Post affirmative if you'll be writing a submission for one or both scenarios.
affirmative.
Brain juice already flowing for both ;)
I am going to put something together for each of them, i think.
The details on the Demon Hunt it entirely ruled out my originial thoughts for it. But actually, i am kind of glad of that. The new idea that is starting to take shape is likely better than my original plan.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
|
I will definately submit something for #20, but after my initial read of the #19 summary, nothing sprang to mind, so I'll work on 20, and if when that's done, I have thought of an idea for 19, I'll take a stab at it, but so far, I'm not planning on submitting for both.
Something sprang to mind for 19 right away, 20 might take more work (and I may not get to it at all).
But yep.
I am ditching #20 for #19, I read the description of 19 and instantly thought something up.
I could do #20, but alas no nabasu stats......
I'm in.
I am gonna try my hand at one anyhow, I may try both.
|
|
I will admit these seem overly complicated and almost as though they already have an adventure idea in mind and are just looking for the guy who pitches what they're thinking.
Shame too, because I have a pair of ideas that I really think would make good scenarios but it'd take a lot of luck for them to randomly come up with a set of restrictions I can fit them into.
Working on 20 as we speak. I'm not sure if I'll finish anything as my wife and I are leaving for vacation tomorrow. Somehow, I think between being in the Carribean and not having access to my gaming library, I'm done for.
Chad
I'll try to submit something for both scenarios. Those will require more research than the last ones, but the guidelines are more precise this time.
- Zorg
RPG Superstar 2013
|
Heh. Realized that my work for Skeleton Moon was okay, but didn't wow me, so #19 is not done over the weekend. Oh, the taste of hubris. Now I'm up against it to get a quality submission for both.
One question that might be on several minds: is it acceptable to have PCs on a mission engineered by themselves? All the scenarios to date have been sort of favors for higher ranking Society members, but not all PFS adventurers are performing favors for the Society all the time right? At some point they are researching and striking out on their own, and recording their finds for exploits to the Society.
Of course, that offers up the problem of telling the players that what kind of adventure they decided to get involved in. So, how do you intend to approach that issue and freshen up the 'tavern scenes'?
One question that might be on several minds: is it acceptable to have PCs on a mission engineered by themselves? All the scenarios to date have been sort of favors for higher ranking Society members, but not all PFS adventurers are performing favors for the Society all the time right? At some point they are researching and striking out on their own, and recording their finds for exploits to the Society.
I am all for it! Mostly because I am doing it ;>
I have a lot going on at the moment, so I will probably not get a submission in this time... but I am looking forward to next time.
It is done.
Active voice: check
No rapper names: check
Googled them anyway to make sure: check
Proofread it: check
Let a friend read it: check
Rework concept after friendly feedback: check
Braced for rejection: check
|
|
It is done.
Braced for rejection: check
I'm torn between complete nervousness that it sucks, nervousness that I messed up some technical detail that will totally throw it out the window, and delusions of grandeur that it'll be the best one they ever read and I'll be tapped to write an AP issue for AP5 =p
I'm still trying to put all my ideas together, but this one is tough. I chose Skeleton Moon to work on (I can't work on two submition, not enough time) and I got nice pieces of puzzle, but no clear image yet. The location, title and main villain are three ingredient difficult to mix (but not impossible). Add to that the hook for the Pathfinder Society... Still 4 days to go, let's hope I can glue all my elements together by that time.
- Zorg
I am nearing completion of my proposal for #20, but my vacation time here in St. Thomas is making me think a lot about trying to put something together for #19 as well. The Caribbean Islands remind me a lot of the PFS setting (lots of European powers sharing interest in some pretty small islands).
Chad
|
#19's written, will leave it a day or two before going back to re-edit it.
#20's causing problems, not even a first draft complete yet, get half-way through then find problems that warrant a restart. The combination of the estate being "overrun by nabasu" rather than the adventure just featuring one with the requirement that there be no undead keeps making me drift in dull directions. Currently got a reasonable answer, but am sure it's one that Josh will get his red pen out for.
As last time am finding the word-counts real hassle.
|
|
Well, I've finished my proposal for #20, though I'm going to leave it for a few days before re-reading, correcting and submitting it.
