Very disappointed with first heat
I read all of the entries for the first heat, and...well...I don't think there's any way to say this nicely to the entrants, but here goes:
Did you read the rules?
Many of the encounters involve fighting/killing the NPC (the one who's supposed to be usable outside the encounter?).
Most of them didn't have a location that would be any use outside of the encounter.
I didn't even bother checking the formatting.
I think there were maybe three that could had a reusable location and a reusable NPC. (Harmonies in the Snow, Bad Cats Day, and Unexpected Visitor)
As for the rest - and I sincerely hope the authors view this as constructive criticism:
Put to the Sword - you kill the NPC. Hardly reusable. I suppose it's OK if you want a completely inaccurate stat block for a lizardman fighter, but it's not much of a developed character. The location's nothing special either.
Catch as Catch Can - Nice NPC...but, um, location?
Centaur's Very Bad Day - again, good NPC, but not much unique or reusable about the location. At least a little better than the fishing one.
L'amour de Erinyes - decent NPC, but once again there's nothing reusable about the location. Maybe if people in the inn had been left alive, and the inn was described as it normally was, this could have worked.
The Portal - unique NPC, unique location...but both are pretty inextricably tied together, so it fails on the "reusable separately" standard.
I Feel Great - Same problem as the first couple - while there may technically be a location, there's nothing to make it really reusable or interesting when separated from the encounter.
Many of these would have been decent encounters for some other competition, but not one with the rules as written.
J