IRON DM 2023 Tournament Thread

[humble minion]

we like to keep this thread pretty tight and free of chatter

Well, except for the trash talk.

Hey [ insert competitor name here ], your mother has mediocre taste in literature, and her vol-au-vents are underseasoned!

 

[Gradine]

Your sponge is underproved and overbaked

 

[humble minion]

Spoiler: Notes for match 3, spoiler-tagged for judge's benefit

Writing that loopy a submission was fun, but I veer between being very satisfied and very uncertain about my entry.

Divine triceratops was the defining ingredient, of course. It's just so weird that the adventure is almost inevitably going to orbit around it, and it really stands out like a ... stand-outy-thing ... in comparison to the other ingredients which trend rather domestic and prosaic. For me, I connected this herbivorous dinosaur to the Hypocritical Vegetarian ingredient in the same way that @Whizbang Dustyboots did, it did seem obvious. And then I thought of the vast stack of dinosaur books i had as a kid, where the t-rex was inevitably fighting triceratops in an illustration, and surely if you're fighting a Rex, then by the literal latin translation it's mutiny of some sort? It kinda came together from there.

(Side note 'mutiny' is my absolute favourite use of the Command spell...)

My big structural concern is wordcount-driven. I just didn't have the words to talk about how the gods reacted to the PCs showing up, or talk about how they were reacting to the unprecedented disappearance of the God-T-Rex, or detail what Saturnalia gets up to during the investigation, or explain as fully as i'd have liked about how the game worked - and all those omissions i think inevitably make the adventure read somewhat disjointed and incomplete. Or to explain why the game existed or why the dinosaur-gods had to play it at all, in fact. I figure it's all just ineffable divine order and best not questioned...

Hypocritical Vegetarian - God-Triceratops, obviously. I just hope he's hypocritical enough. Just eating meat doesn't make you hypocritical, but eating meat while preaching vegetarianism does. I needed to make it clear that God-Triceratops motivations were at least partly principled, based on a dislike of predator rule, and I'm not sure i did that well enough
Permanent Ink - A motivation for the second murder, and a clue that could help identify the killer. I could be in real trouble here if the judge doesn't make the connection i did between ammonites and squid, and the same assumption that ammonites probably had ink like squid do.
Unlikely Mutiny - the herbivore overthrowing and eating the carnivore. I tried to emphasise the whole inexorability of the 't-rex always wins' cosmic order just to make the mutiny more 'unlikely', because in paleontological reality, I suspect that a simply all-in-brawl between the two dinosaurs would have been a close run thing.
Living Chessboard- the Great Game. Like the other entry, my board itself isn't living but the pieces on it were. Probably not QUITE the exact ingredient, but the other competitor did it too so fingers crossed I'm safe! On the other hand, my board isn't specifically a CHESS board. On the other other hand, gods playing chess with the world is a pretty classic motif, so it fits in well here.
Cheerful Melody - the anthem of revolution, the spark which set off the mutiny, and a slightly sinister background tune to add atmosphere. I love Saturnalia, he's so ridiculous and incongruous here and I wish I'd had the wordcount to do more with him. Maybe he can show up again in future episodes, like Bat-Mite. I'm just hoping that the judges think it's cheerful enough. Les Mis isn't exactly known for its happy upbeat soundtrack...
Divine Triceratops - well, yes. Yep. Check. I've got one of those. I'm hoping I have the edge over @Whizbang Dustyboots 's wonderfully whimsical tea-drinking chess-dinosaur-archfey on this one, because in my entry it matters more that it's a triceratops, rather than say, a cow. But that's a pretty fine hair to be splitting, so we'll see how we go!

Still, whichever way it turns out, I'm pretty confident that this is the best adventure where superheroes need to solve a musical-theatre-inspired murder among the chess-playing dinosaur gods EVER, so I'm going to hang my hat on that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As this is my first time competing, I'm sure I got a number of things wrong beyond the inevitable typo I've now spotted, including ignoring a bunch of norms. This was a fun experience, though, and it generated an encounter I'd be happy to slide into Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

 

[Gradine]

IRON DM 2023: Round 1, Match 4, loverdrive and Iron Sky
@Iron Sky and @loverdrive, you have 24 hours to post your entries to this thread. Please limit your entry to a title, a list of the ingredients used and 750 additional words. Please include your list of ingredients at the beginning of the entry and please do not edit your post once it is submitted. Please refrain from reading your opponent's entry until after you have posted your own. You are on your honor to do so.

