Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
IRON DM 2022 The Tournament Thread
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 8767218" data-attributes="member: 150"><p><strong>Round 2, Match 2 Snarf Zagyg vs. Kobold Stew</strong></p><p></p><p> I can't imagine two more different entries than these two -- Iron DM has been turned up loud! </p><p></p><p>This match pits Snarf Zagyg's Disco Party Athletes (DPA), a rules-light one-shot game, against Sweet Dreams are Made of Bees (Dreams) an extended campaign. Let's see how they did. </p><p></p><p><strong>Ingredients </strong></p><p>[spoiler]</p><p><strong>Cursed Dreamcatcher</strong></p><p></p><p>In DPA, while I dig the setup, I'm concerned that the way this ingredient is included is going to be the way many of the ingredients are included --as a possible roll on a table -- so they might not even appear in a given playthrough. In the case of the dreamcatcher, it's not particularly likely that it'll show up (one of the two rolls for what's happening would have to come up snake eyes) and the ingredient places the dreamcatcher inside the disco ball, which makes it less significantly a dreamcatcher. I struggle with this because while this is a fun treatment, it's sort of pushing the need for creative ingredient integration to the reader/GM who runs this, rather than being part of the demonstration of the Iron DM's skill at this sort of integration challenge. So, it's there, but it's weak. </p><p></p><p>Dreams has a dreamcatcher, and it's a significant part of the story of the campaign, so it's being used in a fairly integral way. Advantage to Dreams. </p><p></p><p><strong>Erudite Goat</strong></p><p></p><p>Dreams has a goat librarian living inside the massive astral dragon that makes up the campaign's endgame. Pretty solid, down to the detail by which the goat learns by eating instead of reading -- since that's destructive, it would have been nice to see that matter, but there were only 1500 words, after all.</p><p></p><p>In DPA we have another situation where the ingredient is on a random table, this time of who's trying to stop the party. In this case, the G.O.A.T. is a hybrid of Tom Brady and Albert Einstein (I'm a Bills fan, and I have hopes that Josh Allen is going to try to take the title from Brady, but only time will tell). And, again, this one result is rare because it requires that one of the rolls comes up snake eyes. It's funny, and I like turning goat into GOAT, but still, it's not really woven in by the entry. </p><p></p><p>Dreams also uses GOAT at one point, but it doesn't really work hard enough to make itself the erudite goat of the ingredient. </p><p></p><p>For this, I prefer Dreams interpretation again. </p><p></p><p><strong>Destitute Dragon</strong></p><p></p><p>In DPA, the destitute dragon is another potential bad guy, and in this case, Dragon means Grand Dragon, and the clan has come to the disco party to spoil it. </p><p>In Dreams, the destitute dragon is the astral dragon that is the location of the final adventure in the campaign. That dragon is also the Devouring dungeon. </p><p></p><p>I dig the writing that describes the "dragon" and his interest in the disco, but while he's interested in taking money, that's not a feature of being "destitute". So, there are parts of the clan dragon that don't rise to "destitute dragon". </p><p></p><p>So, again, I prefer Dreams's use in this case. </p><p></p><p><strong>Devouring Dungeon</strong></p><p></p><p>In Dreams, the devouring dungeon is the body of the astral dragon that the last adventure takes place in. There's some discussion of how the digestive juices of the dragon start to "eat" the PCs, but nothing seems to come of it. It's a very interesting location, on its own, but a tiny bit weak on the "devouring" part. </p><p></p><p>In DPA, one of the possible happenings in the disco is a kinky dungeon run by vampires. It's good, and works, and has some of the flaws of the other ingredients presented this way. </p><p></p><p><strong>Dancing Lights</strong></p><p></p><p>I mean, DPA is in a disco. There's also a possibility (roll for it) that people won't be able to stop dancing while the lights are going. That's pretty strong. </p><p>In Dreams, the lights are dreams that are trapped. Also pretty cool as interpretations go, and this one is tied to the dreamcatcher and other story elements. </p><p></p><p><strong>Golden Honey</strong></p><p></p><p>In Dreams, the golden honey is the bee swarm's reward to the PCs for doing their work -- honey made from dragon hoard gold rather than pollen. This ingredient is why the patron and major force in the adventure is a sentient collective of bee swarms, and it's interesting, but the gold for pollen switch is sort of unmotivated or explained. </p><p></p><p>In DPA, the honey is related to one of the possible baddies -- a ghoul who tastes like honey. Who's going to taste him, you might act. Clearly, I've been going to the wrong sorts of discos all my life.....