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IRON DM 2023 Tournament Thread
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9209840" data-attributes="member: 7023840"><p>I want to thank my opponent, [USER=11760]@Whizbang Dustyboots[/USER] ... I thoroughly enjoyed the Tier 4 adventure you wrote, and the competition. You are a worthy Iron DM!</p><p></p><p>I also want to thank the judges, [USER=150]@Radiating Gnome[/USER], [USER=221]@Wicht[/USER], and [USER=57112]@Gradine[/USER]. I know that I, along with all the competitors, appreciate the time and effort that you put into judging the competition. Every round you put in a lot of effort (and you show your work), and you do that simply for the love of the contest. Thank you for your time and dedication. </p><p></p><p>That said, I have been avoiding the forum for a few days. Some times, you see something and choose not to address it in the hope that with time, your desire to address it will diminish. On the other hand, there are times that something sticks in your craw, and the time away only embiggens the stick. It has been several days now, and I think that this particular thought does need to be dislodged.</p><p></p><p>Judging any artistic endeavor is necessarily heavily subjective. Is it really the case that the absolute best actor or best film wins the Academy Award every year? Does the Booker award go to the absolute best novel? No. How would you even define "best?" Of course, we can be reasonably certain it doesn't go to the worst, but choosing between different "good" or "great" things is hard, especially when the things aren't like each other.</p><p></p><p>That said, there are reasons why we enjoy these competitions. They are fun! But understanding that subjectivity in judgment, both as a competitor and as a judge, is part of the equation. In my first competition, two years ago, I wrote an adventure in the first round that put the players in a situation involving thwarting Michael Bay's plot to change history by using the Coen Brothers to make an action adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar starring Nic Cage and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, my judge wasn't a movie buff ... so a lot of the components of the adventure was lost. I appreciated the judgment that acknowledged the issue, but still did its best to analyze the adventure <em>on its own terms</em> despite that. </p><p></p><p>It happens! I was okay with it. Big swings sometimes results in big misses. If you're trying for a home run, you're going to strike out. When I see a list of ingredients, I sit with them for a long time until the majority of the ingredients coalesce- until they speak to me with a single vision. Usually it's an interplay of some common (albeit tenuous) link between the ingredients and whatever is rattling inside my head at the time. But it will be, on average, different than just trying to plug the ingredients into a standard adventure. </p><p></p><p>I'm going to do a quick run through of the finals from the past and put them in spoilers (this is already getting to be a long post). As I type this, I don't know what I'll find, but I do have a strong suspicion-</p><p>[SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>2004 Spring- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2004 Winter- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2005. Three-way finals, six entries! So ... D&D v. D&D v. D&D v. D&D v. D&D v. D&D. Guess what? D&D won.</p><p>2009- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2010- Star Wars v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2011- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2012- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2013- D&D v. (multiple systems allowed, although 3.5e D&D is one of them). D&D wins.</p><p>2014- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2015- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. Side note- that was very gracious of [USER=60965]@Iron Sky[/USER] ...</p><p>2016- Traveller v. D&D. <em>Traveller WINS!</em></p><p>2017- D&D v. "Supernatural" system. <em>Supernatural wins.</em></p><p>2018- D&D (Ravenloft) v. D&D. D&D wins. D&D wins.</p><p>2019- D&D v. Own Hoot Trail (!!!). D&D wins.</p><p>2020- Modern v. D&D. D&D wins.</p><p>2021- Modern supernatural v. Modern Supernatural. <em>Modern Supernatural wins</em>.</p><p>2022- D&D v. Traveller. D&D wins.</p><p>2023- D&D v. Custom. D&D wins.</p><p></p><p>I stopped after going back to 2004, as I noticed a certain trend. I don't think I need to keep going back.</p><p></p><p>(D&D includes unattributed or generic D&D fantasy as well as Pathfinder)</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>Not to put too fine a point on this, but if you looked in the spoilers, you're going to notice something. There's a reason it's called Iron DM, and not Iron GM. If you take out the time that both contestants put in a non-D&D entry, there are only two times that a non-D&D entry has ever won the contest. This is even called out by people when they put their entries in; I saw that Rune expressed trepidation and some regret by using a non-standard system for their entry in 2019. It doesn't mean that it's impossible; but it's hard. <em>And Iron DM is specifically designed to be hard for anything that isn't D&D to win</em>.</p><p></p><p>These are the rules-</p><p><em>Do not expect judges to follow links within your entry. You may include links for others to follow if you choose to do so, <u>but understand that any information that is necessary to the entry must be in the actual entry</u>. Judges will be reading each entry multiple times and, are unlikely to also be willing to go outside the entry to find context for it. <u>More importantly, expecting outside sources to carry the load of exposition very much defeats the purpose of the word-limit</u>.