Worlds Largest Dungeon Holds 'Secret Doors' Contest

This coming weekend, The World's Largest Dungeon--first published in 2004--is launching a 'Secret Doors' contest. Participants are invited to contribute material containing encounters or mini-dungeons found behind the many secret doors in the dungeon. Winning contestants win a share of a $500+ cash prize and published as part of a Platinum Edition of the dungeon being crowdfunded in May (it already has over 8,000 followers, so it looks like it will do very well).

The contest is run by Portals to Adventure, and is open to amateur writers, which they define as people who have not held a full-time job creating roleplaying games.

A submission is made of up to 4,700 words, a map, an image, and a video. The submissions must be for D&D 5E.

7 winners will win 5% of the prize money ($25+), 1 wins 10% ($50+), and the final winner wins $50% ($250+). A further 10 finalists win no cash prize (but they do get a ribbon!) The prize money is generated by fan voters, who pay $1 per vote (with a minimum total of $500). And yes, you can vote for your own submissions, and you can pay for multiple votes (to a maximum of 10, which the site says is to prevent people from simply buying a victory). The prize money for the winners works out at about 5c/word for the winner, 1c/word for second place, and half-a-cent for the 3rd-10th places.

The contest opens on April 13th, and entries close on July 2nd. Fan voting then runs until July 17th.

Unfortunately, this is one of those contests where all submissions (even those which don't win anythng) become property of the publisher, and they retain the right to use or monetise the submissions with no payment to the author. While this competition structure is becoming less common, it does still pop up from time to time; and characterising publication of the work as a 'prize' rather than something which should be paid for can sit uncomfortably with many freelancers. It's far more common these days for publishers to retain the right to use the material (to protect themselves from later accusations of plagiarism) but to pay any writers whose content they actually do use.

"All submissions become the sole property of Producer and may be used in any manner, commercial or otherwise, including without limitation in the Program or any other Program, in any and all media and/or technologies now known or hereafter devised throughout the universe in perpetuity."

On a more positive front, the contest forbids AI-generated content, including text, images, and maps.

The upcoming Platinum Edition of The World's Largest Dungeon is an updated version compatible with D&D 5E. It launches on Backerkit on May 13th, and is over 1,500 pages in size, plus posyter maps, dice, and miniatures. It looks set to be a big one--perhaps a new million dollar club member?

 

[R_J_K75]

I've never heard of anyone who had a good experience with this dungeon, which very much seemed (and seems) like RPG shovelware.

I recall the maps being pretty poor quality with the book being bland black and white on sub-par paper weight. I've avoided this book like the plague ever since I played those few sessions in it years ago. I knew it was going to be a disaster when the first encounter was a Darkmantle, the 3E creature that started every adventure. If I were to invest in this incarnation of the WLD, which I'm not, I'd be long dead before I got through a quarter of the first level. I'm always surprised when companies think that 8000 pages of crap is better than a great 64 page adventure. Sometime less is more.

The fact that people are competing for part of a $500 prize is ludicrous.

At least Keith Baker and the 2 runner ups were compensated for the 2002 WotC Setting Search. Baker even made a semi-living off it for the next 20 years. Even though WotC owns the rights to Eberron, he is still allowed to release content on DM Guild for the setting.

 

[John R Davis]

I do a lot of vanity pledges* in my KS but this feels odd to me.

* Pay an extra ten dollars and you can design a beer, NPC, etc that appears in the adventure

 

[Morrus]

I think for me it's exacerbated by the fact that the Backerkit has so many followers--this is clearly going to do hundreds of thousands, if not a million. Not paying people for content isn't great at any time, but when you can clearly afford to it seems more exploitative.

They aren't even paying the prize money themselves--fans do the work, and fans also provide the prize money (and I guess some fans provide their own prize money as they can vote for themselves).

I don't think there's any maliciousness going on here; I suspect it's more just a case of not having thought it through fully. I get that it's a marketing ploy rather than a content grab, so perhaps their perspective is a little different.

So we have 10 people who get nothing (but the 'privilege' of having their work used for free), 9 people paid way below industry average, and one at roughly industry average of 5c/w. Plus all the other entrants who have essentially donated their work for free.

It feels very exploitive. I can imagine somebody came up with the idea and presented it as a zero-cost-can't-lose scenario. I hope they change this, but the contest launches in two days.

 

[timbannock]

I hope this version has more verticality in its design.

I ran the original a couple times, and had a lot of fun with it. When someone (here on ENWorld, no less) said "Run region A as if it were ALIEN" things clicked. Each region just needed a strong theme to work with that may or may not have been written into the text, and once you grok it you really didn't have to do a lot of work.

(Random encounter tables: that was the work you needed to do.)

All of that said, I'm significantly less interested in this version after seeing how that contest works. And not having seen any previews that suggest it will be more than a straight conversion, I really can't get behind it, because for as much as I did have fun with the original, the comments that it's bland and tedious are not unwarranted, and a pretty straight 5E conversion IMHO will only exacerbate those issues.

 

[EthanSental]

I believe I still have my original copy…read any of it….not that I can remember. I bought it thinking it would be like Undermountain on steroids but I grew out of that style of game play before I bought it but didn’t know it.

 

[Koloth]

A member of my then RPG group bought the original WLD when new and we ran a few sessions. But after a bit, most of us wanted something other then combat followed by more combat with a break consisting of combat. I did later buy a copy of World's Largest City. That may finally get some use in a new campaign starting up. I will look at the new offering but none of the folks I currently play with do much 5e so it will probably be a pass.

Plus a hard pass on the submission conditions.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I've never heard of anyone who had a good experience with this dungeon, which very much seemed (and seems) like RPG shovelware.

My buddy at the time, jim pinto, was a key designer on this project. And one of the requirements was that it had to be ALL ON ONE LEVEL, so they could create a huge 3mx4m (or larger!) wall map for it. IIRC, he wasn't happy about that, as what kind of dungeon is all on a single level - but in this case marketing beat out creative

 

[Nightfly]

So they own the right to your submission even if you don't win a prize? Am I understanding that correctly? That's just ick. I can maybe deal with the pay being a pittance -- you're still being paid, even if it's nominal. But if they're going to own my submission forever and possibly not pay me a dime, that's a dealbreaker.

 

[Nightfly]

My buddy at the time, jim pinto, was a key designer on this project. And one of the requirements was that it had to be ALL ON ONE LEVEL, so they could create a huge 3mx4m (or larger!) wall map for it. IIRC, he wasn't happy about that, as what kind of dungeon is all on a single level - but in this case marketing beat out creative

In fairness, I seem to remember that huge map being very cool. Better than the actual adventure, which wasn't generally well-received.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So they own the right to your submission even if you don't win a prize? Am I understanding that correctly?

That's That used to be pretty standard, to head off lawsuits over parallel thinking.

A contest that gets 10,000 submissions (not relevant in this case) will likely have a wide array of ideas and if the designers use something similar-ish, they're open to being sued for using the submitter's idea without compensation/acknowledgement, even if they never actually saw that in the giant slush pile.

Easier to say "if you gave it to us, we own it, you can't sue over it."