Advance warning. I have had life events happen today which have largely prevented me from being able to work on what I was already finding to be a frustrating and difficult set of ingredients.
I will miss the one day deadline. I will instead submit a <525 word entry, within 48 hours of the ingredient posting time.
Iron Diem
Ugly Duke-ling
Sniper Blind
Open Heart Surgery
True Identity
Broken Wagon Wheel
A Dark Heresy adventure.
PCs are assigned to investigate the 'Day of Iron' (Iron Diem) cult on the industrial/agricultural world Arundel. Their Inquisitor master fears an uprising associated with the traitor Iron Warriors Astartes Legion.
Arundel: dystopian. Continent-sized grainfields worked by forced labor. Ruled by elegant aristocrats in hivecities. Cult activity resembles lowlevel protest movement, graffiti, slogans aimed at greedy aristocracy. Investigation (data analysis, Arbites liaison etc) reveals cult activity associated with the whereabouts of the cityblock-sized harvester megawagon Ubertas Munificentia.
Duke Melos Arvenir commands Ubertas. Ruling governor's youngest son. Clumsy, awkward, embarrassing at parties, given this duty to be out of the way. (Ugly Duke-ling).
Ubertas is out harvesting. PCs must arrange to board, which will be conspicuous.
Confronted by Inquisition, Melos scared but forceful. No cult on HIS harvester. Workers better treated and loyal accordingly. Claims of better treatment seem true. Less lashing, workers given lung cybernetics to protect against pesticide dust inhalation, fed fresh food from harvest rather than preserved rations.
Investigation among workers is slow. Wariness of outsiders. PCs must don worker guise to get answers. When trust builds - workers are happy. Enthusiastic supporters of Melos. No backing for Iron Diem.
Harvest duty is long, PCs are on Ubertas for misfortune-beset weeks. Mechanical failures, disease, accidents. Melos grows into the role, becomes genuinely charismatic, dynamic, impressive.
Opponents on Ubertas:
serial killer, sniping from concealed high points (sniper blind). Targets are all strong Melos supporters among workers. If PCs successfully track the killer, they find the sniper IS blind - a Sanctioned Psyker with eyes long ago burned out by soulbonding.
bladefingered monster kidnapping/vivisecting workers on the labyrinthine lower decks. Investigation reveals no deaths, lots of pain. Victims given open heart surgery without anaesthetic - protective lung implants removed, heart damaged. If cornered/killed, perpetrator is a Mechanicus Biologis Adept.
sabotage of one of of Ubertas's titanic wheels (broken wagon wheel). Urgent PC action required to avoid disastrous crash into ravine. Major delays/repairs needed. Saboteur if caught is ex-Militarum, from a regiment that never visited Arundel.
If any become aware of PCs seriously on their trail, will lay counterambushes. Cat and mouse. They'll run but fight to the death if cornered; if captured will assert to ALSO be Inquisition agents (true identity). Will resist questioning, demand release with Inquisitorial Authority, attempt suicide if seriously compromised.
Through interrogation/persuasion/hacking/forensics, PCs can discover:
other Inquisitor suspects Slaaneshi corruption among decadent aristocracy, and created 'Iron Diem' movement as groundwork for an overthrow of louche corrupted elites by workers. Actually means 'Iron Every Day' - continual strength/discipline.
alleged lung filters were actually injecting warptainted euphorics into workers heartblood. Fresh food avoids the pacification drugs in standard rations. Sniped workers were those becoming too daemontainted to be allowed to live, psyker could see/target their warp presence without eyes.
Melos clearly involved, his new charisma indicative of Slaaneshi favour, but without their Inquisitor the other agents don't have the authority to overthrow aristocracy. Instead delaying and hampering, waiting for backup.
Ubertas workers now heavily tainted. PCs must prevent Ubertas returning to/tainting a hive city, and defeat Melos, now a potent Slaaneshi warlock.
Posted. Apologies for the delay. Life stuff happened, and it obviously got to me mentally because I spent hours in the small hours of the night yesterday swearing at the miserable impossible ingredients and failing to make them fit in a Cthulhu adventure, a steampunk kung fu Western adventure, a Buffy adventure, and a Star Wars adventure.