</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Cave Paintings</strong></p><p></p><p>In Dreams, the cave paintings are part of the seed that starts the adventure. It's a fun detail, but the story could entirely live without it, and there's no explanation of how this cave painting happened or what it signifies. </p><p></p><p>In DPA, one of the possible happenings is animated paintings in an "unfinished room," which is a stand-in for a cave. </p><p></p><p>Overall -</p><p></p><p>I stopped tracking how I felt about each set of ingredients part way through because in all cases the same flaw was hurting DPA. The ingredients were tossed into a random table and that had the impact of only half-integrating them into the story of the mini-game. I'm struggling with the idea that I might be a stick-in-the-mud here, and it was feeling very lopsided so I stopped tracking. I think the ingredients favor Dreams. </p><p></p><p>[/spoiler]</p><p><strong>Presentation, Playability, Creativity</strong></p><p>[spoiler]</p><p>So, this is the section where I get to say that I really loved reading DPA. There's so much style and voice and flavor in it. It's so good that when I read the section about assigning values to attributes it sounded like the band starting up ("a one and a two and a three and a ...."). This is goooooood. </p><p></p><p>And the meat of the write-up is mini-game mechanics. The overall disco/famous goons theme is present in that part of the write-up, but none of the ingredients are. There's an exception (the GOAT gets mentioned in an example of how to resolve action), but that's it. </p><p></p><p>So the part of this writeup that brings out the ingredients is the two tables -- What's happening and Who's trying to stop the party. They fit the theme of the mini-game, but they are not integrated with each other -- that's left for the improvisation of the Gm who runs this. And while that's great for a one-shot mini-game at the table, it isn't really in keeping with the spirit of Iron DM. </p><p></p><p>Having said all that, I also have some critical thoughts about Dreams. The choice to make this a full campaign and not a more self-contained adventure felt like a way to take the challenging ingredients and deal with the in sequence, but not in a fully integrated way. Rewritten as a high-level adventure set in the body of an astral dragon, most of the ingredients would work as they are, but some of the others would have to be brought into the fold. </p><p></p><p>Next to DPA, Dreams feels ... not really "ordinary", but it's so much an expression of what Iron DM is that it suffers a little in comparison to something that is so far off in left field. </p><p>[/spoiler]</p><p><strong>One Judge's Vote</strong></p><p>[spoiler]</p><p>Having said all of that, it's clear to me that Dreams is the stronger Iron DM entry here. DPA is fun and gonzo and exciting, but it's a mini-game with a few iron DM ingredients tossed in for garnish, and Dreams is a fully integrated, realized campaign plan that weaves all of the ingredients into the story. </p><p></p><p>I don't want to squash the sort of unusual approach that DPA takes -- I love the idea of the mini-game as an entry. A stronger version might have sacrificed some of the game mechanics word count, presented the table of possible happenings and opponents, and then explained how the author, as DM would approach weaving those together into a story. Or something else that delivers more on the challenge of the ingredients. </p><p></p><p>The gold standard for a competition like this is that when the story is presented the ingredients should feel like the only possible, obvious choices for the story. When these random ingredients are well integrated we feel like it was serendipity that they arrived together. But if the entry presents them as simply random options that might enter the mix, that's far from that integrated idea. </p><p></p><p>So, with that said, thank you to both Snarf Zagyg and Kobold Stew. I enjoyed both a lot, in different ways, and you both kick a lot of ass in my book. </p><p></p><p>[/spoiler]</p><p></p><p>-rg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Radiating Gnome, post: 8767218, member: 150"] [B]Round 2, Match 2 Snarf Zagyg vs. Kobold Stew[/B] I can't imagine two more different entries than these two -- Iron DM has been turned up loud! This match pits Snarf Zagyg's Disco Party Athletes (DPA), a rules-light one-shot game, against Sweet Dreams are Made of Bees (Dreams) an extended campaign. Let's see how they did. [B]Ingredients [/B] [spoiler] [B]Cursed Dreamcatcher[/B] In DPA, while I dig the setup, I'm concerned that the way this ingredient is included is going to be the way many of the ingredients are included --as a possible roll on a table -- so they might not even appear in a given playthrough. In the case of the dreamcatcher, it's not particularly likely that it'll show up (one of the two rolls for what's happening would have to come up snake eyes) and the ingredient places the dreamcatcher inside the disco ball, which makes it less significantly a dreamcatcher. I struggle with this because while this is a fun treatment, it's sort of pushing the need for creative ingredient integration to the reader/GM who runs this, rather than being part of the demonstration of the Iron DM's skill at this sort of integration challenge. So, it's there, but it's weak. Dreams has a dreamcatcher, and it's a significant part of the story of the campaign, so it's being used in a fairly integral way. Advantage to Dreams. [B]Erudite Goat[/B] Dreams has a goat librarian living inside the massive astral dragon that makes up the campaign's endgame. Pretty solid, down to the detail by which the goat learns by eating instead of reading -- since that's destructive, it would have been nice to see that matter, but there were only 1500 words, after all. In DPA we have another situation where the ingredient is on a random table, this time of who's trying to stop the party. In this case, the G.O.A.T. is a hybrid of Tom Brady and Albert Einstein (I'm a Bills fan, and I have hopes that Josh Allen is going to try to take the title from Brady, but only time will tell). And, again, this one result is rare because it requires that one of the rolls comes up snake eyes. It's funny, and I like turning goat into GOAT, but still, it's not really woven in by the entry. Dreams also uses GOAT at one point, but it doesn't really work hard enough to make itself the erudite goat of the ingredient. For this, I prefer Dreams interpretation again. [B]Destitute Dragon[/B] In DPA, the destitute dragon is another potential bad guy, and in this case, Dragon means