IRON DM 2025 Tournament Thread
- Thread starter Gradine
- Start date
Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
IRON DM 2025: Round 1, Match 4, Whizbang Dustyboots vs AustinHolm
@Whizbang Dustyboots and @AustinHolm, 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:
Coin Tree
Existential Threat
Upper Decks
Week of the Monster
False Negative
Mysterious Flowers
Good luck!
@Whizbang Dustyboots and @AustinHolm, 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:
Coin Tree
Existential Threat
Upper Decks
Week of the Monster
False Negative
Mysterious Flowers
Good luck!
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
The Root of All Evil
Ingredients:
Ingredients:
- Coin Tree
- Existential Threat
- Upper Decks
- Week of the Monster
- False Negative
- Mysterious Flowers
The Naavik! A great hyper-yacht! Meant to tour the multiverse’s rich and powerful through the wonders of creation! Calamity! A powerful astral storm has dashed the yacht to pieces before its very first tour! Parts of the hyper-yacht are scattered throughout time, space and infinite dimensions!
The upper decks have come crashing into your reality, embedded in a remote mountain range!
Gods and other great powers of this universe are aware of its arrival! Especially one plant in the garden! Money literally grows on the fabulous paisa tree, in the form of gold coins!
Two groups now converge on the Naavik!
The economists militant! The faithful of Avideco, god of money, wealth and finance! Should the tree be left intact, it can produce enough gold to destabilize civilization as we know it! The economists are on a mission to destroy it, at all costs!
Anarchist, rebels and madmen! Servants of Ĥaoso, trickster lord of the fey! They seek to claim the tree and its gold coin fruit! They will plant the seeds across the world, plunging it into anarchy and chaos, destabilizing civilization as we know it!
A third group, the players, have learned of the fabulous tree and its wealth by other means! But not that the coins themselves can grow yet more paisa trees! If they seek the riches for themselves — or shape the future civilization — they must join the race and venture into the fabulous wreck of the Naavik!
Dramatis personae
The upper decks have come crashing into your reality, embedded in a remote mountain range!
Gods and other great powers of this universe are aware of its arrival! Especially one plant in the garden! Money literally grows on the fabulous paisa tree, in the form of gold coins!
Two groups now converge on the Naavik!
The economists militant! The faithful of Avideco, god of money, wealth and finance! Should the tree be left intact, it can produce enough gold to destabilize civilization as we know it! The economists are on a mission to destroy it, at all costs!
Anarchist, rebels and madmen! Servants of Ĥaoso, trickster lord of the fey! They seek to claim the tree and its gold coin fruit! They will plant the seeds across the world, plunging it into anarchy and chaos, destabilizing civilization as we know it!
A third group, the players, have learned of the fabulous tree and its wealth by other means! But not that the coins themselves can grow yet more paisa trees! If they seek the riches for themselves — or shape the future civilization — they must join the race and venture into the fabulous wreck of the Naavik!
Dramatis personae
- Servants of Avideco: Ruthless economists, swords for hire, guardians of the status quo! The best weapons and armor obtainable through a competitive bidding process! A traitor seeks to steal coins to make their country fabulously wealthy, no matter the consequences!
- Servants of Ĥaoso: Anarchists, madmen and revolutionaries! Mismatched weapons and armor, bolstered by fairy magic! A traitor seeks to steal coins to lift their country out of poverty, even though that entrenches the current system in place!
- Naukar: Automatons meant to serve the wealthy on the upper decks! Reprogrammed now by Bhram to kill all intruders! But 1 in 6 retain their programming by Naitikata! They offer guidance and non-violent service to all visitors as they wait for repairs that will never come!
- Bhram/Naitikata: The Naavik’s number two, their identity torn asunder by astral storm! Two warring personalities within one skull! Bhram, the monstrous! Naitikata, the beatific! A negotiated truce! Control over the body goes to whoever wins a weekly game Niyati, the gods’ own dice game! Naive Naitikata has no idea brutal Bhram has been cheating him, again and again! Naitkata only thought he’s lost! Now Bhram has turned the Naavik into a deathtrap for visitors soon to arrive!
