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Message: <blockquote data-quote="anonystu" data-source="post: 955180" data-attributes="member: 10897">Re: The Judge's apology.Thank you for the apology, Rune. I didn't feel like your analysis was unfair, but rather just sort of sad that a large amount of my effort just went to something that, in retrospect, was so obviously wrong.  I felt embarassed that what to me, was clearly a result of interpreting the contest differently, instead came across as mass ineptitude on my scale. When you say that the two entries were of completely different classes, I agree: I entered, mistakenly, into the "Abstract of a module" class, while Nemmerle entered into the "module without statblocks" class. He says it needs some polishing, but I think it would run great straight out of the post.Let me also say that I still have more interest in playing a final product of Nemmerle's than mine: while Nemmerle's reminds me of a lot of Cthluhu, I a) love cthulhu, and b) think that throwing a curve at players used to traditional high fantasy with this break is a great idea, and c) it's exactly the kind of game I like (that the PC's are agents in a game which continues whether or not they act).I'll do the proper exposition later, since I'm interested in going over what my expanded, full idea was before I started cutting it down to the 'right size'.Let's also say, I appreciate your work as judge: being the organizer of a convention (no, no plug, I'm staying good <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />), I understand the huge amount of work (almost always unappreciated) that goes into organizing anything, let alone, organizing well. Thanks for doing this.So, what I offer is not criticism, but rather advice for whoever runs Iron DM Fall 2003, which I will gladly participate in.I think a lot of what could be done to help this is to codify the rules more: rather than relying on people sifting past threads, just come up with a simple, concise, and clear set of rules, and issues like howandwhy99's "plagarism", and this, won't come up as often.The length issue: The question to me is not one of: what's the reasonable interpretation of what was said at the front of this thread (which would be unproductive at this point), but rather, what's a more interesting tournament in the long run? Are the pressures of trying to tie together six disparate elements into a coherent abstract of an outline more interesting than trying to write what amounts to a module minus stat blocks?I think, given the results shown here and elsewhere, that the latter is more desirable. So, encode this. Something like the following would work (please make suggestions):--Length: The level of detail is at your discretion, but we encourage entries to resemble anything between encounter outlines and full modules. Note that length or padding is not considered a virtue: whatever you can use best to clearly communicate your idea to the judge.Most entries have tended to average around 3-6 pages in word (single-spaced), as a rough guideline.--2) Systems: The dynamic here is that I clearly wanted to write a non-fantasy setting: while I can write and like playing fantasy, I wanted to earn those creativity points. This is why I tried to ascertain whether I could do this early. I was disappointed when my post was taken with a grain of salt because of using d20 modern: I didn't have the "room" to include d20 modern, and thought that both d20 modern was, while not common, certainly not uncommon.Next, there was the SRD to fall back on: if you had wanted to know what Department 7 was, google's first link, takes you straight to the SRD.If only you had told me, that either: the burden of clarity rests on the author for including all non-X setting material, or had just told me you knew spycraft, I could have either included the setting material necessary, or just adapated it to spycraft (which is one of my favorite games, although as my exposition will talk about, the spycraft version of this that was conceived and dismissed, had a much different flavor to it).The trick is of course, what's the non-x in the previous statement? Is it non-srd? non-core rulebook? non-greyhawk? non-fantasy? non-high-magic-standard-high-fantasy? That's why I'd recommend being open about it: at the start, with the rules, post the settings you're familiar with: players will know what they can write towards, either by choosing to include setting information, or by picking something they know the judge is familiar with.There is a balancing tradeoff: on one hand, standard fantasy SRD games are much more 'useful': more campaigns will be able to use them off the bat. On the other hand, encouraging creative writing is what this is all about. I leave whoever runs Iron DM Fall 2003 to balance this.Scheduling: A 8-player single elimination has 7 battles to it. While I understand the need for this to not drag on forever, especially for the one organizing, I think staggering the battles lets the spectating, the debating,  the basking, take place better: I still haven't processed all the entries yet. A day a piece, with assumedly 3 days of "couldn't schedule anyone here", is only a 10-day affair for something that is a 3-month issue. This is of course, only determinable by your amount of free time, although I don't think it lengthens it much, just spreads it out, and I think it would be a bit more exciting.I think there are a lot of other minor things which could be codified to the benefit of all, but those are the main issues I wanted to bring up.I hope this has been helpful. Apology accepted, and I'm excited to read the rest of this. I also encourage any debate to make this and the next iron DM better.--stu (a he, to finally clear that up)</blockquote>

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