Anyone Interested in a "Create Your Own RPG" Competition?

[Lord Xtheth]

I'm in, but only if you drop that namby three month work time thing. I mean, three months is great, but people do the 24-Hour competition every year and come up with killer stuff, so it's not necessary. I say the work window should be one month max.

Between work, My D&D sessions, trying to refine my 4E campaign for publishing and Real life, I couldn't do that.
But thats just me.
I can be a judge if it's just 1 month of work time.

 

[jdrakeh]

Between work, My D&D sessions, trying to refine my 4E campaign for publishing and Real life, I couldn't do that.
But thats just me.
I can be a judge if it's just 1 month of work time.

Well, everybody has their priorities, but in terms of impromptu-ish design contests three months is really unheard of insofar as contest durations are concerned. I mean, look at the various Game Chef competitions and the 24-Hour RPG competition. Or even the various Story Games competitions.

Don't get me wrong, I hear where you're coming from (I, too, have a 40+ hour-a-week day job, numerous civic duties to attend to in my free time, and personal projects to work on), but a big part of the challenge for such contests is the limited time windows. And the challenge is what draws most of the participants.

Giving somebody three months to design a game isn't really all that challenging and, I suspect, might cut down on the number of interested parties (frex, I'd have no interest in submitting to a contest with that time-frame, even with my harried schedule, though I might volunteer to serve as a judge).

I freely admit that I could be wrong, but I don't think it's coincidence that most of the successful and well-known game design contests have a narrow work window available for participants to submit within.

 

[fuindordm]

Sounds like fun. I would probably participate.

As for the deadline... some of us have full-time jobs and all. Why not give people the time to create something playable?

Ben

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Well, everybody has their priorities, but in terms of impromptu-ish design contests three months is really unheard of insofar as contest durations are concerned. I mean, look at the various Game Chef competitions and the 24-Hour RPG competition. Or even the various Story Games competitions.

Don't get me wrong, I hear where you're coming from (I, too, have a 40+ hour-a-week day job, numerous civic duties to attend to in my free time, and personal projects to work on), but a big part of the challenge for such contests is the limited time windows. And the challenge is what draws most of the participants.

Giving somebody three months to design a game isn't really all that challenging and, I suspect, might cut down on the number of interested parties (frex, I'd have no interest in submitting to a contest with that time-frame, even with my harried schedule, though I might volunteer to serve as a judge).

I freely admit that I could be wrong, but I don't think it's coincidence that most of the successful and well-known game design contests have a narrow work window available for participants to submit within.

This seems more like a "Just for fun" contest to me though. But I can see where a more restricted timeline might make for better competition. I, However, can not come up with the free time in 1 month to put somthing together from scratch that even so much as makes sense.

OTOH: I can see what I can do

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Heres some more rules questions:

Can we still use the SRD? I know you don't want "Refer to the SRD for rules" but if we include things like the 6 main stats, the bonuses for said stats, the concept of feats and such would that be alright?

What if we accidently "create" an existing yet obscure (or less obscure) game? (I've read so many RPG books, I'm not sure if any idea I have going through my head is orriginal or not)

Is blatant copywright infringement out of the question ("This is my '300, the RPG!!!' ")

I may have more later, but I'm tired and can't think of anything but bikini babes and banana cream pie.

 

[Roadkill101]

I've already designed a system I use for myself. It's written in MS Word and has a 72 page count (which is longer than your suggested 30-40 pages).

So my question is can we submit something we've already writtten, or does it need to be something newly designed for the contest.

 

[Fifth Element]

Well, everybody has their priorities, but in terms of impromptu-ish design contests three months is really unheard of insofar as contest durations are concerned. I mean, look at the various Game Chef competitions and the 24-Hour RPG competition. Or even the various Story Games competitions.

Well yes, but maybe the idea is to try something different, rather than yet another 24-hour RPG design contest. I don't think the OP mentioned anything about it being an impromptu-ish design contest.

 

[pawsplay]

I think three months is about right for a well-conceived but not intensively designed pamphlet style game. I for one do not have a week or a month until well into January I could just throw at something like this, but with a wider time frame, it would be fun. This is something different than a 24 hour game design or something... my impression is something more old school, more of putting a framework on paper that someone could run a campaign in for years.

 

[xechnao]

Cool idea! Unfortunately I am out of time for such a project right now but I would love to see this fruit here.

 

[jdrakeh]

I don't think the OP mentioned anything about it being an impromptu-ish design contest.

He didn't have to mention it, dude — he started a thread saying "Hey! Let's have a contest!" (that's impromptu).