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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 9186980" data-attributes="member: 150"><h3>Iron DM 2023 Round 1 Match 3</h3><a href="https://www.notion.so/Iron-DM-2023-Round-1-Match-3-Whiz-bang-Dustyboots-vs-humble-minion-8451d11143e243c5819f497c2f05d1c5?pvs=21" target="_blank">Iron DM 2023: Round 1 Match 3, Whiz bang Dustyboots vs humble minion</a>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<h3>Ingredients</h3>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.<h3>Playability/ Creativity and Final Judgement</h3>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 [USER=11760]@Whizbang Dustyboots[/USER] to the final round. [USER=5948]@humble minion[/USER], I'm sorry, but for me, you've flown just a touch too close to the sun. [/spoiler]Thank you both for your entries!-rg</blockquote>

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