Contest Results (Finally)!
First of all, once again I apologize... This has been a hellish month, and had I known that it was going to end up like this I probably would have handled the contest differently. It is my first contest after all.
Due to my inability to focus in a time of adversity, I put the call out for judges. Four people responded (all of them have chosen to remain nameless), and one of those four never responded to me sending them information, so I'm basing the following results on the other three. Each judge was to take all five entries and rank five of them them in order from 5 (best) to 1 (worst). All three judges' score would then be added and the highest score (out of a possible 15 points) would be declared the winner.
Using that mechanism, after a few days of deliberation on their part, we ended up with a two-way tie for 1st place and a two-way tie for 3rd place.
Due to the delay in prize selection, and adding the fact that I did not choose to be the tiebreaker myself (if I wasn't capable of judging before, I don't consider it proper to be judging now), I have decided to award all four with a prize in one way or another.
After seeing all the entries, I did notice something: Although "standard" and "elite" monsters are pretty well defined and everyone handles them the same way more or less, the "solo" encounter is a whole other story. I've seen multiple ways that the request for a "solo" is encounter was interpreted... Some did a very basic and plain solo creature surrounded by traps and hazards. Others created a sort of hybrid, where it's one creature that goes through three elite stages (once the "elite" version of the monster is destroyed, it's replaced by a different version of it). And others didn't put many mechanics in to the encounter and preferred the story and the potential roleplaying aspects of the situation play out.
So here are the results, as chosen by my crack team of judges, in no particular order except for the prize grouping.
TIE FOR FIRST (no particular order)... Prize: Heroes of Shadow (or equivalent) from Wizards of the Coast
- "The Fountains of Unbearable Grief" by Caoimhe Ora Snow (@dazedsaveends on Twitter): The background story won over most of the judges. It also includes a very detailed encounter area with a variety of different terrains, and the solo itself is quite the intriguing concept.
- "Fountain of Sorrow" by The Id DM (@TheIDDM on Twitter): This was more than I personally expected and reads like a full adventure (it's close to being longer than most the other contest entries combined), complete with an adventure summary, a social scene leading up to the encounter, a random encounter table, custom magic items and more. I would have taken points off for making the enemy my name spelled backwards though, so be lucky I didn't judge it... đ
HONORABLE MENTIONS, TIE FOR THIRD (no particular order)... Prize: $10 Amazon gift card
- "Ego-Tastrophy" by Jeff Gupton of Blackbyrne Publishing (@BlkbyrnePublish on Twitter): It probably helped that two of the three judges were creative designers, and one of which is a published designer. Very straight up encounter against a golem, but the inclusion of a tactical map was nice. And the judges were simply fascinated with the name of the creature: the "Horace Brigland Borgtite Golem".
- "Lair of the Tentacled Horror" by Raja (NOTE: PDF does not contain the area map; don't have access to it right now, so it will be posted separately soon): The judges liked the concept of a monster that spawned minions repeatedly (similar to SvD's Endless Hordes, but instead of being a separate hazard it's part of the creature's mechanics). Mixed that with a very Cthulhu-esque atmosphere and enemies (cultists and tentacles! Woo!)Â and it looks quite entertaining. This was yet another submission that went above and beyond presenting more than just an encounter; it included an entire underground system of caverns through which the "tentacled horror" can pretty much move at will. PCs would probably have to slice through several tentacles shooting up from out of the water before the BBEC ("big bad evil cehalopod") shows up.
Thanks to everyone for their submissions. I promise the next contest will be simpler, will be easier for anyone to enter without much effort, and will be decided upon significantly faster.
If you are one of the winners above, please contact me privately (through email or through Twitter DM) to make arrangements.
I may include some of the other submissions in a future post; I don't know yet.
Call for Judges
Due to my current health issues (inner ear inflammation, dizziness and vertigo, foul mood) and a major assignment at work that needs to be completed by Monday, in order to not further delay the choosing of a winner to the contest I am placing an open call out for impartial people to serve as judges.