Am I not the only one who thinks it's not an easy scenario to write considering the abilities of the main BBE counter the restrictions imposed on the scenario?
Cheers! :D
|
|
Well, I've finished my proposal for #20, though I'm going to leave it for a few days before re-reading, correcting and submitting it.
Am I not the only one who thinks it's not an easy scenario to write considering the abilities of the main BBE counter the restrictions imposed on the scenario?
Cheers! :D
The blog states that the estate is infested with nabasu, but does not specifically require that the Big Bad End of Adventure Villain has to be a nabasu.
(See the 2nd edition Apocalypse Stone for at least one scenario where an estate/region has become infested by monsters, but the principle villain is very 'human'.)
As to the undead related abilities, but no undead being around before the PCs arrive, yes that could be tricky.... :D
Ah, when I meant BBE, I meant the enemy/monster type etc. on which the story focuses. Sorry, should have explained myself more.
Cheers! :D
|
One question about the Open Call.
Does the writer get more detailed information on what ELs to use in his encounters after selected?
My mistake two.
Or is that available elsewhere?
Living Greyhawk had detailed EL totals for each APL but I don't see that anywhere I have looked.
I am submitting something for Skeleton Moon and I am at 641 words with the conclusion and faction missions to go.
Cheers
|
|
One question about the Open Call.
Does the writer get more detailed information on what ELs to use in his encounters after selected?
My mistake two.
Or is that available elsewhere?
Living Greyhawk had detailed EL totals for each APL but I don't see that anywhere I have looked.
I am submitting something for Skeleton Moon and I am at 641 words with the conclusion and faction missions to go.
Cheers
I used Among the Living as a guideline for what I had planned out, but didn't list any ELs for the actual encounters, I preferred to use my word count on the story and concept over the crunch of it.
Coridan,
I went pretty much the same route as you, focusing on story, minimizing numbers.
Chad
Almost done with 20. Just need to stew on one faction mission which may be problematic.
Still not sure if I will write anything for 19 or not. Certainly ideas are bouncing around in my head, but have not put anything to paper yet.
Chad
I won't be submitting again.
Based on their feedback, the amount of creative control they seem to allow is extremely small. Heck, they won't even let you name the adventure!
I also find their "buy our books if you want to submit a proposal" position to be extremely off-putting. especially considering that it would cost them nothing to provide excerpts of the necessary material (like a stat block for their version of the "nabusu").
It makes me thing this whole "call for submissions" is a marketing tool to get people to buy their adventures and campaign sourcebooks. Considering that they've never even discussed compensation of any kind is also a red flag in my book.
So yeh, in the age of the Internet I can self-publish if I want do something for little to no compensation because at least I'll get creative control.
Obviously we pay our writers. As that's part of the contract terms, it's not discussed unless you receive a contract.
We rarely ask for monsters outside of the MM--as in, this open call is the first time we've done so in 20 scenarios (some of the authors might stray from the core, but we don't ask them to). And we don't own the book that its in.
The open calls are an opportunity for up-and-coming authors to write for a game company and we're attempting to groom and grow them so they might someday write for the larger Paizo properties, not just the Pathfinder Society scenarios. We rarely let authors of those works name the products as we need them to fill a specific niche in our publishing plans and we tend to solicit them to distribution well before the writing has even started. We're not letting authors of the scenarios have full creative control as we need specific monsters and plot elements to appear in the larger plot of the OP season. (Though one author suggested a name change on a previous scenario that I agreed to--so in that sense, the authors have some freedom to suggest changes.)
This is the nature of writing shared-world material. If you're not interested in this method of publishing, then like you said, nothing stops you from self-publishing.
Based on their feedback, the amount of creative control they seem to allow is extremely small.
K...
I can tell you as a part-time freelancer, that creative control over any publisher's project is a myth. You're writing for them for a reason. It's their world. It's their project. And from a business perspective, it's their money at risk. That's why they almost always have an outline in mind, a particular set of requirements for things they either want in the final turnover or they want to ensure aren't a part of the final turnover.
