Would you be interested in an adventure/one-shot building contest?

[Uncle Pine]

We have Iron Chef, E6 Iron Chef, Iron Chef for villains, Junkyard competition and I'm probably missing a few others. I also assume some (possibly most) of us enjoy coming up with a whole lot of scenario which don't always happen to see the light of the sun because your players aren't the right level, or in the correct environment, or the idea clashes with the tone of the current campaign, as good as it might be. And if you're not going to show it to them, why would you elaborate on your idea beyond a small note you drop in a binder somewhere? Surely I can't be the only one with an entire .txt filled with stuff like "Create Crawling Claws", "soulbow skeleton fortress", "half-goristro phrenic fleshraker overlord", and much more.

So what would you say if we had a contest where the playgrounders could go wild based on a common prompt? I think DMs around here would love to share their own ideas and considering the feedback from the various Iron Chefs even more people would enjoy seeing what the Hivemind in the Playground can come up with.

Along with your opinion on the possibility of such a contest, I'd like to discuss the following points as they'll definitely influence the way this idea will be received:

Cooking time: coming up with an idea for an adventure or a one-shot and then building it can take a while. As such, I'd wager at least two, possibly three weeks will be required for the various participants to concoct their dish with ease without having to rush it.
Level of detail required: this is a bit of a grey area to me, as requiring a full fledged adventure is clearly unfeasible but I feel each entry should be in-depth enough to require only a fraction of the normal amount of preparation to make it somewhat playable by anyone reading through it. In my opinion this means having: 1) the entire plot figured out; 2) the main villain(s) and major NPCs that are likely to fight or be fought fully statted; 3) every creature identified (i.e. if your adventure has the PCs ambushed at some point you don't necessarily need to provide the full statblock for the bandits. "Four half-fiend orcs Rogue 3" would be enough, but "bandits with demonic features" isn't going to cut it); 4) the treasure listed for each major opponent and guidelines for minor ones'.
The prompt: I've had a lot of success in the past using TV Tropes' Story Generator (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/storygen.php) as prompt generator, inspiring me to create many exciting adventures such as the time when everyone rolled Fine-sized characters fighting against normal-sized lizardmen, or when the party went dungeon crawling inside a giant monkey-shaped underwater sunken temple. But I digress, my main point is that the chairman can roll a batch and everyone else can be on the same page without being too constrained as Tropes Are Flexible (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible). You're encouraged to suggest and discuss alternate ways to determine the prompt of each edition.
Criteria for judging: Use of the Secret Ingredient(=adherence to the prompt) is obviously going to be one of them and I feel like both Originality and Elegance are also good candidates, although since we're making adventures rather than characters I think Elegance could need a little help to be worded. I believe we could use a category in which the chances to tie the adventure in an existing storyline or campaign, as in entry points/plot hooks, are evalued. Maybe Accessibility? I don't know, we'll think about it.
Any other business.

[SirNibbles]

I'd be interested, but I think the biggest issue is a lack of people who want to judge.

I think the best solution for judging is to simply have open judging, where all participants and anyone else can simply offer their opinion on whether or not a submission is good and why.

[Long_shanks]

This is an awesome idea.

I don't think I would participate, as the time investment would be too great (unless the theme fits with the game I'm currently DMing), but I would be very interested for inspiration. The collective genius of these forums would greatly help my game (on anyone's for that matter)

If the entries are limited in size (say imposing a one post maximum rule), I may be up to judge, depending on real life constraints. I think we could start with the more constrained one-shot option, then move to the adventure if everything goes well.

[Zaq]

Yeah, I like the concept, but I can’t see myself as getting involved as either a contestant or a judge. The amount of time/effort commitment required is more than I can envision myself being willing to put in. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that sentiment is common.

That said, don’t let me be too much of a naysayer! The only way to know for sure is to try it and see who actually steps up to the plate. The worst that can happen is that it flops, but even if it flops, you might learn something. And it’s not like you’re spending any money on it or anything, you know?

[Seharvepernfan]

I'm interested, but I have to say that 2-3 weeks for an adventure is simply not enough, unless you want it to be a very simple adventure with a lot of holes and cracks and things you can't answer as a DM.

[Doctor Awkward]

I'd be down

[DeTess]

This sounds interesting, but whether I'd participate is down to my personal time and whether the prompt inspires me.

