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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 8379032" data-attributes="member: 60965">Judgment for Round 1, Match 2: Snarf Zagyg vs el-remmenFirst off, sorry for limited participation so far; love Iron DM and wanted to stay involved but heavy RL stuff has hit that's taking up much of my time (and devouring my sleep). I'm super punchy from the not sleeping much the last few weeks, so if I'm rambling or lose coherency, that's my excuse.That said, a couple notes about how I'm going to try to judge: my goal is a series of readthroughs with different foci and metrics for success.First, I'll skim it like a casual reader looking for basic comprehension and cool factors that would make me want to get it if it were a published adventure.Second, I'll read through it as though I'm a GM planning to run it, focusing on how easy it would be to run, keep track of, and whether it would be fun for me to GM.Last, I'll analyze it as an IronDM judge focusing on ingredient identification, strength, fit, irreplacability, and cleverness.When I competing in IronDM I usually focus on originality, theme, and "coolness" over mechanism. I then get to see my "sweet" adventures lose to solidly playable, straightforward entries with less flash and more function. When judging, I see why I lose to playabilty-focused adventures. Make an economical vehicle with a fresh coat of paint, not a rocket-powered bicycle that will maybe blast moonwards but more likely blast a smoking crater. I.e. solid and playable trumps exciting and flashy. (Note to self for next year: remember this).Let's start with [USER=7023840]@Snarf Zagyg[/USER] and Hail Caesar.[spoiler=Hail Caesar]Right off the bat, I ended up shaving 8 words off the end due to the adventure summary pushing it over the word limit. I copy-pasted into a .doc and deleted the last 8 words without reading them to avoid them effecting my judgment. Hopefully that doesn't hurt the conclusion too much.Right off the bat, a gamble: knowledge of movies. Though I've seen a lot of movies, pop culture is probably my single weakest area of knowledge (intentionally). Hopefully pulling me as a judge doesn't shoot you in the foot.Dropped Thoughts During SkimHad me at "timequakes". Lost me quickly after.I actually know these actors, but other references are lost on me.That plan doesn't seem simple in almost any way, unless you mean "simple" as in "created by a simpleton". I'm guessing it's the latter."Bay has control over the Knight and the Dogs..." what Knight? Assuming this is a reference to the Transformers (whose movies I haven't watched after hearing they're terrible). And order them to stand down from what? Adapting Shakespeare?"The Coen's struggled to get financing for their film..." What film? Isn't the movie Michael Bay's? Were they already making one but were coerced by Bay to do his version? Did Bay rewrite theirs? Losing the plot here...Since I'm losing track of what the players are supposed to be doing, who they are, and how they got to 1983 in all the background and character motivations, I'm going to skim ahead to the end then circle back.Chuckled at the few references I got. Wordcount ate the last thing they need to do to fix the timeline and what it is that the Coen brothers need to shoot. Michael Bay? Presumably they need to go back to shooting Blood Simple or the universe unravels? Sound pretty important for a movie I'd never heard of until I just googled it.Really bad luck in pulling me for a judge. If my wife had anywhere greater than 0 interest in gaming, she'd have been a great judge for you (and rolled her eyes and sighed when I didn't get 90% of your references).I'm pretty sure now the PCs are some sort of "Timewatch" sent on missions to fix broken timelines. Though it's often a primary theme of time travel RPGs, there are other things you can do with them.Are they in 1983 or 1984? Did the players follow him from now, are they native to 1983/4, or from the future? Did the Coen brothers go with Bay from now or are they the 1983/4 Coen brothers? Why does he have to go to 1983/4 again?Remembering that I'm supposed to be doing just a quick skim for cool, fun bits, it seems the PCs are trying to use their knowledge of Hollywood personalities to stop the movie using purely social skills. This means somehow convincing Bay to go home without telling him why, which seems like not so much a railroad as a single-scene adventure: they chuckle at the references, then try to convince Bay he's awesome and everyone else's just haters.If they fail, there's not much recourse since he has unkillable bodyguards that will stomp them dead if (really when since they are PCs) they try any funny business. Better hope you have a character with dope social abilities and/or everyone realizes this is their one shot at success so better spend whatever resources you have on this one roll...Already Second