Sometimes you just need to sleep on it, and clearly this was one of those times. One of the reasons I like timeslots that span neatly over two days, rather than the 2am deadline i had to manage for this one! Yesterday I had a legitimately miserable, exhausting, gruellingly un-fun time trying to force these ingredients to work, today things fell together much better.
Still, with the entirely self-inflicted late penalty and reduced word limit, my back is against the wall for this one, but my opponent put the work in and deserved - y'know - an opponent for their effort. So I didn't want to just drop out.
So here we go. Last time I submitted a Warhammer adventure in Iron DM I was unceremoniously bundled out in round 1. Let's see if we can make it two from two...
Bedir Than’sOn the Iron Diem (BT:OtID) came to us early, 13.5 hours after the ingredients were posted. Humble Minion’sSeeds of Corruption (HM:SoD) was 23 hours late.
Unfortunately, there is no benefit for being early, and according to our official word-counter, BT:OtID came in at 754 words, forcing me to cut off the last four words. Luckily, that simply changes the last phrase from “plus a favor from the two teenagers” to “plus a favor”, which changes its meaning not one bit.
HM:SoD is penalized by lateness down to 525 words, and comes in at 524, so we’re good to go. For those watching at home, this might seem no big deal (or alternately, not enough punishment for lateness), but the usual 750 word-count is brutal as it is, 525 is harsh – this is going to be tough for HM.
So far, close enough to call it even.
Style & Readability
Both entries I found easy enough to read, even with HM:SoD’s very short sentences. For me, most of the time, those brief snippets portrayed what they needed to while obviously necessary to meet the word count. BT:OtID’s overall structure met my expectations.
Not much to add here. Pretty even so far.
Ingredient Usage
Here’s where we start trading blows. As anyone who’s competed in Iron DM knows: You can’t win ‘em all. But doing your best is what this competition is all about. Let’s dig in and see how they do:
Iron Diem
In BT:OtID we have a ‘duke’ (more on that later) who once-a-month gives out iron, gunpowder and unspecified ‘supplies’, and sometimes petrol or alcohol to those who ‘qualify’. The PCs are there for petrol, which they qualify for if they succeed on ‘four or more’ challenges. I have a few quibbles with this ingredient use: Iron Diem is what the locals call the dole, presumably from the name of the event that offers the dole. But Iron is only one of five listed things that the dole gives out, and it’s not the one that the PCs are there for!
This isn’t terrible by itself; people name things that way all the time. It makes sense in the setting for the people to call both the event and the thing that the event offers by the same name. But as an ingredient, we need to remember that both words matter. If the PCs are to interact with the ingredient, both parts of that ingredient should be meaningful to them – so in this case, it would be a better use if they were there for Iron, rather than Petrol, or we have Petrol Diem. We are also left with the question: What happens if they don’t succeed at four or more challenges? That might be hard, as challenges go A to D – by my count four – so, they must succeed at everything, other than stuff that pops up along the journey, improvised by the GM.
In HM:SoD we have the Day of Iron Cult that is causing all the trouble, which turns out to be the slogan Iron Every Day that keeps the zealous Inquisition agents persevering in their thankless task of inciting rebellion while they wait for backup that, given the setting, would likely never come. Or in this case, come in the form of the PCs working against them (if only until they uncover the truth). I’m only vaguely familiar with the setting, but it seems appropriate. In addition, this ingredient use has the benefit of pointing out, from what I can gather, a more proper use of the Latin. Sometimes when an Iron DM entry tries to use an ingredient “two ways” it backfires, muddying the whole, but I think it works here.
I’m giving the edge to HM:SoD here.
Ugly Duke-ling
In BT:OtID we have two teenagers who are pretending to be the Duke’s children, but are also pretending that there is a Duke, when there isn’t. Neither of them are described as Ugly, but I think some of their behaviour is? But they also give out the much-needed dole. But we also have a building, that is called “The Ugly Duke-ling”, where one of the Duke-lings likes to party. I guess some of her “ugly” behaviour might be on display here, but it’s not entirely clear. Remember how I spoke about using an ingredient “two ways”? That’s on display here, and I think it fails. I don’t see much reason for the building to be named that, other than its name somehow describes its contents.