</em></p><p></p><p>If you think about those rules for a second, something become clear very quickly. D&D is the common tongue of TTRPGs. By default, we know that we write an adventure for D&D (whether it's D&D, PF, or "generic D&D fantasy") and we have incorporated by reference all that this includes! There is, quite literally, zero possibility that any judges won't know any of the millions of rules, tropes, and references that form the backbone to those adventures. As soon as we move away from that we start to lose that massive and inherent advantage. Traveller ... sure, that's a fairly common reference point for sci-fi. But trying to design any adventure for a system that is outside of the wheelhouse of the "standard" gamer is already a big risk; in the first round, I knew the perfect system for the adventure- it was <em>Ten Candles</em>. Because the game was a tragedy; it was quite literally (as well as metaphorically) about fading light. And yet, I also knew that there was a decent chance that it would be a swing and a miss. It happens.</p><p></p><p>Which gets to the issue of rules incorporation. When you're writing with a strict word limit, you are far too aware that every ... single ... word matters. And that if you are going to spend precious words devising a bespoke rules system for the adventure, it better be worth it. There needs to be a compelling reason for those rules and you had better to take care to have them integrate with the vision for the adventure and the ingredients. </p><p></p><p>The very structure of Iron DM forces these types of choices. If there is a bona fide reason to have something in the rules that isn't bog standard (and most likely D&D), you are faced with a very uncomfortable choice; you can either "pick" a system that the judges most likely won't be familiar with, or you create your own and be told that you are wasting time on creating the rules ... even when they are absolutely necessary to the adventure.</p><p></p><p>And adding to those issues, the list of ingredients often includes specific "D&Disms" (or, at a minimum, fantasy-isms). It's not impossible to find a use of Orc and Owlbear that don't involve D&D, but it's not exactly easy.</p><p></p><p><strong><u>Okay, so why are you writing all of this?</u></strong></p><p></p><p>I totally get that a lot of people might bounce right off of the adventures that I write. It's not for everyone! And I can respect that. One person's clever use of an ingredient in serve of a larger purpose might be another person's wasted opportunity. Is the adventure witty, or is it merely wise-cracking; as Dorothy Parker has told us, there's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]336775[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>But ... as I wrote before, this is the rare time that I felt uncomfortable reading a judgment. I assumed that the game would be relatively clear in meaning; after all, I named the specific parts after well-known books, so the idea of an adventure about how we create purpose and meaning in our lives through games (a captivating toy that captured its designers ... some of whom want to return to the, um, captivating toy company) seemed self-evident, and the actual meaning of the three agendas and how they tied into the ingredients would be clear. But maybe not! Not everyone is on my wavelength, which, you know, is probably a good thing. I get that people might miss how the exact ideas are manifested in the specific bespoke rules and why the actual play of the adventure is the act of creating the rules and finding meaning.</p><p></p><p>If you do a Coen Brothers / Michael Bay homage, you run the risk that people aren't film buffs. If you're doing an existentialist meta-adventure, you run the risk that people aren't grooving to <em>L'Étranger</em> and <em>Godel Escher Bach</em>.</p><p></p><p>With that said, it's still an adventure. It's not a storytelling game (<em>Ten Candles</em> is a storytelling RPG, albeit a very different type). In fact, <em>Tavern </em>is far from a storytelling game, given that it has a very tight focus on the creation of <em>rules </em>and how you can use the rules to win the game ... and what that means- it's closer to a TTRPG version of <em>Cosmic Encounter</em> crossed with <em>Paranoia</em> (hence, the distribution in authority on each turn) than it is to any storytelling game. It's not Pictionary. It's <em>certainly </em>not the case that the players are encouraged to just go play D&D, and if that's what someone pulled from that adventure, then maybe I did fail terribly. But I'm not going to over-explain what I did, because it speaks for itself.</p><p></p><p>Even after sitting with all of this for a while, I did feel the need to get this off of my chest. I know that what I write isn't going to appeal to everyone, and I'm okay with that. I write what the ingredients (and my sick and twisted brain) compel me to write, not what I think is most likely to win ... which would be another D&D adventure. And I loved Whizbang Dustyboots' adventure, which is a worthy winner. But while I think that there is a lot that can be learned from the judgments that I read ....</p><p></p><p>Having someone tell you that the adventure you put substantial thought and effort into may "technically" be an RPG (technically? as opposed to a "real RPG?") .... and isn't even an adventure (????!!!) has been eating at me for a few days. And not in a good way. I know, going in, that the adventures I write are not going to be for everyone, but they are certainly adventures. And while I run a lot of 5e and 1e games, I also run a lot of custom one-shots that I design myself, and it's unsettling reading that people don't view what I do (and what people enjoy) as being real RPGs, or actual adventures.