D&D General Win The Title of D&D's Best DM

WotC is running a competition called the Dungeon Master Challenge. Similar to Paizo's old RPG Superstar contest, it features various design rounds which whittle down the contenders until only one remains.

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The winner gets a trophy and some D&D products worth just over $2K.

Note: your entry becomes the property of WotC, which can use it in any way it wishes, even if you don't win. They don't even have to credit you for it. Be sure to consider this when deciding whether to enter.

• The first design challenge for a 1,000-word entry is Thursday June 17th, and contestants have three days to submit their entries. This round is open to everybody who qualifies (18+, in one of a list of countries).
• 10 contestants will then proceed to the next round in July, which is an elimination stage with various weekly 1,000-word design challenges.
• Three of those will go on to the final challenge in September, which involved being a DM on a livestream, judged by a panel.

What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?

Freelance writers (as opposed to those on salary) tend to be paid per word. The rate varies from publisher to publisher, and on how experienced the writer is. Ed Greenwood, for example, can command a much higher rate than a new writer can. Obviously only you, the freelancer, can decide...

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[Reynard]

My inspirational material were videos on traps from Matt Colville, Dael Kingsmill and the Questing Beast. None of them gave practical advice I used, but I used their overall philosophy in my design, which is also largely baked into WotC's complex trap rules as-is.

I also kept Dael's "us vs. them" idea in mind, in that my trap is intended to keep thieves out (or dead), but the space is still usable for the trapmaker. (As opposed to, say, an Egyptian tomb where fake side tunnels cave in and are forever after sealed off.)

I was surprised at the dearth of decent investigations into the Xanathar's rules on YouTube.

 

[Quickleaf]

My inspirational material were videos on traps from Matt Colville, Dael Kingsmill and the Questing Beast. None of them gave practical advice I used, but I used their overall philosophy in my design, which is also largely baked into WotC's complex trap rules as-is.

I also kept Dael's "us vs. them" idea in mind, in that my trap is intended to keep thieves out (or dead), but the space is still usable for the trapmaker. (As opposed to, say, an Egyptian tomb where fake side tunnels cave in and are forever after sealed off.)

Yeah, those are all good videos. I particularly liked Ben's break down on Questing Beast – I thought that was particularly lucid and well-presented.

Totally, I think your mindfulness about the trap's designers and its intent will only help your entry!

Out of curiosity, how many active vs. dynamic vs. constant elements did you guys use in your traps? And did any of the components of your trap break from that organizing schema?

 

[Quickleaf]

Mine was a mix of mechanical and magical elements because I wanted to include the option for some PCs to just punch some stuff until it stopped working along with the skills or spells countermeasures.

Mine only escalated a little and practicality won't escalate at all because some trap elements can be "turned off" in the process.

It is still deadly, though and I feel bad for anyone encountering it at the lower end of tier 2.

Did anyone else include a "DM Guidance" call out? My trap suggested a particular mitigating spell and I wanted to call special attention to how it interacted with the trap.

Nice, I also did a mix of mechanical and magical.

I think including DM Guidance and a leveling sidebar like you did will really improve your entry in the eyes of their judges. It was one of the things I initially wanted to include, but the word count battle was real.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I submitted mine. I also did second tier, because it's a good place were the PCs can handle a trick trap but also not just completely ignore it. Mine was pretty much all magic, but I tried to include options that non-magical people could do.

I interpreted "lore" as being a paragraph at the start similar what the ones in Xanther's had like "this was built by yuan-ti."

Out of curiosity, how many active vs. dynamic vs. constant elements did you guys use in your traps? And did any of the components of your trap break from that organizing schema?

I had a little bit of each, but the main threat came from the active element. I tried to stick to the way the Xanather's ones were organized. I'm not sure if they're judging on that, but figured I'd play it safe.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Out of curiosity, how many active vs. dynamic vs. constant elements did you guys use in your traps? And did any of the components of your trap break from that organizing schema?

One active and one dynamic threat for the main trap. The trick was essentially to simple traps working in conjunction. If the party ignores the trick, they don't come into play. (But they're going to be really tempted to get involved with it until the healer starts yelling at them about the dynamic component of the main trap.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I interpreted "lore" as being a paragraph at the start similar what the ones in Xanther's had like "this was built by yuan-ti."

Yeah, that's about what I did. Two sentences where I said "this trap was made by brand new minor NPC, who lives in established mega-dungeon where he'd fit in great, and this is what he wanted to accomplish with this trap."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've entered a lot of writing contests in my time. I am really looking forward to seeing the winning entries, which I hope we see as soon as possible after the D&D Live announcements. In my experience, a chunk of winning entries in writing contests are "huh, that feels comparable to mine; I wonder what made this stand out to the judges" and a chunk of "holy crap, on my best day, I never would have come up with that."

I've also been a judge in writing contests, and often, what makes something stand out is impossible to plan for. If everyone submits extremely similar ideas (and the way the Xanathar's trap section is laid out, I bet there's going to be a ton of overlapping ideas), the most unusual ones will stand out, even if they're not objectively "better."

On the other hand, it needs to be something that can be parsed relatively quickly, as each of the judges is going to have an enormous pile to dig through. I know that by the end of an eight hour day of looking at entries, I'm fried. I can only imagine how rough it'll be for the judges a week or more in. Since they're judging based on order received, this will likely advantage the people who submitted theirs on Thursday or Friday.

 

[Reynard]

I've entered a lot of writing contests in my time. I am really looking forward to seeing the winning entries, which I hope we see as soon as possible after the D&D Live announcements. In my experience, a chunk of winning entries in writing contests are "huh, that feels comparable to mine; I wonder what made this stand out to the judges" and a chunk of "holy crap, on my best day, I never would have come up with that."

I've also been a judge in writing contests, and often, what makes something stand out is impossible to plan for. If everyone submits extremely similar ideas (and the way the Xanathar's trap section is laid out, I bet there's going to be a ton of overlapping ideas), the most unusual ones will stand out, even if they're not objectively "better."

On the other hand, it needs to be something that can be parsed relatively quickly, as each of the judges is going to have an enormous pile to dig through. I know that by the end of an eight hour day of looking at entries, I'm fried. I can only imagine how rough it'll be for the judges a week or more in. Since they're judging based on order received, this will likely advantage the people who submitted theirs on Thursday or Friday.

On that note it feels strange they wouldn't "shuffle" all entries regardless of when during the window they were submitted.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

On that note it feels strange they wouldn't "shuffle" all entries regardless of when during the window they were submitted.

It's the first year they're doing this. They will likely change some components of this contest in future years.

EDIT: They might also be bluffing, to encourage people to submit earlier and beat the deadline. I saw one person on Twitter who tried to turn theirs in too late.

 

[ersatzphil]

Yeah, that's about what I did. Two sentences where I said "this trap was made by brand new minor NPC, who lives in established mega-dungeon where he'd fit in great, and this is what he wanted to accomplish with this trap."

Hrm. I got pretty specific with mine - I wrote a trap set by Kazerabet from the 2e 'Complete Book of Necromancers' and tied her to Valindra Shadowmantle from 'Tomb of Annihilation'. I have no idea if I've helped or hurt myself by being so specific, but I had more fun thinking of the who and the why of the trap than the trap mechanics themselves.