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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 9777771" data-attributes="member: 57112">Judgment for Round 2 Match 1: [USER=7054007]@AustinHolm[/USER] vs. [USER=5948]@humble minion[/USER] Rules and ReadabilityBoth So Real it Burns (hereafter referred to as "Burns") and Forgotten Meat (hereafter "Meat") were turned in on time and under the 1500 word count limit. Both entries remains unedited, and all other tournament rules appear to have been well followed. Full marks for both.Which brings us to readability. "Burns" is a well organized adventure that lacked, to me, any noticeable grammatical or spelling issues. "Meat" is just a tad more haphazardly organized, with a few noticeable grammatical errors and typos. For readability, I have to give a slight nod to "Burns" here.Adventure Flow & PotentialThis is my subjective "what did I generally like/dislike about the adventures" section of the judgment.First off, I'd like to note that in the Judges' chat, after we completed this ingredient set but before I posted them, I added the following gif:<img src="https://media2.giphy.com/media/AwrtP9lMXtXiM/200.gif" alt="america guy GIF" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 287px" />So this is just me noting: called it."Burns" and "Meat" both follow remarkably similar structures; there is a human colony where Bad Things(TM) are happening. In "Burns" the Bad Things are caused by the aliens themselves; in "Meat" it's mostly the Company and its assets (typical of the Alien franchise, really). Things are not at all what they seem, details are being hidden, the people in the know are difficult to get that knowledge from, the mines hold hidden dangers, and it all culminates in a chaotic attempt at flight.The are many differences, of course, in the individual details, but the reason I bring up these similarities is because these are both incredible adventures. Might be some of the most engaging adventures I've read in these competitions. Definitely anthology worthy. Both are sure to be extremely tense, paranoia-filled investigations as the who and what to trust becomes increasingly foggier. I describe them together because, quite simply, I don't know how to choose one over the other. Both of our contestants should be extremely proud of what they've put before us today. I can't even suggest a hint of a lean in either direction. I want to run them both.As usual, this will likely be decided by the ingredients.The IngredientsI want to reiterate that again, these are both exemplary adventures. The flipside to that is that with both adventures being so equally strong, I feel that in order to really determine a winner I'm going to have to get really rigorous with how I judge the ingredient usages. Which adventure will come out on top? I write these judgments linearly, so I haven't the foggiest idea. Let's find out together, shall we?Flaming SpiritsI'm glad that both entries caught on to the double-entendre meaning of this ingredient. Booze is flammable, and aliens so often seem have a weakness to fire. Both alcohol stocks are tied to essential NPCs that the players will want to have on their sides when things break bad. "Burns" gives us both sides of the double entendre, at the same time, which is great. I was initially a little bit skeptical of why the illusions people were seeing were of flaming spirits, but the tie to what the colonists think happened to Katrina (ie, she burned to death), along with the very useful stash of moonstone (useful for both igniting and for drinking to resist the psychic illusions) helps turn an otherwise weakly utilized ingredient into a strong one. We have some non-alcoholic spirits mentioned in "Meat", with the naming of the NOMs and the digitized spirits of the drag queens-...God damnit. I just got it.<sigh>Yeah, so... I'm gonna call this one a tie for now.Harsh RealityWell, this is really the crux of both entries, isn't it? With "Burns" we have the truth of what's really been happening to the colonists all this time. This ties into the central structure of the adventure's plot, and the players will have to confront it. Meanwhile, in "Meat", this is the reality that the remaining colonists aren't going to get to leave, and are meant to simply just die there. This ties into so many different complicating factors within the plot, from the missing colonists (a lovely misdirect as the xenomorph isn't actually responsible for any until it hatches), to Miss Primrose's coverups, to the remaining colonists potentially trying to steal the players' ship. "Burns'" use here is very strong; "Meat's" is just stronger.Gelatinous PyramidThis is the point where we judges really start to narrow down every piece of an ingredient to judge an entry's usage. Does the Pyramid being Gelatinous matter so much that if the ingredient was Skeletal Pyramid or Meat Pyramid or Smooth Pyramid would it alter the nature of the adventure? Or what if the ingredient was Gelatinous Sphere? Or Gelatinous Cube? "Meat" gives us, well, the Meat Pyramid. Both words in the ingredient here is a stretch. Is a thawing block of decaying organic waste gelatinous? Maybe? It's a stretch. And I think the shape is a bigger stretch. Full corpses I could maybe see stacking neatly into something resembling a pyramid's shape (though "hill" or "pile" would be better suited), but we're having this called out as mostly as drainage and detritus. I imagine the pile would have ended up a fair bit flatter than a pyramid shape.Still, a stretch is going to be better than being entirely