to Round 2.
Both of you really kicked ass on this one, and you make me glad I'm not competing with you myself.
In the end, for me, I come back to the ingredients. For me as a judge this is always the core of the question. The competition is not for raw creativity, but for creativity with the challenge of working with the frustrating mix of ingredients the judges whip up.
And there's where I lose it for God-Shaped Hole. The creativity and the passion and the writing don't do enough to make those ingredients an integral part of the whole. The ingredients used as alternative names for the gods -- empty treasury, spectral lioness, terrible bard -- only the bard felt like it was a real expression of that divine being, not just a named added where it sort of fits. Wonderful world, uncivil war -- these are brief concepts in the motivation of the mad scholar. And the historic bridge -- well, there is at least a bridge, and I suppose if there is a new reality after the Apocalypse there might be someone who can record it for some sort of history.... but that's not the feeling I get from the entry.
I've talked so much about God-Shaped Hole, and I am doing a disservice to the fine work that went into Beautiful World. This is an entry that works, and the level of completeness and connection for ingredients makes it a textbook case in making the ingredients part of the story. It wasn't perfect -- we can see, for example, that the empty treasury is weak, but others work very well, and connect to multiple parts of the story.
In the end, as excited as I am at the potential of God-shaped hole -- and as much as I really want to play in that game -- for this competition I feel like the best entry is Beautiful World -- also a game I very much want to play in, and I feel like I could also run for my table. And we would have a blast.
So, that means that Neurotic, you will advance to Round 2.
Both of you really kicked ass on this one, and you make me glad I'm not competing with you myself.
-rg
Rune
Once A Fool
On an unrelated note, @loverdrive, I notice your profile has the “publisher” tag. Is there anywhere I might be able to check out your work? Your creativity, skill, and writing style suggest I should.
loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
The links are in my signature, under every post I make
Rune
Once A Fool
Ah. Signatures don’t show up on mobile, as far as I can tell. And my phone is my computer.The links are in my signature, under every post I make
…But it looks like they can be found through your profile page, so I’ll check them out!
FitzTheRuke
Legend
You write full judgements... on your phone!? I'm impressed!
