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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 9801658" data-attributes="member: 57112">Judgment for Championship Match: [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] vs. [USER=7054007]@AustinHolm[/USER] Rules and ReadabilityBoth PARADiS3 R3GAiNED (hereafter referred to as "Paradise") and Traumhammer (hereafter "Hammer") were turned in on time and under the 2000 word count limit. Both entries remains unedited, and all other tournament rules appear to have been well followed. Full marks for both. Both entries are also easily readable and reasonably well organized. I noticed one minor typo in "Paradise", and both entries introduce references to names or concepts before they are introduced, which threw me for a bit of a loop, but I trusted both entries would eventually explain themselves well, and I was not wrong.I don't really see much to favor one entry over the other here.Adventure Flow & PotentialThis is my subjective "what did I generally like/dislike about the adventures" section of the judgment."Paradise" is a tightly designed cyberpunk heist. I'm unfamiliar with the system in use but its use of counters and clocks call to mind a hi-tech version of Blades in the Dark. We miss out on the planning phase, with the plan seemingly set for the party by FP, but if my use of BitD as a heist touchstone says anything about my approach to heist adventuring, it's that meticulous pre-planning is not something I find essential. There's plenty of character and fun genre trappings here, and there's a lot of room for chaos as our thieves grow more desperate and more challenged. This is a great adventure."Hammer" gives a standard D&D adventure structure (chase down thieves, retrieve the macguffin, save the kingdom) but provides an incredible amount of color and strangeness from the hook and the actual substance of the adventure. There's a lot of fun to be had here, and as a solid D&D adventure it offers plenty of encounters designed along all three pillars of play. The dream logic associated with the power of the macguffin helps tie some of the otherwise incongruous elements a bit more strongly together, and presents several memorable encounters.These are both strong adventures. I think from a personal preference standpoint I like "Paradise" slightly more, and I think it is a little bit more strongly tied together, overall, than "Hammer". It's a slight edge; we'll see if it makes a difference.The IngredientsAnd now we get to the ingredients. I made sure to really put these adventures through the ringer on judging this list of ingredients. As usual, we get a lot of great uses, and a lot of uses that left me sorely disappointed. Let's see how they shake out.Shrimp HeavenRight out of the gate we get the weirdest one on the list, and one that I will happily take the credit (blame?) for. Both adventures commit some cardinal sins with how they use this ingredient, but there's also a clear winner here. "Paradise", sadly, relegates this to a piece of background lore that is in no real way relevant to the characters, and I don't even know how or why they would learn about it. You can cut this one right out without changing the adventure at all. This is also technically true when it comes to the Shrimp Heaven found in "Hammer". This is the danger involved in calling on dream logic in your Iron DM entry; when you're introducing out of left field, it could be replaced by any other thing that's out of left field. It's certainly the weirdest part of this adventure, and it really helps to set the tone for what this adventure is trying to do at this point in it. So I can't knock it too bad.Aggressive PuzzleThis one hurts, because I was expecting something really cool out of this. Instead, this ingredient leads to what are easily the weakest portions of each adventure. The diversion with Parcival in "Paradise" is at least thematically and internally consistent and helps set the tone of the adventure, but as an obstacle he's fairly replaceable. He is at least something that the characters need to deal with on the way to completing the heist. The same cannot be said for Rätsel in "Hammer". When I first encountered him in the adventure I thought that his presence made a certain kind of sense; Traumbildhur is introduced as a sculptor "of a kind" and he has a hammer. But as I reread the adventure and with each reread Rätsel sticks out more and more like a sore thumb. Traumbildhur's a dreamsculptor; we really get nothing from his character or his location that calls to him crafting much of anything physical. His existence doesn't tie into the dream-wish aesthetic at all, either. This leaves the golem as this weird thing that seems to only exist only to fulfill the ingredient use. I think his presence does, ultimately, add a lot of the actual structure of the adventure, and the adventure with him there, but some alternate implacable force of destruction would have done just as well, and might have even enhanced it.Restless ThievesNow we're cooking with gasoline. Both adventures utilize this ingredient extremely well. In "Paradise", this is the characters themselves, and I'm a sucker for making the players an ingredient. The restlessness aspect might have been incorporated a little more strongly into the adventure however; most of the source of this is again relegated to background. Presumably, over the course of a longer campaign one could be building this up in the background. As a standalone, however, it's not as strong as it could be. Which is a shame because "Paradise" had an opportunity to tie this more strongly into another