- “Oracle Flowers”: Slow-moving residents of the Wonder Garden, puffing out clouds of pollen that show visitors secrets of past, present and future! But the crew has been deceived! Jootha, the gardener, went with cheaper and easier to obtain wish flowers! They only show visitors visions of what they wish to see! The unwary sink into blissed-out catatonia many will never want to escape from! Even if they do, they believe tempting lies over harsh reality!
- Climbing wall: Brightly colored handholds, an alternate route into the rest of the Naavik! But at the top, naukar automatons!
- Night club: Dark, even in the middle of the day! Strange mists, flashing lights, booming, uncanny music from nowhere! A good spot for an ambush by rival parties, naukar or Bhram!
- Observation deck: The obvious entrance, dotted with empty tables and chairs! Naukar servants, waiting for guests who will never arrive! But should those naukar be under the command of Bhram, there’s no place to hide!
- Office: Separate logs by Bhram and Naitikata! Naitkata logs the history of their weekly games of Niyati, noting how unlucky he is! Bhram’s log: gloating! His Niyati dice, weighted!
- Water park: Great saltwater pools, water slides, quiet cabanas! Beware the enemies who lurk within!
- Wonder Garden: Plants from across creation! Fabulous fountains! Wandering oracle flowers! At the center: The paisa tree, gleaming with golden fruit that can decide the fate of nations! Too large to simply carry off! Too wet to easily burn!
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Like my daddy always said, go Jack Kirby or go home.
AustinHolm
Villager
Crashed in the Coin Tree
An Adventure for Troika
Ingredients: Coin Tree, Existential Threat, Upper Decks, Week of the Monster, False Negative, Mysterious Flowers
BREAKING NEWS: Troika City Port Authority reports harbour snafu!
The Golden Barge Existential Threat, known for dangerous cargo, ran aground on a strange silver tree, spawned from its own treasure hold. Rumour says the ship holds the False Negative, a legendary photograph that threatens the Autarchy’s existence.
Cross the City! Navigate the Week of the Monster’s carnival-riots! Scale the Coin Tree! Pluck mysterious metal flowers! Board the upper decks of the ruined Existential Threat; Troika, the Great City, depends on it!
The False Negative (Player-known information)
The last remaining photonegative depicting the Autarch in an embarrassing situation. It’s illegal to speak of, except to decry its deceitfulness. This taboo imbues it with intense magical power. Aristocrats wish it recovered. If published, it'll weaken the Autarch!
Hooks:
Secure the False Negative (for sale or political leverage)
Clear the port
Investigate wreck, rescue survivors
Week of the Monster
This traditional seven-day Troikan festival involves monster masks, simulated crime, and real debauchery. It celebrates the Great Scam, when Troika convinced invaders they’d raided hell by mistake. The festival makes travel slow and dangerous. Count each delay; the PCs race against the Autarch’s forces!
Immediately, Mask Vendors accost the party. They won’t sell without ‘a sporting haggle’ (causing delay). Navigating the parades, riots, and wet t-shirt contests filling the streets creates three more encounters.
D6 Encounters (x3)
1.Werewolf-masked Shopkeepers pretend to rob themselves, throwing promotional loot to the mob, trusting their insurance to cover the giveaway. Delay earns a Pistolet, Velare, or strung coin necklace (d66sp).
2.Tower Wizards in Devil Masks cast Purple Lens on anyone looking serious. This enchantment causes optimism and delay.
3.Parchment Witches wear papier-mache human masks and lure unmasked victims into alleys with spellbooks (Flash, Jolt, Find).
4.Pickpocketed by Gremlins wearing Gremlin masks! They don’t ‘get’ the holiday. Chasing them causes delay.
5.Eyeball-masked culture critics (d3 Trolls) demand you delay. “Explain how your mask expresses your soul!” They flee if questioned.
6.Living Dead wrapped in toilet paper pose as mummies, boasting of ‘majestic pyramidal tombs’. Listening causes delay; not listening causes offense!
Coin Tree Roots
Harbour chaos! Golden barges hover, plasmic reserves dwindling. An enormous silver tree pierces the Existential Threat. Longshoremen debate solutions.
