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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 9193147" data-attributes="member: 150"><h3>Iron DM Round 2 Match 1; FitztheRuke vs Whizbang Dustyboots</h3>It’s semi-final time, and that means the judges are a panel. So, this is just one judgment of three that will evaluate the efforts of the DMs.In this round, we have FitzTheRuke’s Whose Turn Is It Anyway? (Turn) versus Whizbang Dustyboots’ Traitor’s Ruin (Ruin).  And I love that the two entries are so very, very different, given the same set of ingredients.  Turn is a raucous comic plane-hopping farce, and Ruin is a grim, identity-stealing dungeon.  Should be easy to judge, right?Since neither seems to be breaking any of the holy standards of Iron DM, let’s jump right into the use of ingredients.<h3>Ingredients</h3>Ruined Monastery - In Ruin, the ruined monastery is the core setting for the adventure, a monastery turned dungeon.  It works pretty well, although nothing about it being a monastery really felt necessary — the ghost at the end is an abbot but could have been a baron in a castle, etc.  So, good use, not great.  Turn, similarly, uses the monastery as a location with little or no detail that makes it important that this was once a monastery.  So, we’ll open up with a draw on this ingredient.Silent Chime - In Turn, the silent chime is the way the Gith commander is made aware of the presence of the PCs — this is technically used, but it’s interesting to note that the PCs will never experience that chime — so this is exceptionally thin use, only part of what the DM experiences in the adventure.  In Ruin the silent chime is actually the fallen and broken bell in the bell tower which still vibrates at a frequency that can be felt and not heard.  It feels a bit tacked on here, too — the adventure doesn’t need that detail at all, but at least it’s something the PCs will experience. Advantage to Ruin.Face Blindness - This is the first ingredient that we have really meaty use in both cases. In Ruin, face blindness is the result of the Shroud Identity spell cast on the PCs as they are teleported into the monastery, essentially masking the identities of everyone in the monastery. In Turn, it’s the repeated annoyance of the DM/Chris Rock, who can’t keep whose turn it is straight thanks to his trauma-induced face blindness.They’re both well-used. At first blush, I prefer the use in Ruin, as the kitschy repeated gag, in Turn, seems like it is more annoying than effective (eliminating it would not hurt the story at all), but I need to factor in the idea that, for Turn, this actually is Face Blindness and not a mask.  In Ruin, as cool as the new spell is, and its effect, it’s not making people blind to faces, it’s masking their faces. So, it’s a bit wobbly as a use of the ingredient.So, I’m going to call them a wash at this point.  I’m starting to sound indecisive.Fighting Words - In Turn, we have kitsch again — the Chris Rock DM announces the start of every battle with “Those are Fighting words”. I can hear that in his voice, and it furthers the idea of this DM as an annoying problem.  In Ruin, on the other hand, the use of “fighting words” appears to be the various things scrawled around the ruin. They’re not literally fighting, but they are part of the trap of the place that forces fighting.  I’m going to give the advantage to Turn on this one, for the sake of the more clear use of the ingredient.Extradimensional Arachnid - So, in Ruin the extradimensional spider is the primary audience for the activity in the monastery, while in Turn, the Spinner is the imprisoned and exploited arachnid at the end of the adventure — the thing that needs rescuing. I actually really did the idea that the spider needs to be rescued, not defeated.  At the same time, I liked the idea that the arachnid observer in Ruin was watching from all reflecting surfaces — that’s a lovely detail. I think, in the end, for this ingredient, I like Turn better, since the arachnid is a critical part of the weave/tangle setting and the plot of the story, while in Ruin it’s the being responsible for the trap and the challenge, but there’s not a lot that makes it necessarily an arachnid. So, advantage to Turn.The Hanged Elf - In Turn, the hanged elf is the last step of the player’s quest to get home. This comes after the rescue of the Arachnid and the boss battle, and feels like it is sort of wedged into the story here.  In Ruin, the Hanged elf is the abbot of the monastery, the betrayer who let the forces of evil into the monastery in the first place. Actually, I don’t know that he’s the Abbot, just a member of the community, but he happens to be hanged in the Abbot’s chamber. They’re both decent applications of the Hanged Elf ingredient (I was hoping for someone to play around with the hanged/hung thing my old writing prof used to natter on about), but neither feels stronger than the other.Reality Show - In both cases, the situation the PCs find themselves in is a sort of reality show. In Turn, there’s an audience at home that is watching the players play the game, and in Ruin, there’s the extradimensional audience that is watching through reflections. I think for flavor reasons, I like the presentation in Ruin better — mostly because the observers, even though they’re extraplanar, they’re part of the world of the game, and we can imagine the characters facing off against that spider at some point in the distant future.So, that means:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Turn: Fighting Words, Extradimensional Arachnid</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ruin: Silent Chime, Reality Show</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">No Advantage: Ruined Monastery, Face Blindness, Hanged Elf</li> </ul>And that’s a dead heat, for me.<h3>Creativity, Playability, and Final Judgement.</h3>I love both of these entries.  And they’re so very different, which is exceptionally cool.  I like the idea of the sort of gonzo one-shot that Turn presents a lot, but the flavor of that isn’t usually to my taste.  At the same time, the more serious and traditional Ruin is more to my taste, but I was left with some questions after reading it over a few times.For example, there’s this potential for serious chaos in the monastery when the PCs who arrive and can’t recognize anyone.  It’s not clear to me if the shroud of the character and the character’s double look the same, compared to other characters and doubles. Or does every figure in the chambers of the monastery look vague and indistinct from each other — in which case, how do the characters decide who to kill, who to trust, etc.  I think that the confusion and bloodbath are the point, but it seems very hard to play without coming up with some really interesting interventions at the table — like not letting players look at the table unless it’s their turn, swapping out random number tokens for the character’s tokens for everything except their own token, and so on.  It seems like the only way for the party to succeed without a lot of PC death is for all but one character to quit — and that’s cool and all, but to really get the theme right there would need to be a lot of fog of war — players unaware of what other players are doing, doppelgangers trying to trick the players, players disappearing by saying “I quit” too soon, and then not being there for the fight (unless they decide to re-enter).Also, I’m curious about the impact of the writing on the walls being in Elven.  Like, let’s imagine that the character that can read elven speaks the words and is transported into the monastery. That leaves the rest of the party outside? Maybe they’re trying to join by sounding out the words or trying to repeat the phrase phonetically from memory?Turn, for all of its antics and repeated gags, is possibly more playable — at least, the chaos is contained to more manageable things like whose turn it is, etc. I find the path of action to be fairly direct and clear, which is playable but limits player-generated chaos, too.  And we all love the chaos. They’re both very creative — I think I prefer the sort of creativity in Ruin — really nice confusion and atmosphere, I get the feel of the doomed monastery. I think they’d both be very memorable, with a lot of stories to tell afterward.In the end….[spoiler]… I think I’ll cast my ballot for Ruin.  I love them both, and in the end it’s more of a flavor thing for me than anything else — I think I prefer the claustrophobia and the feeling of being watched in Ruin to the hijinks of Turn, and I like the way the reality show audience is really a part of the world of the game (albeit remote) better -- even with the questions above about how it would play out. So, that’s one vote for Whizbang Dustyboots — but will I be the minority report?[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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