The writers of the competition

[Corporate Dog]

So either you've written a real stinker or your way too polite.

Up until I saw what I was running against, I thought a mauve slime NPC sitting in the middle of a field WAS original.

See it's LIKE a green slime. But it's MAUVE. And it has a level of Paladin.

Actually, I just haven't read all of the entries yet.

Regards,
Corporate Dog

 

[Victim]

How do we vote for these?

I've seen quite a few encounters that use very arbitrary rulings, or decisions that make no sense from a rules perspective. This problem seems more frequent in higher level adventures, where the exceptionally varied and powerful abilities of PCs make the temptation to just say "Sorry, it doesn't work" very strong.

Edit: i cont spel.

 

[barsoomcore]

Can I just state that "page" restrictions are much more difficult than "word" restrictions. I don't know if my entry fits the page restrictions or not. Oh well.

Can I humbly request that future contests place a word restriction rather than a page restriction? A page is typically 500 words or so, but a word restriction makes things like margins, point sizes and so on irrelevant. It's MUCH easier, both to adjudicate and to estimate. Please.

Thanks!

 

[THG Mage]

Just my opinion

After looking over several of the entries, reading the posts in this forum, I wanted to post my opinion on the topic. This opinion comes from someone who did not enter the contest, but knows of several people who did.

This contest brings to mind something that came up in one of our forums about something similar to this. I believe the question was raised in our forum about rules or guidelines being so stringent for something we are doing. This is a paraphrased version of the response, which I think is a good one, that was given by someone I greatly respect:

"Your writing style and creativity, while important, isnt always the whole picture. On the other hand, whether or not you can follow simple directions and guidelines says a lot about you"

Morrus set up the rules for a reason, so that all entries would have to follow the same guidelines and no one would be given an advantage over another. What you wrote about was your business. The way it was presented had to follow the rules...period.

That is the way I believe Morrus wanted it anyway. Uniformity in presentation....creativity in content.

Im done. Thank you for your time, and might I add a general well done to all the contest entries.

 

[der_kluge]

Victim is probably referring to my entry.

I agree with several posters here. Some of the entries -clearly- didn't follow the rules. There are a few with 10-pt. font, and some that exceed the page count blatantly.

If we can vote only once, of course I'm voting for mine. If we can vote more than once (I hope that we can), then I'm going to base a large portion of my vote on usability in my game were I running a game. This includes eliminating entries that rely on heavy use of religion-specific concepts, or some of the ones that feature "randomly" teleporting buildings or structures (there are a couple of those). It's a neat concept, but way overdone, IMHO.

edit: hey, I'm a programmer, not an editor.

 

[Victim]

I don't know, which one is your encounter? Actually, don't say. I wish that people's names or emails weren't attatched to any of the files we look it, thus eliminating any possible bias. For example, one member of our community named the file after his online handle. Now his entry may not be judged fairly because people will have preexisting opinions.

Also, I think many of the ELs are badly misjudged. Of course, I feel like I shouldn't discuss these either. Grrrr.

Should I stop worrying about affecting people's votes and discuss the dang things?

 

[KDLadage]

name of the file...

Sorry... my handle is the name of my file. I did this so that I would not have to put my name in the encounter itself; I thought Morrus was going to make one big file out of these... however, with 69 entrants, I see why he did not.

In the end, I wish I had named it something else... but thems the breaks... I don't figure enough people here have a strong enough opinion of me (and my writing) for that to influence them too much.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

Random Thoughts

I am grateful for all the feedback so far about the competition, both from other writers and readers.

I'll admit that I am not to sure about the EL of mine, I based it on the NPC level and trap difficulty. In hind sight I might have bumped it up a level, but because there were non-combat options I felt it was fair.

As far as format goes I've noticed a common occurence. While some followed the Morrus' rules to the letter, and others seemed to write more randomly, there is a third format which comes up adain and again. The two column, Background/Summary/Encounter format used by most gaming publishers. I'm not sure how to judge those. I was guessing that the purpose of the Encounter/Location/Character split is that they could be more easily judged seperatly. 2 best location; 2 best characters; 2 best encounters.

As far as the page vs. word # debate it made me think of "journalistic" requirements. The number of words you fit on a page can varry, not only from what words you use but how you structure paragraphs. (Dialoge wastes more space than expositon.)

I haven't found any yet that I like better than mine, but there are several I feel are just as good. (I've read up to EL 8.)

One thing I've noticed is the frequency of Elementals in the encounters.

 

[Pielorinho]

Well, I voted. Did you?

In reading over them, I found the following things most important to me:

1) Does the adventure railroad the PCs? A couple of the encounters allow only one course of action, and contain flavor text that tells PCs how they feel. Uh uh.
2) Does the adventure use the rules well? A couple of the encounters give DCs without an associated skill or attribute, or allow people to cast spells they shouldn't be able to cast. Uh uh.
3) Is the adventure plausible? If an encounter's plausibility rests on giving a spell a permanent duration when it should normally have a duration listed in hours per level, and doesn't provide any evidence that the spellcaster has some special ability, it doesn't work.
4) Is the adventure fun?

These are most important to me. Breaking the rules isn't such a big deal, as far as I'm concerned; part of entering a competition is knowing how far the rules will bend. If someone submitted a novel as their entry, that'd be one thing -- but if someone changed the page order or something in order to improve the quality of their submission, I'm fine with that.

Daniel

 

[KDLadage]

I voted.

There were a few worthy candidates in the mix; but it was a no-brainer for me which I liked best...

No... I am not going to say, so there... pthth~~~~