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Message: <blockquote data-quote="carpedavid" data-source="post: 2360759" data-attributes="member: 6971">Hi Roger, thanks for playing along at home! Tinfoil DM is such a neat idea that, if anybody else wants to practice their skills by writing up an entry from any of the sets of ingredients used in the contest, I'll happily provide some amount of comments for each.Let's take a look at your entry. The very first suggestion that I would make is to make sure that the encounters you provide are appropriate for the level of the party you're targeting the adventure to. Your entry is targeted to a party of third-level adventurers, but the main antagonist, who the PCs are intended to fight alone, is at the very least, 8th level. Why do I say that? Well, if you look at the prerequisites for the Ghost-Faced Killer, a rogue wouldn't be able to take a level in that class until after 7th level, and, as far as I can tell, rogue is the shortest path, due to the other skills that are required. You might be able to drop that down a bit with some clever multi-classing, but it wouldn't be by much.This is a very common mistake for Iron DM entrants to make; in fact, I made it in my very first Iron DM entry. So, make sure to keep your power level consistent. Account for any powers that an NPC might have, and make sure that the challenges you're presenting are appropriate for the level of the party that you're targeting the adventure to.The second observation I'd make is that the events in your entry seem pretty scripted. While you can't account for every action the PCs are likely to take, you do need to provide some advice as to how the adventure will proceed if the PCs don't go along with every action that's taken. For example, what happens if the PCs try to escape in the very first scene? You do provide statistics for the guard for combat, but what if the PCs simply sneak off? Each event is heavily predicated on the PCs going along with the previous one, which makes the adventure feel a bit railroaded.As a general bit of design advice, never write up an adventure that assumes the PCs are going to do any specific thing. Give good hooks, plan events that occur, design clever encounters, and then tell me what happens when the PCs go off script.As far as ingredient use goes, there are really three things to aim for. First, make sure that the ingredient is interactive - your Thatched Hut occurs only in the background, when Dolon burns them to the ground. This is one of the biggest Iron DM no-nos. Make sure that the ingredient is something that the PCs can interact with in some form or another.Second, make sure to justify the existence of that ingredient. Why is the ingredient a bugbear and not a dragon? You've done a good job here of justifying both the Unsuccessful and Bounty Hunter aspects of the first ingredient. The consecrated harrier prestige class is, by definition a bounty hunter, and one of the requirements to gaining the class is that you must successfully complete an assignment. Having failed that, Dolon gets a bit obsessed, and the PCs get entangled in the fallout.You've managed to find a specific mechanic that matches up with the ingredient, and you've picked one where being "unsuccessful" has a specific penalty. I'd actually go so far as to say that this use of the ingredient was superior to that of either finalist! Third, strive to draw connections between the ingredients. Make the connections feel organic, as though there was a reason that they're in the same adventure other than they're on the list. If you can't draw direct connections between the ingredients, then at least make sure that they fit within the scope of the adventure. I think you've managed to make them all fit within the context of the larger adventure, though, to get to later rounds of the tournament you may need to start drawing more direct connections.These three goals are tough to juggle, and almost nobody manages to achieve all of them in every entry. Above all, make sure that your adventure is something that you'd want to play through, have fun writing it up, and practice.</blockquote>

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