Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="carpedavid" data-source="post: 2351291" data-attributes="member: 6971">Finals, Match 2: Stormborn vs. Wulf RatbaneWulf Ratbane is a damn good writer - there's just no two ways about it. His prose is always polished, he exhibits great skill at self-editing (a skill that some others in this tournament need to practice), and the man can set a scene like few others. Here, he graces us with a tale that has a cinematic quality; upon reading it, I was immediately drawn in, eager to see how the tale of Half-heart, the underdog paladin, would unfold.Stormborn, while not quite as polished a writer as Wulf, has shown consistent improvement throughout the tournament. This entry is, quite frankly, his best yet. He starts off strong, with an isolated town where the few horses (the only method of transportation) are more valuable than the people, gets a bit muddled in the middle when the PCs are sent to investigate the meaning of a vision, and then finishes strong with a desperate battle amongst a scene of terrible carnage.Let's begin this judgment with an examination of the ingredients. Wulf begins his entry with an elaborate background where he ties various elements of his adventure together. The heroic paladin makes a mad dash from the northernmost village to the southernmost village, uniting the people of the land in a common defense. Said heroic paladin ends up becoming the Ill Tempered Saint in the form of a magical weapon; the uniting aspect of his ride is represented in both the Constitution of the collected villages, and the Rainbow Pennant; and the Horse ingredient is represented by the horses used by the contestants in the race.All of these ingredients expertly combine to form a compelling background and setting. Unfortunately, that's all they combine to form. While they serve to set up the competition, the PCs don't interact with them at all. The Horses are mounts for NPCs, the Pennant is a prize that the PCs aren't competing for, the Constitution is something the PCs aren't likely to have ever read, and the Ill Tempered Saint is broken until the dénouement. Even the Crooked River is mostly window dressing. The contestants have to interact with it, but the PCs aren't contestants (unless they seize on the hook that Wulf considers the least likely).Snow is the one ingredient that the PCs are likely to actually interact with, when the Witch casts control weather. There's a slight problem, though. You can't actually make it snow with that spell (at least as it's described in the 3.5 rules) unless it's already winter, but Wulf has set the adventure in spring or autumn. You can make it sleet, or make the weather cold, but you can't make it snow. Let's assume you can make it snow, though. Wulf doesn't describe a raging blizzard – just normal snow, which is something that I'm sure these people have seen before. It doesn't really seem like it's terribly threatening, though I suppose that if one of the paladins were riding around in his skivvies, he might get a bit cold.Remember how I said at the beginning of the judgment that I was eager to see how the tale of Half-heart played out? Well, that's the problem with Wulf's entry. He's created an adventure for Half-heart, and not the PCs. Let me say that I love simulation-type scenarios, where the scene is set, the plot is put in motion, and the PCs are encouraged to come in and muck things up in the way that only PCs can do. At first glance, this seems like it fits these criteria. The key, though, to those types of adventures, is that the actions of the PCs have to have a discernable (if not dramatic) effect.Here, the half-orc seems pretty capable of looking out for himself: he shoos the PCs away from the barbarian ambush, and he seems confident that he can "settle" the matter with his mother on his own. Let's assume, though, that he does get distracted by his mother. Who cares? There is nothing to guarantee that he'd win in the first place. There's no indication that any particular contestant's victory would either benefit or harm the Drakeskills. Would outside interference directed against one contestant somehow cast the victor as illegitimate? If so, shouldn't the newly reforged holy blade just shatter again, forcing everyone to re-run the race? Other than injuring the PCs sense of fair-play, we're given no consequences for inaction.Let's turn to Wulf's opponent. Stormborn endeavors to make every single one of his ingredients interactive, but does so at the cost of tight integration. His snow ingredient sets the scene, but unlike Wulf's scenery, this one has a direct effect: the winter environment saps the energy of those who wander around in it. Constitution manifests in Fortitude saves and Concentration checks brought on by the cold weather, and Fortitude saves to avoid the effects of gusts of wind. Horses are a commodity so valuable that they need to be guarded (and perhaps chased and calmed) by the PCs. Even the Crooked River is described as the ideal place for an ambush by goblins.The first act of Stormborn's entry is great – the isolation, the suspense of waiting for the inevitable wolf attack, the dangerous weather – all make for a memorable encounter. Starting with the second act, though, things get a bit muddled. All of a sudden, we've got a mysterious vision that can only be interpreted by an NPC who seems to be alternately regarded as a font of wisdom, and someone who nobody ever gets to see. The trek to his cave is straightforward, but then we're greeted with a bunch of monks whose only purpose seems to be to fight the PCs. Huh?At any rate, the Saint is Ill Tempered, though he seems to be so in a more childish way than I would have expected. He interprets the vision, understands that if the Rainbow Pennant isn't returned, then war will come to the world, and then, because he deserves his status as saint, does nothing. Huh? He sends the PCs on the way and goes back to contemplation, but he deserves to be a saint. Huh? I know that it's a challenge to keep NPCs, especially high-level ones, from stealing the spotlight from the PCs – in fact I just criticized Wulf's entry for that very reason – but this just falls flat. He's not old and decrepit, he's not busy with some more important challenge, he's not bound by some sort of blood oath not to interfere in the world of men – he's sitting in a cave, and it's not like the cave is going anywhere.At any rate, things pick back up when the PCs go to find out the fate of honor guard. Didn't they learn anything from Hannibal? Elephants and mountains just don't mix. In this case, the guard was ambushed in a terrain that they were woefully unprepared for, and the PCs have to go clean up the mess. This third act works fairly well, except for the inclusion of the rampaging war elephant that's plopped in there just for the PCs to kill. At the end, the PCs find the MacGuffin of this particular adventure, the Rainbow Pennant.Stormborn's ingredient use isn't as tightly integrated as Wulf's, but he gives us far more to work with. Wulf's adventure hums along nicely, but it does so pretty much with or without the PCs. Stormborn's adventure nearly tanks in the middle, but starts and finishes strongly. <spoiler: highlight to read>[spoiler]While I value tight integration of the ingredients above creative use, the playability factor tips this contest definitively in the favor of Stormborn. This means that Tinner has the advantage going into the thrid match. If he wins, he takes it all. If he loses, then the final round is a tie, and I'll break the tie using the War Elephant ingredient. At the very least, it should be an interesting round.[/spoiler]</spoiler></blockquote>

Verification