Delay >2: 2d6 Autarch-serving Man-Beasts arrive.
The tower’s origin is clear from its base; each silver pence aboard the Threat split like a seed, sprouting a silvery tree. Those metal growths fused into this massive structure. Test Climb to avoid delay.
Coin Tree Branches
A choice! Take the scenic route through Mysterious Flowers, causing delay? Or make straight for the Threat’s breached underhull, risking trouble with the d6 Harpies harvesting silver bark?
Mysterious Flowers
Amidst the branches, strange flowers bloom, enticing the curious and greedy. Harvesting causes delay. High branches grant access to the Threat’s upper decks.
Flowers
Gold - Attracts Jolt spells. Worth 100sp.
Copper - Test Shield to reflect Jolt spells. Worth 1sp.
Silver - Throw as Knives+1. Worth 10sp.
Tin - Sniff-potion: Assume Shape.
Lead - Sniff-potion: Immunity to metal magic (flowers, idols, Stormgulls).
Iron - Sniff-potion: Deal and take +1 damage for a day.
The Existential Threat
Lower Decks (Haz-Mat Hold)
Branches pierce the ruined hull. Bosun Soren Alsarte clutches a Golden Idol and babbles about life’s meaninglessness. He’s mad, but knows the False Negative’s canister is ruptured. Given purpose, he becomes a Henchman.
Coins near the Idol burst into metal trees (Spear damage within melee). Worth 10,000sp; tricky to sell, anathema to banks.
Upper Decks
Cpt. Camus and crew are frozen in violent death, eyes flashing irregularly like photobulbs (2:6 chance/round of casting Flash). Blind combat movement is dangerous; Test Luck or fall!
Stormgulls, bloated on conductive metals, cavort in the light. They attack as 3d3 Owls, cast Jolt, and can’t be blinded.
A locked door and blackened windows block the Captain’s Quarters.
Delay >2: It’s night when you arrive.
False Negative Finale!
In the Captain's pitch-black quarters, a sunproof tent contains the False Negative’s film canister. It hides a micro-rupture! Exposed to light, the artifact’s magic flares, creating colour-inverted duplicates of the PCs.
These Negatives fight as Khaibits and take damage as Firebolt from Flash and sunlight. Their originals can’t harm them. Slain victims freeze, like a photo with flashing eyes. The Negative panics in light, but longs for rescue. Its shadows try explaining their strengths and weaknesses as they fight; they’re incapable of truth-telling. Once they’re dispatched, the rupture may be seen and patched.
If the unpatched canister falls, Troika itself is duplicated, threatening its existence.
An Adventure for Troika
Ingredients: Coin Tree, Existential Threat, Upper Decks, Week of the Monster, False Negative, Mysterious Flowers
BREAKING NEWS: Troika City Port Authority reports harbour snafu!
The Golden Barge Existential Threat, known for dangerous cargo, ran aground on a strange silver tree, spawned from its own treasure hold. Rumour says the ship holds the False Negative, a legendary photograph that threatens the Autarchy’s existence.
Cross the City! Navigate the Week of the Monster’s carnival-riots! Scale the Coin Tree! Pluck mysterious metal flowers! Board the upper decks of the ruined Existential Threat; Troika, the Great City, depends on it!
The False Negative (Player-known information)
The last remaining photonegative depicting the Autarch in an embarrassing situation. It’s illegal to speak of, except to decry its deceitfulness. This taboo imbues it with intense magical power. Aristocrats wish it recovered. If published, it'll weaken the Autarch!
Hooks:
Secure the False Negative (for sale or political leverage)
Clear the port
Investigate wreck, rescue survivors
Week of the Monster
This traditional seven-day Troikan festival involves monster masks, simulated crime, and real debauchery. It celebrates the Great Scam, when Troika convinced invaders they’d raided hell by mistake. The festival makes travel slow and dangerous. Count each delay; the PCs race against the Autarch’s forces!
Immediately, Mask Vendors accost the party. They won’t sell without ‘a sporting haggle’ (causing delay). Navigating the parades, riots, and wet t-shirt contests filling the streets creates three more encounters.
