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

[Morgenstern]

What are people actually writing?

I have the weirdest sensation that people were largely writing stuff that is far, far away from the point of this exercise... The questions that the template asks aren't "tell us about your world" questions IMO, but "so what does the ad-copy for this product line look like?" With potentially thousands of entries pouring in, hearing "gamer war stories", even in 1-page miniature, sounds like pure hell. I'll be highly curious as to what the surviving 1-pagers look like, whether they are predominently descriptive of the setting, or point out "this writer can spin some new ideas together and has a feel for what will sell..." With a 1-page forum, geography (unless bizare), history, named iconics and lots of other details that a person whose already developed and run in that world would have at their fingertips seem... superfluous. That will all be well and good at the 10-page mark .

Did anyone else treat it as a marketable product line proposal first, fantasy world second?

Oh, and mine was 750 words .

 

[Altmann]

Re: colour vs compact

So were you terse and didactic? Or did you go for a more colourful approach?

Colourful, definitely colourful.

 

[Zappo]

Re: Re: colour vs compact

Colourful, definitely colourful.

Don't tell me... you've used a different color for each paragraph? Sentence? Word? Letter? Or did you use multi-colored fonts? I'm sure the reviewers will sooooo like it!!

 

[kingpaul]

Re: What are people actually writing?

Did anyone else treat it as a marketable product line proposal first, fantasy world second?

My 1st draft only focused on the world. After friends and family butchered it, I did some revisions to make it more marketable. And I weighed in @ 426 words, 10 pt Times New Roman, 1.5 spacing.

 

[Mirth]

Thanks to everyone for this thread. Especially Anthony et al. from Wizards. I would never even have known about this contest if it hadn't been for enworld.org and I would have been completely stumped as to how to approach it without the advice of the Wizards staff and the fine people on these boards. (Special shout-outs go to Clark for the ethos sentence examples, Daniel (Asheville in the house! Woot Woot!) for some early funny comments that put me at ease and to Ryand from gamingreport.com for some excellent insider advice.)

For those keeping score: My two proposals went out yesterday afternoon via priority mail w/ delivery confirmation. Word count on each was ~750. Used 10 pt. Times w/ 1" margins. Numbered questions were bolded on a line by themselves, answers began on the next line in plain text with no indentations. One line break seperated each answer from the next numbered question. My name was number 7 and I put it on the last line I could without jumping to the next page. Cover letter was simply labeled and included name, address, phone, fax, email and nothing else. Color was added in small doses. I don't think I stretched myself too thin by submitting two ideas. One was story driven like DL and the other was setting driven like FR and GH. ( I think this paragraph was longer than some of the ones in my proposal, ha ha.)

I did the right thing and called all of my old gamer friends to let them know about the contest (that's right, I said contest). None of them knew about it. I wonder how many people are entirely clueless about this, and I thought about the guy who comes back from vacation today and checks the boards only to find out that the last day was Friday. Och! I think the quick turnaround of the first submissions will limit the competition in a good way. I'm 34 and have been gaming since 1979 and this is the first time that I've ever submitted an idea. It felt really good to work those old creative juices for all that they were worth. Even if I don't win, I still have some great settings to work with (although I haven't really found anyone to game with where I am - SUCKS).

Good luck to everyone and I'll definitely be posting my proposals here after July 3rd,

Jay

 

[Zappo]

Have you all voted here? C'mon, help Yuan-Ti make a decent statistic.

 

[damnit!]

And by the way - aren't you enjoying how incredibly positive and supportive everyone on this board has been? Good sports all around.

I'm quite surprised. In addition to the guys from WotC who have taken the time to answer our questions (which is greatly appreciated by many here!), alot of members have made very helpful suggestions, even though they knew it would make the competition even tougher. A little flaming, but no out-and-out backstabbing (unless you count the tongue in cheek attempts at sabotage). But, I guess it just proves that gamers really don't have what it takes to make it in the corporate world. For the most part, we're more interested in seeing the best proposal chosen than making sure ours is the winner. And considering the monetary gain associated with winning this competition, I think that speaks quite highly of this community.

Cheers to all of you, and best of luck!


John

 

[brak1]

I also wanted to express my thanks for the help offered by everyone here. My usual experience with large groups of people in competition with each other did not prepare me for the helpful, friendly and good-natured tone of the majority of the posts here. Thanks, and good luck to us all!

My submissions (2) went out Wednesday and Friday respectively. 650 and 473 words - Arial 11 point. One submission was from a game world I've been working on, but the other was from an outline for a book idea. One of my brothers also submitted an idea from a novel outline.

I'm wondering how many people here also used a book (or story) idea as their basis? I'm not sure that there is any advantage to this approach, other than well-defined main characters and plotline. What do you folks think?

 

[Mirth]

Have you all voted here? C'mon, help Yuan-Ti make a decent statistic.

Thanks for the reminder, Zappo. Just voted. I actually had three ideas, but the last one would have been too hard to develop, so I canned it even though it was pretty cool.

Jay

 

[Troll's Choice]

Gee, you guys are so nice you're all giving me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I asked this question before, guys, but received no comment. If your papers are accidentily shuffled out of order in your envelope(submission agreement at bottom, instead of at top), are you doomed?

I have all my materials. But I still am unsure of whether or not I put them in the envelope in proper order. The thought that I might have inserted them inside the envelope improperly disturbs me. And it's too late for me to do anything about it now.

Does anyone in charge know the answer to this one? Please enlighten me!