I'd make sure to make the expected scope really clear though. So not just 'write an adventure/one-shot with prompt X', but something more along the lines of 'Use prompt X to write a session taking about 4 hours' (and I'd not really expect more than a 4 hour session if you want to keep the work manageable).

As for judging criteria, in addition to 'use of SI' and 'originality', I'd use 'adaptability and flexibility' (ease of which you can add it into an existing campaign and how resistant/permissive the adventure is to PC's going off the rails) as a category instead of 'elegance'.

[Uncle Pine]

I'd be interested, but I think the biggest issue is a lack of people who want to judge.

I think the best solution for judging is to simply have open judging, where all participants and anyone else can simply offer their opinion on whether or not a submission is good and why.
On one hand I figured out there'd be more people interested in checking out and judge stories/adventures compared to going through 1st-20th level character tables, on the other... Yes, getting judges could be less than easy. However, we only need a handful of them and if we only get a couple I can always step down as a chairman and double as judge.

I've considered open judging as an option, but since I'm not too familiar with the concept I'd have to read more about it before I can set up a fair voting system.


This is an awesome idea.

I don't think I would participate, as the time investment would be too great (unless the theme fits with the game I'm currently DMing), but I would be very interested for inspiration. The collective genius of these forums would greatly help my game (on anyone's for that matter)

If the entries are limited in size (say imposing a one post maximum rule), I may be up to judge, depending on real life constraints. I think we could start with the more constrained one-shot option, then move to the adventure if everything goes well.
Limiting the length of the entries, at least at the beginning and depending on how things go, is definitely something to think about. How many characters is a post?


I'm interested, but I have to say that 2-3 weeks for an adventure is simply not enough, unless you want it to be a very simple adventure with a lot of holes and cracks and things you can't answer as a DM.
Do you think a month would be more reasonable? I personally wouldn't go for more than 4 weeks as it's possible after a while people could simply forget about the contest.


This sounds interesting, but whether I'd participate is down to my personal time and whether the prompt inspires me.

I'd make sure to make the expected scope really clear though. So not just 'write an adventure/one-shot with prompt X', but something more along the lines of 'Use prompt X to write a session taking about 4 hours' (and I'd not really expect more than a 4 hour session if you want to keep the work manageable).

As for judging criteria, in addition to 'use of SI' and 'originality', I'd use 'adaptability and flexibility' (ease of which you can add it into an existing campaign and how resistant/permissive the adventure is to PC's going off the rails) as a category instead of 'elegance'.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely need to describe in depth both the specifics of the prompt and those of the expected entries. For example, the fact the Story Generator provides a trope for the "Hero" of the story when in fact as a DM you generally don't have too much of a saying on the kind of heroes (read: the party) that will take part in each adventure needs to be addressed and in fact I often end up using the "Hero" entry for secondary NPCs, possible henchmen, etc.

That said, I'm not too sure "expected hours of playing" is the best meter in this case: too many times a Five Room Dungeon one-shot ended up taking 10 hours over the course of two days because the PCs really digged the implications of the roleplaying encounter, or a month's of investigative sessions are sidestepped in 5 hours because the 3rd-level Cleric did in fact prepare Zone of Truth that morning. Or maybe it actually works and I just don't have enough experience with pre-written modules or adventure league games to see it. What if we used "number of scenes" as a factor? Not every adventure needs to be a Five Room Dungeon, but if we plan to limit ourselves for the first few editions five scenes seems like a solid starting point for an adventure.

I dig "adaptability and flexibility" as a category. :smallsmile:

[Seto]

That's such a good idea! Plus it would be very useful for DMs as "example sessions" or "supply of inspiration".

As for criteria... You talk about fully-statted NPCs, and that is certainly an option. But contrary to the other 3.5 building competitions, I feel this is the one that could work as a non-system-specific building contest in the general "Roleplaying games" forum. Not statting NPCs would allow competitors to focus on structure and plot (I know when I DM D&D3.5 that statting the dungeon boss to be original and a challenge is often gonna take me more time than designing the rest of the Dungeon, traps and encounters, and that's a burden, in a way. And that's when I'm just doing a dungeon crawl without much plot), and be less reliant on D&D centric concepts (to take one of your examples, the Fleshraker thing relies completely on the villain being a monster with unusual templates, and "adventure building" should be able to stand without that kind of crutch IMO). Besides, it would allow more easily for either one-shot or small campaign-level planning. As the poster above said, if we're going to stat things and specify ambushes and random encounters, a 4-hour session would probably be the most manageable option.
So that's my idea, but maybe it's taking your idea too far away from what it was.