D6 Encounters (x3)
1.Werewolf-masked Shopkeepers pretend to rob themselves, throwing promotional loot to the mob, trusting their insurance to cover the giveaway. Delay earns a Pistolet, Velare, or strung coin necklace (d66sp).
2.Tower Wizards in Devil Masks cast Purple Lens on anyone looking serious. This enchantment causes optimism and delay.
3.Parchment Witches wear papier-mache human masks and lure unmasked victims into alleys with spellbooks (Flash, Jolt, Find).
4.Pickpocketed by Gremlins wearing Gremlin masks! They don’t ‘get’ the holiday. Chasing them causes delay.
5.Eyeball-masked culture critics (d3 Trolls) demand you delay. “Explain how your mask expresses your soul!” They flee if questioned.
6.Living Dead wrapped in toilet paper pose as mummies, boasting of ‘majestic pyramidal tombs’. Listening causes delay; not listening causes offense!
Coin Tree Roots
Harbour chaos! Golden barges hover, plasmic reserves dwindling. An enormous silver tree pierces the Existential Threat. Longshoremen debate solutions.
Delay >2: 2d6 Autarch-serving Man-Beasts arrive.
The tower’s origin is clear from its base; each silver pence aboard the Threat split like a seed, sprouting a silvery tree. Those metal growths fused into this massive structure. Test Climb to avoid delay.
Coin Tree Branches
A choice! Take the scenic route through Mysterious Flowers, causing delay? Or make straight for the Threat’s breached underhull, risking trouble with the d6 Harpies harvesting silver bark?
Mysterious Flowers
Amidst the branches, strange flowers bloom, enticing the curious and greedy. Harvesting causes delay. High branches grant access to the Threat’s upper decks.
Flowers
Gold - Attracts Jolt spells. Worth 100sp.
Copper - Test Shield to reflect Jolt spells. Worth 1sp.
Silver - Throw as Knives+1. Worth 10sp.
Tin - Sniff-potion: Assume Shape.
Lead - Sniff-potion: Immunity to metal magic (flowers, idols, Stormgulls).
Iron - Sniff-potion: Deal and take +1 damage for a day.
The Existential Threat
Lower Decks (Haz-Mat Hold)
Branches pierce the ruined hull. Bosun Soren Alsarte clutches a Golden Idol and babbles about life’s meaninglessness. He’s mad, but knows the False Negative’s canister is ruptured. Given purpose, he becomes a Henchman.
Coins near the Idol burst into metal trees (Spear damage within melee). Worth 10,000sp; tricky to sell, anathema to banks.
Upper Decks
Cpt. Camus and crew are frozen in violent death, eyes flashing irregularly like photobulbs (2:6 chance/round of casting Flash). Blind combat movement is dangerous; Test Luck or fall!
Stormgulls, bloated on conductive metals, cavort in the light. They attack as 3d3 Owls, cast Jolt, and can’t be blinded.
A locked door and blackened windows block the Captain’s Quarters.
Delay >2: It’s night when you arrive.
False Negative Finale!
In the Captain's pitch-black quarters, a sunproof tent contains the False Negative’s film canister. It hides a micro-rupture! Exposed to light, the artifact’s magic flares, creating colour-inverted duplicates of the PCs.
These Negatives fight as Khaibits and take damage as Firebolt from Flash and sunlight. Their originals can’t harm them. Slain victims freeze, like a photo with flashing eyes. The Negative panics in light, but longs for rescue. Its shadows try explaining their strengths and weaknesses as they fight; they’re incapable of truth-telling. Once they’re dispatched, the rupture may be seen and patched.
If the unpatched canister falls, Troika itself is duplicated, threatening its existence.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Troika!
I know, right? Troika is marvelous.
Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
Judgment for Round 1 Match 4: @Whizbang Dustyboots vs @AustinHolm
Rules and Readability
Both Root of all Evil (hereafter referred to as "Root!") and Crashed in the Coin Tree (hereafter "Crashed") were turned in on time and under the 750 word count limit. Both entries remains unedited, and all other tournament rules appear to have been well followed. Full barks for both.