ingredient to make both of them stronger, but I think, unfortunately, it drops the ball in that area."Hammer" gives us the thieves as our primary antagonists. Are they restless? Absolutely. Why are they restless? Because they won't sleep. Why won't they sleep? Because they stole the hammer. This is how it's done; tying both pieces of the ingredient together so tightly that you couldn't have one without the other. Furthermore, the thieves are also incredibly fun and varied antagonists, presenting an interesting array of challenges. Absolutely impeccable. No notes.Weight of InevitabilityIn "Hammer", this is what is killing Traumbildhaur. It's present, it's something that the characters have to solve, and all-in-all, it's an incredibly clever interpretation of the ingredient. Well done.I'm going to be honest, I've read through "Paradise" several times and I cannot find exactly where this is supposed to be. It's maybe a little too subtle for me. It might be the countdown clocks that lead to the alarm? That is, I think, the best and most generous reading. On the one hand... that's not bad! On the other hand, that's a feature of a lot of heists? I don't know, I think I was just looking for something a little stronger, a little more here.Death WishTraumbildhaur losing his hammer means he's dying a very slow, very painful death, one that even getting his hammer back apparently will not prevent for... reasons. I'm assuming because otherwise this ingredient wouldn't be (a) central and (b) present at all. That's fine though; I think this is still pretty solid, and when you tie it together with another ingredient, like done here in "Hammer", it strengthens both. "Paradise" here gives us... the Death WISH bots. Which are just killed robots that are called Wish for... reasons. Yeah, it's an acronym, but like... if there's one thing to take away from this for future tournaments, it's to please not make acronyms out of a part of an ingredient and hope that that'll work. It won't work.Fertile GroundThis is a solid use for "Paradise", as a biochem greenhouse/research lab that our thieves will have to get through, creating a bit of a thematic link with Paradise's backstory (the AI, not the adventure... though I guess both work). It's not entirely irreplaceable but it creates some fun, interesting obstacles to get through and the it ties well to the genre. "Hammer's" Fertile Ground ties into the power of the hammer, the plight of the thieves, the nature of the desert location, and the Shrimp Heaven ingredient from earlier. It's equal parts goofy and horrifying, which ties it pretty thematically strongly with all that is happening in the caves in the first place. I like it!Shoulder PadsHere we get some Shoulder Pads in both entries that are relatively important to the adventure. In "Paradise" the pads are essential; they contain the RFID chips that help our thieves break in to the central location, so they give us a little fetch quest before the heist (or pre-heist, as I've decided to call it). Why do the RFID chips need to be located in the shoulder pads? No clue. This hurts this ingredient use, a lot. "Hammer" gives us the Parasol Pauldrons which... I'm having a tough time conceptualizing, honestly. They provide cover from the sun and heat of the desert so they're certainly useful, but they also aren't mandatory, which really hurts this ingredient usage as well. I'm having a hard time seeing why they need to necessarily be on the shoulder in any case. I'll lean towards "Paradise" on this one, slightly, just because they're more centrally featured in the adventure.Imposter SyndromeIn "Hammer" this is Hochstapler, one of the thieves that Traumbildhaur got to because he made the mistake of giving in to the sleep. Now he thinks he's a Doppelgänger (sorry, Doppelganger... no umlaut here? I get it's a D&D thing but... come on...) and has gone even more insane than the lack of sleep is making the others. Now, in my own personal experience, Dopplegangers and Iron DM championship entries go together quite well. In this instance... it's really a clever usage, but I'm not sold on its irreplaceability. Still, Hochstapler and his imposter syndrome is really, strongly tone-setting at this point of the adventure, he makes a great antagonist (or ally?) so it's ultimately a good usage.Now we come to "Paradise", and this I think was the biggest missed opportunity in the adventure. This might be a feature of the setting or gameplay function that I'm personally not aware of, but I can't figure out a reason why wearing the SecCorp disguises leads to such strong distress in the player characters. If I just had a sense of why this was happening, this would not only be a very strong ingredient usage, but it would have bolstered the Restless Thieves ingredient usage as well, and maybe even a few of the others. It would've fit really well thematically and within the genre trappings as well. Instead, I'm just left with the idea that wearing the disguises stresses the players out for... reasons.In ConclusionThese are two very strong adventures from two contestants that have shown how strong they are at their craft. Unfortunately, one of them fell short as an entry, in part due to a failure to really capitalize on tying the ingredients. Therefore, there is only one judgment I can render.[SPOILER="The Judgment"]And that is that Traumhammer wins this match, and thus [USER=7054007]@AustinHolm[/USER] earns my vote to be THE Iron DM 2025.[/SPOILER]And now to see... was this the deciding vote? Or was this a foregone conclusion? Time to check.</blockquote>

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