The Earl of Sandwich's page

Hmmm...If your party is resuming its campaign at the levels you mentioned before, why not start your power-gamer's character a couple levels behind the rest of the party? Eventually he will catch up, but in the meantime, he will have to be very crafty to be useful to the party (as well as stay alive!).

How about Best Damn Role Playing Game Ever? Or BDRPGE for short....

The six book Dungeon series, edited by Philip Jose Farmer and each book written by a different author, started slowly in book 1, got very interesting in books 2 & 3, and then proceeded to fall apart. What a waste....

Ahhh, Racer X....Scarified still stands up today...(Sadly, the same can't be said for Mr. Big...LOL.)

I remember endlessly listening to my prog-rock like Tony McAlpine and Vinnie Moore alongside Yngwie Malmsteen, Maiden, Slayer and all the rest.....Ahhh 80s, I am your ugly stepchild...

Oh yeah, and I'll throw in a plug for Godsmack...saw them live once and they really brought down the house....

Bachelor of Education, B.A. in Psychology & English....and I work in banking....As does my wife, who has a B.A. in Geography & Environmental Studies....hahaha...

I've lifted (or lifted & tweaked) a LOT from the items in round 1; Joel's Bodyguard's Vest, Joe's Torch of Solidity, Hal's Nausea Pill and your very own Chiurgeon's Chest were the items I enjoyed reading for their own sake as well as inserting them in my campaign without changing anything about them. While I haven't actually lifted any countries in such a way, all of the writers mentioned inspired elements big and small in my campaign (including a tribe of harassed & harried blink dogs, some of whom might end up as allies or cohorts of my PCs). Oh, I've also re-examined my prejudice against ghouls as bad guys by aspects of both the Skinsaw Man and Durgal Maldar.
I should probably go back through the contest round by round and pick out all the elements I enjoyed and was inspired by; but that's too big a project for tonight. Once again though, my hat's off to all the writer's who invested their time and enriched my gaming experience because of their effort!

This competition has kept me entertained for weeks. I hope the writer's strike ends the minute the winner is announced. Otherwise I might have too much free time on my hands. But the writers in this contest have kept me interested and entertained for the duration. I would like thank a few of the contestants who, while not making it to the final round, have added to my campaign and my enjoyment of gaming. Eric Anderson, William Cronk, Joel Flank, Hal MacLean, and Joe Outzen, please take a bow. Kudos!

I hear what you're saying Nem-Z. But with only vote per person, I think the issues of strategic voting will be greatly lessened in this final round. You vote for your fave, and if you don't, they might not win.

Demeros....Yeah, this would have definitely been a contender for my top 5...Some of the humor verges on metagame humor, but I'm twisted enough to enjoy the jokes and references. Well done.

Clark Peterson wrote:

Plus, gamers are contrarians. If I give it an F someone has to give it an A to be smarter than me. :) You see it all the time with gamers. You are definately gaining from teh "controversial" buzz.

I've never met a contrarian gamer. Where do you come up with this stuff?

I’ve read 21 threads in a row and I’m getting a little punchy. It’s getting late and I’ve also had a couple of rye and Cokes. But I laughed at this exchange for ten minutes….

I'm just not into it. Here's the deal, if you want to write for Paizo, you've got to live up to Paizo's standards. And they've set a very high bar with what they've done to generic monsters like goblins and an even higher bar for suck monsters like fairies.

Blink dogs suck.

I understand why you're not into it. I was mixed in my first reaction. But your post helped clarify why I liked this country. Because any sucky monster can be made interesting, and even cool, by an inspired writer. And I think the author of this entry could make blink dogs cool...maybe.

Still, what a brazen bastard you are to write a nation of blink dogs.

This entry is in my Top 5. After reading 21 entries and threads in a row, I remember this one. Many others I do not.

One of the better written entries I have read so far. But after the exciting beginning (which hooked me in the first 100 words as Vic Wertz mentioned sagely in another thread) I felt like the technical aspects of country creation were handled with fine craftsmanship, but not nearly as much energy or inspiration. I do like the writing though. This one feels like a case of,"If only the word limit was 1500..."

Hmmmm....This entry is difficult. For uniqueness and creativity it's definitely in my top 5. But would I want to base my campaign in this nation? Hmmmm....

If this were a contest to create multiple nations for a game world, I would definitely vote yes. But I see this country as the country neighbouring the nation my campaign is primarily being played in.

After thinking it over.....I'm still on the fence.

I always love a good undead nation. So do a lot of gamers. This one put it's own twist on the basic premise. But what pushes this one over the top for me was the quality of sentence construction and the smooth flow of concepts in the writing. This entry reads to me like it has been edited repeatedly. And it shows. Craftsmanship in writing might not be sexy, but it is important. Very important. This definitely has my one of my votes.