Grand Dragon, and the clan has come to the disco party to spoil it. In Dreams, the destitute dragon is the astral dragon that is the location of the final adventure in the campaign. That dragon is also the Devouring dungeon. I dig the writing that describes the "dragon" and his interest in the disco, but while he's interested in taking money, that's not a feature of being "destitute". So, there are parts of the clan dragon that don't rise to "destitute dragon". So, again, I prefer Dreams's use in this case. [B]Devouring Dungeon[/B] In Dreams, the devouring dungeon is the body of the astral dragon that the last adventure takes place in. There's some discussion of how the digestive juices of the dragon start to "eat" the PCs, but nothing seems to come of it. It's a very interesting location, on its own, but a tiny bit weak on the "devouring" part. In DPA, one of the possible happenings in the disco is a kinky dungeon run by vampires. It's good, and works, and has some of the flaws of the other ingredients presented this way. [B]Dancing Lights[/B] I mean, DPA is in a disco. There's also a possibility (roll for it) that people won't be able to stop dancing while the lights are going. That's pretty strong. In Dreams, the lights are dreams that are trapped. Also pretty cool as interpretations go, and this one is tied to the dreamcatcher and other story elements. [B]Golden Honey[/B] In Dreams, the golden honey is the bee swarm's reward to the PCs for doing their work -- honey made from dragon hoard gold rather than pollen. This ingredient is why the patron and major force in the adventure is a sentient collective of bee swarms, and it's interesting, but the gold for pollen switch is sort of unmotivated or explained. In DPA, the honey is related to one of the possible baddies -- a ghoul who tastes like honey. Who's going to taste him, you might act. Clearly, I've been going to the wrong sorts of discos all my life..... [B]Cave Paintings[/B] In Dreams, the cave paintings are part of the seed that starts the adventure. It's a fun detail, but the story could entirely live without it, and there's no explanation of how this cave painting happened or what it signifies. In DPA, one of the possible happenings is animated paintings in an "unfinished room," which is a stand-in for a cave. Overall - I stopped tracking how I felt about each set of ingredients part way through because in all cases the same flaw was hurting DPA. The ingredients were tossed into a random table and that had the impact of only half-integrating them into the story of the mini-game. I'm struggling with the idea that I might be a stick-in-the-mud here, and it was feeling very lopsided so I stopped tracking. I think the ingredients favor Dreams. [/spoiler] [B]Presentation, Playability, Creativity[/B] [spoiler] So, this is the section where I get to say that I really loved reading DPA. There's so much style and voice and flavor in it. It's so good that when I read the section about assigning values to attributes it sounded like the band starting up ("a one and a two and a three and a ...."). This is goooooood. And the meat of the write-up is mini-game mechanics. The overall disco/famous goons theme is present in that part of the write-up, but none of the ingredients are. There's an exception (the GOAT gets mentioned in an example of how to resolve action), but that's it. So the part of this writeup that brings out the ingredients is the two tables -- What's happening and Who's trying to stop the party. They fit the theme of the mini-game, but they are not integrated with each other -- that's left for the improvisation of the Gm who runs this. And while that's great for a one-shot mini-game at the table, it isn't really in keeping with the spirit of Iron DM. Having said all that, I also have some critical thoughts about Dreams. The choice to make this a full campaign and not a more self-contained adventure felt like a way to take the challenging ingredients and deal with the in sequence, but not in a fully integrated way. Rewritten as a high-level adventure set in the body of an astral dragon, most of the ingredients would work as they are, but some of the others would have to be brought into the fold. Next to DPA, Dreams feels ... not really "ordinary", but it's so much an expression of what Iron DM is that it suffers a little in comparison to something that is so far off in left field. [/spoiler] [B]One Judge's Vote[/B] [spoiler] Having said all of that, it's clear to me that Dreams is the stronger Iron DM entry here. DPA is fun and gonzo and exciting, but it's a mini-game with a few iron DM ingredients tossed in for garnish, and Dreams is a fully integrated, realized campaign plan that weaves all of the ingredients into the story. I don't want to squash the sort of unusual approach that DPA takes -- I love the idea of the mini-game as an entry. A stronger version might have sacrificed some of the game mechanics word count, presented the table of possible happenings and opponents, and then explained how the author, as DM would approach weaving those together into a story. Or something else that delivers more on the challenge of the ingredients. The gold standard for a competition like this is that when the story is presented the ingredients should feel like the only possible, obvious choices for the story. When these random ingredients are well integrated we feel like it was serendipity that they arrived together. But if the entry presents them as simply random options that might enter the mix, that's far from that integrated idea. So, with that said, thank you to both Snarf Zagyg and Kobold Stew. I enjoyed both a lot, in different ways, and you both kick a lot of ass in my book. [/spoiler] -rg [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
IRON DM 2022 The Tournament Thread
Top