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 9209840, member: 7023840"] I want to thank my opponent, [USER=11760]@Whizbang Dustyboots[/USER] ... I thoroughly enjoyed the Tier 4 adventure you wrote, and the competition. You are a worthy Iron DM! I also want to thank the judges, [USER=150]@Radiating Gnome[/USER], [USER=221]@Wicht[/USER], and [USER=57112]@Gradine[/USER]. I know that I, along with all the competitors, appreciate the time and effort that you put into judging the competition. Every round you put in a lot of effort (and you show your work), and you do that simply for the love of the contest. Thank you for your time and dedication. That said, I have been avoiding the forum for a few days. Some times, you see something and choose not to address it in the hope that with time, your desire to address it will diminish. On the other hand, there are times that something sticks in your craw, and the time away only embiggens the stick. It has been several days now, and I think that this particular thought does need to be dislodged. Judging any artistic endeavor is necessarily heavily subjective. Is it really the case that the absolute best actor or best film wins the Academy Award every year? Does the Booker award go to the absolute best novel? No. How would you even define "best?" Of course, we can be reasonably certain it doesn't go to the worst, but choosing between different "good" or "great" things is hard, especially when the things aren't like each other. That said, there are reasons why we enjoy these competitions. They are fun! But understanding that subjectivity in judgment, both as a competitor and as a judge, is part of the equation. In my first competition, two years ago, I wrote an adventure in the first round that put the players in a situation involving thwarting Michael Bay's plot to change history by using the Coen Brothers to make an action adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar starring Nic Cage and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, my judge wasn't a movie buff ... so a lot of the components of the adventure was lost. I appreciated the judgment that acknowledged the issue, but still did its best to analyze the adventure [I]on its own terms[/I] despite that. It happens! I was okay with it. Big swings sometimes results in big misses. If you're trying for a home run, you're going to strike out. When I see a list of ingredients, I sit with them for a long time until the majority of the ingredients coalesce- until they speak to me with a single vision. Usually it's an interplay of some common (albeit tenuous) link between the ingredients and whatever is rattling inside my head at the time. But it will be, on average, different than just trying to plug the ingredients into a standard adventure. I'm going to do a quick run through of the finals from the past and put them in spoilers (this is already getting to be a long post). As I type this, I don't know what I'll find, but I do have a strong suspicion- [SPOILER] 2004 Spring- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. 2004 Winter- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. 2005. Three-way finals, six entries! So ... D&D v. D&D v. D&D v. D&D v. D&D v. D&D. Guess what? D&D won. 2009- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. 2010- Star Wars v. D&D. D&D wins. 2011- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. 2012- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. 2013- D&D v. (multiple systems allowed, although 3.5e D&D is one of them). D&D wins. 2014- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. 2015- D&D v. D&D. D&D wins. Side note- that was very gracious of [USER=60965]@Iron Sky[/USER] ... 2016- Traveller v. D&D. [I]Traveller WINS![/I] 2017- D&D v. "Supernatural" system. [I]Supernatural wins.[/I] 2018- D&D (Ravenloft) v. D&D. D&D wins. D&D wins. 2019- D&D v. Own Hoot Trail (!!!). D&D wins. 2020- Modern v. D&D. D&D wins. 2021- Modern supernatural v. Modern Supernatural. [I]Modern Supernatural wins[/I]. 2022- D&D v. Traveller. D&D wins. 2023- D&D v. Custom. D&D wins. I stopped after going back to 2004, as I noticed a certain trend. I don't think I need to keep going back. (D&D includes unattributed or generic D&D fantasy as well as Pathfinder) [/SPOILER] Not to put too fine a point on this, but if you looked in the spoilers, you're going to notice something. There's a reason it's called Iron DM, and not Iron GM. If you take out the time that both contestants put in a non-D&D entry, there are only two times that a non-D&D entry has ever won the contest. This is even called out by people when they put their entries in; I saw that Rune expressed trepidation and some regret by using a non-standard system for their entry in 2019. It doesn't mean that it's impossible; but it's hard. [I]And Iron DM is specifically designed to be hard for anything that isn't D&D to win[/I]. These are the rules- [I]Do not expect judges to follow links within your entry. You may include links for others to follow if you choose to do so, [U]but understand that any information that is necessary to the entry must be in the actual entry[/U]. Judges will be reading each entry multiple times and, are unlikely to also be willing to go outside the entry to find context for it. [U]More importantly, expecting outside sources to carry the load of exposition very much defeats the purpose of the word-limit[/U].