In HM:SoD we have the boss of the harvester, who seems decent only to turn out to be the BBEG. I’m not sure why his title is Duke - I understand that the harvester is BIG, and people like grand titles – but I think that it would have been enough for him to be the son of the governor, himself a Duke, making him a “Duke-ling”, rather than a Duke himself. Both entries have something of this problem, though. And both have the problem with the word “Ugly”. Is this Duke-ling ugly? It’s hard to say. I would think when he becomes a Slaaneshi warlock he could be all mutated and stuff, but the text doesn’t make that clear, and I don’t know enough of the lore. Before that, he’s described as ‘charismatic’.
Both entries have their troubles, and that’s okay – it’s a tricky ingredient. I’m going with maybe a slight edge to HM:SoD, if only because I don’t like the building name in BT:OtID.
Sniper Blind
In BT:OtID, we have a bandit who uses a church as cover to enact revenge on the PCs. Trouble is, the bandit has encountered the PCs before, and in my experience, that will most often make him dead. The adventure points out that this encounter only occurs if the bandits survive. If they don’t, presumably, it never happens. Ingredients need to happen. Also, it is not entirely clear in what way the church is used as a blind. Sure, it’s easy enough to invent: A bell-tower with a low wall, sandbags on the roof, a gargoyle to hide behind, etc. But the GM will have to make it up. Asking the GM to make up details is fine, in particular when an Iron DM entry is generally simply an adventure outline, but… this is an Ingredient. It needs to be made as solid and important as possible.
In HM:SoD, we have another double-use, and I think it works again! The sniper, hidden behind a blind, is also a blind sniper, having presumably traded his eyes for psychic powers (or at least, having sacrificed them to show devotion to a crazed cult that gave him psychic powers – again, I don’t know the lore, but I feel the vibe.) Sometimes that kind of stuff might be “too clever”, but it works for me here, in particular as the fact that the sniper sees psychically is important: It allows him to detect civilians that are succumbing to their daemon blood. Uncovering this fact is important to the PCs in deciding who’s side they’re on.
Again, I’ll give this one to HM:SoD.
Open Heart Surgery
Another tough ingredient! (Aren’t they all, much of the time?) And I think both entries struggle a little.
In BT:OtID, we have an act that the PCs need to perform, both in order to complete a challenge, and to save the victim of a Sniper, though it appears to be not the one who uses the Blind, though maybe it is. (But if it IS, it has the issue that he may already be dead from a previous encounter with the PCs). At any rate, the PCs have to try, because the town has no medical supplies. This scenario has a number of problems, because I think there’s a good chance that the PCs wouldn’t volunteer for this, thinking that they’d have no chance to succeed. Or even if one of the PCs is somehow qualified, it’s a very difficult task, and they may fail. And if they fail, what happens? One of the Duke-lings is dead – the one that gives out the dole – so they may never be able to get their petrol.
In HM:SoD we have a monster who’s been chopping out lung implants. He has a great ‘reveal’, in that he’s doing it on behalf of the ‘rebellion’ to remove a thing that is corrupting the workers with daemon blood, but… it’s not really Heart Surgery, is it? It’s Lung Surgery, and if he’s been accidentally ‘damaging their hearts’ while he does it, I’ve got to wonder, how have they all survived? The imagery is awesome. The ingredient use is weak.
I enjoy how I like the adventure part more in the second entry, but I have to admit that the ingredient is slightly better used in the first, though flawed. This one goes ever so slightly to BT:OtID, which makes up for the previous near-tie.
True Identity
In BT:OtID we have the True Identity of the Duke is that there isn’t a Duke. It’s just his two “children” (who may-or-may-not at all be children of a Duke) pretending he exists. It’s fine, I guess. This is a relatively ‘easy’ ingredient (in particular in comparison to Iron Diem or Ugly Duke-ling) but can be surprisingly easy to mess up. My only issue might be that the “True Identity” is an absence. I can’t fault it much, but it doesn’t excite me.