Which brings us to readability. Both entries were well organized, but I will say I did find myself having the thought, after my initial read of the two entries, "If I see another explanation point again it will be too soon". Crashed would be considered a little too enthusiastic on its own, but it seems downright tame compared to Root!, which if it contains a single period, I cannot find it. The short, clipped writing style is what we've come to expect from these early round, 750-word entries; my eyes genuinely feel tired, though, after this read. I'm not sure if that's actually a fault of either entry or a me thing, but as a subjective thing it does detract, at least a little bit for me, from the readability especially of Root. This will likely have minimal, if any, impact on my judgment, however.
Adventure Flow & Potential
This is my subjective "what did I generally like/dislike about the adventures" section of the judgment.
Root! is an exciting and complex race with so many moving pieces and potential complications and obstacles that it begs to be run. Every character or creature or faction involved is fun and intriguing. If anything I would dial back on the presence of traitors in both religious factions; I worry that it might create too many moving pieces and dilute from the role that each group is meant to play. Finally, as much as I complained about how physically sore reading this entry made me, I'm also an absolute sucker for a strong stylistic writing choice. So it balances out, mostly. This particular choice simply wasn't a hit for me.
Crashed here presents its own intriguing and chaotic race, though I can't help but feel like it contains less of a sense of urgency, particularly since any direct competition for the final prize only truly serves as a direct issue to one of the three possible hooks. i recognize this is a personal bugaboo of mine; I would have preferred a single stronger hook, one that puts the players directly on the hunt for the False Negative. Other judges might more appreciate the option of hooks, however. In addition, while my personal knowledge of Troika! is a bit limited, I really do like how the setting here blends the strange and the mundane; with its down-to-earth political machinations and absurdity of the rest of the city and the dilemma. I care about the world of this adventure more than I do its counterpart in Root!
This one is extremely close to me; with a stronger hook Crashed would probably be a better adventure to me; but as it is I lean slightly more in the direction of Root!
This will likely be decided by the ingredients.
The Ingredients
These are both extremely good Iron DM entries, so keep that in mind as I discuss some of the positives and negatives I see in these adventures.
Coin Tree
One thing that is going to make judging these two entries extremely difficult is how similar they are in a lot of ways. It's going to be difficult talking about this ingredient, Existential Threat, and Upper Decks separately, because both entries are using these ingredients in a nearly identical weave, with the tree and the boat and consequences therein serving as the existential threat. I am inclined to lead towards Root! here, as the coin tree itself is what's at issue, whereas in Crashed the tree(s) are the result of a cursed idol that seems to otherwise have little bearing on the rest of the adventure. The tree in Roots! is thus more central, as a goal and not just an as an obstacle.
Existential Threat
There are a few things that begin to stand out as red flags as a season Iron DM judge, and few stand out as much as naming something in the adventure after the name of an ingredient, which meant that the ship named "Existential Threat" in Crashed stood out as a red flag. Root! again centers its existential threat as front and center and driving the adventure, asking the tough, existential questions like "What would a society money is free and thus meaningless actually look like?" and "Why are economists always just the worst?" (I feel like those questions should be interrobangs, honestly
). And if Crashed had left its "Existential Threat" as just the name of its ship, Root! would have run away with this ingredient.
However, Crashed doesn't stop there, layering multiple existential threats (What happens if the cursed idol grows things more out of control than it already has? What happens if the Autaurch can actually be brought low? How do the players react to facing off against themselves? And what does accidentally creating a second Troika mean?) upon each other in a way that makes the adventure more terrifying the more than you dig into it. This is a really great ingredient usage for Root!, but it's used even better here in Crashed.
Upper Decks
The Upper Decks of both ships serve as the primary location of both adventures. It's a good solid usage and I really do not see too much to separate one from the other. If anything, there's more going on in the Upper Decks of Roots! which is enough to give Root! here a slight advantage.