On another note, I think it could be interesting if the secret ingredients was both a prompt AND a party. It's always better to design an adventure knowing, in at least a general sense, what the party members' interests and capabilities will be. (That's why so many oneshots or modules are built with predefined characters).

[Falontani]

I definitely like the idea, a full story would be hard for me to do in this kind of scope, however a single encounter is something that I'm sure others would enjoy as well. Perhaps two different contests in the same thread.
A full length adventure (what 4-10 hours) with the theme
And
A single encounter that would fit the adventure of the theme.

Anyone that does the full length adventure chooses one of their encounters for the encounter. This gives people the ability to easily enter the competition, while giving others an incentive to do the whole adventure

[Troacctid]

In my mind the best way to do this contest involves a livestreamed Roll20 playtest run of every adventure, with past Iron Chef builds as the PCs!

[Goaty14]

I would be interested in creating an encounter, but not an entire one-shot.

[Tvtyrant]

I'm up for either participating or judging. Or both, which would resolve a lot of judging problems.

There isn't an actual reward so bias shouldn't be that big a problem.

[CMagnum]

I really like the idea! I am not nearly as experienced as the majority of the people on the forums. However, I make a one shot or two a year to introduce friends who aren't in my regular group to the game and also for holidays and weeks my group can't get together.
Last Christmas I had a one shot where everyone was an elf working at Santa's slave camp and they all escaped and killed Santa. Had a lot of fun with it.
I'm sure I'm not at a level to compete with you all on here, but I'd definitely be reading the submissions and would be happy to contribute an effort if this gets up and running 😀!

[Uncle Pine]

That's such a good idea! Plus it would be very useful for DMs as "example sessions" or "supply of inspiration".

As for criteria... You talk about fully-statted NPCs, and that is certainly an option. But contrary to the other 3.5 building competitions, I feel this is the one that could work as a non-system-specific building contest in the general "Roleplaying games" forum. Not statting NPCs would allow competitors to focus on structure and plot (I know when I DM D&D3.5 that statting the dungeon boss to be original and a challenge is often gonna take me more time than designing the rest of the Dungeon, traps and encounters, and that's a burden, in a way. And that's when I'm just doing a dungeon crawl without much plot), and be less reliant on D&D centric concepts (to take one of your examples, the Fleshraker thing relies completely on the villain being a monster with unusual templates, and "adventure building" should be able to stand without that kind of crutch IMO). Besides, it would allow more easily for either one-shot or small campaign-level planning. As the poster above said, if we're going to stat things and specify ambushes and random encounters, a 4-hour session would probably be the most manageable option.
So that's my idea, but maybe it's taking your idea too far away from what it was.

On another note, I think it could be interesting if the secret ingredients was both a prompt AND a party. It's always better to design an adventure knowing, in at least a general sense, what the party members' interests and capabilities will be. (That's why so many oneshots or modules are built with predefined characters).
Your suggestions are sound, but I can't shrug off the feeling that reconciling them with what I had in mind would be hard. I'm not sure if it makes much sense, but to me adventure building can be as much a storytelling excercise as a test of system mastery: if I want to insert an NPC that is basically fantasy Pinocchio in an adventure and be sure it can do a certain thing as a member of the class X would do, I can either roll a woodling halfling with X levels in a class and a greatclub as a grafted weapon and throwing scarab symbionts to be able to throw "wooden splinters" at range OR a warforged with the Ironwood Body feat OR an awakened stump of a tree fashioned as a small kid. You can do this sort of stuff in 3.5e and I can see and understand how one could decide to do it, but if we simply say "basically fantasy Pinocchio" in a non-system-specific environment it fails to deliver anything beyond watching a cool movie or reading a nice book and say "hey this would be cool in d&d". Yes it would be cool, but since you have absolutely nothing in your hands beyond a glimpse of inspiration you'll need to post a thread named "How to make Pinocchio in d&d" before you can start filling the holes in your adventure.

