[IRON DM] Winter '04 Tournament (IRON DM ANNOUNCED!)

[Paka]

The suspense of waiting is...growing...difficult...must walk away from computer.

 

[Enkhidu]

Wow.I was going to do a breakdown of Nemm's comments about the round (which I did during HIDM 2003), but took a look at the thread, and instead decided to post some of what I believe is insight about Iron DM.

When I first entered the IDM n00b edition, I took a look back at some of the previous threads that Nemm had judged and watched his judgements like a hawk to see what he did and did not like. And while I think I was truly outclassed talent-and-imagination-wise by some of the other competitors in that contest, I think the reason I eventually won was because Nemm and I have very similar tastes in gaming. I was inadvertantly writing material that Nemm might have written.

I guess what I'm saying is that writing an Iron DM entry is no different than any other sort of writing: know your audience.

Here's some examples, from the first three contests:

...Note: Due to the extra number of match-ups in this tournament, I will be a lot stricter about length - You stand warned...

This is a big one. When I did a word count after I finished my entry and saw over 3000 words, I grumbled a bit and then went back and cut 400 of them. It turned out that I used too many prepositional phrases, cut them, and my entry read better than it had.

And here is a hint for all you would-be IRON DMs out there, however neat an idea you present might be (like having the wishes the cow grants transport you to a fairy tale world where they come true and replace you with thematically-aligned monsters to wreack havoc in the "real world") make sure you include a damn example or two, to show what you mean and as a guideline for how it is to be handled - otherwise it just comes off as a half-assed idea.

This quote is why I spent so much space on pointing out how the fog covered moors affected combat and mechanics. Sure, anyone with access to the SRD could look this stuff up, but I wanted to make damn sure that they weren't just a backdrop and were in fact the centerpieve of the adventure. In my first IDM I made the mistake of not pointing out stuff out that I figured would be slf-explanatory only to find out that what was obvious to me wasn't obvious to anyone else.

]...When you have the IRON DM judge thinking “when is something that concerns the PCs gonna happen?” you know its bad news, and that is exactly how I felt when I was reading that long-winded backstory...

Remember my first point, well it turns out this is why Nemm put it in there - no matter how good the backstory is (and Noskov, I think your backstory falls into this catagory) if it isn't presented in a concise manner, it doesn't matter. In the case of backstory, Nemm (and most IDM judges, it seems) prefer short and sweet ot long and involved. There are ways around this - we'll look into one of them in a minute.

Wulf smartly went for detailing that thing you can get away with detailing in an IRON DM entry because it only takes a sentence or two and its presence throughout a scenario only helps to develop it and bind it together with other ingredients, or is a central non-ingredient element that does that does the binding. I am talking about an NPC.

Nemm loves NPCs. I think he spends his lonely Valentine's Days statting the dang things up. Because of this, every IDM entry I write has a big "hey look its the NPC section!" section. And here's why I bring it up - NPCs are really backstory. My NPC descriptions actually had more background in them than my background! I did a quick count - Noskov had 965 words of background, and I had 833. Basically, I snuck my background in the back door.

Finally, and I didn't find the quote for this one because it was in the sign up thread, a literal interpretation of the ingredients is almost always best. In Nemm's words, be clever but not "too" clever.

Oh, and Noskov, you coming to the Ohio Gameday?

 

[Dave Turner]

The suspense of waiting is...growing...difficult...must walk away from computer.

Ditto!

 

[Quickbeam]

Of course he is - in the Simon Cowell "tough-talking judge" way, not the "big man being a jerk" way. I find the judge style really refreshing and interesting, partially because he's far harsher than I would be. If feelings get hurt, it's neither personal nor the end of the world. I know Nemm pretty well in person; he's incredibly nice, and he's able to be very diplomatic when he wants to be. He judges in that style because it makes these competitions more interesting for the viewers.

Exactly my point PC. The comments aren't intended to be hurtful, just scathing in the context of this event. No one enjoys having their labors picked apart for sport, yet that's part of the "fun" one reaps as a competitor herein.

And to avoid any further hijacking of this thread, my final off-topic remarks:

Noskov -- Your entry wasn't crap. It just may not have been satisfactory to you in retrospect, or representative of your true abilities. Heaven knows I feel the same way now looking back on some of my previous entries versus the one posted yesterday. We live and we learn .

Enkhidu -- We must have met at one or both of the previous Ohio Gamedays...I knew the username sounded familiar. Hopefully I can make the trip for a third consecutive gathering.

 

[Enkhidu]

Enkhidu -- We must have met at one or both of the previous Ohio Gamedays...I knew the username sounded familiar. Hopefully I can make the trip for a third consecutive gathering.

Yup. I'm actually organizing this one - Crothian stuck me with it for #3. Hope you can make it down!

 

[Dave Turner]

Gah, the suspense! Think of the children, nemmerle!

 

[shilsen]

Tolstoy is known for being long winded. He wrote War and Peace, the definative "long book."

Ahhh....I should have looked it up before comenting. I suck with names. Yeah, all you had to do was mention 'War and Peace'.

Interestingly, AFAIK Tolstoy (or was that Chekov?) was also the one who claimed that every aspect of a story should be integrated into the plot. Or, to paraphrase, if there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first scene of a play, it should be used before the end of it. Which is an approach that seems quite appropriate to an IronDM tournament, esp. in view of Nemmerle's comments.

 

[el-remmen]

Ugh.

Hungover.

At work.

I'll get to judging sometime. . .

 

[Piratecat]

Ugh.

Hungover.

At work.

Oh good. Well, at least he won't be in a bad mood when he judges....

 

[Noskov]

I just want it to end.

Oh, and Noskov, you coming to the Ohio Gameday?

Actually, I was going to ask at some point during the contest when or if there was going to be an Ohio one because I saw so many Ohioans on here. I've been looking for people forever to play. I've got a small group in my area and we do fairly well, but we desperately need more people.

That being said, I'm more then a little embarrassed about all this. There's basically a lot of backstory to why I reacted the way I did and it it goes a lot deeper then what I have said on the board. I don't know if I'd want to show my face, but I would just out of sheer love of the game.

One question though: How much does gameday involve other additions? We play a 2nd / 1st addition with a lot of house rules. I've brought up switching to 3rd to my players more then once, but no one wants to. I know nothing of 3rd edition except of what I read about and talk to people about.