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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 9763313" data-attributes="member: 57112">Judgment for Round 1 Match 1: [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] Rules and ReadabilityAnd He Commenced a Great Burning (hereafter referred to as "Burning") was turned in on time and well under the 750 word count limit. The entry remains unedited, and all other tournament rules appear to have been well followed. The entry is well written, organized, and highly readable. I'm not a copy editor by any means, but I didn't notice any grammatical or spelling errors that took me out of the experience. Top marks on this front.Sadly we did not receive a competing entry to this adventure. This is a situation without precedent, at least for me as a judge, and so I've found myself having difficulty deciding how to proceed. My judgment style is often predicated on a comparison between two entries, and so having to provide critique to a single adventure on its own merit has necessitated an unwelcome shift. I will say that as a result I think that I will end up being more critical about the ingredient usage than I otherwise would be; with particularly difficult ingredients (and some of these were very difficult!) it's a little bit easier to see two authors both struggle incorporating the ingredient, and also easier for me as a judge to pull out the positives to decide which adventure had the upper hand. I hope that I am still able to provide feedback that is helpful, inspiring, and educational, not just to the author but to all of our participants.Adventure Flow & PotentialThis is my subjective "what did I generally like/dislike about the adventures" section of the judgment. Burning is a compelling adventure that feels perfectly emblematic of its genre. It is not reinventing any wheels, certainly, but it hits all the usual notes and is, I believe, a strong example of the form. You have your mad cultist, blood sacrifices, a solid environmental hazard, a gang of street thugs inexplicably working for somebody trying to bring about an apocalypse, the whole works. If there's anything missing it's the presence of squicky things to fight/flee, but I guess that's only if the investigators fail to stop the ritual!If I had to nitpick one thing, it's that the investigators in this adventure don't get to do much actually investigating. The fire breaks out before they even have a chance to process what they've learned at the stockyard, and from there it's straight to the action. Introducing a gap in time would allow investigators to, for instance, research more about the number and type of cattle, allowing them to, perhaps, prepare some of those blessings and spells to best counteract the ritual.The IngredientsAs mentioned earlier, this is probably the part that is going to come across as harsher than my normal output as a judge. There are some weak ingredient uses here. There are also some remarkable strong ones as well. This is typical!  Again, I hope that you all are able to find this segment of the critique instructional and inspiring.Loosed ChangeOkay, okay, look, so sometimes, some judges <eyes Rune> get into their head to contribute ingredients to the larger pool that... don't make a whole ton of sense. I in fact received a "this was a typo, right?" message regarding this one. Here's the really dirty secret; you might be wondering what we judges would be looking for out of an ingredient like this. The answer is, we don't have the foggiest idea, but luckily for us, that's your job to deal. Some people just want to watch the world burn. We wouldn't know what to do with it ourselves if we got it. We just... do things.But enough judge secrets and Heath Ledger Joker references. You want to know what I thought of how well Burning incorporated this ingredient. And the answer to that is... pretty well, actually. The villain is certainly trying to loose change on the world (or at least London), and it's a central piece of the adventure that the players have to engage with. That's about all that we could ask for, honestly. I might quibble a bit on the conjugation (the Change is not actually Loosed, past tense, unless the players fail), but that's the sort of the thing that would only make or break the ingredient in a straight comparison.Half a HandThis is a good example of an ingredient usage that is merely "okay", and also one that would be massively helped by improving the flow of the adventure itself. Here, "Half a Hand" is the clue to the investigators that O'Malley is the culprit of the cattle robbery. That's not bad. The problem is, as a clue, it's largely irrelevant, because the fire breaks out while they're still at the stockyard. This is a great example of how improving the flow of the adventure would actually benefit the ingredient use as well.Cattle WranglerHere's a great example of an deceptive ingredient that on the surface looks well used; there's a whole cattle wrangler right there, in the adventure. Great, right? The problem is, this usage here is actually fairly weak; James Burke is largely irrelevant to the adventure as a witness (again, a culprit of the "there's no time/room for actual investigation in this investigation"). It's even irrelevant that he's a cattle wrangler at all. There's some relevance to the cattle aspect, at least, so it could be worse, but even had the witness been relevant, they still could've been a farmhand, or a handyman, or a shepherd (you could also replace the bulls and sheep in the ritual) without changing the nature of the adventure at all. As far as ingredient usages go, it's better than being completely absent.Fire BrigadeThis, however, is a top tier ingredient usage. The Fire Brigade in question is related to the environmental hazard but also critical to the villain's main plan. They are, depending on things are going in any given moment: allies, obstacles, victims, and enemies. Their presence makes perfect sense, they are central to what the players are dealing with, and replacing them or removing them from the equation altogether totally alters key elements of the adventure. For those of you preparing for your own entries, this is the example you want to follow the most.Positive ImpactI would call this one a solid usage, one that would again have benefitted from giving the adventure more room to breath. The interpretation is a little bit of a stretch (the blessings and spells the investigators can cast to counteract the negative powers being added to the ritual), but given the difficulty of the ingredient it's really not bad at all. Nyarlathotep knows I've pulled my own share of incredible reaches in my time. Image of SuccessThis is probably the best example here we can get of what not to do; an ingredient that occurs entirely "off-screen". As a motivator for the villain, it has potential. But what chance to the players have of ever knowing or interacting with this fact? Again, this could have been another clue in the investigation that wasn't allowed to take place, something for the investigators to interpret and pull conclusions and useful strategies from. In any case, if your ingredient use is never interacted with by the players, that's barely a step above not being present at all.In ConclusionLook, I've been through this rodeo many times before myself. I know, all too keenly, that repeatedly hearing "this adventure would've strongly benefitted from more time to breathe" has got to sound rich coming from the same person that told you that you only had 750 words to work with. I get it. In more than a few cases, this additional scene would have greatly improved your scoring, overall, in this tournament. Probably far more than worth whatever you'd end up having to cut to work it in under the word count. But I also think, in general, that it would be good advice for you or anybody else who might want to turn your entry into an actual play. Sometimes that's valuable feedback to get too.[SPOILER="The Judgment"]Feels weird to spoiler a foregone conclusion, but I feel it's best to keep this consistent.[USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER], you have provided here a genuinely good Iron DM entry. It's a fun adventure, and you have, or at least come close to, nailing a particularly tricky set of ingredients. As long as you focus on making each ingredient incredibly relevant to the players' interactions, and irreplaceable with any other potential ingredient, you'll make it far in these tournaments.As it is, congratulations are in order! I will see you in the second round![/SPOILER]Bring on Match 2!</blockquote>

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