Here's how I think this will work:
Judges: Between three and five judges who have not submitted an entry in to the contest.
Material: There isn't a lot, to be honest. I think at last count there were eight valid submissions (if you're reading this and yours is one of them, your chances are pretty good), so there isn't a lot to review.
Blind Judging: Unless it is unavoidable, I will present the entries to the judges without any indication of who is submitting it. In other words, I will open the submission in Acrobat, Word or whatever and remove your name and branding from the submission before I present it to the judges in PDF format. There may be cases I can't do this adequately (if removing branding would impact the content being judged), but I'll do my best so that the judging is as impartial as it can get.
Scoring: Unless someone out there has a better suggestion, I can't come up with a scoring system that would be acceptable, so I will ask judges to rank the top five entries in preferred order. These entries will be given a score, and the highest average score amongst all judges will be declared the winner.
Prizes: Because of this delay, I am considering selecting more than one winner. Don't quote me on that, though.
How to Apply: Email me at dflor@brainclouds.net and I'll take you in to consideration. Hopefully I will get enough people to do this in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The alternative to the above would be to wait until I can clear my mind and judge the entries myself, but with my left ear ringing, the room sometimes dipping and swaying as if I was at sea and a metric assload of work I need to finish by end of month, I can't guarantee when that will happen. I can't imagine some of you waiting long to find out if you get the prize or not.
I apologize for this inconvenience. I will plan for such things if I do such a contest in the future.
Quick Contest Update
Just wanted to let everyone know where things stood on our Heroes of Shadow contest.
Since Saturday I myself have been battling with a relapse of inner ear issues I've had since childhood, and as a result I'm getting hit quite often with massive amounts of dizziness and vertigo. So I have not been able to concentrate to the point where I can be a proper judge.
But, for what it's worth, all the contest entries have been printed and I've gone over them in the most basic of ways. I have quite a task ahead of me... Some of the entries are quite impressive, and it shows you all have put much more work than I would have thought. I even got a few Gamma World submissions, and I had to go back and check that I never mentioned what gaming system you should be using in the rules, so I'm accepting them even though that honestly wasn't my initial plan.
If I feel I cannot make a proper decision of a winner by this Friday, I will put myself on "injured reserve" and look for third party judges to make the decision on my behalf.
As a result of my delays, I'm debating whether to have more than one winner. Don't quote me on that...
-=O=-
On an unrelated note, I have published my Gamma World campaign "Fire From the Sky" through DriveThruRPG. There's also a free preview of a single encounter (link's currently broken due to technical issues on the site), if you're curious.
I'm looking for people to review it on blogs other than mine... If you're up to it let me know and I'll comp you a copy.
Contest and Upcoming Publications
First off, thanks to everyone who submitted their solo encounters to our Heroes of Shadow contest! As I've stated before, I had chosen to not look at any of the submissions until past the deadline, so now that that's done with I'm going to go through them and try to objectively pick a winner.
Will probably start doing that at some point tonight; hopefully I'll be able to select a winner by end of week.
-=O=-
On another note, a few weeks ago I had sent a pitch of my Gamma World module "Fire From the Sky" to the Wizards of the Coast submissions email. Today I got a pretty straight forward response...
David;
Thanks for the proposal, but we're not looking for any Gamma World material right now.
(Name of person responding redacted)
Simple enough. At least they're listening!
Now I still haven't gotten a response from the Wizards of the Coast legal department regarding compliance with the 4e GSL (see this post for more information on that), but I have decided to go ahead and publish my Gamma World module for a nominal fee through RPG Drive Thru. If they have any objections to it (and lord knows I have tried to clarify things prior to publishing it), I will simply take it down.
I will be going through final review in the coming days (there's one thing that I know I have to change due to it not working well within the Gamma World mechanic), and then will let everyone know when it's up. If you would like to review it in the meantime, let me know and I can provide a free copy.
