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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 8391272" data-attributes="member: 57112">So when [USER=67]@Rune[/USER] said:I felt that so hard, and I felt it even more hardly reading each and every one of these judgments, which, I have to say, were some of the three most wildly differing judgments I've ever read for a single match; let alone one involving me. To say it was nerve-wracking would be an understatement. Now,  I am glad that I'm competing, but my goodness has every adventure I've read this year been excellent and tough to beat. I feel fortunate and grateful to be returning to the final round, and I'm very much looking forward to getting to write one last full adventure for y'all. I'm pretty sure that it's not going to be all that great for my heart though <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Now all that's left is to take on.... oh. Ohh. Nuts. Well [USER=221]@Wicht[/USER], here's looking to a great final match!Responding to the critiques:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">This wasn't my first Iron DM adventure featuring children PCs; but it was the first that was specifically geared towards children players. I figured it would be risky; as Rune points out, none of our judges are really the target audience for this particular adventure. It paid off this time, but it very nearly didn't.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I was particularly worried about the "Salacious" ingredient. "Onanism" was a late addition to the <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking" target="_blank">Arson, Murder, Jaywalking</a> list at the end particularly to hint a little more at that (without leaning into anything more decidedly icky and inappropriate), but on balance I think I was better off just leaving it out. I am glad that people appreciated the "Copyright Infringement" gag though.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The target audience is why I didn't sweat the linearity at all. I tried to put together a good excuse for why these disparate villains were working together, and what their end goal was, but ultimately nothing came to me. I decided that "how cool is it that we're fighting Hook and his pirates AND the Soldier Cards from Alice together? And with Peter Pan?!" was more important that putting together a cohesive, nuanced villainous plan. Not the best excuse, of course, but I'm fine with "the bad guys are bad because they're bad guys" being the extent of what these players have to confront at this point.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'll also note that I specifically had my daughters and her friends in mind; 6-7 year-olds obsessed with Frozen and Winnie the Pooh and protecting nature from this imaginary "black rider" they all made up. The younger the kid, the more likely I am to err on "rule of cool" versus "nuanced and grounded". Probably not a tack I'm likely to take in the future, but we'll see how the ingredients of the future treat me.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">But also "Lost Boys" "Winter Court" and "Salacious Homonculus"? Lost Boys, Frozen, and the Pleasure Island with Pinocchio on it just immediately sprang to mind. And what does "Wicked Grin" remind one more of than the Cheshire Cat? I don't think I could've gone in any other direction with it. Knowing that I was definitely going to get a lot of the criticism that I got in any case, I was ultimately happy with it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">[USER=60965]@Iron Sky[/USER], one of these days I will thaw your frozen heart* and convince you that PCs that are good and that are motivated by doing the right thing actually exist and are indeed quite common. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></li> </ul>[SPOILER="Spoiler*"]As usual, the puns** are always intended <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />[/SPOILER][SPOILER="Spoiler**"]That was a Frozen reference, for the uninitiated.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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