My initial idea was for the entries to be more or less interchangeable in the premise, so that any DM whether new or expert could grab the most suitable of the presented plot hooks and place the adventure in his or her own world. Think about the "adventure background" and "hooks for players" sections most published adventures have: sure, some of them will require some common elements such as at least one character being able to cast arcane spells for some elements of the adventure to be believable or certain obstacles to be beaten, but most of the requirements are often purely roleplay elements (i.e. your sister has been sending you letters for a while and stopped abruptly, or an odd magical key has been found as part of the treasure during the last adventure). Still, the idea of having a "prompt party" seems easier to implement without changing the scope of the contest too much so I'll think about it. We could even have some contests with a prompt party and others without it!


I definitely like the idea, a full story would be hard for me to do in this kind of scope, however a single encounter is something that I'm sure others would enjoy as well. Perhaps two different contests in the same thread.
A full length adventure (what 4-10 hours) with the theme
And
A single encounter that would fit the adventure of the theme.

Anyone that does the full length adventure chooses one of their encounters for the encounter. This gives people the ability to easily enter the competition, while giving others an incentive to do the whole adventure
I would be interested in creating an encounter, but not an entire one-shot.
What if... we have everyone write the plot of the adventure, detailing most encounters but without statting them outright (in the example I used in the OP, you could have demonic bandits ambushing the party and say they are half-fiend orcs rogues and that they should be an encounter of medium difficult but you don't have to stat them in their entirety) and then we have each participant pick ONE kingpin encounter, the one that the players will most likely look back to and remember as the most holey-moley of the whole adventure and completely stat only that? In most cases the kingpin encounter will be the final boss, but that won't necessarily be true as maybe one particular entry features a particular character which could become an important recurring NPC while simply having "Ur'gul the behir with a name and an agenda" as BBEG. And if someone wants to fully stat more than one encounter we won't say no, as long as he or she picks one of those as the kingpin encounter of that adventure.

This should reduce the workload for the contest while not entirely detatching it from the rules of the game as they are, shouldn't it?


In my mind the best way to do this contest involves a livestreamed Roll20 playtest run of every adventure, with past Iron Chef builds as the PCs!
That would be AWESOME, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to work that into the schedule of my life right now. It's still a really awesome idea though. :smallredface:

[Troacctid]

What if... we have everyone write the plot of the adventure, detailing most encounters but without statting them outright (in the example I used in the OP, you could have demonic bandits ambushing the party and say they are half-fiend orcs rogues and that they should be an encounter of medium difficult but you don't have to stat them in their entirety) and then we have each participant pick ONE kingpin encounter, the one that the players will most likely look back to and remember as the most holey-moley of the whole adventure and completely stat only that? In most cases the kingpin encounter will be the final boss, but that won't necessarily be true as maybe one particular entry features a particular character which could become an important recurring NPC while simply having "Ur'gul the behir with a name and an agenda" as BBEG. And if someone wants to fully stat more than one encounter we won't say no, as long as he or she picks one of those as the kingpin encounter of that adventure.

This should reduce the workload for the contest while not entirely detatching it from the rules of the game as they are, shouldn't it?
That's pretty much what most published adventures already do.


That would be AWESOME, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to work that into the schedule of my life right now. It's still a really awesome idea though. :smallredface:
I have a Roll20 Pro account and I'm free on Tuesdays. 🤷

[Uncle Pine]

I've been working on an opening post for the contest and it should be ready to launch in a couple of days. However, I'm still missing one last category for judging. Originality needs no explanation and the same goes for Use of the Secret Ingredient. I've also decided to go for Adaptability and Flexibility over elegance as it makes more sense in this kind of contest, but without elegance we're in need of a category in which rules lawyer-y judges can penalize contestants for using 3.0 content disregarding the 3.5e update and making terrible flavor choices to pump the numbers on a certain boss... and I can't think of a good name for it.


P.S.