Week of the Monster
This one was a tough one. I feel like on the surface for both entries this is a fair use, but it also fails on several levels in both adventures. In Root! we have the weekly match for the ship's first mate, with the "monstrous" Brahm cheating and therefore winning every week. This means that we're no longer talking about a single week (Brahm seems to have been in control for quite some time), and other than calling out his personality as "monstrous" we don't really get any kind of sense of what makes him a Monster at all rather than just a bad dude and a Mr. Hyde reference. It makes for a neat bit of backstory but with the time pressure and all of the other obstacles and competition I'm not sure how relevant this whole Jekyll/Hyde thing is going to be for the players, ultimately. Meanwhile, Crashed gives us a festival named "Week of the Monster" and makes such festival a source of some fun and interesting complications while we make our to the actual point of the adventure, but we never really get a sense of why this ingredient is necessary in this adventure. Sure, the added obstacles help add time pressure to the players, which isn't bad at all, but I feel like I could remove this festival and replace it with any number of similar sets of encounters without really changing the nature of the event.
I think this one is a tie.
False Negative
Once again, Crashed came in with an important piece of the adventure named after an ingredient. The reason we call this out as a red flag is because, often, the name is utterly meaningless and only there to satisfy the ingredient usage. And by about 90% of the way through the adventure, that's what I was thinking it was, beyond the clever bit of wordplay with a photography negative. But then, Crashed turns this around by the end, giving us a photograph that creates false copies (false in the sense that they are photographic copies but also in the sense that they cannot speak the truth). What creates the copies? The rupture and exposure to light. It is a False Negative in so many different ways, I would almost have hoped that the entry doesn't outright name it as such. It's not needed.
On the other hand we have the opposite end, a use so subtle that I missed it entirely in my first two readings. What I think is the intended use of the ingredient in Root! is the Oracle Flowers, or at least their cheap knock-off versions showing false visions of the future based on the viewers' wishes... but this seems to be more of a case of a False Positive instead of a False Negative. Presumably nobody wants to see negative things happen to them in the future. Tying two ingredients together is usually a really good thing to do (as both adventures have done with their first three ingredients), but I can't help but think even I'm missing something very obvious or that this is an incorrect usage of the ingredient.
Crashed takes this one.
Mysterious Flowers
We have the Oracle Flowers of Root! and the Metallic Flowers of Crashed. In both adventures they are tied to the nature of the tree, though in the former they are present in the garden alongside the tree and in the latter they are a consequence of the tree (though no less arbitrary, ultimately). They both present as obstacles and as a temptation. I think, that by both tying the Metal Flowers to the Coin Tree and providing an actual trade-off making the temptation potentially worthwhile instead of just a trap, creating an interesting decision point for the players, that Crashed handles this one a little bit better.
In Conclusion
This has been one of the most difficult matches to judge I've had in a long time. We have two genuinely very strong entries that have done some really cool things with some fairly difficult ingredients. We end with up with two adventures with a lot of similarities, especially superficially. This one has come down to the details. And while I think one entry is, on the whole, stronger and more cohesive in general in the details of the adventure overall, the other entry is stronger when we dig into the details of how the ingredients have been used. And, when in doubt, I have to err on the side of the ingredients.
Bring on Round 2!
Rules and Readability
Both Root of all Evil (hereafter referred to as "Root!") and Crashed in the Coin Tree (hereafter "Crashed") were turned in on time and under the 750 word count limit. Both entries remains unedited, and all other tournament rules appear to have been well followed. Full barks for both.
Which brings us to readability. Both entries were well organized, but I will say I did find myself having the thought, after my initial read of the two entries, "If I see another explanation point again it will be too soon". Crashed would be considered a little too enthusiastic on its own, but it seems downright tame compared to Root!, which if it contains a single period, I cannot find it. The short, clipped writing style is what we've come to expect from these early round, 750-word entries; my eyes genuinely feel tired, though, after this read. I'm not sure if that's actually a fault of either entry or a me thing, but as a subjective thing it does detract, at least a little bit for me, from the readability especially of Root. This will likely have minimal, if any, impact on my judgment, however.
Adventure Flow & Potential
This is my subjective "what did I generally like/dislike about the adventures" section of the judgment.