non-essential at all. I feel like I could replace the Gelatinous Pyramids from "Burns" and end up with the roughly the same adventure, just with a differently shaped/composed central structure. I was willing to give that the aliens being gelatinous made sense due to the shape-shifting, but they aren't really shape-shifting, are they? They're mostly emanating psychic illusions.I think I have to give this one to "Meat".Dead to the WorldI really like how this is used in both entries. Both entries tie this ingredient together with Harsh Reality to set the stage for a fun and chaotic finale. If I had to pick a slightly better usage here I'd lean towards "Burns" slightly in the way that Katrina's presence subverts the expectation that the ingredient provides. She is dead to the world, but it turns out she's not literally dead, and in fact in central to resolving the mystery here.Ancient SateliteOnce again we have very similarly used ingredients here. Both entries feature a satelite orbiting a world originally primed for farming/ranching. I never get a sense of what, exactly, makes either satelite all that ancient, however. Sure, in "Meat" the inhabitants of satelite are aging, and it's surely been mining there for a while, but that hardly passes the bar for "Ancient". Meanwhile, in "Burns", sure, the satelite and aliens have been on the planet for three million years, which definitely qualifies for "Ancient". But did it need to be that old? Would anything change if the aliens were newer arrivals? Or even if they arrived after the colonist? I don't think age the satelite would change anything about the adventure.Ultimately, this one comes down to the Satelite being the stage for most of the action in "Meat", whereas in "Burns" it is a minor anomaly, a mystery, on the way to the main location of the adventure. Sure, the prospect of its flaming wreckage crashing down onto the planet adds some fun chaos to the finale, but not enough to give it the edge over the pure centrality of the satelite in "Burns".Knowledge HoarderI really like how this is utilized in both entries. In "Meat" we have Miss Primrose, an absolutely delightful character that will be so much fun to run with as a GM. But while she is certainly hiding knowledge, is she really hoarding it? I guess, but again it feels a bit of a stretch. She is otherwise a very strong antagonist and the key to practically the entire mystery, so it's still a strong usage.Meanwhile, the aliens in "Burns" are literally hoarding the collected knowledge of their captives; it's their food, it's their raison d'etre. In "Meat", Miss Primrose has to hoard knowledge as a consequence of her plans. In "Burns", hoarding knowledge is the plan. That does make it stronger.Rampaging GnomesI can't speak for the other judges, but if I had to guess, I'd say that all three of us had high hopes for this ingredient. And for me, it was kind of a letdown. Both entries have gnomes, the gnomes do eventually rampage, the rampage is a central obstacle to the players' (at this point in the adventure) survival. So the winner of this ingredient is the one that best answers the question: but why do they have to be Gnomes?"Meat" gives us the the Non-Organic Mineworkers, or NOMs, affectionally named, and in some cases decorated, as Gnomes by the human colonists. The Alien franchise is set in future version of our own Earth, where gnomes were mythologically spirits often associated with mining and metallurgy. That mining link is tenuous, as I think realistically the NOMs could be replaced with another type of creature or reference without making too big of a difference, but it's not the biggest stretch in the world."Burns" gives us the psychic illusions of the aliens, who appear to humans as stationary garden gnomes. Why garden gnomes? Because these particular aliens, when observed, turn into weirdly, cutely, old-but-also-young versions of their beholders but at roughly 1/6 the size. Why is that what happens with these particular aliens? Because the ingredient was Gnomes. Does it create absolutely wonderful visual imagery? Yes. Could I see a sci-fi show like Star Trek having aliens do this exact thing for some reason? Yeah, I could. Do I love it? Hell yes. But it does it make the ingredient usage tenuous at best within the context of Iron DM? Unfortunately, that answer is also yes.I have to say, "Meat" gives us a slightly better answer to the question "Why gnomes?"In ConclusionThis has been one of the most delightful matches I've gotten to judge so far in Iron DM. I genuinely love both of these entries. I read the entries, as I write, sequentially, so I got to read "Burns" first, and my thinking while reading that was "damn, this is awesome, and is probably going to be tough to beat". Then I read "Meat", and, while presentation-wise it certainly was weaker, as an adventure it was just as incredible. I had to take this down to the ingredients, and while they weren't quite as close as I was expecting, it showed just how strong both of these adventures were not just as adventures, but as Iron DM entries.[SPOILER="The Judgment"]As much as I really do wish I could advance both of these entries, I have to go where the ingredients lead me. Thus, I have to say that "Forgotten Meat" is the winner of this match, and therefore [USER=5948]@humble minion[/USER] is my vote to advance to final round. But I am but one vote of three. We shall now see who has won this match.[/SPOILER]Now to see how the other judges have voted, and announce the winning entry.</blockquote>

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