In HM:SoD, on the other hand, the whole thing is a mystery, and the True Identity of what seems to be the bad guys (I’m going to call them that, even though in Dark Heresy, from what I gather, everyone is pretty much the bad guys) is that they are just like the PCs – agents doing their jobs. And further to that, they are telling the Truth about their Identity.
I was expecting to call this one a draw, but on refection, I really think that HM:SoD’s use is stronger.
Broken Wagon Wheel
Another “easy” one, but fitting that sort in can sometimes be tricky, and I think both entries struggled a little, making this ingredient seem ‘tagged on’. But let’s delve into it and see if I change my mind on that.
In BT:OtID we have our opening Scene, on the road, running into a busted wagon. It’s on-the-nose, but gets the job done. I also notice here that my earlier admonition regarding the chances of the Bandits being dead might come off overly harsh, as there’s a good chance that the PCs won’t encounter them to kill them. On the other hand, in that case the Bandits have no reason for “revenge” at the Church. The ingredient gets a pass, but the adventure suffers.
In HM:SoD, the harvester’s presumably gigantic tread is sabotaged by a militant agent of the opposition (that turn out to be acting as close to rightly as this setting seems to get). Of course, the results are nearly disastrous for both sides, as the whole harvester nearly crashes into a ravine. I don’t think that anyone would want this. At first, I think that I was going to say “but that’s not really a wagon wheel, is it?” And that’s true, but while the words of an ingredient need to be important, they don’t always need to be exact. I think that the fact that this event is both exciting, and important to the overall adventure, that it tips it up to be a good use.
Looks like I was wrong at the start. Both of them get the job done. I’m going to give the slight edge to HM:SoD here, for being more overall satisfying.
Playability
An Iron DM entry should be possible (and hopefully enjoyable) to RUN. Usually, they make good one-offs. I’ve actually run a few, and not just my own! So… how do these stack up?
BT:OtID is runnable, as long as you have an idea of how to judge challenge difficulty in whatever system you use. But there’s quite a bit of work to do on the part of the GM to pave over some of its flaws. This is okay, in that again, it’s just an outline, and any good GM should be used to this task – even with fully published adventures! I’ve certainly seen worse – by which I mean adventures where the task of turning it into something that can actually be done at the table take more adjustments than this one would – but ultimately, I’m not sure that I’d want to run this.
HM:SoD, though, I think I’d actually enjoy running. It has a good mystery with a good reveal, and some exciting scenes. I can see how I’d run it, without much in the way of changes. I’m honestly shocked that it works as well as it does, in particular because I don’t really know the setting or the game, and I don’t really need to. Any over-the-top Sci-Fi game would do it.
This isn’t a final judgement (that comes later), but it’s another point to HM:SoD.
It might be a surprise, what with the lateness and the reduced word-count, but you handed in, in the end, a solid adventure with mostly good to great uses of the ingredients!
@bedir than, your entry was solid, but probably could have used a bit more time taken (I assume that you needed time to prep for your conference, or you know, sleep) to polish it up to the next level. I think it was just a few inconsistencies that caused it to fall behind, which I think you could easily fix in the future.
Bedir Than’sOn the Iron Diem (BT:OtID) came to us early, 13.5 hours after the ingredients were posted. Humble Minion’sSeeds of Corruption (HM:SoD) was 23 hours late.
Unfortunately, there is no benefit for being early, and according to our official word-counter, BT:OtID came in at 754 words, forcing me to cut off the last four words. Luckily, that simply changes the last phrase from “plus a favor from the two teenagers” to “plus a favor”, which changes its meaning not one bit.
HM:SoD is penalized by lateness down to 525 words, and comes in at 524, so we’re good to go. For those watching at home, this might seem no big deal (or alternately, not enough punishment for lateness), but the usual 750 word-count is brutal as it is, 525 is harsh – this is going to be tough for HM.
So far, close enough to call it even.
Style & Readability
Both entries I found easy enough to read, even with HM:SoD’s very short sentences. For me, most of the time, those brief snippets portrayed what they needed to while obviously necessary to meet the word count. BT:OtID’s overall structure met my expectations.