Root! is an exciting and complex race with so many moving pieces and potential complications and obstacles that it begs to be run. Every character or creature or faction involved is fun and intriguing. If anything I would dial back on the presence of traitors in both religious factions; I worry that it might create too many moving pieces and dilute from the role that each group is meant to play. Finally, as much as I complained about how physically sore reading this entry made me, I'm also an absolute sucker for a strong stylistic writing choice. So it balances out, mostly. This particular choice simply wasn't a hit for me.
Crashed here presents its own intriguing and chaotic race, though I can't help but feel like it contains less of a sense of urgency, particularly since any direct competition for the final prize only truly serves as a direct issue to one of the three possible hooks. i recognize this is a personal bugaboo of mine; I would have preferred a single stronger hook, one that puts the players directly on the hunt for the False Negative. Other judges might more appreciate the option of hooks, however. In addition, while my personal knowledge of Troika! is a bit limited, I really do like how the setting here blends the strange and the mundane; with its down-to-earth political machinations and absurdity of the rest of the city and the dilemma. I care about the world of this adventure more than I do its counterpart in Root!
This one is extremely close to me; with a stronger hook Crashed would probably be a better adventure to me; but as it is I lean slightly more in the direction of Root!
This will likely be decided by the ingredients.
The Ingredients
These are both extremely good Iron DM entries, so keep that in mind as I discuss some of the positives and negatives I see in these adventures.
Coin Tree
One thing that is going to make judging these two entries extremely difficult is how similar they are in a lot of ways. It's going to be difficult talking about this ingredient, Existential Threat, and Upper Decks separately, because both entries are using these ingredients in a nearly identical weave, with the tree and the boat and consequences therein serving as the existential threat. I am inclined to lead towards Root! here, as the coin tree itself is what's at issue, whereas in Crashed the tree(s) are the result of a cursed idol that seems to otherwise have little bearing on the rest of the adventure. The tree in Roots! is thus more central, as a goal and not just an as an obstacle.
Existential Threat
There are a few things that begin to stand out as red flags as a season Iron DM judge, and few stand out as much as naming something in the adventure after the name of an ingredient, which meant that the ship named "Existential Threat" in Crashed stood out as a red flag. Root! again centers its existential threat as front and center and driving the adventure, asking the tough, existential questions like "What would a society money is free and thus meaningless actually look like?" and "Why are economists always just the worst?" (I feel like those questions should be interrobangs, honestly
). And if Crashed had left its "Existential Threat" as just the name of its ship, Root! would have run away with this ingredient.However, Crashed doesn't stop there, layering multiple existential threats (What happens if the cursed idol grows things more out of control than it already has? What happens if the Autaurch can actually be brought low? How do the players react to facing off against themselves? And what does accidentally creating a second Troika mean?) upon each other in a way that makes the adventure more terrifying the more than you dig into it. This is a really great ingredient usage for Root!, but it's used even better here in Crashed.
Upper Decks
The Upper Decks of both ships serve as the primary location of both adventures. It's a good solid usage and I really do not see too much to separate one from the other. If anything, there's more going on in the Upper Decks of Roots! which is enough to give Root! here a slight advantage.
Week of the Monster
This one was a tough one. I feel like on the surface for both entries this is a fair use, but it also fails on several levels in both adventures. In Root! we have the weekly match for the ship's first mate, with the "monstrous" Brahm cheating and therefore winning every week. This means that we're no longer talking about a single week (Brahm seems to have been in control for quite some time), and other than calling out his personality as "monstrous" we don't really get any kind of sense of what makes him a Monster at all rather than just a bad dude and a Mr. Hyde reference. It makes for a neat bit of backstory but with the time pressure and all of the other obstacles and competition I'm not sure how relevant this whole Jekyll/Hyde thing is going to be for the players, ultimately. Meanwhile, Crashed gives us a festival named "Week of the Monster" and makes such festival a source of some fun and interesting complications while we make our to the actual point of the adventure, but we never really get a sense of why this ingredient is necessary in this adventure. Sure, the added obstacles help add time pressure to the players, which isn't bad at all, but I feel like I could remove this festival and replace it with any number of similar sets of encounters without really changing the nature of the event.
