How did you experience the WotC Setting Search

[Pants]

The only real thing I remember about that time was reading people post on various forums that thier homebrew was far too precious to be whored out to WOTC for a mere 100k.

Call me a whore, but I would've dropped my pants and sold my setting for 100k.

Needless to say, I never did enter. I kept agonizing over the details and it just got too late to send it in :\

 

[Arnwyn]

How did you experience the Setting Search - either as an observer or as a participant? From its earliest announcments to the declaration of the winner?

Saw the announcement, shrugged, and ignored pretty much everything since then.

 

[Boojum]

Well, I missed the initial announcement, and didn't find out about it until a week or two before it was due. I didn't have a setting of my own, but I sat down and came up with a few ideas that I liked to send in. My entry didn't deserve to make the cut, and it didn't, but it did get me started on thinking about my setting and developing it, and now I am running a campaign in it. The original draft didn't have more than a quarter or so of the cool ideas and gameplay possibilities that the current one does, so I'd love to see another search and have another crack at it with the revised version. Regardless, the original search got the ball rolling for me to make a setting, and that has contributed quite a bit to my enjoyment of gaming over the last two years.

 

[Desdichado]

Call me a whore, but I would've dropped my pants and sold my setting for 100k.

Needless to say, I never did enter. I kept agonizing over the details and it just got too late to send it in :\

Heh, I dropped my pants a good three times. No takers at WotC, unfortunately.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

I had plans to enter several setting ideas, but some serious freelance commitments cut into my time enormously, and I submitted only one.

The one I ended up submitting was a reworked version of the Summerlands, a game I've been developing off and on for a while now. When I sent it, I was a bit conflicted - I won't kid myself and pretend it wouldn't have been wonderful to win, and wouldn't have been more profitable than it will be now, but the Summerlands has always been a very personal thing for me and I wasn't really sure I wanted to let it go.

Fortunately *ahem* for me... it didn't win anyway.

In retrospect, I should have concentrated on the other ideas - we've all got lots of perfectly interesting settings rolling around in our heads, and I made the mistake of concentrating too heavily on one. Of course, that's all academic anyway, as Eberron turned out to be a very worthy setting.


As to the stuff around the setting search... I unintentionally sparked an ENORMOUS flamewar that spanned both ENWorld and RPG.net (at the time, it was the 5th longest thread in RPG.net history) when I was far too undiplomatic in my response to people saying their work was too good for WotC. Wish I hadn't done that - but live and learn and become an RPG.net admin two years later, as they say.

Otherwise, I followed it with interest, and was very happy to see several of the final 10 folks get a chance to publish their settings. I was also happy to see all the excitement around the contest, as it really livened up the place, and kindled a lot of imagination.


My biggest regret is that I've never seen Keith Baker's 1 pager. I'm curious to see how he presented Eberron, and managed to his ideas for such a diverse and quirky setting across in a single page.

Patrick Y.

 

[MarkAHart]

My biggest regret is that I've never seen Keith Baker's 1 pager. I'm curious to see how he presented Eberron, and managed to his ideas for such a diverse and quirky setting across in a single page.

I would also like to see not only Keith's initial 1-page entry, but those of the other 10 winners as well. How much of these "sold the sizzle" of the steak, so to speak, and what phrases proved most evocative in these proposals? These would be, I think, enjoyable to read.

 

[Raloc]

I wrote up a page and never managed to send it in, because I went on a trip that weekend. I don't think it would have had a chance of winning though, it didn't really stick to the staples of D&D. I didn't follow it other than that, as I was away in the Army. I didn't even know about ENWorld until recently, or Eberron for that matter.

 

[ssampier]

Ugh, I stupidly gave my setting to a d20 company thinking that I had a chance to get it published. In the end, they went out of business and sold it to another d20 company and I did not get a dime nor any credit for the work. It really bites to see stuff you created appear and not even be acknowledged for writing it.

I stopped writing RPG material at that point and went back to writing my novel. So I viewed the whole setting search in a negative light.

That sucks! Call me clueless, but may I ask how did that happen? You can email or pm the story (email me ssampierNOSPAM at yahoo dot com).

 

[nopantsyet]

Well, I just assumed from the start that it was both market research and a publicity stunt. But I have no problem with that. I maintain it was a great idea. Why not? Get the active community (i.e. the money-spenders) interested. Give them something they'll be talking about for months. Start promoting a product that you haven't even started developing at the same time. I applaud the folks who came up with this idea.

