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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 8384496" data-attributes="member: 150">This is a match of matches, old guard vs old guard, and it shows.  Great work, both of you. So, each judge is different, and the whole point to this is that everything is subjective. Off we go for "Cold Crown" vs. "Don't have a Cow (DhaC)." Ingredients.  Seven ingredients this time...[spoiler]Slippery SlopeIn Cold Crown, the slippery slope is the capstone competition in the big Ice Tournament -- the worm luge, as it were.  Wait, it can hold up to four humans, so not luge. Worm bobsleigh.  Wormboggans.  Something like that.  There are multiple days of competition, and there's a whole minigame implied in what's going on here that sounds like it could be fun. So, a pretty solid use of this ingredient.In DhaC, the slippery slope is a bit more of a stretch. The term is used to describe the likely outcome of undermining the system of Kaiju city champions dueling to settle disputes between citystates.  I'm okay with the idea of using "slippery slope" as a type of argument in this challenge, rather than as a literal slope that is somehow slippery, but in this case I'm not sure that what we have presented here is a slippery slope.  After all, a slippery slope is meant to be a logical fallacy, a way of implying something is likely to happen when it isn't.  In this case, we're meant to believe that the destruction or release of the kaiju will absolutely lead to much more destructive war between city states.  Perhaps it's the former-english-comp-2 instructor in me rising up from the past, but this implementation of slippery slope feels a bit weak, and certainly weaker than what Cold Crown came up with, so advantage CC. Morale CheckThese are coming in an order where I'm going to be coming down hard on DhaC, but I think that will just be an early anomaly in the ingredient analysis.  But here, again, we have ChaC making a less-than solid use of an ingredient.  The Moral Check is a stone runestone token that is given to the people who live out in the open between cities where Kaiju will soon battle. The stones can be turned in for cash if the bearer survives the destruction of the battle -- to "keep morale up". A sort of restitution for the destruction to come, paid in advance, which strikes me as an odd system, but this is an example of a sly use of the ingredient that doesn't quite work for me.  The rune stones are not a "check" in any sense of the term, for one thing, and the whole idea seems a big forced. For Cold Crown, the morale check is also not really a single check -- but the idea that breaking the hold of the debt collectors on the court will improve morale overall.  I like that the struggle with Hirokol must be carefully handled, and that outright battle is not a good idea -- and I like this part of the adventure, but improving morale and a morale check are not quite the same thing. So, Meh.  Neither really works for me.  Tough ingredient.Limbless BeastCold Crown has worm-toboggans.  They're alive, they are dangerous and nasty, and the PCs have to figure out how to ride them.  This covers the based solidly.Don't have a Cow has a limbless beast -- the Kaiju of the city of Chirops is a limbless beast, a god-maimed flightless blue dragon that is magically increased to Kaiju size for battle.  This appears to cover the ingredient, and it's interesting, but not quite as strong in my opinion as the worm-toboggans. It's not as integral to the story as the worms, since it is only the focus of one of the three possible solutions to the problem of the story, even if it's the most playable of the three (see below). I like it, but I like the worms more.  So, slight advantage to CC. Heavy CrownSo, in Don't have Cow, the heavy crown is the device that allows a mortal to summon and control the city's Kaiju -- and that's something the PCs have the option to try to do.  This feels solidly part of the adventure and setting to me, and the idea of it being a crown makes sense.  I like this one.In Cold Crown -- despite being eponymous -- the crown is not quite as well used.  The crown in the story is actually not cold, it's fiery.  It's heavy because it's carved from solid stone, but the idea that it's heavy doesn't seem to be important to the story (unless we presume that part of the PC's defense for being framed in the crown's theft is that they can't lift it). So, it's there, sure, and in some places that might be good enough, but DhaC does it better, so advantage to the cows on this one. Subpar HeroCold Crown's subpar hero is a corrupt champion of the giants who sabotages his own performance in the tournament because he's being blackmailed over debts.  It works, in a b+ kind of way -- covers the base, but the use of "subpar isn't spot on, really.  He's corrupt more than subpar.  And that may be just me being pedantic. But Don't have a Cow does it a bit better, making the PC's themselves subpar heroes because the cream of the cities have been getting sacrificed to the Kaiju. It's a gimmick, maybe, but I liked it, and I'm imagining the warty, malformed, and homely band of heroes that the PCs would create for this adventure.  I think this might be the most fun element of the DhaC adventure.  So, advantage to Cows again. If you're keeping score at home, we have two advantages each for DhaC and Cold Crown, and one that was a dead heat.  Two left......Vanished BehemothIn Cold Crown, the vanished behemoth is the apparently stolen worm-toboggan that Koltabl arranges to have stolen from himself. It's a fairly convoluted way to try to throw his own tournament performance, and it seems like it might be pretty hard to hide a whole frost worm  -- and why are the nameless thugs who were hired to steal it keeping the thing around? It's just evidence waiting to be discovered as long as they sit with it in a cave.  So, it's there, but it could be stronger.In Don't have Cow, on the other hand, the PC's city is out of sight -- essentially vanished, because the PCs have killed the beastmaster and he's the one who knows how to call the thing.  It's vanished, yes, but the PC's seem to have a pretty good idea of where it is, or at least what they need to do to get it back (put on the crown and try), so the vanishing of this behemoth is possibly quite temporary if the PCs jump right to solution #3, which seems likely to me. I have mixed feelings about both of these, so I'm going to call it a draw. Which means.....Tomorrow’s MatchIn Don't have a Cow, the next match is the upcoming tie breaker match between Kopak's missing behemoth and the Chirops Limbless horror.  