Not much to add here. Pretty even so far.
Ingredient Usage
Here’s where we start trading blows. As anyone who’s competed in Iron DM knows: You can’t win ‘em all. But doing your best is what this competition is all about. Let’s dig in and see how they do:
Iron Diem
In BT:OtID we have a ‘duke’ (more on that later) who once-a-month gives out iron, gunpowder and unspecified ‘supplies’, and sometimes petrol or alcohol to those who ‘qualify’. The PCs are there for petrol, which they qualify for if they succeed on ‘four or more’ challenges. I have a few quibbles with this ingredient use: Iron Diem is what the locals call the dole, presumably from the name of the event that offers the dole. But Iron is only one of five listed things that the dole gives out, and it’s not the one that the PCs are there for!
This isn’t terrible by itself; people name things that way all the time. It makes sense in the setting for the people to call both the event and the thing that the event offers by the same name. But as an ingredient, we need to remember that both words matter. If the PCs are to interact with the ingredient, both parts of that ingredient should be meaningful to them – so in this case, it would be a better use if they were there for Iron, rather than Petrol, or we have Petrol Diem. We are also left with the question: What happens if they don’t succeed at four or more challenges? That might be hard, as challenges go A to D – by my count four – so, they must succeed at everything, other than stuff that pops up along the journey, improvised by the GM.
In HM:SoD we have the Day of Iron Cult that is causing all the trouble, which turns out to be the slogan Iron Every Day that keeps the zealous Inquisition agents persevering in their thankless task of inciting rebellion while they wait for backup that, given the setting, would likely never come. Or in this case, come in the form of the PCs working against them (if only until they uncover the truth). I’m only vaguely familiar with the setting, but it seems appropriate. In addition, this ingredient use has the benefit of pointing out, from what I can gather, a more proper use of the Latin. Sometimes when an Iron DM entry tries to use an ingredient “two ways” it backfires, muddying the whole, but I think it works here.
I’m giving the edge to HM:SoD here.
Ugly Duke-ling
In BT:OtID we have two teenagers who are pretending to be the Duke’s children, but are also pretending that there is a Duke, when there isn’t. Neither of them are described as Ugly, but I think some of their behaviour is? But they also give out the much-needed dole. But we also have a building, that is called “The Ugly Duke-ling”, where one of the Duke-lings likes to party. I guess some of her “ugly” behaviour might be on display here, but it’s not entirely clear. Remember how I spoke about using an ingredient “two ways”? That’s on display here, and I think it fails. I don’t see much reason for the building to be named that, other than its name somehow describes its contents.
In HM:SoD we have the boss of the harvester, who seems decent only to turn out to be the BBEG. I’m not sure why his title is Duke - I understand that the harvester is BIG, and people like grand titles – but I think that it would have been enough for him to be the son of the governor, himself a Duke, making him a “Duke-ling”, rather than a Duke himself. Both entries have something of this problem, though. And both have the problem with the word “Ugly”. Is this Duke-ling ugly? It’s hard to say. I would think when he becomes a Slaaneshi warlock he could be all mutated and stuff, but the text doesn’t make that clear, and I don’t know enough of the lore. Before that, he’s described as ‘charismatic’.
Both entries have their troubles, and that’s okay – it’s a tricky ingredient. I’m going with maybe a slight edge to HM:SoD, if only because I don’t like the building name in BT:OtID.
Sniper Blind
In BT:OtID, we have a bandit who uses a church as cover to enact revenge on the PCs. Trouble is, the bandit has encountered the PCs before, and in my experience, that will most often make him dead. The adventure points out that this encounter only occurs if the bandits survive. If they don’t, presumably, it never happens. Ingredients need to happen. Also, it is not entirely clear in what way the church is used as a blind. Sure, it’s easy enough to invent: A bell-tower with a low wall, sandbags on the roof, a gargoyle to hide behind, etc. But the GM will have to make it up. Asking the GM to make up details is fine, in particular when an Iron DM entry is generally simply an adventure outline, but… this is an Ingredient. It needs to be made as solid and important as possible.