Entries that are between 1 and 59 minutes late will have their word-limits reduced to 675. Later entries that are at less than 1 day late will have their word-limits reduced to 525. Entries that are at least 1 day late will have their word-limits reduced to 375. In addition, entries that are at least 2 days late may be disqualified at the discretion of the judge with consent from the match's opposing competitor. Entries that exceed their word-limits will be considered to end once they reach that limit; I will ignore everything after.

Your ingredients are:

• Star Ranger
• Purple Crayon
• Ancient Satellite
• Triple-sided Coin
• Wooden Artifact
• Sleeping Train

Happy writing!

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Iron DM 2023 Round 1 Match 3​

Iron DM 2023: Round 1 Match 3, Whiz bang Dustyboots vs humble minion

The Iron DM lists are getting quite strong year over year — and looking at the full list of competitors I know that there are no unproven entrants, no dark horses, no mysterious strangers. This is just a meeting of proven, blooded veterans, and this round like the first two shows what that means for the judges — close matches, well-crafted entries, and difficult decisions.

In this match titans we have Whiz’s The Grandmaster (Grandmaster), a single encounter, and humble minion’s The Carnivore’s Crown (Crown), which is a sort of short campaign — so even just in scale, the entries couldn’t be more different. This is going to be fun.

As far as Iron DM rules and standards go, everyone got their entries in WAAAAAY early, and they’re both appropriate lengths, so that’s not something we need to worry about. We can jump right into

Ingredients​

So, this list of ingredients was a steamy hot mess, just the way we like them, but both entries appear to have done a pretty good job blending them all together neatly. Let’s take a closer look.

Hypocritical Vegetarian - in Grandmaster, the Hypocritical vegetarian is the Grandmaster himself, Kornoj. He’s central to the tale and eats plants, so he’s vegetarian. Is he a hypocrite? Well, that’s an interesting question. He’s either a minor diety or an archfey, bound by his own set of laws, but he makes a big deal about being a vegetarian and looking down on those who eat meat — while relishing in the consumption of the sentient topiary pieces from the chess game. Those pieces are former players and therefore were meat once… but does transforming them into plants make them vegan? Does that make him hypocritical as a vegetarian? Maybe as a vegan, for sure, but….It’s fun, I’ll take it, but there’s a little wobble there.

Meanwhile, for Crown, we have God-Triceratops, who eats the God-T-Rex to gain his power, after killing him — and this act makes him a hypocrite because he is eating meat. This a better hit on the target from a literal point of view, but for me this idea — the hypocrisy of the god-triceratops - it doesn’t matter much to the story or characterization — at least, not quite as much as the consumption of topiary pieces makes Kornoj more interesting. I think if there’s a real difference between the two is that the PCs will see the hypocrisy in action in Grandmaster, but until/if the PCs start messing with time in Crown, they won’t see that hypocrisy. Of course, there’s the detail of the God-Triceratops growing fangs that he tries to conceal…. I’m just going to call this one a wash. Both are pretty solid, both factor into the story reasonably well.

Permanent Ink - In Crown, the permanent ink is what the Triceratops uses to conceal his fangs. The ink comes from the God-Ammonite’s body, which the God-Triceratops also kills. I like the killing of the God-Ammonite to help cover up the signs of the God Triceratops’ guilt, but as an ink ingredient, it’s a little tacked on and could be lost easily.

In Grandmaster, on the other hand, the permanent ink is an important part of one of the key ways to defeat the Grandmaster — to add new rules to the chess rulebook. I really dig the idea of bringing a RAW-style argument into the game this way. So, Advantage to Grandmaster.

Unlikely Mutiny - In Grandmaster, the mutiny is the potential of the pieces, the musicians, and of Komizo, the mournful dire mole, who might be enticed to join the party and revolt against the Grandmaster. As devices go…. it’s okay but not great. I’m struggling with whether this particular mutiny is unlikely. Since the pieces are trapped opponents who have lost at chess to the Grandmaster, turning on the Grandmaster seems either like it’s not a mutiny (since they’re slaves and not crew) or it isn’t especially unlikely.

Meanwhile, the mutiny in Crown is the inciting incident — the revolt by the God-Triceratops against the long-serving king of the god-things, the Got-T-Rex. Is it a mutiny — yes. Is it unlikely? Well …. maybe a little more unlikely than in Grandmaster. I’m going to give Crown the advantage on this one.

