Campaign World Submissions - Who Entered?

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

I was just reading the Plot Workshop for the Ebarron Novel Contest thread... Now...I'm on lots of other RPG forums, including a local Toronto one, for the Toronto Roleplaying Association...and one of the members and I were talking about world creation...and he mentioned that he entered the WotC Campaign contest that Ebarron eventually won...

So, here's my question to you all: Who entered that contest? Do you still have your one-page proposal? Would you care to post it? I would be interested to see what other worlds were out there.

Ultimately, I'd love to look at also the Ebarron one-page proposal as well.

A friend of mine summitted a proposal for that contest. In the end, because I thought that the proposal was pretty good, and it was very hard to convey the world concept and all the intracatecies of it in just one page. In the end, he felt that it was pretty much just an 'inside' job. Since they picked someone who was already in the Gaming Industry to win. They picked one of their 'buddies'. So, what do you all think of that contest?

 

[Zappo]

I'll dig for my proposal later - basically, a world which had been subject to a violent transition from high technology to high magic not too long ago, with demons added into the mix. In retrospective, it probably had no chances; even though the actual campaign era had no tech at all and was strictly fantasy, the background had futuristic elements which violated the basic conditions.

I don't think the setting search was rigged; it is true that they eventually chose an industry man, but Eberron is very good, and it makes sense that the average worldbuilding skills are higher among professionals.

 

[Kichwas]

I doubt both of the final assumptions.

First, from what I hear the author was not an industry insider, he just has a name similar to one. Proving or disproving me on this will only take a very short amount of research - I'll leave that to awake crowd.

Second, I doubt an industry insider could do a better job than an outsider, given what I've seen of the industry. Too many authors are stuck in the same basic faults and same basic motifs, and several of these are present in Eberron. One of my players often describes a different RPG that he bought for kicks as 'everything you thought was Kewl when you were 17,' and in many ways that description fits Eberron. It handles some of its ideas rather well, although it falls flat on a few of them, but there is nothing new in there - what is mostly in there is a collection of things geekdom finds 'Kewl', just a different collection than you see in some of the other WoTC books.

I think an outsider, not set in an industry paradigm, has the potential to do a vastly better job. They're not assured of such, but they will never hit the limits EVERY insider will hit - if they are good, they will lack the paradigms that block them from becoming great.

I also doubt we'll ever see them come to print in a gaming product, but they are out there and they could...

The best (and worst) world designers are in my opinion all on the fiction end of fantasy, but few of them will ever see the point of using their skills in our hobby. The second best (and second worst) are among the amatuers - the GMs out there, and by the time most of them can get into print in gaming they will have been burdened by the paradigms that work to achieve medocricy - shaving off their edge on both ends of the skill spectrum.

 

[Zappo]

Keith Baker's resume. Not a "big name" before Eberron, but a published author nonetheless.

 

[Plane Sailing]

There used to be place on ENworld were submissions were stored by people, but I can't see where it is now.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I entered. In hindsight I can see why I got passed over. My world has a rather meta-game tilt to it (the players are more in control of the setting than in other game worlds), but WotC was clearly keeping an eye open to the MMORPGs, which they told us in the inital submission call.

Eberron, among other things, is very "zoned". The main continent has two outdoor-dungeon type places and there are a couple of other continents that are clearly more powerful than the starting areas. This is great for a MMORPG. Plus you have all those travel options to take you from area to area. That's a pretty nice setup for computer game design.

I happen to like Eberron a lot. I think there are a lot of parts to it that are quite innovative. But the sectional nature of the setting was surely very important.

 

[Sir Elton]

Why did I even look at this thread? :\

 

[scadgrad]

I entered and was not surprised at all to have been rejected. It was at best a crap shoot, and we can all take pride in the fact that those of us who were rejected were in the good company of most of the industry's most talented designers.

Kudos to Keith Baker for having won. I can't say that I like Eberron, but I can see the appeal that it will have due to its "Big Tent" approach to the core paradigms of D&D.

At the end of the day though, I think Midnight was the REAL winner of that contest.

 

[Mouseferatu]

First off, no, they didn't pick Keith because he was "an insider." He had only a few published credits, and none of them were with WotC. It's very unlikely WotC even knew him until they read the Eberron entry. Plus, Eberron's damn cool.

Second, I entered the search with three different entries. As others have said, I can see in retrospect why I didn't win. WotC wanted a setting--rightly so--that could incorporate all the aspects of D&D as written, plus add new ones. I thought that my ideas were pretty good, but at least two of them eliminated some standard options in favor of new ones. Further, they were geared toward specific types of stories far more than Eberron is, which makes them less widely useful.

I still think they're good ideas, and I hope to have the opportunity to publish them (or stories set in them) at some point in the future. But I have no hard feelings about it. From Eberron so far, and from talking to Keith in person for several hours at GenCon, he deserved to win the setting search.

 

[Imagicka]

*bump*

What? There wasn't anyone else who entered this?
No one cares to share their outline? *pouts*