-=O=-
Finally, Chapter One of my uber-campaign The Coming Dark - a chapter called "Homecoming" - is technically complete and pending review from third parties. I'm kind of hesitant publishing it because it flows in to subsequent chapters that don't exist yet; part of me doesn't want to publish something that people will play only to stop while I work on the next part. So we'll see when that gets out there.
Stay tuned, everyone!
Preview: The Ethereal Bard
The fiolliowing is an element from Chapter 2 of my campaign, The Coming Dark. If you are one of my players and have not reached Chapter 3, you may not want to read this.
D&D 4e has very specific rules on how certain powers affect "allies" and "enemies", but those rules always make the assumption that there are two sides to every conflict. What if there's a third party that's laying down effects that change every round?
For one of my favorites scenes in my campaign I created a thing I call the "Ethereal Bard". Imagine walking in to an inn and, instead of seeing a band on stage or a sole minstrel playing music, there's a semi-transparent illusion of a bard playing music, and that magical construct reacts to requests from patrons, plays songs according to the situation or mood in the main area, or simply plays songs at random. And, when violent action ensues, it doesn't quite know how to react to everything that's going on, so it starts to play random songs more frequently.
Furthermore, each song is similar to a bard's power, treating *everyone* within range of the music as either an ally or as a friend depending on the power.
Here is my official write-up of it:
THE ETHEREAL BARD
The âEthereal Bardâ is a magical device that appears as a humanoid musician with any number of different instruments in hand. The musician himself is an illusion, powered by the magically infused pedestal it stands upon. There is a tip jar near the pedestal at its feet that contains mixed silver and copper pieces.
The bard plays music appropriate to what is going on in the lobby, or will play a completely random song. It will also take requests, giving preference to any creature that adds coins in to its tip jar.
When combat in the lobby begins, the Ethereal Bard floods the room with inspirational music. At the start of each round, it will begin to play one random song that has a magical effect on everyone that can hear it in the lobby.
At the start of each combat round, roll a d6 against the table below to determine the effect. The effect applies to every non-deafened creatures in the lobby until the end of the round, when the device will choose another song.
1) Song of Courage: The device plays an uplifting song that includes shouts of encouragement, making it seem as if a large crowd was cheering.
Effect: Any creatures that hears the song gains a +1 power bonus to attack rolls.
2) Song of Defense: The device intones a battle hymn, bolstering your abilities to resist attack.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song gains a +1 power bonus to AC.
3) Song of Conquest: The device begins to play a bolstering song that makes everyone fight with renewed vigor.
Effect:Â Any creature that hears the song and hits an enemy with an attack gains +3 THP.
4) Song of Recovery: The device begins to play an inspiring song that instills a sense of perseverance.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song gains a +2 power bonus to saving throws.
5) Saviorâs Song: The device begins to play a song inspiring determination and focus, with hopeful verses of battles won despite daunting odds.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song can reroll one saving throw that he or she fails during the turn.
6) Song of Speed: The device begins to play a rousing refrain, imbuing everyone with increased speed and agility.
Effect: Any creature in earshot gains +4 power bonus to speed and can shift 1 extra square whenever he or she shifts.
I mean, just imagine it... Our heroes and the bad guys are duking it out in the lobby, upending tables and throwing chairs at each other, all the time while music from an illusionary bard plays in the background and boosts their abilities.
I considered giving this device an XP weight, but since both the allies and enemies could take advantage of it I decided not to. Just another zone effect to add to the excitement of the encounter.
So what do you think? Anyone out there used something similar?
-=O=-
On a semi-related note, Chapter 1 of my campaign is pretty much complete and being reviewed by a few people. Soon it will be released to the public, and I hope you enjoy it!
And there is a little over a day left in our contest to win "Heroes of Shadow"! Get those submissions in quick!
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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