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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rune" data-source="post: 8146420" data-attributes="member: 67">Interesting data. I’m curious how far back you went.I’d caution against blindly applying some of these lessons across the board, though. I’m just one guy, and I’m not going to pretend that I speak for the majority of judges, but at least one of your conclusions looks like a pretty risky gambit to me.In particular, if you throw a varied bunch of weak interpretations of an ingredient at the judges in hopes that something will stick, this judge, at least, is likely to be disappointed with each poor use and additionally annoyed at the extra work involved in isolating the author’s intent.On the other hand, if the author includes different manifestations of an ingredient that echo each other and reinforce some thematic underpinning, that lends strength to the ingredient as a whole (and generally results in a stronger adventure, as well).Of course, to pull this off well, the author has to put in the work to make the theme important to the adventure. As for judges favoring specific ingredients, and advice not to push them into the background, I will say two things. First, none of the ingredients should be dropped into the background! If they aren’t relevant to the PCs, they aren’t relevant!Second, the best ingredients are ambiguous ingredients, precisely because they do not come with an expectation. And the very best ingredients are the ones that suggest a thematic frame that the author can hang an adventure on. Because: see above.With that said, ingredients (or their components) sometimes have obscure secondary definitions. Contestants are advised to look them up, even when you think you already know what you’re looking at. You might be inspired in unexpected ways.</blockquote>

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