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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lightful" data-source="post: 998332" data-attributes="member: 10870">I’m certain that all of the participants, judges, friends, followers and lurkers of the Iron DM competition series have their own thoughts on some of the small or not-so-small matters involved in hosting and running an effective Iron DM tourney. I thought we should bring it all to the table in an all-suggestions-are-welcome kind of way so as to better a favorite exercise in creativity.1. How often should an Iron DM competition be held ?2. How many participants and judges should there be ?3. How long should the entries be ?4. What, exactly, are the judges judging in an entry ?5. How much criticism of the judge is allowed ?And any other questions anyone else raises !Someone pointed out that holding an Iron DM competition too often would cheapen the title ? They are absolutely correct, in fact I’d say that the current rate of 1-per-season seems about right, but I do have a couple suggestions. To this point Iron DM has always been a knock-out system (lose and go home), but it could easily be formatted as a series or even a league with the judges awarding points from a set of (say 5) to either of the competitors, with the highest point total after everyone has faced off winning. I think it could even add to the excitement – imagine seasong holding on to a shaky 2 point lead over nemmerle leading up to the last round. Seasong is set to face the always competitive Quickbeam, while nemmerle needs all of the points he can muster against Wulf Ratbane who hasn’t been up to his own standards lately, but could pull out a fantastic entry anytime.There’s a lot of people who would like to take part in these competitions but the current format really doesn’t allow for that, a league would. Adding more competitors might require adding more judges – which may not be a bad thing regardless. The ceramic DM competition has a panel of 3, and I think that Iron DM could, possibly use the same (more on that later). Another thing which could be fun is a “themed” competition, one of the things I’d love to see is an Iron DM: Planescape ! Or a competition where the contestants themselves choose the ingredients !Many people have thoughts on the length of the entries. My opinion is that it should be limited, but not overly so. The premise of the competition is to use a set of differing ingredients in an adventure, writing up a “brief” campaign setting instead makes the whole exercise moot. The larger the scope of the entry the easier it becomes to use wildly differing ingredients, to the point of not actually having any one ingredient come into contact with any other ! Think of the original Iron Chef – the goal is to create a dish, not a six-course meal.Another matter discussed often is the use of ingredients in backstory so that the PC’s don’t actually ever interact with them. This leads to my next question. To this point Iron DM has been very free-form, and I’d hate to over regulate but I think that some kind of standards ought to be set, especially if only one person continues to judge. Piratecat, moderating, said that it’s all about who’s adventure appealed more to the judge. I disagree, it should be about writing the better adventure while using the ingredients in a meaningful way. Backstory ingredients that the characters can’t interact with are useless. Equally bad are “interchangeable” ingredients, those which could just as easily be something else if that something was required. In this last competition, one of the ingredients was a diseased paladin – great call by the judge, inspiring ingredient. Neither competitor used it, they both had diseased EX-paladins (to be fair one was a truly great character) and the judge didn’t call them out on that. Personally, I find that kind of laxity wrong – if it’s Iron DM – let’s keep it IRON.Judging this kind of thing isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s not so difficult either provided we can agree to some basic outlines. In this latest and the other Iron DM competitions I’ve found myself agreeing with the judges verdict most of the times – but a panel might help in certain cases, as would a clear definition of what is being judged. This would bring about a more level field, while still allowing a certain amount of whoring to the judge.Just my 2 cents (it all depends on the exchange rate !)Thanks for taking the time to read through this monstrous post and please, feel free to comment !</blockquote>

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