In HM:SoD, we have another double-use, and I think it works again! The sniper, hidden behind a blind, is also a blind sniper, having presumably traded his eyes for psychic powers (or at least, having sacrificed them to show devotion to a crazed cult that gave him psychic powers – again, I don’t know the lore, but I feel the vibe.) Sometimes that kind of stuff might be “too clever”, but it works for me here, in particular as the fact that the sniper sees psychically is important: It allows him to detect civilians that are succumbing to their daemon blood. Uncovering this fact is important to the PCs in deciding who’s side they’re on.
Again, I’ll give this one to HM:SoD.
Open Heart Surgery
Another tough ingredient! (Aren’t they all, much of the time?) And I think both entries struggle a little.
In BT:OtID, we have an act that the PCs need to perform, both in order to complete a challenge, and to save the victim of a Sniper, though it appears to be not the one who uses the Blind, though maybe it is. (But if it IS, it has the issue that he may already be dead from a previous encounter with the PCs). At any rate, the PCs have to try, because the town has no medical supplies. This scenario has a number of problems, because I think there’s a good chance that the PCs wouldn’t volunteer for this, thinking that they’d have no chance to succeed. Or even if one of the PCs is somehow qualified, it’s a very difficult task, and they may fail. And if they fail, what happens? One of the Duke-lings is dead – the one that gives out the dole – so they may never be able to get their petrol.
In HM:SoD we have a monster who’s been chopping out lung implants. He has a great ‘reveal’, in that he’s doing it on behalf of the ‘rebellion’ to remove a thing that is corrupting the workers with daemon blood, but… it’s not really Heart Surgery, is it? It’s Lung Surgery, and if he’s been accidentally ‘damaging their hearts’ while he does it, I’ve got to wonder, how have they all survived? The imagery is awesome. The ingredient use is weak.
I enjoy how I like the adventure part more in the second entry, but I have to admit that the ingredient is slightly better used in the first, though flawed. This one goes ever so slightly to BT:OtID, which makes up for the previous near-tie.
True Identity
In BT:OtID we have the True Identity of the Duke is that there isn’t a Duke. It’s just his two “children” (who may-or-may-not at all be children of a Duke) pretending he exists. It’s fine, I guess. This is a relatively ‘easy’ ingredient (in particular in comparison to Iron Diem or Ugly Duke-ling) but can be surprisingly easy to mess up. My only issue might be that the “True Identity” is an absence. I can’t fault it much, but it doesn’t excite me.
In HM:SoD, on the other hand, the whole thing is a mystery, and the True Identity of what seems to be the bad guys (I’m going to call them that, even though in Dark Heresy, from what I gather, everyone is pretty much the bad guys) is that they are just like the PCs – agents doing their jobs. And further to that, they are telling the Truth about their Identity.
I was expecting to call this one a draw, but on refection, I really think that HM:SoD’s use is stronger.
Broken Wagon Wheel
Another “easy” one, but fitting that sort in can sometimes be tricky, and I think both entries struggled a little, making this ingredient seem ‘tagged on’. But let’s delve into it and see if I change my mind on that.
In BT:OtID we have our opening Scene, on the road, running into a busted wagon. It’s on-the-nose, but gets the job done. I also notice here that my earlier admonition regarding the chances of the Bandits being dead might come off overly harsh, as there’s a good chance that the PCs won’t encounter them to kill them. On the other hand, in that case the Bandits have no reason for “revenge” at the Church. The ingredient gets a pass, but the adventure suffers.
In HM:SoD, the harvester’s presumably gigantic tread is sabotaged by a militant agent of the opposition (that turn out to be acting as close to rightly as this setting seems to get). Of course, the results are nearly disastrous for both sides, as the whole harvester nearly crashes into a ravine. I don’t think that anyone would want this. At first, I think that I was going to say “but that’s not really a wagon wheel, is it?” And that’s true, but while the words of an ingredient need to be important, they don’t always need to be exact. I think that the fact that this event is both exciting, and important to the overall adventure, that it tips it up to be a good use.
Looks like I was wrong at the start. Both of them get the job done. I’m going to give the slight edge to HM:SoD here, for being more overall satisfying.