I think this one is a tie.
False Negative
Once again, Crashed came in with an important piece of the adventure named after an ingredient. The reason we call this out as a red flag is because, often, the name is utterly meaningless and only there to satisfy the ingredient usage. And by about 90% of the way through the adventure, that's what I was thinking it was, beyond the clever bit of wordplay with a photography negative. But then, Crashed turns this around by the end, giving us a photograph that creates false copies (false in the sense that they are photographic copies but also in the sense that they cannot speak the truth). What creates the copies? The rupture and exposure to light. It is a False Negative in so many different ways, I would almost have hoped that the entry doesn't outright name it as such. It's not needed.
On the other hand we have the opposite end, a use so subtle that I missed it entirely in my first two readings. What I think is the intended use of the ingredient in Root! is the Oracle Flowers, or at least their cheap knock-off versions showing false visions of the future based on the viewers' wishes... but this seems to be more of a case of a False Positive instead of a False Negative. Presumably nobody wants to see negative things happen to them in the future. Tying two ingredients together is usually a really good thing to do (as both adventures have done with their first three ingredients), but I can't help but think even I'm missing something very obvious or that this is an incorrect usage of the ingredient.
Crashed takes this one.
Mysterious Flowers
We have the Oracle Flowers of Root! and the Metallic Flowers of Crashed. In both adventures they are tied to the nature of the tree, though in the former they are present in the garden alongside the tree and in the latter they are a consequence of the tree (though no less arbitrary, ultimately). They both present as obstacles and as a temptation. I think, that by both tying the Metal Flowers to the Coin Tree and providing an actual trade-off making the temptation potentially worthwhile instead of just a trap, creating an interesting decision point for the players, that Crashed handles this one a little bit better.
In Conclusion
This has been one of the most difficult matches to judge I've had in a long time. We have two genuinely very strong entries that have done some really cool things with some fairly difficult ingredients. We end with up with two adventures with a lot of similarities, especially superficially. This one has come down to the details. And while I think one entry is, on the whole, stronger and more cohesive in general in the details of the adventure overall, the other entry is stronger when we dig into the details of how the ingredients have been used. And, when in doubt, I have to err on the side of the ingredients.
This is a really tough one, because the more that I try to compare the two adventures the more I come away more impressed with Root! than with Crashed. But this says more about Root! than it does about Crashed, which is genuinely also a very good, very exciting adventure. Were the ingredients closer, this would be enough to make a difference. However, as far as I can see Crashed in the Coin Tree has the edge on ingredients, and thus I declare it the winner of this match.
@Whizbang Dustyboots, you are not only the returning Iron DM champion but also a damn good adventuer writer and designer in your own right. Against a lesser entry this one easily had what it takes to reach the next round. My inability to grok what you were trying to do with False Negative might have even been enough to swing the tide the other way. But you were up against a genuinely impressive and strong entry that weaved its ingredients together in a way that I've rarely seen before. You will undoubtedly be back here and in the mix again, I am confident.
As it is though, congratulations are in order to @AustinHolm, who has advanced to the second round!
@Whizbang Dustyboots, you are not only the returning Iron DM champion but also a damn good adventuer writer and designer in your own right. Against a lesser entry this one easily had what it takes to reach the next round. My inability to grok what you were trying to do with False Negative might have even been enough to swing the tide the other way. But you were up against a genuinely impressive and strong entry that weaved its ingredients together in a way that I've rarely seen before. You will undoubtedly be back here and in the mix again, I am confident.
As it is though, congratulations are in order to @AustinHolm, who has advanced to the second round!
Bring on Round 2!
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FitzTheRuke
Legend
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Jack Kirby made me do it. I felt myself slipping into Appendix N Jam mode -- it was a really influential event on me this summer -- and wanted to go with big Kirby energy to differentiate this entry somewhat, which meant that there were indeed no periods in the final entry.
Great job, @AustinHolm! I really liked the Week of the Monster being a festival with a completely Troika-appropriate background and the use of a photographic negative.
I meant for my false negative to be the dice game, but that was clearly too subtle to pick up.