PassI'm drifting into the second read it seems. I just got how poor judges must feel reading my entries: "look at all the clever references and over-the-top moving parts... how do I run this again?"I just realized Blood Simple is a movie and am Googling it. Editing back above with some of my realization which might make this judgment make less sense, but yay sleep deprivation! Hoping the plot synopsis will help understand the adventure.Nope.Oh, Blood Simple (1984). Got it.Switching formally to the second reading even though I've read it several times: how would I see this running and would I want to?I see a bunch of chuckles at the movie/celebrity references (that I mostly don't get) then the PCs have fun but effectively meaningless interactions with action stars and Coens, before hopefully realizing they need to convince Bay to go home through epic sucking up.They succeed and it's a wrap. They fail and TPK as they try to kidnap him resulting in direct combat and murdered by Markie Mark et. al.Maybe I'm missing something critical, but that's my read. Would it be wacky fun? Probably. Would I want to run it? Probably not.Third PassLet's move on to pass the third: ingredients.Simple Plan: As a plan, this is anything but simple. In fact, it's about as convoluted and tortured as you could conceive of yet is exactly the sort of thing Hollywood produces so Bay might think it's simple. However, the "Bay is a simpleton" dig is clever so I'll give this one credit. Plus, it's hooked to the movie Blood Simple which, in retrospect, is probably what you actually meant not the stuff I read into it.Credit Due: Bay thinks he's due credit for all his awesome movies and so launches into this whole misadventure. Since it's also the only way to solve the adventure makes the ingredient much stronger (and the adventure much weaker).Dogs of War: Having not seen the Transformers (even as a kid; growing up in a cult where pop culture was evil nerfed my cartoon watching), I had to look up the dogs to see if they exist in Transformers. Answer is yes, which ties into the Last Knight. Even skimming Wikipedia's movie plot summary made me cringe. Ironically, I was the judge who added the Last Knight to our ingredient pool but didn't even know there was a Transformers movie with the same name. Tangents aside, these could be replaced with anything and even those things could be ignored. If the PCs succeed, the Dogs are window dressing. If the party fails, they are unkillable insta-death machines.Poor Reception: An understated general consensus as to the Last Knight's quality. It's fairly integrally tied to Credit Due and the (only?) solution to the adventure.Last Knight: Tied tightly to Dogs of War with the same limitation: if they players do well, they never have to interact with it while if they fail and do what players usually do when words fail, it's game over. Maybe literally.Reality Breach: I'm not sure exactly why Bay's time travel will destroy everything, but it is at least central to the plot as it's the main thing they're trying to avoid. The PCs don't interact with the breach directly... and this just pushes harder on the "why time travel" question I had. This links to Blood Simple even if we don't know why time travel creates a breach.If this is a time travel game then presumably time travel is safely reproducible? Though I don't think I'd trust a time machine created by Bay either. It would definitely end with a giant bang and people wanting their time back.All in all, the ingredients are woven together surprisingly well even if some of the players won't tug on their threads at all.In summary, this adventure is clever, funny (even pop-culture ignoramus I chuckled), the ingredients knit together tightly, and the whole adventure resolves in a single Charisma check. The entire critical path my sleep-deprived brain can derive: approach Bay → flatter him (roll) → pass=win, fail=get physical+die. The adventure grew on me more and more as I read yet I still wouldn't want to run it.[/spoiler]On to [USER=11]@el-remmen[/USER] with Let Slip.[spoiler=Let Slip]Starting the first skim:Stream of Consciousness as ReadLooking up Villains & Vigilantes as I've never heard of it. Superheroes, got it.Who is "They" in the first paragraph? The players? Donors? Both are plural, but all the examples are singular."Recently assistant"? Usually a verb follows "Recently"...Compiling a show? Did he debug it too?Cocks sees his boss as "due credit?" So Cocks thinks the boss should get credit for giving Cocks more work without pay? What? This is also an ingredient but isn't bolded, so is it not meant to be the use?The Last Templar thing is cool, the sort of thing I was hoping for when I poured that ingredient into the pool.The PCs "should" witness Makepeace and Cocks arguing? What if they don't?The dog's kinship with the Templar felt like a bit of a stretch, but having Super Dogs named Alfonso Henriques, Geoffroi