Middle Earth D20 Best Original Character Contest Entries

tleilaxu said:
so when is the next contest? when the TT DVD comes out? :)

i suggest a mini-adventure for the next contest

In our brainstorming, Jeff and I discussed a series of contests (Best Original Place, Best Original Item, Best Original Adventure). Originally I imagined they would come one after the other.

We don't have any other prizes lined up, but are people interested in continuing the contests anyway? (The Spelljammer list which I took the idea from has had about ten contests over the last two years, none involving prizes)
 

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Re: get it going

Sakzilla said:
1) I'd like some feedback on Weodegil - take off the gloves and let me know what you thought. Was he dull? Boring? Not flexible enough? not fleshed out enough?
[/B]

Hey Ron,

My feelings about Weodegil were very similar to my feelings about Cuwe. He was very suitable to Middle Earth campaigns, and I like that you presented some complexity to his background.

I wanted more in the way of hooks. Looking over the entry again, I see that your comments at the end about slaying orcs and seeking for signs of his wife and son could qualify, although it sounds more like a description of his personality. I wanted hooks to be more explicit. Where would PC's encounter Woedegil, how might he help them (and they him)?

Sakzilla said:
2)To get interest going again on the site, what if we started a concerted effort to "produce" material on a regular basis. By this I mean we set out to detail a previously un-mapped area of ME and tie it in with the established canon on Tolkien.
Ron [/B]

This is a great idea, but the organizational challenge seems daunting. We have a lot of individuals motivated to work on individual conversions (or creations), but I am unsure about our ability to work together closely.
 

Re: Re: get it going

GruTheWanderer said:
We have a lot of individuals motivated to work on individual conversions (or creations), but I am unsure about our ability to work together closely.

I hadn't thought about it quite like that before. I'm guessing that's an accurate assessment. Derek and I keep in regular touch, but, judging by the lack of activity at the Yahoo group, as I mentioned above, we seem to be in a minority. If anyone has any thoughts on how to rectify this, let us know.
 



Feedback

I'll pipe up too, I guess. Sorry not to have posted sooner, but things get hairy around here from time to time...

Cuwe and Woedegil are both fine characters (in the slightly archaic British sense of the word, i.e., "excellent," as opposed to the common North American "satisfactory"). ;)

In my final tally, I had Cuwe and Weodegil tied for third place only 2 points (out of 30) behind the Maw, and only 1.5 points behind Maiteliant -- a very close race. I rated both Cuwe and Wodegil very high in suitability (in fact, higher than any of the other entries); Woedegil's lowest mark (from me) was in flexibility, while Cuwe's was in creativity. This is not to say that they were not flexible or creative, respectively, but simply that these were their lowest marks.

Cuwe, I think, is well crafted using the d20 rules, but I think he is simply a little too deeply entrenched in the canonical Middle-Earth cosmology (in terms of creativity as a contest entry, of course; from any other perspective, this "embeddedness" might well be his greatest asset).

Woedegil, of all the characters, has what I'd call the most profoundly Tolkienesque feel: that tragic vision, that terrible sense of sadness and loss, the indefatigable human spirit standing in the face of the darkest adversity. His one weakness -- and again, this is a weakness only as it applies to his existence as a contest entry -- is that there is relatively little in his biography to which one might tie an overarching plot: that is, in gaming terms, he doesn't come with many inherent plot hooks. ;)

Again, though, let me reiterate what a fine bunch of characters I think these are. I might well use any or all of them at some point or another in my own games. That's a lot more than I can say for almost any NPC in a published work that I've read, bought, or worked on...

Well done, everyone.

Scott Holden-Jones
Editor/Developer
Fiery Dragon Productions
Sword & Sorcery Studios/White Wolf Publishing
OtherWorld Creations
Mythic Dreams Studios
 
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I know I'm trolling here, but I must chime in to say that the Maw has, at long last, fulfilled the precise need shared by many ME gamemasters (including myself): A new archvillain! This is a big, big deal; 4A baddies are difficult to generate. I was on the path to using Ardana (from the old ICE Ardor supplement) before this fine fellow came along. Thanks, Michael!

Congratulations to all the other entrants as well; even just reading the character descriptions was hugely entertaining!
 

For 3e conversion purposes, I converted Ardana (from ICE's Ardor) and merged her with Chandra Khal from Arduin Grimoire's Winds of Change (book 8) and that resulted in a nasty Arch-villain.

Both Ardana and Chandra are based on the same general mythologies, so the merger worked pretty well. And when you combine Ardana's Court of Ardor with Chandra's Black Lotus Society, you get tons of interesting flunkies for the PCs to fight.

Tom

ruleslawyer said:
I know I'm trolling here, but I must chime in to say that the Maw has, at long last, fulfilled the precise need shared by many ME gamemasters (including myself): A new archvillain! This is a big, big deal; 4A baddies are difficult to generate. I was on the path to using Ardana (from the old ICE Ardor supplement) before this fine fellow came along. Thanks, Michael!

Congratulations to all the other entrants as well; even just reading the character descriptions was hugely entertaining!
 


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