WotC submission ideas you rejected rather than send.

[BiggusGeekus]

Sure, we've heard about the guys who sent in twenty-three proposals. But what about you folks who had an idea and then realized it was dumber than Dummy McDumb? What did you personally reject rather than send to WotC?

For this thread we won't hold anyone to sticking to the official "six question" format.

I'll go first.
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A world where the humans were nomadic pre-iron age types and caught in the middle between four warring elemental factions.

Air - Elves
Earth - Dwarves
Fire - Kobalds
Water - Gnomes

The elemental kingdoms have superior skill with magic relating to their given element, but weak when opposing their opposite.

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Your turn!

 

[mmadsen]

A world where the humans were nomadic pre-iron age types and caught in the middle between four warring elemental factions.

Air - Elves
Earth - Dwarves
Fire - Kobalds
Water - Gnomes

That sounds like a perfectly interesting world to me -- but I have to wonder at Gnomes as the water-aspected race. "Gnome" is a real-world term for "earth spirit".

 

[mmadsen]

What did you personally reject rather than send to WotC?

There are many, many ideas I'd love to see published as worlds for 3E, but I didn't submit them because they're completely derivative. I'd love to see a world like Howard's Hyboria, a world like Tolkien's Middle Earth, a world like Vance's Dying Earth, a world like Arthur's Britain, etc. Each of those settings takes more than a little tweaking to get right, but that work will only get done by fans.

If you put out a world like Middle Earth, no one will praise you for capturing the flavor many people want in their campaign; you'll just get panned for putting out something derivative -- even though the real work isn't in coming up with a "new" idea, but in fleshing out the rules (classes, spells, spell lists, monsters, etc.) to match the vision.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Re: Re: WotC submission ideas you rejected rather than send.

That sounds like a perfectly interesting world to me -- but I have to wonder at Gnomes as the water-aspected race. "Gnome" is a real-world term for "earth spirit".

One of many reasons I didn't send it in. Also, here were my gut responses to the questions:

Hereos - The guys who bash stuff with elemental magic. Bash bash!
Villians - Evil rulers of the elment kingdoms. They're EVIL! Booo! They fight each other to drive the plot.
Unique - Its like Planescape, only smaller!

... of course, if anyone wants to give me $120,000 to develop this, I'll take the money and put my artistic integrity in the trunk of a new Porche.

 

[am181d]

I've been working on a steampunk setting that I was considering submitting, but the WotC reps made it pretty clear that they weren't looking for anything that high-tech.

 

[am181d]

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[King_Stannis]

Re: Re: Re: WotC submission ideas you rejected rather than send.

... of course, if anyone wants to give me $120,000 to develop this, I'll take the money and put my artistic integrity in the trunk of a new Porche.

now that is funny!

 

[Paul_Klein]

g

 

[tsadkiel]

I didn't submit my actual homebrew, since it's based on existing (though public domain) intellectual property. (The Oz books, for those keeping score at home.) Also, I've shifted the whole thing over to d20 Modern rules and it works much better now.

I also didn't submit Gnomish Space Patrol (coming this fall as a free web-based minigame!) because it's much too high tech.

Other ideas which I considered, but didn't excite me as much as the one I sent in:

An Asian-flavored steampunk setting, with clockwork battle armor and Progress Demons.

A Sumerians-and-aliens setting, with the Fraal from Alternity playing god to a number of bronze-age desert cultures.

 

[Oracular Vision]

Oh there were dozens, just not enough time. If they had allowed e-mail submissions, I would have had a lot...

Waterworld, mostly water with islands of land-dwellers all fighting for every scrap of earth, while the water races have taken over most of the earth. This would use D20 ship rules and subterranean cities made by powerful mages for the above water species.

Tinymoon, a place where various spelljamming races got stranded after a war, and with limited resources. The ultimate goal of all the denizens is to escape of course.

The floating juggernaut, another spelljammer-started world, with a hugh floating hulk which is being investigated by several races, with each trying to take control - of course they haven't found the owners yet, think Aliens vs. high fantasy...

The Hollow World, with dinosaurs and low magic, very Malatran.

Scar, a planet with no humans, only the other races, with the dwarves living underground, the elves living high up on heavily forested plateaus, and the goblinoid races owning most of the land the humans would normally have. This would allow some monsters as character class action.

Monsterworld, with only monster manual creatures using the monsters as characters rules exclusively in a fight for world domination.

Land of the Giants - a place where giants rule, and the smaller races are actively hunted as pests, sort of like Fantastic Planet, an old scifi animated movie I saw a long time ago...

and the list goes on and on...