Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 2306934" data-attributes="member: 94">At the risk of helping some other uppity newbie topple the reigning champ, here's how I generally go about crafting my entry. Total time is usually about 4-5 hours. (That's actually a pretty significant chunk of time to invest, considering most folks work all day and like to sleep at least 7 hours.)Anyhow:1) I put all the ingredients at the top of a page to begin taking brainstorming notes.*2) I look for any common theme that immediately jumps out. The monk and the impossibly high wall linked pretty quickly, as did the foxglove (poison). Usually, whatever immediately links up ends up forming the plot, the antagonist, and/or the setting. The other elements are then woven in as details to support that first, most obvious link.3) Google anything you don't know front and back, and a few things you do.Googling foxglove helped me a lot. I found out more than I knew about its effects. I also found out that it tends to grow in the cracks of mortar. I also found a quote on one page that was very cool and evocative: Gerard recommends it to those 'who have fallen from high places'4) Run to the SRD and search it for all d20 terms.In my case this included looking up the mohrg, the monk class, darkwood, and instability. I couldn't find instability in the SRD, but I knew I had seen it before in a monster. Gibbering mouther? Nope. Chaos beast? Aha.I also found out that darkwood wasn't really suitable for making a dagger-- you can really only use darkwood for things that normally contain some wooden component. Since I was already having trouble working a dagger into my entry, I started thinking outside the box.5) Use Dictionary.com to look up trouble words.And by trouble, I mean anything that doesn't seem like it's fitting as well as you'd like. I looked up instability as well as, believe it or not, dagger. The purpose here is to see if there's some obscure use of a particular word that might work better than its most obvious or literal meaning.6) Sleep on it.By this time I've done about all the research I can on the ingredients, and all that's left to do is just let it ruminate. See if it all comes together. This part of the process has its downside, as it usually keeps me from getting a good night's rest. I have to keep a pencil and pad nearby to jot down anything that starts to click-- or, worse yet, I bolt out of bed and head for the computer. This can have a deleterious effect on your relationship with your sleeping partner.7) Start writing.This process usually takes me 2 hours or so, 3 hours if I am really struggling.Don't try to include statblocks or DCs. They don't add enough to the strength of your entry to warrant the extra time. On the other hand, if you want to introduce an interesting new mechanic that supports your entry, do so. (Assuming it's well designed, of course.)Just write. Get the story down. Provide the minimum background necessary to support the entry. Don't give away the farm in the background-- keep the judge reading. If the entry builds to a climax, as you'd hope it actually plays out, that's best.Provide some reasonable hooks, but don't obsess over it. Some players are just stubborn bastards who feel it's their duty not to be 'hooked' or to justify reasons for their PCs not to get involved; but you know, the more you worry about how to hook the stubborn bastards, the more your entry is going to seem like a railroad. So provide some reasonable hooks, and just give a nod to that limited set of alternates outside of 'killing the bad guys and taking their stuff.' Provide as many places as possible for the PCs to actually DO something, and that "something" they should "DO" is definitely "interact/see/touch/smell/hear/feel/kill/loot/ or kick-in-the-junk as many of the ingredients as possible. Don't treat your entry like a story that is going to unfold inevitably. If your entry can resolve itself without the intervention of the PCs, you've got a problem.8) Post the entry.All of your prior work should have been done in Word. Now post it up on ENworld, and preview, preview, preview. Don't hit submit until it is formatted properly and you've read it 2 or 3 or even 4 times to make sure it all makes sense. This is your last chance to fix it.9) Click Submit.-----*For those who are actually interested, here's the complete, exact text of my brainstorming notes:</blockquote>

Verification