So I wrote a one-pager. I was in the process of starting my first homebrew world, and I thought it was a pretty good idea. I didn't expect to make it anywhere, but I figured stranger things have happened, right? Of course it didn't get picked. And by the time Eberron came out, I had taken a lot of lessons from my own experience and the Eberron design journals and was starting my second homebrew. This one I feel good about.

I figure the exercise was good for me. It forced me to break down the world in ways I hadn't considered. Now I'm not saying I'm ready to be published or anything, but I think my current world is pretty good. We're having a fun time playing in it at any rate.

And I do like Eberron. I would love to play in an Eberron game. I try to take lessons from it even though there are some parts I'd like to steal. Maybe if I ever take a hiatus or my current campaign ends.

 

[Amal Shukup]

That's quite an assumption. What are the chances that someone who isn't yet published might be better than people who already are? Being published does not make you a better writer.

True. But writing and NOT being published doesn't make you a better writer either - particularly if you write in a vaccuum (which is the case for the vast majority of unpublished writers). NOBODY reads the material, there's no feedback or editorial insight, no incentive to refine the craft, no CONTEXT to help the developing author understand that writing is a process of crafting a dialog WITH an audience, and NOT merely an exercise in self expression. Writing alone, furtively, under the covers, is about as fruitful as the OTHER thing going on there (not unsatisfying in its own right, but not actually useful...)

A talented, unpublished writer with a) something to say and b) who works at it CAN get read and even published.

Many good writers have never had the opportunities. I thought that was the point of this Setting Search.

Oh, B-Crap: Write. Submit. Get Published or Rejected. Learn from the rejection, develop your craft. Heck, self-publish or author a Blog. It's a reasonably level field, all things considered. I don't have a lot of sympathy for "the man's holding me DOWN, dude" pose, if you want to get published there's nothing at all stopping you except you.

The Setting Search was a bit of a 'Hail Mary' long shot: 11000 to one, massive payday up for grabs. What are the odds that all of the 11000 are gonna good losers? And a number of deserving folk DID get a payday - WoTC certainly held up their end of the bargain.

I certainly knew, when I entered, that I was going to be going up against some varsity - they said it was open to anyone - not just rank amateurs and wannabees. Plus, $100K is enough 'bank' to attract even reasonably successful professional authors.

Not to belabor the point here, but being able to boil your setting down to one page doesn't make you a better writer either. It makes you a better summarizer.

Not to belabor MY point, but double B-CRAP. Writing short but effective content is about the HARDEST thing to do well in terms of writing. So YES, being able to distill a WORLD down to a page and still getting across its unique advantages and differentiators, PLUS making it 'sing' enough to be picked out from amongst thousands of other entries DOES mean you're a better writer. I would love to see the 1-pagers for the first round picks - I bet some of that material is freakin' poetry.

Even if it's NOT poetry (to the untutored eyes of the envious), it was successful and effective (in other words 'better') writing by the only criteria that actually matters - they got the gig...

And just because WOTC said it was anonymous doesn't make it so. And yes, I know, just because they said it was supposed to bring in new writers doesn't make it so either.

Conclusions drawn on base allegations and wishful thinking not even hinted at in evidence. Statement stricken from the record.

My experience of the Setting Search:

Besides recognizing the search as being absolute GENIUS in terms of Marketing and Marketing Research (my field of expertise), I thought it was great from a DM/player point of view. Greyhawk felt tired to me (I'd used it off and on throughout the '80's and '90's) and I hated the Realms (as a story-telling environment it has deficiencies...), so I certainly felt READY for an exciting new setting.

I was even readier for $100K US though, so I certainly tossed my hat in the ring. I spent several days preparing my entry. My homebrew was years in development and (IMHO) fairly publishable fantasy setting. It's biggest 'selling point' was diversity: lots of richly developed cultures, nations and societies, distributed in a fairly cohesive fashion. Stone age through mid rennaisance with substantial detours to the strange and unusual, and all interconnected to one degree or another.

Since then, I've kept working on it. I'm mentioning this to help convey the extent of my investment.

So, we just started playing an Eberron 'one-off' (one of our players taking on the mantle of DM for the first time) And we're having a BLAST bangin' around Sharn. Really enjoying the texture of the place.

Which leaves me - who's setting features a number of well developed urban centres - SERIOUSLY thinking of ditching my 'investment' setting and working with Eberron.

Is it perfect? No it isn't, but it isn't a retread of the Realms or Greyhawk either. It's cohesive, innovative, and absolutely brings something NEW without being divorced from mainstream play. That's a tough thing to do well, and I think Keith pulled it off. Kudos to him and the other finalists.

A'Mal