Visually, the rogue's version of Warduke's helmet? The imagery is what sells this item. I will be interested in the fluff this writer creates for the country portion of the contest....

I like the name, but for those who don't, how about Frank Farmer's Vest of VIP Protection?

Seriously, This not only allows the fighters to protect their party, it better allows the healers to do their jobs too. One of those items that says, "Hmmm, how did I not think of this?" because it is so fundamentally appealing. Top 5.

I love the basic idea....As a DM, I would find it hard to deal with this item if it was in the hands of PCs, but this just seems like it HAS to exist in my campaign. I think a very powerful, commerce-minded NPC would "rent out" time on this item to whomever could pay for it's use, hero OR villain....I think there could be some VERY interesting sequences where PCs and their rivals or enemies show up at the site that houses this wonderful item at the same time....*steepling his fingers together in his best Montgomery Burns imitation*....Exxxx-cellent....

Very evocative...It seems like it should play a major role in a Ravenloft novel....

ROTFL....Funny, evocative and VERY useful against a large number of aberrations. I imagine a PC imprisoned by an aboleth/kraken/neogi; the pill is the only "equipment" the PC could hide, waiting for the rest of the party to make a dramatic rescue....And this little pill is their only defense.....

Very interesting debate about this item...IMHO, it's not the most original of the top 32, but the "cool" factor would be VERY big for the younger D&D player. Eric's reference to Hank the Ranger is spot on; who didn't want an energy bow when they watched those cartoons back in the day? As older, possibly more jaded D&D veterans, I can agree with some of the criticism. But as a DM introducing younger players to the game, well, they would probably jump off a bridge to get this item.....

If I had a certain kender's Device of Time Journeying I would certainly be able to sleep a lot more tonight than I know I'm going to be....But who's kidding who, the tension is unbearably exquisite....

I went the route of scribbling every idea I had on a scrap piece of paper for nearly 10 days. It was amazingly easy to get rid of the dreck, which most of it was. A grand total of two ideas passed my first quality control check. Of course, the two ideas I had left were nearly impossible to choose between, so I'm still agonizing over the one I didn't send in.
Now, having gotten the whining out, it was a helluva of a lot of fun....

I know nothing about 4th ed. other than what I've read here. My concern, apart from the obvious monetary ones, is that fact that as I've gotten used to 3.5 I find that I just throw out or modify rules that don't work for my group. But if I'm paying this much money I'd rather have a complicated system that I can pare down to meet my needs, rather than some simplified system that requires me to MAKE more rules....

I would have thought pre-built characters would have been great opportunities to show new players (and those who aren't as "skilled" in character building), how to build strong, effective characters.

This single line from mevers' first post was the one that intrigued me the most - and subsequently seemed to be ignored more than the (apparently) slightly more controversial line that the thread has followed...

Speaking as a DM recently returned from a 20 year absence, trying to soak up 3 versions worth of rule changes, and explain a lot of it to new, non-geek players who WANT to understand (with as short an explanation as possible) how and why the rules work as they do, mevers suggestion seemed like a worthy idea. While I acknowledge space constraints are always going to be an issue, is it possible to give the ICONICS builds several options for feats/skill point allocation/etc. with a very brief explanation of HOW these choices make a difference? This way a new-ish DM (who is a rules geek but still learning) can give these options to less geek-oriented players, some of whom might very well want to use the ICONICS and not go through the whole character gen process but who still want some understanding of HOW their character is built so that they could tweak it a little bit for themselves. IMHO, this is a small idea that is the type of thing that helps create new gamers (and new Paizo customers!)....

Oooo, this is a fun thread....but I can't just give one each...
Favorite: The beholder, an all-time classic. The night hag, evil coming soon in a dream near you....The kopru, something about the evil behind the evil BEHIND the Isle of Dread will always have a special place in the dark part of my heart....
Least Favourite: Many covered so far in this thread were very accurate. I'm not in favor of the trend of endlessly taking real-world animals and combining them to make "fill-in-the-blank FOLK." i.e. Badger-folk, marmoset-folk, ferret-folk, etc......Although, wait a minute...Ferret-folk...hmmmm....

Jomolungma.
I've been re-reading Into Thin Air recently....

How about Shabriri and Palvlag? They're old-school in more ways than one...Proto-devils, proto-demons, proto-anything always seems to be a little more....powerful? Interesting? Mysterious?
For that matter, let's bring back Vuron for one last hurrah too.....

I very rarely have had nightmares for the last 20 years. If a horror movie can keep me up because I'm scared, it's good. If I actually have a nightmare because of it, then it's killer. The "killers" I've already seen in this thread are:

Seven [the "Sloth" scene still freaks me out.]
Exorcist 3
Fire in the Sky

One I haven't yet is "The People under the Stairs." I saw it in my early teens, when I happened to be having a recurring nightmare very similar to this movie BEFORE I'd ever seen or heard of it. It really tapped into something primal in my psyche....