WotC Seeking Your Setting Proposals (was "Big Wizard announcement")

[Agback]

Re: 3 days now . . .

Anyone finished their 10 pager?
Anyone finished their 100 pager?

I wrote my 10-pager in 1987. All that is left to do is cut it down from 24 pages. A change to 8-point Times ought to do it.

And I wrote my 100-pager in 1991. It's only 63 pages long, but that's in 8.4-point Times, so a change to about 10 or 11 point ought to fix that.

Regards,


Brett

 

[your father is]

Re: uh--i forgot..

Yeah, I spent hours working on it. And I scurried off to the post office at 3pm on the deadline to get it mailed off.

And promptely forgot about it.

Me too. I completely forgot about mine! I don't even post in this thread anymore...

 

[Agback]

Re: A new thought

It just crossed my mind that with Wizards getting all these submissions it would be a great way to build up a database of roleplayer's addresses for direct marketing.

Duncan

A way, but not perhaps a great way. The 20,000 gamers who submitted settings probably have less need to buy setting material than the 1,980,000 gamers who had neither the time nor the inspiration to submit suggestions.

Regards,


Brett

 

[Altmann]

Re: let's talk characters

In novels and campaign settings, do you prefer clear distinctions between the heroes and the villains or do you prefer more morally ambiguous characters with believable motivation?

I'm an Amber player/gm :
Heroes ? Villains ? What's the difference ? It's more about Friends/Enemies and conflincting goals.

Even in my "low-level" (= D&D) campaigns, the distinction is seldom black&white. One of the reasons is that in my campaign world, each deity has its own definition of Good and Evil. And they do not agree on anything - not even on "Thou shalt rever the Deities"

Both can work. When playing a game it is often preferable to know who the bad-guys are. When reading about a character, though, a little depth is a good thing.

Well, my most worked-on character, as player, had a 14 pages-long background, including a portrait and full biography and police report (this was a high-level PC for Star Wars RPG).

I think the new setting will have to be something that allows for sympathetic characters to come into conflict with each other, with no character absolutely good or evil. That is why they asked specifically about conflict.

I agree on this.

Or do you think a world where characters would be more gray than merely black or white would be at a disadvantage?

I sure hope not.

Be reading you,
YA

 

[Ds Da Man]

Well, I'll say honestly that 1 page was tougher then ten pages. I struggled and struggled with finding the right mixture of words to try and describe an entire campaign setting world in a few sentenances. Oh well, there's always 4E.

 

[Greybar]

Interesting comment I thought I would share, coming froma friend who has done gaming freelance writing. What kills freelancers, he says, are deadline. Freelancers as a group cannot product tight, quality work on a deadline. Delays (due to extra editorial passes, or just plain not getting the copy in) then kill the publishers financially.

So my read is that WoTC will ask 10 folks for 10-pagers, and at least 2 will totally flake. Yeah, yeah, I hear you saying "Not me!" and "I can write 10 pages on my favorite character in an hour".

Probably when they get to the 3(ish) in the last round, all three will get it in. But don't underestimate the number of people "with great ideas, no really!" that simply will not be able to write to the deadline. I'm not saying they are lazy bums, but these people have lives, college, family, young children...

anyway, a rambling food for thought...

John

 

[Jon F. Zeigler]

Interesting comment I thought I would share, coming froma friend who has done gaming freelance writing. What kills freelancers, he says, are deadline. Freelancers as a group cannot product tight, quality work on a deadline. Delays (due to extra editorial passes, or just plain not getting the copy in) then kill the publishers financially.

Absolutely, 100%, true. This is by far the hardest part of the RPG publishing business to manage for any publisher that relies on freelance creators.

So my read is that WoTC will ask 10 folks for 10-pagers, and at least 2 will totally flake. Yeah, yeah, I hear you saying "Not me!" and "I can write 10 pages on my favorite character in an hour".

Probably when they get to the 3(ish) in the last round, all three will get it in. But don't underestimate the number of people "with great ideas, no really!" that simply will not be able to write to the deadline. I'm not saying they are lazy bums, but these people have lives, college, family, young children...

This wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. I don't think that writing a 1-page or 10-page summary is a hurdle high enough to filter out the folks who will choke at the 100-page level. Especially since it sounds like they're going to be expecting pretty professional development jobs at the 100-page level.

 

[Zulkir]

test

Hopefully this attaches a photo of our Admin. Asst. Christina surrounded by one days worth of mail.

AV

 

[A'koss]

*blink*

Little more than you figured Anthony... ;-)


A'koss!
(hey, I think I see mine...!)

 

[Zog]

Well, at least she looks happy!

Now what we need is the 'after' picture - poor Christina buried in torn envelopes and rejected letters, covered in bandages from paper cuts.

Poor girl.

10,000 in one week huh? So probably about 15-20,000 total. Now I wonder how many were actually numbered and read?

So, did anyone at WOTC actually have a weekend?