Living Chessboard - Both entries have living chessboards of a sort. But, in Grandmaster, the chess board is really a chess board in a significant way. The pieces are chess pieces and behave like chess pieces. In Crown, the board is presented as a chessboard but the game they play is not necessarily chess — pieces fight each other if they end up on the space space (so, it is to chess what the very old computer game Archon was to chess). So, an advantage to Grandmaster on this ingredient.

Cheerful Melody - In Grandmaster a handful of satyr musicians play cheerful music that lures the party into the glade where the Grandmaster awaits. The music is both coercive and cheerful, which is a bit of fun, but in the end, this ingredient is a pretty replaceable hook for the encounter and doesn’t do much more in the entry.

Meanwhile, in Crown, the music is as a minor player, but it’s a little better because the music being played (Can you Hear the People Sing, from Les Mis) hints about the idea of revolution and carries a little of the plot (which also kind make the mutiny seem likely, again….but I digress). It’s carrying a little narrative weight there — and yet it is also a piece that could be removed without breaking the story.

I’m torn, but I think I like the implementation in Crown a little better, so I’ll give it a slight edge there.

Divine Triceratops - And, of course, this is a real hum-dinger of an ingredient. Is the Grandmaster a divine triceratops? He’s maybe divine, maybe archfey, maybe he’s just Q from ST:TNG with some skin issues. He’s a very powerful being who creates a space where there are rules and the way out is to turn those rules against him.

Is Got-triceratops divine? He’s certainly a god-being of some sort, so he does a good job at being divine.

Here’s the fun question: For either of them, in what ways does it matter that they’re a triceratops? In Crown, the Triceratops is part of the god-animal-pantheon, and the herbivore nature of the triceratops matters. In both cases they could have been any other herbivore dinosaur, perhaps — Kornoj didn’t have to be a dinosaur at all, he could be a moose for that matter. I looked back at both entries looking for something inventive that would make the triceratops' nature important — like a fixation on threes, for example — if we imagine that a triceratops has a deep appreciation for things that come in threes. Something like that might have taken either interpretation of the DT from good to great. As it is, I find they are roughly equal.

So, that means that I’ve given slight edges to Grandmaster for Permanent Ink and Living Chessboard; I’ve given edges to Crown for Unlikely Mutiny and Cheerful Melody; and called the other two ingredients equal. So, after the ingredients, we’re pretty much neck and neck.

Playability/ Creativity and Final Judgement​

Both of these entries are really strong. In first-round matches there are often ingredients that just didn’t make it into the story very well, or things that just don’t hang together, but that’s not the case here.

Trying to think about both of these from a playability point of view…. while they’re both very strong, just the choice of a little encounter with an archfey makes the Grandmaster a bit more playable — it’s self-contained, etc. I wish, however, that there wasn’t so much hanging on a single die roll — that DC 30 Intelligence (Chess Board) check. If the game gets to a place where the players are making that roll, it’s gone all wrong. I would have liked to see something scaffold that a little — perhaps treat the game as a skill challenge of some sort, with stages and moves, and while the players are considering their next move the other party members can fiddle around and try to find ways to help (like rewriting the rules of the game).

Crown, on the other hand, is big and unwieldy. Important things happen with the PCs off-screen. The PCs arrive and have to try to investigate a murder and try to “correct” it in a few high-concept ways. The trickster role played by Saturnalia is interesting, the God-something schtick is kind of fun (and I enjoyed that the idea of the God-Ammonite sent me “To the Wikipedias!” where I learned a few things.

They both exhibit excellent creativity and have things they do well and things that are wobbly. There really isn’t a clear winner — but of course, I have to pick one.

Spoiler

I love Les Mis, and the idea of blending the show into Crown is an extra fun element to me. But I think that part of the challenge of Iron DM has to be knowing what you can deliver effectively with a very short word count. And in that way, with just 750 words, a shorter, more scaled-down entry has an advantage. Grandmaster is an interlude, and it is very tight — and while I would have liked a little more structure to the contest, I think it’s the stronger entry of the two because of the smaller scale.

So, while for me it’s a whisker, I have to give Grandmaster the nod and advance @Whizbang Dustyboots to the final round. @humble minion, I'm sorry, but for me, you've flown just a touch too close to the sun.

Thank you both for your entries!


-rg

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well fought, @humble minion. Thank you, @Radiating Gnome!

 

[humble minion]

Congratulations @Whizbang Dustyboots ! Nice work.

Dammit, I thought I had a shot at that one. My miserable iron DM record, winning the whole thing once, unceremoniously turfed in the first match Every Other Time, continues

After making my entire entry dinosaur-themed to make sure I nailed the triceratops ingredient, and then not even getting the points for it, the writing was on the wall. But yeah, I did worry that I was trying to do too much in the word count and left too many gaps in the process. 750 words is hard. I think I’ve suggested upping the round 1 limit to 1000 before, but the rules is the rules. Oh well, next year.

