James Jacobs
Adventurer
Roger said:
If a submission has bad English, its chances of being accepted are very, very low. It's not a bad idea at all to have someone give your submission a quick proofread before you send it in.
Rejected Dungeon Submissions
- Thread starter Altalazar
- Start date
If a submission has bad English, its chances of being accepted are very, very low. It's not a bad idea at all to have someone give your submission a quick proofread before you send it in.
Jeremy Walker
First Post
Roger said:
Rather than try and break down specific reasons why we reject adventures, it is more revealing to examine why we accept them.
Increasingly within the past several months, we have been receiving more and more adventures that fall into the "acceptable" category. That is, the writing quality, mechanics, and story idea are good enough to meet are basic expectations for an adventure. At that point, the decision usually comes down to a simple question: Which of these adventure proposals has a unique and/or interesting idea that grabs our attention? This could be a cool monster, a unique villain, an original location, a compelling plot twist, or any number of different things. These are the proposals that we generally accept. And we have even been known to overlook the violation of one of our usual "taboos" to green light a proposal. (Although, we generally will ask the author to remove the offensive section if possible.)
Now, it is true that probably about 30–40% of the proposals we get fail to meet the minimum acceptable standard for writing quality, rules mechanics, or outright silliness, but those are in the minority these days.
If you want more information about what precisely we are looking for, I highly recommend you read through the following threads on the Paizo messageboards, and there is some terrific discussion about writing for the magazines from prospective authors, editors, and fans alike. They can be found at:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/dungeon/generalDiscussion/tipsForContributors
and
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboard.../isThereABlackHoleInTheSubmissionsRoomAtPaizo
Jeremy Walker
Editorial Assistant: Dungeon Magazine
pogre
Legend
Years ago I sent in an adventure that called for the PCs to organize a couple of halfling villages' defenses against a hobgoblin army. Most of the adventure consisted of the PCs negotiating and cajoling the villagers to work together.
I think Barbara was the editor at the time and she wrote me a very nice lengthy letter explaining that my adventure was more like a wargame scenario than an adventure. She was right of course, but the scenario was a lot of fun...
I think Barbara was the editor at the time and she wrote me a very nice lengthy letter explaining that my adventure was more like a wargame scenario than an adventure. She was right of course, but the scenario was a lot of fun...
Christoph the Magus
Explorer
James Jacobs said:
And example number one is goofy locations that don't make any sense in my campaign world. I'm not knocking Dungeon for what it is, which IMO is a decent source for 1 shot adventures. But I don't need 1 shots-I need things that fit into my campaign, and goofy locations like a wizard's tower made out of a titan femur don't fit. Sure I could change it, but if I'm going to start changing things then I might as well just make my own.
It's those "boring" adventures that I need. Complete, with well thought out compounds, villains, etc that don't make my players say, "Ummm, if there's a weird tower made out of a leg bone on top of a mountain with a really big, creepy cemetary surrounding it, why haven't we heard about it before?"
Again, I'm not trying to knock Dungeon-I understand that it works for some people. But it doesn't work for me as of last look, and your post doesn't give me any reason to believe that things have changed enough for me to be interested.
Christoph
Respect to the editors; I'd imagine that there's no easier way to get sick of D&D and all it's more tired themes than wading through the Dungeon magazine slush pile.
I've run a couple of campaigns which put the adventure setting as subservient to the adventures themselves (e.g. L'Trel was there, as was the Isle of the Abbey, the woods from Legacy of the Liosalfar etc.). It took planning in terms of "what adventures do I want to run", as opposed to "what world do I want to build", but I think the former results in a far healthier D&D game for players, because adventures are the lifeblood of the campaign...rather than worldbuilding, which seems to be more of a DM hobby horse (not that there's anything wrong with that; it's another way to enjoy the game).
I recommend trying it at least once, though, if you've got a big stack of back issues (although it'd be harder to run 2E and 1E stuff without considerable thinking-ahead now - so much conversion!); you discover that Dungeon has a secret setting all of it's own with wrastling and cloud castles and unique earthquake-causing monsters, and you can jigsaw puzzle it together any way you like, leaving out the pieces you don't want.
You can always hack away at a "novel" adventure and make it "boring", surely..? The opposite is much harder.
It doesn't solve your problem, but I've said on these boards before that most everyone's got it exactly backwards, expecting the adventures to fit the setting, rather than vice versa.
I've run a couple of campaigns which put the adventure setting as subservient to the adventures themselves (e.g. L'Trel was there, as was the Isle of the Abbey, the woods from Legacy of the Liosalfar etc.). It took planning in terms of "what adventures do I want to run", as opposed to "what world do I want to build", but I think the former results in a far healthier D&D game for players, because adventures are the lifeblood of the campaign...rather than worldbuilding, which seems to be more of a DM hobby horse (not that there's anything wrong with that; it's another way to enjoy the game).
I recommend trying it at least once, though, if you've got a big stack of back issues (although it'd be harder to run 2E and 1E stuff without considerable thinking-ahead now - so much conversion!); you discover that Dungeon has a secret setting all of it's own with wrastling and cloud castles and unique earthquake-causing monsters, and you can jigsaw puzzle it together any way you like, leaving out the pieces you don't want.
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BOZ
Creature Cataloguer
i have to assume that not every single location (wizard's tower, noble's castle, port-o-potty) in an adventure has to be totally unique, the likes of which have never been seen before. but definitely, having some things that are not run-of-the-mill makes them, say... memorable. 
James Jacobs
Adventurer
BOZ said:i have to assume that not every single location (wizard's tower, noble's castle, port-o-potty) in an adventure has to be totally unique, the likes of which have never been seen before. but definitely, having some things that are not run-of-the-mill makes them, say... memorable.
True; not every location needs to be like Titan Femur Tower. And in fact, not every adventure needs to have a WEIRD location like that. But keep in mind that we recieve over 100 proposals for adventures a month, but only print 3–4 of them a month. Your proposal should have something that catches our attention, be it a unique location, an interesting villain, excellent writing, etc. Again, flip through the last few issues of the magazine to see what kind of adventures we've been printing to get a good idea of what we're looking for. #129, for example, has an urban adventure set in Eberron, one in a remote dwarven fortress, and one in a tomb of horrors-style dungeon.
Altalazar
First Post
One thing to keep in mind generally, I think, is that, assuming that you have a generally decent adventure, what ultimately gets you into the magazine is a matter of taste, not the actual quality or originality of the adventure.
So really, knowing the personalities of the editors will proabably be more helpful than any list of guidelines.
We've all heard stories of books that were classic bestsellers that were rejected by dozens of publishers first, for various reasons.
So take heart and keep submitting, is my motto. I have another idea I'm working on now. Mostly, I like the joy of creating and getting published is really just icing on the cake.
So really, knowing the personalities of the editors will proabably be more helpful than any list of guidelines.
We've all heard stories of books that were classic bestsellers that were rejected by dozens of publishers first, for various reasons.
So take heart and keep submitting, is my motto. I have another idea I'm working on now. Mostly, I like the joy of creating and getting published is really just icing on the cake.