[/I] If you think about those rules for a second, something become clear very quickly. D&D is the common tongue of TTRPGs. By default, we know that we write an adventure for D&D (whether it's D&D, PF, or "generic D&D fantasy") and we have incorporated by reference all that this includes! There is, quite literally, zero possibility that any judges won't know any of the millions of rules, tropes, and references that form the backbone to those adventures. As soon as we move away from that we start to lose that massive and inherent advantage. Traveller ... sure, that's a fairly common reference point for sci-fi. But trying to design any adventure for a system that is outside of the wheelhouse of the "standard" gamer is already a big risk; in the first round, I knew the perfect system for the adventure- it was [I]Ten Candles[/I]. Because the game was a tragedy; it was quite literally (as well as metaphorically) about fading light. And yet, I also knew that there was a decent chance that it would be a swing and a miss. It happens. Which gets to the issue of rules incorporation. When you're writing with a strict word limit, you are far too aware that every ... single ... word matters. And that if you are going to spend precious words devising a bespoke rules system for the adventure, it better be worth it. There needs to be a compelling reason for those rules and you had better to take care to have them integrate with the vision for the adventure and the ingredients. The very structure of Iron DM forces these types of choices. If there is a bona fide reason to have something in the rules that isn't bog standard (and most likely D&D), you are faced with a very uncomfortable choice; you can either "pick" a system that the judges most likely won't be familiar with, or you create your own and be told that you are wasting time on creating the rules ... even when they are absolutely necessary to the adventure. And adding to those issues, the list of ingredients often includes specific "D&Disms" (or, at a minimum, fantasy-isms). It's not impossible to find a use of Orc and Owlbear that don't involve D&D, but it's not exactly easy. [B][U]Okay, so why are you writing all of this?[/U][/B] I totally get that a lot of people might bounce right off of the adventures that I write. It's not for everyone! And I can respect that. One person's clever use of an ingredient in serve of a larger purpose might be another person's wasted opportunity. Is the adventure witty, or is it merely wise-cracking; as Dorothy Parker has told us, there's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words. [ATTACH type="full"]336775[/ATTACH] But ... as I wrote before, this is the rare time that I felt uncomfortable reading a judgment. I assumed that the game would be relatively clear in meaning; after all, I named the specific parts after well-known books, so the idea of an adventure about how we create purpose and meaning in our lives through games (a captivating toy that captured its designers ... some of whom want to return to the, um, captivating toy company) seemed self-evident, and the actual meaning of the three agendas and how they tied into the ingredients would be clear. But maybe not! Not everyone is on my wavelength, which, you know, is probably a good thing. I get that people might miss how the exact ideas are manifested in the specific bespoke rules and why the actual play of the adventure is the act of creating the rules and finding meaning. If you do a Coen Brothers / Michael Bay homage, you run the risk that people aren't film buffs. If you're doing an existentialist meta-adventure, you run the risk that people aren't grooving to [I]L'Étranger[/I] and [I]Godel Escher Bach[/I]. With that said, it's still an adventure. It's not a storytelling game ([I]Ten Candles[/I] is a storytelling RPG, albeit a very different type). In fact, [I]Tavern [/I]is far from a storytelling game, given that it has a very tight focus on the creation of [I]rules [/I]and how you can use the rules to win the game ... and what that means- it's closer to a TTRPG version of [I]Cosmic Encounter[/I] crossed with [I]Paranoia[/I] (hence, the distribution in authority on each turn) than it is to any storytelling game. It's not Pictionary. It's [I]certainly [/I]not the case that the players are encouraged to just go play D&D, and if that's what someone pulled from that adventure, then maybe I did fail terribly. But I'm not going to over-explain what I did, because it speaks for itself. Even after sitting with all of this for a while, I did feel the need to get this off of my chest. I know that what I write isn't going to appeal to everyone, and I'm okay with that. I write what the ingredients (and my sick and twisted brain) compel me to write, not what I think is most likely to win ... which would be another D&D adventure. And I loved Whizbang Dustyboots' adventure, which is a worthy winner. But while I think that there is a lot that can be learned from the judgments that I read .... Having someone tell you that the adventure you put substantial thought and effort into may "technically" be an RPG (technically? as opposed to a "real RPG?") .... and isn't even an adventure (????!!!) has been eating at me for a few days. And not in a good way. I know, going in, that the adventures I write are not going to be for everyone, but they are certainly adventures. And while I run a lot of 5e and 1e games, I also run a lot of custom one-shots that I design myself, and it's unsettling reading that people don't view what I do (and what people enjoy) as being real RPGs, or actual adventures. [/QUOTE]
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