 

[loverdrive]

shoot I forgot to include the ingredients, see the next post

 

[loverdrive]

Spoiler: Jazz, tuxedos and inevitable nuclear annihilation

INGREDIENTS​

• Star Ranger
• Purple Crayon
• Ancient Satellite
• Triple-sided Coin
• Wooden Artifact
• Sleeping Train

We open on a freight train speeding through Siberia, and the camera lingers on some kind of space wreckage marked with hammer and sickle hauled in one of the cars. Several people, dressed to kill, in three-pieces and bowties are tailing the train on roaring motorcycles. These are our characters:

FRENCHIE,​

colorblind femme-fatale with a whole arsenal of gadgets up her short sleeve, the most amazing being actually comfortable high-heels silenced by the power of Unobtanium. And a pack of crayons, purple one being a mini-nuke in disguise.

There’s a reason annihilation is inevitable.

DOKTOR,​

crazy German scientist who gets very agitated if someone brings up that he doesn’t have a medical license. He says a Wundermaschine he caries in his briefcase produces gas with miraculous anesthetic properties on industrial scale, but it’s actually a paralyzing nerve agent.

Patient is not in pain if they can’t scream, right? They look like they are asleep, at least!

TANK,​

who is built like a tank, their face and voice are obscured by a gas mask and they mostly communicate like “MHHMHMM”, but the characters can understand them just fine, Chewbacca-style, this… thing is a psychotic killer with a mind of a child. Obsessed with Star Ranger superhero, their most prized possession is the first issue dated 1938. Oh, and also a minigun, a flamethrower and some other heavy ordnance.

No, I don’t know how it fits in their pocket.

---

A disembodied voice of a chain-smoker contacts them through earpieces. This is the

ADMINISTRATOR,​

their boss, who will sometimes drop cryptic hints and gleefully comment on ongoing or imminent acts of destruction. In the event of approaching apocalypse, she will sound almost orgasmic.

Maybe not even almost.

---

After a brief soundcheck she immediately starts flirting with Frenchie and will not stop until someone asks about the mission.

Then she’ll reveal that the wreckage is actually a

2.000 YEARS OLD SOVIET SATELLITE​

from the future, and it’s an imperative that it should not arrive at its destination, and their employer highly encourages capture of all the data from it.

What she doesn’t reveal (may or may not because she doesn’t know) is that it’s powered by actual magic, not just brilliant Soviet engineering. One of the two main components is a three-sided coin that, when tossed, basically inverts probability in a short bubble around it.

Time travel is pretty improbable, after all.

The other is a statue of Lenin, that looks like its made of wood, but it’s actually some sort of fungus-radiowave hybrid, working as the main processing unit of the whole system.

And it’s not a statue. The body in Mausoleum is fake.


Depending on how accepting to her advances Frenchie was, she may also reveal that it’s protected with state-of-the-art automated laser turrets.

THE GENERAL,​

an imposing man in his 50s, with strength that can rival Tank’s is commanding the train and has codes to disable the lasers. He is patriotic to the point of zealotry, so bribes or threats are unlikely to work, unless his kid is used as a “leverage”.

THE KID​

is a smart, observant and, above all, curious 5 year old boy who has seen his father input the codes a few times. He has a very strict upbringing and can barely imagine an illustrated book, yet alone a book that is nothing but flashy pictures!

---

BEFORE THE GAME​

Show the players pretty much any of the Team Fortress 2 promotional videos. Meet the Spy, Meet the Medic and Meet the Pyro will illustrate who the characters are, and Expiration Date is just hilarious.

DURING THE GAME​

Describe the situation, ask The Most Important Question: “What ya gonna do?”, smirk, describe what results it will have and ask if they wish to proceed. If they do, exactly that will happen.


If they don’t, give them a chance to reconsider, but don’t let them drag their feet for too long. If they keep trying to play it safe, they will waste time, and time is precious! Put pressure on them, and keep putting it until something explodes.


And, above else, maintain an over-the-top cartoonish tone. Administrator being all-seeing and all-knowing is a good way to inject direct commentary, but remember: first, she can’t really do anything from her command center, second, she seeks amusement and wouldn’t hesitate to withhold crucial information just for laughs.

AFTER THE GAME​

Play Vera Lynn’s rendition of “We’ll meet again”.