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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8379392" data-attributes="member: 5948">[SPOILER="Response to judgement"]Well, I knew going with a 40k adventure was a risk, I went into it with my eyes open, and sometimes risks just don't pay off.Broken Angel: well, in-setting, 40k space marines are universally known as 'the Angels of Death' or 'the Emperor's Angels' and are frequently depicted as such in religious iconography etc.  So i got one of them, and broke him (twice in fact, once with his bloodline curse, and once in combat with Rugluk), and made him an objective for one PC's personal mission and conflictingly, an information source for the wider mission.  In retrospect I should have made it cleaner by specifying Target was a Blood Angel marine, and noting the adventure was intended for a party with a fellow Blood Angel in it, which would have saved some word count that I could have used to explain what the Black Rage was and why it was a big deal.  I'm not sure why the judgement says the broken angel only mattered at the start and might as well have not been there at all - in my estimation, he (and the Secretbearer's decision about what to do with him) was a crucial part of the climax of the adventure.  Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough that the NPC Target rather than the PC Secretbearer was the 'broken angel'?   I don't understand this bit of the judgement, to be honest.  However, [USER=67]@Rune[/USER] is 100% correct in saying that I should have separated Llifyr's manipulation of the party from this whole dynamic, because it all just got a bit muddled, and confused two subplots (the secret mission, and Llifyr's duplicity) that didn't need to overlap.Rotting Utopia: again, i was guilty of jargon shorthand and heavyhanded editing.  A Maiden World, like Hamith, is a verdant paradise world seeded and geoengineered by ancient Eldar for the use and enjoyment of their descendents.  I mentioned 'Maiden World' but i didn't explain what it was, and while i initially had some Eldar other than Llifyr living an idyllic life here pre-Rugluk, they fell to the word count cull in the last hour or so before deadline, alas, so the place unfortunately lost a bit of its utopianness in the editing process.Ghost Mushroom: again, jargon and insufficient explanations of such.  Many Eldar war machines are golem-like constructs controlled by the psychic ghosts of dead eldar, and are accordingly known as 'ghost warriors' or 'wraithguard'.  My ghost mushrooms weren't themselves ghosts, they were mushrooms that extended into the psychic sphere, tainting or subverting these Eldar ghosts and allowing Rugluk to control the Eldar war constructs.  They were 'ghost mushrooms' in the same way that 'wood mushrooms' are mushrooms that grow on wood, not mushrooms that are made out of wood.Armored Lizard: the Eldar who live on Maiden Worlds (known as Exodites, in a bit of jargon that DID get cut...) are known for riding large reptilian dragony creatures to war.  Just another tie-in to the setting lore - there was no more significance to the armour than that!Writing an adventure that assumed lots of setting knowledge (especially in a setting like 40k where the lore is oceans deep) does let you save word count by shorthanding with setting-specific terms, but you risk a judge who's not a complete setting nerd missing some of what you're trying to do.  And the more deeply tied to setting details that your adventure is, the more there is to miss, especially in the first round where the tiny wordcount gives you no space to spare for explanations.  Iron DM is nominally setting-agnostic, but in the end this is primarily a D&D board and not a 40k board, and a competitor who wants to give themselves the best chance of winning should write their entries with that fact in mind.  I got through the first round last year with a Buffy entry, but with this one I probably went several steps too far into setting minutae unless I lucked out and got a judge who was a huge 40k fan.Having said all that, take nothing away from [USER=221]@Wicht[/USER] who wrote a fun, gonzo, vaguely TMNT-esque adventure and for bonus points, set it in a place (Magnetic Island) that I've visited and am very fond of!  Anything with drop bears gets a lot of bonus points from me.  Congratulations on the win, and best of luck in future rounds.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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