The writers of the competition

[MavrickWeirdo]

Without asking anyone to reveal which encounter they did, I am curious how the the other writers felt about their encounter, and the competition.

I liked the lenght of time we were given to write (almost a month), but keeping it down to 3 pages was difficult. Editing down the encounter while trying to maintain a balance of content and flavor, and still have it readable, was a challenge. (It took all of my willpower not to widen the margins to fit more.)

I have read less then half of the entrys and already I'm seeing that there is alot of good ideas there. I may have to vote for someone elses encounter.

So what do the rest of you think?

 

[Corporate Dog]

Yeah, size was DEFINITELY a concern. As it was, I had to edit out a lot of flavor text and unnecessary "neat stuff", and even then I ended up asking Morrus if I could bleed some of my encounter text onto my fourth map page (for the record, he said it would be okay).

I notice lots of people applied similar tricks to fit in more text (thinner margins, smaller fonts, etc.). So if we do this again, I say raise the page cap. Two pages for the NPC's stats, history, description and tactics, three pages for all encounter text, and then a sixth page for optional images and/or maps.

And there certainly ARE a lot of good ideas out there. I just hope we get to vote for multiple encounters (at least in the first round of voting).

Regards,
Corporate Dog

 

[Morrus]

smaller fonts

And technically disqualified themselves in the process.

...your text should be in Times New Roman font (or similar) at a font size of 12 points.

If you look through the entire list, I think you'll suprised by how many people failed to meet the requirements:

1) Your entry should be in .doc or .rtf format, and consist of three pages. The first page should contain the encounter, the second page should describe (and, if necessary, map) the location and the third page should include your NPC, complete with background, roleplaying notes and combat tactics (if relevant).
Your entry may optionally contain one fourth page for illustrations or maps; this is not compulsory.

2) You may not exceed one page for each of these elements, and your text should be in Times New Roman font (or similar) at a font size of 12 points.

3) The full 3-page document should bear a title and an indication of its Encounter Level, and sent as an email attachment to me at morrus@d20reviews.com.

4) Your email should contain your full name and mailing address.

Requirements 3 & 4 proved to be rather challenging for a lot of people.

There are exceptions, but only where those were explicitly allowed.

 

[UniversalMonster]

Vote for me!

Well, I won't say which one is mine, but I hope I win something. =)

 

[der_kluge]

Wow, I missed #4 - the address part. Never saw that. Are you sure it was on the main page? Have to go back to look again.

I had initially written my encounter as 10-pt font, and then I reread the requirements, and had to up it to 12 and I was like "whoa! Too much stuff!" While this might be a clue to which one I did, I ended up having to push the margins out to the limits to get it all in. I saw at least one other one that had to do the same.

I've read through about half of them. I've come across about 3 or maybe 4 that I'd consider good enough to actually run in my own game (where I running one). Some of them don't make any sense, and there are a lot written by people to whom English is a second language. I can forgive the bad grammer on some, but the typos and misspelled words are a different matter.

I read through one that exceeded 4 pages, and there was another that was less than two. For the most part, people followed the requirements fairly closely.

 

[KDLadage]

Mine was fun to write... then again, for something like this I wanted to create something rather... unusual. Mine is also not intended as a combat encounter. It was something of a 'throw it in, see if the players bite; if they do, hook them and play with them for a while' -- granted, if comebat comes, it will get to be raher... nasty...

Still, as I look over the others, I know that I will not be voting for mine. I am a little over half-way through, and I see three others so far that I like as well as, or more than mine... Oh well.

 

[Oracular Vision]

I finished one, but was not happy about the ugliness of my maps, so I didn't submit it. Maybe I will rework it later. It was fun anyway.

 

[Corporate Dog]

Originally posted by Morrus
If you look through the entire list, I think you'll suprised by how many people failed to meet the requirements...

So I take it that we, the voting public, are supposed to decide who did and didn't follow the guidelines? That could get messy.

Regards,
Corporate Dog

 

[Mistwell]

I have an entry in as well (and it will be obvious to everyone which one, until I get the cover page removed, which should be soon).

I actually think the rules on this contest were pretty good. It is harsh to try and fit everything in one page each (and I had plenty of trouble with it, and was not particularly happy with the "encounter" portion of my submission, nor with the space I had to describe the NPC's background. Of course, I also did mine at the last minute and didn't give myself enough editing time, so that's my own fault). However, it is important to force people to be as brief as possible, or else we would end up with 500+ pages in the end to read. That would be just too much. So yes, it's difficult to follow the page limit, font, font size, and margins rules, but probably necessary. I would even eliminate the optional fourth page idea, just to trim things down some more.

It's going to be odd, voting on the best submissions while taking in to account a penalty for violating the rules. Everyone will weigh the factors differently, making it rather subjective. Oh well, I can't think of a better way to do it.

I've read about eight of the submissions so far (only 60 more to go!), and all of them were good. Pretty impressive. Going to be nice to have that many free encounters to use as a DM.

Mistwell

 

[Morrus]

I despair.

Now poeple are sending me revisions to their entries as noted on the contest page. Their revisions tend to fit into the guidelines for the contest, which is good. However, they are now unable to follow the ONE simple rule for sending in revisions.

So far, 15 poeple have sent me revised documents. Of those, only one has managed to do so in the manner asked.

A note to everyone - if you have sent in a revision, and your revision has not appeared, check the guideline for doing so before emailing me and asking why. You should be able to figure out for yourself why your entry has not been updated.