Thasmodious
First Post
I enjoyed the contest, humble minion, and I really liked your entry, it oozed flavor and I love urban adventures. I've added a few bits to my DM file. On to some thoughts/comments:
[sblock]One of those bits is humble's use of the magic fruit. I love the idea of a fruit stand selling fruit 'potions' in an elven district. That just oozes flavor. It really made me want to see this orchard that is so infused with elvish magic that the trees bear such fruit. I imagine that such an orchard would be rife with adventuring possibilities.
I agree with everything Nifft said about my entry. Had I gotten in a rewrite or two, a few of those issues would have been fixed (I hope), especially the rambling, which I was well aware of. I needed to organize it differently. In my head, the adventure started as a bit more straight-forward, plotted adventure, but then I didn't want to ignore the whole city, where much nightmarish fun could be had, and just send them straight to the tree. So halfway through it turned into a site-based adventure, which is why I went with the notes on expanding it, but point well taken there, Nifft.
Regarding Sigil showing up in my story, that's what my brain does to me sometimes. I pictured someone saying "why is there a portal that conveniently leads back to the material plane when the location has been torn from space and time?" And my answer was that Sigil leads everywhere, so it was a handy reason. It was completely superfluous and distracting. The "stellar" part was meant to simply be the star gate like passage (I pictured the star gate jump in 2001 but with lots of tentacles and space worms, which is why it ended in a lavish bedroom).
CleverNickname, as I say above, it was originally a bit more plot-driven in my head and morphed into a more open adventure. But I do have to say I really love, as a DM, just setting the PCs loose in a place and letting them find some plot, they almost always surprise me and I enjoy winging a lot of the actual game time and then thinking through the week until next session on how to tie some of the things the PCs are getting up to to threads of meta-plot bouncing around my notebook.[/sblock]
Like others have said, I'd really recommend those following the competition who are not participating to join the next one. It is loads of fun, the judges criticism is a level of feedback on your strengths and weaknesses that you usually don't get from your players or even if you start a thread and ask for it.
[sblock]One of those bits is humble's use of the magic fruit. I love the idea of a fruit stand selling fruit 'potions' in an elven district. That just oozes flavor. It really made me want to see this orchard that is so infused with elvish magic that the trees bear such fruit. I imagine that such an orchard would be rife with adventuring possibilities.
I agree with everything Nifft said about my entry. Had I gotten in a rewrite or two, a few of those issues would have been fixed (I hope), especially the rambling, which I was well aware of. I needed to organize it differently. In my head, the adventure started as a bit more straight-forward, plotted adventure, but then I didn't want to ignore the whole city, where much nightmarish fun could be had, and just send them straight to the tree. So halfway through it turned into a site-based adventure, which is why I went with the notes on expanding it, but point well taken there, Nifft.
Regarding Sigil showing up in my story, that's what my brain does to me sometimes. I pictured someone saying "why is there a portal that conveniently leads back to the material plane when the location has been torn from space and time?" And my answer was that Sigil leads everywhere, so it was a handy reason. It was completely superfluous and distracting. The "stellar" part was meant to simply be the star gate like passage (I pictured the star gate jump in 2001 but with lots of tentacles and space worms, which is why it ended in a lavish bedroom).
CleverNickname, as I say above, it was originally a bit more plot-driven in my head and morphed into a more open adventure. But I do have to say I really love, as a DM, just setting the PCs loose in a place and letting them find some plot, they almost always surprise me and I enjoy winging a lot of the actual game time and then thinking through the week until next session on how to tie some of the things the PCs are getting up to to threads of meta-plot bouncing around my notebook.[/sblock]
Like others have said, I'd really recommend those following the competition who are not participating to join the next one. It is loads of fun, the judges criticism is a level of feedback on your strengths and weaknesses that you usually don't get from your players or even if you start a thread and ask for it.