de Charney, or Robert de Craon is pretty cool."The plan" = "their plan"? At first I thought that was suggested plan for PCs. I like how we get the dog's placement and motivation so don't have to figure out where all 13 dogs are and why.PCs having to slip away to don supersuits is cool, as are the dogs' personality traits.The twist of suddenly awakening Knight Ghost Satan is neat.The occult superhero + ghost bit didn't make sense. Assuming that is a V&V system thing. Mechanical bits best left out of these.First pass complete. Promising so far as I know who the bad guys/canines are, what they are doing, and why. Many adventures provide how the PCs must solve something but not why they should. This does the opposite by giving the why and leaving the how up to PCs. Exactly what you want for an RPG; you want scripted play a video game.Having written a few of these things, I'm impressed you got that much in there in 750 words.Second passA kid with a grudge working secretly with dog soldiers who identify as Templars rob the attendees at a posh gala and the museum hosting it. The dogs pack personality, motivation, and a plan that all help me run them and bring them to life. This would be plenty for a 2.5 page adventure, but we also get a re-awakened 700-year old ghost manipulating both sides to bring about the end times. Superhero games are my least favorite (Exalted excepted), but I could probably run this and enjoy it.Third passIngredientizing:Simple Plan: The plan involves multiple placements, positions, and orders of operations, but it is relatively simple. It has the advantage of actually being a plan you might write down: functional, usable, and directly tied into the game.Credit Due: the motivation for Cocks to launch the plan. The wording weakens this as it sounds like the opposite but I get it. Might be a bit stronger if his boss took credit for ALL their social media presence to justify masterminding a felony, but still works.Dogs of War: literal war dogs who identify as Templar warriors. While cool, they could be replaced with almost any other enemy. If Cocks was secretly a weredog or something might have tied in better. Connected pretty well with the Plan and Credit Due at least.Poor Reception: Clever double use that also puts more pressure/spotlight on the PCs since no help is coming and is also the setting for the whole adventure. About the best I could have hoped for with this ingredient even if it's present by what it keeps out.Last Knight: The Templar who comes back for vengeance by (eventually, some day) creating the reality breach. His main feature is that he's a ghost though, not a knight. If the dogs were a strain originally bred by Templars or something instead of distantly sympathizing with them this would be stronger.Reality Breach: Probably the weakest ingredient, especially since it doesn't even feature in this adventure except as the hinted climax of the story line that this adventure initiates.Fairly well connected ingredients but many of them are individually arbitrary/replaceable or barely linked.In summary, this adventure is fun, playable, has a great twist, and yet you could change several ingredients entirely without anyone noticing.[/spoiler][spoiler=Conclusion]Interesting contrast:Hail Caesar started off confusing, obscure, and somewhat frustrating to read through due to missed references. Yet as I read more, I became more impressed with how well tied together the ingredients were. Let Slip, however, started off as a far easier read, a great play, and left me comparatively disappointed reading the ingredients.For pure ingredients, Hail Caesar wins via surprisingly tight intermeshing even if a couple ingredients are weak. For playability, however, no contest. Where Hail Caesar potentially boils down to a single interaction and maybe even a single dice roll to sway Bay, Let Slip starts with a gala, transitions to a violent heist wherein PCs must slip away to slip into their super suits then try to take out a group of disciplined, organized, and unpredictable supervillians while an ancient apocalyptic ghost manipulates both sides from behind the scenes.In the end, playability and readability of decent ingredient use wins over a densely-packed, cleverly-constructed layer of ingredients supporting the shiny coin for flipping pass/fail. Maybe another judge more into movies would catch something I missed. Maybe that last sentence Wordcounter cut off would make more bits than Bay relevant. Maybe I'm just exhausted and I'm the problem not the adventure.Whatever the case, Hail Caesar is wacky, clever, entertaining, and holds together about as well as a Michael Bay movie under close scrutiny.Let Slip is solid, functional, and packs a cool twist. In spite of its decent vs excellent ingredient use, it and el-remmen advance to round 2.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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