(to take one of your examples, the Fleshraker thing relies completely on the villain being a monster with unusual templates, and "adventure building" should be able to stand without that kind of crutch IMO)
I've forgot to address this in my previous reply, but the fleshraker idea is actually intended as an excuse for me as a DM to suddenly stand up from my chair at the start of the final confrontation and proclaim at the top of my lungs "YOU FACE JURAXXUS, FLESHRAKER LORD OF THE DINOSAUR LEGION!", complete with evil laughter follow-up (MUAHAHAHAHAHA). Everyone in my main group is either an ex-WoW or an ex-Hearthstone player, so I bet they'd love the reference (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pkJzAreKxXY/maxresdefault.jpg) as much as me. Yes, I'm willing to make an entire adventure based off a single amusing misspelling of a pop culture reference. I'm sure that's normal. :smallbiggrin:

[Seharvepernfan]

I've also decided to go for Adaptability and Flexibility over elegance as it makes more sense in this kind of contest, but without elegance we're in need of a category in which rules lawyer-y judges can penalize contestants for using 3.0 content disregarding the 3.5e update and making terrible flavor choices to pump the numbers on a certain boss... and I can't think of a good name for it.

Non-munchkinery. Or maybe Lactose Intolerance.

[Tvtyrant]

Non-munchkinery. Or maybe Lactose Intolerance.

But why are we opposed to using the rules to optimize monsters? Half-Dragon Trolls deserve to exist!

[Uncle Pine]

But why are we opposed to using the rules to optimize monsters? Half-Dragon Trolls deserve to exist!

Half-dragon trolls make sense if the adventure is about a black dragon trying to take over the countryside with Social Darwinism, or if the local mind flayers are trying to decypher the ancient tablets of Ai-k'eeah to recreate the Emerald Legion. But if every major opponent just happens to have the Troll-Blooded feat and fire and acid resistance simply because it's convenient, you deserve to be smitten.

[Tvtyrant]

Half-dragon trolls make sense if the adventure is about a black dragon trying to take over the countryside with Social Darwinism, or if the local mind flayers are trying to decypher the ancient tablets of Ai-k'eeah to recreate the Emerald Legion. But if every major opponent just happens to have the Troll-Blooded feat and fire and acid resistance simply because it's convenient, you deserve to be smitten.

Expect a lot of troll blooded bone knight cultists of The Great Hunger is all I am saying ;P

[Seharvepernfan]

Expect a lot of troll blooded bone knight cultists of The Great Hunger is all I am saying ;P

Who would then get low scores.

[Troacctid]

I've been working on an opening post for the contest and it should be ready to launch in a couple of days. However, I'm still missing one last category for judging. Originality needs no explanation and the same goes for Use of the Secret Ingredient. I've also decided to go for Adaptability and Flexibility over elegance as it makes more sense in this kind of contest, but without elegance we're in need of a category in which rules lawyer-y judges can penalize contestants for using 3.0 content disregarding the 3.5e update and making terrible flavor choices to pump the numbers on a certain boss... and I can't think of a good name for it.
I think the name you're looking for is "Elegance." :smallsmile:

Story would be a better category than Originality, IMO.

Other criteria I'd be looking at for judging an adventure would be Balance, Pacing, and Presentation.

[Uncle Pine]

I think the name you're looking for is "Elegance." :smallsmile:

Story would be a better category than Originality, IMO.

Other criteria I'd be looking at for judging an adventure would be Balance, Pacing, and Presentation.

I think we could fit those last three inside Story (with all due explanations in the paragraph about Judging). This would leave us with Story, Use of the SI, Adaptability and Flexibility, and Elegance. It's possible that Story might end up a little cluttered, but I'd prefer that to having half a dozen categories for the judges to vote. Thoughts?

[Troacctid]

Balance is not about story, it's about how well the encounters challenge a level-appropriate party. Pacing refers to both the flow of action and the overall runtime of the adventure. These are primarily game design rather than story concerns.

Presentation is also not about story but rather the adventure's layout, organization, readability, ease of prep, and so on—aesthetic and utilitarian, not narrative. I suppose you could argue for it under Elegance, but for an adventure I think Presentation is the more meaningful category. I've run a lot of published adventures and the formatting is a major factor in how easy it is for me to prep and run the mod.

Adaptation should definitely not be a five-point category by itself. It's not important enough to be weighted that heavily.

[Uncle Pine]

Balance is not about story, it's about how well the encounters challenge a level-appropriate party. Pacing refers to both the flow of action and the overall runtime of the adventure. These are primarily game design rather than story concerns.

Presentation is also not about story but rather the adventure's layout, organization, readability, ease of prep, and so on—aesthetic and utilitarian, not narrative. I suppose you could argue for it under Elegance, but for an adventure I think Presentation is the more meaningful category. I've run a lot of published adventures and the formatting is a major factor in how easy it is for me to prep and run the mod.