Playability
An Iron DM entry should be possible (and hopefully enjoyable) to RUN. Usually, they make good one-offs. I’ve actually run a few, and not just my own! So… how do these stack up?
BT:OtID is runnable, as long as you have an idea of how to judge challenge difficulty in whatever system you use. But there’s quite a bit of work to do on the part of the GM to pave over some of its flaws. This is okay, in that again, it’s just an outline, and any good GM should be used to this task – even with fully published adventures! I’ve certainly seen worse – by which I mean adventures where the task of turning it into something that can actually be done at the table take more adjustments than this one would – but ultimately, I’m not sure that I’d want to run this.
HM:SoD, though, I think I’d actually enjoy running. It has a good mystery with a good reveal, and some exciting scenes. I can see how I’d run it, without much in the way of changes. I’m honestly shocked that it works as well as it does, in particular because I don’t really know the setting or the game, and I don’t really need to. Any over-the-top Sci-Fi game would do it.
This isn’t a final judgement (that comes later), but it’s another point to HM:SoD.
It might be a surprise, what with the lateness and the reduced word-count, but you handed in, in the end, a solid adventure with mostly good to great uses of the ingredients!
@bedir than, your entry was solid, but probably could have used a bit more time taken (I assume that you needed time to prep for your conference, or you know, sleep) to polish it up to the next level. I think it was just a few inconsistencies that caused it to fall behind, which I think you could easily fix in the future.
when the ingredients inspired something Twilight:2k ish I had to review a rule set and setting I haven't played in for 20+ years. That was a lot of fun. I think I know the further directions I'd take with 1000 words, as some of the things I cut were items you suggested be included.
when the ingredients inspired something Twilight:2k ish I had to review a rule set and setting I haven't played in for 20+ years. That was a lot of fun. I think I know the further directions I'd take with 1000 words, as some of the things I cut were items you suggested be included.
Yesterday I had a legitimately miserable, exhausting, gruellingly un-fun time trying to force these ingredients to work, today things fell together much better.
I've had that, writing Iron DM entries. I've had ones that were relatively easy to write, ones that were a bitter slog all the way to the end, and ones like you had: Just a total wall, but then something clicks after a break (sleep is a good one) and it comes together in the end.
And I'm a relative baby when it comes to this competition! I've written, I think it is, eight entries all told. All of which, I think that I could have done better with more time and more words.
OtoH, maybe I'd just screw it up! There's certainly a "charm" that comes with the limitations set by the competition. Not to mention, the ridiculous ingredients!
We were asked earlier about just how "D&D" related the competition was, given the title. I can say that I found as I competed that there are often too many ingredients that are modern or strange for D&D for it to make a very good go-to setting. Though, honestly, D&D has been branching out with its settings lately (in particular Feywild-based or Victorian-based settings) that it's getting easier, in my mind, to use it.
At any rate my point is: Often Gonzo-style settings suit the ingredients better than more standard ones.
Thanks @bedir than - it was a very close-run thing in the end, a lot of the ingredient decisions were by very small margins and it could have gone either way. And I really liked your choice of a post-apocalyptic setting to reconcile the time period discrepancies in the ingredients between open heart surgery, dukes, snipers, and wagons. The first Iron DM round is by far the hardest, I've always thought, just because of the word count. Later rounds have more ingredients, sure, but also a much more forgiving word limit to ingredient ratio.
Re the judgement and my ingredient use:
Iron Diem was the really hard one, because even translating 'Diem' as Latin for 'day' it ... kinda meant nothing. For a while I leveraged off the fact that 'Diem' is a common Vietnamese name and 'Iron Diem' became a steampunk cyborg vigilante protecting Asian railway workers from robber baron rail magnates, but the setup just got too complicated to fit in the wordcount. After most of a day spent cursing a meaningless impossible bad-Latin ingredient, I eventually realised that I should simply use a setting where bad Latin is a long-established trope. Hi there, Warhammer. I tried to riff off my own confusion with the bad-Latinness in the adventure, with the confusion in translation.