The PCs have until the next dawn to try to figure out what the heck to do.  It's solid, important to the story, and makes sense.In Cold Crown, tomorrow's match is a little tiny bit less "tomorrow-y" because the entire adventure takes place over many days.  So, at any point in the adventure Tomorrow's match is just the next match the PCs will have to take on in the ongoing efforts to win the favor of the giants.  I think it's sort of a tricky wicket to play, given the rest of the structure of the adventure, but just the idea of tomorrow here doesn't quite fit the story as well as it does for DhaC.  So, I'm going to give and edge to Don't have Cow here. But it's slight.So, overall for the ingredients I think I've given a slight edge to Don't have a Cow, but I feel like they're actually very, very close.  The two each have some ingredients that work very well, and some that are a bit flat.  So, lets move on to the other, broader elements to evaluate. [/spoiler]Writing, Presentation, and Playability. [spoiler]Both of these entries are clearly written by seasoned competitors, dynamite GMs and great writers.  They are presented clearly and cleanly, I have no trouble understanding what's going on (I think) and they both feel like they give me a great blueprint for running a game (or series of games) for my players. I think that the place where I can see some distinctions are in the playability of the two adventures. In Cold Crown, I love the idea of the intrigue.  I love the idea of the players operating in a frost giant village where they are not supposed to kill anyone -- where killing anyone is likely to spoil their mission -- and they have to figure out and play the political games within the tribe while competing in the tournament to get the job done.  The idea of the worm-toboggan and the repeated races could be really fun, fleshed out, and that just seems awesome. If there's a flaw in the plot, though, it seems like it's Koltabl.  That "subpar" corrupt champion loses every single match leading up to the final match -- and I'm not sure how much suspense there is by the time things get to the end of the festival.  He starts to seem like a real sad sack, and that might play him as sympathetic -- and that MIGHT be a fun element to play around with, where the PCs are trying to help him win, but he's still working against it, and they have to figure that out. But as it stands, I have a little trouble with him.  It seems like the adventure is working to hard to make sure he remains "subpar". There's some natural fuzziness in the middle of this -- multiple challenges that there wordcount precludes detailing for this entry. Preparing this, I would want to try to make sure things build rather than get caught in some sort of rinse and repeat cycle, but that's neither here nor there.The appearance of Isholter at the end certainly ramps up the energy and makes for a truly cinematic, awesome final sequence, but we haven't really seen it coming -- Isholter's massive worm should probably somehow be foreshadowed, etc.  But that does sound like a kickass final battle. In Don't have a Cow, I love the way the adventure starts, with the PCs standing over the body of the dead beastmaster. They're commoners, warts and all, and they rose up against their opressors and they could start up a new, better state except for the problem of the other city and their big limbless deathsausage that is going to come and conquer them tomorrow. This setup seems fun.  The opening scene seems fun.  But the adventure that follows is not as strong.  The three possible solutions seem sort of wobbly to me. Solution 1 is perhaps the most playable -- destroy the other city's magic Kaiju-powerup arch. It's a good quest goal, but the timeline is super short for a band of nobodies that just <s>entered mount doom</s> killed the beastmaster of their own city. Solution 2 feels problematic to me -- of course, some PCs will jump at the idea of stealing vouchers from the poor to trick them into rising up against their own government -- but as a DM I would want to create some additional adventure around infiltrating Chirops to create that revolution, and a single night is not a lot of time for that. Solution 3 feels like a dead end -- first, it's likely to be the first thing they try (they're in the throne room with the crown, what could go wrong?) and if trying it on has a reasonable chance of just outright killing the first PC to try (CHA/Will save or have the PC's mind destroyed), it seems like we need to have an adventure where the rebellion can provide additional PC's as the initial party dies off, and if the PC who dons the crown actually pulls it off against the odds you've got the unfortunate endgame for the adventure of the PCs watching two Kaiju fight a massive battle -- with maybe one PC controlling one of the beasts.  That seems pretty anticlimactic.So, they're both great, and both have some flaws.[/spoiler]Conclusion[spoiler]I've gone back and forth on my judgement several times in the writing of this evaluation.  I've given a slight edge to Don't have a Cow for ingredients, but it was thin, and I find the playability of the two pretty much neck-and-neck.  Cold Crown gives us a right intrigue adventure, good thumbnails on a web of personalities and factions to deal with, and a very tight adventure with an awesome final battle.  Don't have a Cow starts off really strong, with a great premise that is fun and different and cool, but the adventure that follows is just not as tight and developed as that of Cold Crown. When I struggle with these judgments, I try to go back to the ingredients. They are the central conceit of this competition, and they're very concrete and specific as a tool for evaluation.  And in that I found that Don't have a Cow had slightly better use of the ingredients.  Cold Crown had better use of the limbless beasts and the slippery slope, but the subpar heroes, heavy crown and tomorrow's match in Don't have a Cow are just the tiniest bit better. So, I'm going to cast my one vote of three for Don't have a Cow, Man, and for El-Remmen. And I'll be super excited to be the minority voice, if that happens.  I wish both entries could win.[USER=221]@Wicht[/USER]  and [USER=11]@el-remmen[/USER], you've put together two very different adventures and I love both of them, want to play both of them, run both of them, tinker with both of them... Thank you for all this work.-rg[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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