Adaptation should definitely not be a five-point category by itself. It's not important enough to be weighted that heavily.

I see. I thought you meant balance as in both the nature and difficulty of the various encounters (i.e. making sure some of them can be solved without killing everyone in the room), aka the balance of the plot, and I ended up considering pacing from a purely narrative point of view. Presentation is a huge deal, but I think it'll become less of a concern when we'll have a couple rounds under the belt and developed some sort of form for the submissions.

Here's a list of all the things that should be arguably judged in an adventure building contest. Let's see if we can condense all of these into four categories. Worst case scenario we end up with five.

Story - This will probably include other stuff, but at the very least it means plot- and narration-related stuff.
Originality - Self-explanatory.
Encounter balance - Is it appropriate for Xth-level characters?
Encounter types - Is there a nice mix of combat and non-combat encounters?
Pacing - Referring to the flow of the action and adherence to the prefixed schedule of the adventure.
Adaptability - How hard or easy it is to slot the adventure into a campaign world.
Flexibility - How resilient the adventure is to PCs doing PC things.
Use of the Secret Ingredient - Self-explanatory.
Elegance - How skillfully the adventure is put together from a mechanical point of view.
Presentation - Layout, organization, readability... In a word, accessibility.

I believe the following categories share at least some elements: 1-2 (quality of the plot), 1-7 (sliding scale of linearity vs openness), 3-4-9 (encounters), 4-5 (speed of the adventure), 6-7 (plot hooks), 6-10 (ease with which a DM can approach the adventure), 9-10 (crunch). I've put a Venn diagram of this in the spoiler below.

https://i.imgur.com/B2x2uW0.png
I'm not sure if this will be useful at all, but it could be useful.
Imo Use of the SI will be a standalone, Story and Originality can be easily merged together, and then everything becomes blurry as I try to stick something together with Adaptability and Flexibility to not leave them together while also giving Presentation its own spot and not jumbling everything else in a single, unknown "mechanical stuff" section.

[SirNibbles]

Balance is not about story, it's about how well the encounters challenge a level-appropriate party. Pacing refers to both the flow of action and the overall runtime of the adventure. These are primarily game design rather than story concerns.

Presentation is also not about story but rather the adventure's layout, organization, readability, ease of prep, and so on—aesthetic and utilitarian, not narrative. I suppose you could argue for it under Elegance, but for an adventure I think Presentation is the more meaningful category. I've run a lot of published adventures and the formatting is a major factor in how easy it is for me to prep and run the mod.

Adaptation should definitely not be a five-point category by itself. It's not important enough to be weighted that heavily.

I think it's good for judges to look at categories, but I think assigning point values to categories isn't helpful.

"How good is the story?
-It's a 7/10." It's so arbitrary.

With so few judges, individual thoughts about what a 7 or 8 or 9/10 means will skew the results, more so when you increase the number of categories.

The overall impression of the adventure is much more tangible than attempting to divide it into categories.

It's like buying a car. You don't test drive a few cars and then grade each category. You just choose the one that felt the best. The gas mileage might not be the best, or the colour might not be the one you'd've chosen, but it's the one you enjoy driving the most.

The best adventure is the one you want to play (or DM) the most.

[Uncle Pine]

I think it's good for judges to look at categories, but I think assigning point values to categories isn't helpful.

"How good is the story?
-It's a 7/10." It's so arbitrary.

With so few judges, individual thoughts about what a 7 or 8 or 9/10 means will skew the results, more so when you increase the number of categories.

The overall impression of the adventure is much more tangible than attempting to divide it into categories.

It's like buying a car. You don't test drive a few cars and then grade each category. You just choose the one that felt the best. The gas mileage might not be the best, or the colour might not be the one you'd've chosen, but it's the one you enjoy driving the most.

The best adventure is the one you want to play (or DM) the most.

Dividing judgements in categories and voting on them has worked a few times (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oyjVU5JmeCnC8YTMqDArDqE5PszHl0Ysadz630kuTGk/edit?ts=59a4835f#gid=0) in the past (warning: excel file with 1059 links in it). I'm not saying that playtesting each and every adventure wouldn't be more fun, just that I can't do that.

And no, you can definitely grade every aspect of a car. In fact, there are entire magazines devoted to this.