Rune
Once A Fool
One of the best side-effects of the incredibly competitive and extremely tough challenge that is the IRON DM TOURNAMENT is that a plethora of extraordinarily creative and high-quality short adventures--or adventure seeds are produced.
Because of the format of the tournament, these are usually light on mechanics or system-neutral and are, consequently, usually pretty easy to port over to an ongoing campaign.
Are they all good? Of course not. But this is an anthology, not an archive. To that end, the following post(s) will contain links to some of the entries I consider to be the very best for purposes of actually running (as opposed to meeting the criteria of the tournaments).
Additionally, I will include a very brief description of each adventure and a very simple rating.
The rating system:
Ease of Use: This category is a loose estimation of how easy I think the adventure would be to actually run based on ease of formatting, information, hooks, linearity (or lack thereof), and the like. It is rated on a scale of 1-5, with one being "practically unusable" and five "practically runs itself."
Awesome: This category is a loose estimation of just how memorable the adventure is (in a good way) for the players and the DM/GM, based on creativity, amazing imagery, rat-bastardy, and the like. It is rated on a scale of 1-5, with one being "either entirely forgettable, or memorable for all the wrong reasons" and five being "they'll be talking about this one years from now."
Unfortunately, only the EN World Iron DM Tournaments appear to have survived the years and still be available on the internet. The tournaments held at Nutkinland and the Rat Bastard DM's Club boards have disappeared with those sites. Consequently, all of these examples are pulled from only from the tournaments held on this site (and, regrettably, not the original tournament, which was on a previous incarnation of EN World).
As a final note, I encourage you all to post your favorites, as well. (And if anyone has archives of any of the lost tournaments, those would be cool, too!)
Because of the format of the tournament, these are usually light on mechanics or system-neutral and are, consequently, usually pretty easy to port over to an ongoing campaign.
Are they all good? Of course not. But this is an anthology, not an archive. To that end, the following post(s) will contain links to some of the entries I consider to be the very best for purposes of actually running (as opposed to meeting the criteria of the tournaments).
Additionally, I will include a very brief description of each adventure and a very simple rating.
The rating system:
Ease of Use: This category is a loose estimation of how easy I think the adventure would be to actually run based on ease of formatting, information, hooks, linearity (or lack thereof), and the like. It is rated on a scale of 1-5, with one being "practically unusable" and five "practically runs itself."
Awesome: This category is a loose estimation of just how memorable the adventure is (in a good way) for the players and the DM/GM, based on creativity, amazing imagery, rat-bastardy, and the like. It is rated on a scale of 1-5, with one being "either entirely forgettable, or memorable for all the wrong reasons" and five being "they'll be talking about this one years from now."
Unfortunately, only the EN World Iron DM Tournaments appear to have survived the years and still be available on the internet. The tournaments held at Nutkinland and the Rat Bastard DM's Club boards have disappeared with those sites. Consequently, all of these examples are pulled from only from the tournaments held on this site (and, regrettably, not the original tournament, which was on a previous incarnation of EN World).
As a final note, I encourage you all to post your favorites, as well. (And if anyone has archives of any of the lost tournaments, those would be cool, too!)