Ugly Duke-ling - I have to admit I just used 'duke' as a placeholder for 'nobility' here. I'm vaguely aware that sometimes the more distant heirs to thrones carry the title, but I don't know the specifics. What I was more focused on here was mirroring the 'ugly duckling' story that obviously inspired the ingredient. Melos starts off despised and awkward, but blossoms into a swan as the adventure progresses (but this being Warhammer, such things are not always good news - by the time the PCs fight him at the end he quite probably IS weirdly elongated and covered in feathers!)
Sniper Blind - I tried to double down on this with the blind sniper in the sniper blind because just having a sniper shooting at PCs from a blind seemed to miss the point a little. It made the sniper the important element, while the ingredient was the blind.
Open heart surgery - the criticism re confusion between heart and lung is legit. My intention was for this to be a clue that All Was Not As It Seemed with Melos's utopian workforce. If the attacker performs heart surgery, but somehow the lung implant is gone afterwards - how does that makes sense? Answer: it doesn't, which means the supposed lung implant wasn't in the lung at all, and Melos was lying. But I just didn't make that clear in the entry. I could blame limited wordcount, but given my late submission, the limited wordcount was all self-inflicted too...
True identity - i thought I used this one ok, but I would have preferred to establish the false identity first to contrast the true one. But that just wasn't going to happen given wordcount restrictions.
Broken Wagon Wheel - @FitzTheRuke was more generous to me on this than I would have been! While my initial intentions were good, in the end I really just used 'broken wheel' and used 'wagon' as a synonym for 'basically any vehicle at all' where it probably more accurately refers to a cargo-carrying vehicle that might rely on a towing vehicle for propulsion. So I might have gotten away with one there...
We were asked earlier about just how "D&D" related the competition was, given the title. I can say that I found as I competed that there are often too many ingredients that are modern or strange for D&D for it to make a very good go-to setting. Though, honestly, D&D has been branching out with its settings lately (in particular Feywild-based or Victorian-based settings) that it's getting easier, in my mind, to use it.
At any rate my point is: Often Gonzo-style settings suit the ingredients better than more standard ones.
Yeah, a lot of the time the ingredients seem to just rule out D&D off the bat, which is perhaps a shame. Lots of modern ideas and concepts. I could have managed to fit a sniper in a D&D adventure (with a crossbow perhaps), but open heart surgery was a step too far so I never really considered it for this ingredient set. You can stretch the definition of words and try to creatively interpret, but that tends to be expensive on wordcount, and if you go too far you risk the judge just dumpstering the whole thing.
Open heart surgery - the criticism re confusion between heart and lung is legit. My intention was for this to be a clue that All Was Not As It Seemed with Melos's utopian workforce. If the attacker performs heart surgery, but somehow the lung implant is gone afterwards - how does that makes sense? Answer: it doesn't, which means the supposed lung implant wasn't in the lung at all, and Melos was lying. But I just didn't make that clear in the entry. I could blame limited wordcount, but given my late submission, the limited wordcount was all self-inflicted too...
Ah, I see... they go in for lung implants to protect against pesticides, but instead get implants that pump daemon blood into their hearts. Yeah, it wasn't clear in the entry, but it's good to know if one wants to run it.
Broken Wagon Wheel - @FitzTheRuke was more generous to me on this than I would have been! While my initial intentions were good, in the end I really just used 'broken wheel' and used 'wagon' as a synonym for 'basically any vehicle at all' where it probably more accurately refers to a cargo-carrying vehicle that might rely on a towing vehicle for propulsion. So I might have gotten away with one there...
That one might be down to my inexperience as a Judge. I went in expecting to stomp on you for it, as it's definitely NOT a "wagon" (or, realistically, not even a "wheel" - probably more like enormous tank treads), but you managed to make it important and evocative enough that to me, you managed to squeak ahead of (no offense to Bedir) a very generic and inconsequential broken-down wagon, that frankly could have been replaced with a bridge being out, or a bull being loose, or any other road challenge. Not that that's a bad thing, really, either as an ingredient use (being on-the-nose is better than being off in left field, usually) or for an adventure (players like to know what they need to do. 'Fix the wagon' is easily understood).
Like you say at the start of the post - many of them were really, really close. It took me four hours to write that judgement!