So, if you want to freelance, you learn early on that the best method of working in the industry is to work within those constraints. And, in a lot of ways, they aren't constraints anyway. If you're a glass half-full kind of person, they've essentially helped structure your design work for you. But, for a good scratching of that creative itch, they've left enough room in there for you to stretch your limits.
I also find their "buy our books if you want to submit a proposal" position to be extremely off-putting. especially considering that it would cost them nothing to provide excerpts of the necessary material (like a stat block for their version of the "nabusu").
Rule number one of freelancing: If you want to write, you had better learn as much as you can about helping a particular publisher market and develop their intellectual property. That means, you need to know their world well enough to write for it. To know their world, you need access to their pre-existing products. To get that access in the swiftest method possible, you can buy their products...or look over a friend's copy...and so on. But the bottom line is that as a freelancer, you always need to be educating yourself on the material that's out there before just dropping by and asking if you can write something for them.
Now, all of that aside, can a company like Paizo occasionally put up some materials to aid you in understanding their preferred format? Yes. But, in the interests of time, you can obtain that information much more quickly yourself...and fairly inexpensively (i.e., a single PFS scenario should go a long way). Eventually, I believe Paizo's editors had already mentioned they wanted to craft a more generic writer's guidelines for everyone like they had in the days of Dungeon and Dragon magazine. But, until the final version of the Pathfinder RPG comes out, there's not a lot of reason to provide those guidelines (and stat-block examples) until the rules are finalized. In the meantime, the rule of thumb is 3.5 stat-blocks comparable to what they've already published in other scenarios and products. Asking potential designers to access those products for examples while they continue to focus on establishing their core product line isn't really all that much to ask in the grand scheme of things. And complaining about it can't possibly endear one to them when you eventually do submit something.
It makes me think this whole "call for submissions" is a marketing tool to get people to buy their adventures and campaign sourcebooks. Considering that they've never even discussed compensation of any kind is also a red flag in my book.
Compensation is usually discussed in general terms (i.e., the current market rates for freelancers as compared to Wizards of the Coast all the way down the line). If you want specifics, that generally doesn't come until a query submission is accepted and a contract is offered. But if you want to know the going rate, it falls anywhere between 1- to 6-cents a word, depending on who you're writing for as a first-timer. Named authors command more, but since Paizo is looking to groom "new" authors, that doesn't apply here. So, a company like Wizards is on the 5-6 cents per word scale. Paizo is usually just under that, I believe. And many fly-by-night PDF publishing outfits crawl along at the 1-2 cents a word rate.
As for your conspiracy theory around the "call for submissions" being a marketing tool...I think it's just that -- a conspiracy theory. Long before Paizo started these open calls, there have been plenty of other companies doing the same thing. As a marketing tool, it isn't that effective. Sometimes it can attract a surge of interest (e.g., RPG Superstar)...but I think it's more a flash-in-the-pan kind of thing and not a reliable method of marketing anything.
So yeh, in the age of the Internet I can self-publish if I want to do something for little to no compensation because at least I'll get creative control.
And there you have it. Yes. If you want complete creative control, self-publish. If you want to write for a well-known, widely-read, highly-respected publisher in the industry and improve your name-recognition and reputation along the way, you give up some of the creative control and you learn how to help such a company produce successful products for their flagship instead. That, in a nutshell, is a core underpinning of the RPG industry for would-be designers. And it's been that way for quite sometime.
Hope that helps...and apologies for the lengthy reply.
Sincerely,
--Neil
|
|
Obviously we pay our writers. As that's part of the contract terms, it's not discussed unless you receive a contract.
We rarely ask for monsters outside of the MM--as in, this open call is the first time we've done so in 20 scenarios (some of the authors might stray from the core, but we don't ask them to). And we don't own the book that its in.
The open calls are an opportunity for up-and-coming authors to write for a game company and we're attempting to groom and grow them so they might someday write for the larger Paizo properties, not just the Pathfinder Society scenarios. We rarely let authors of those works name the products as we need them to fill a specific niche in our publishing plans and we tend to solicit them to distribution well before the writing has even started. We're not letting authors of the scenarios have full creative control as we need specific monsters and plot elements to appear in the larger plot of the OP season. (Though one author suggested a name change on a previous scenario that I agreed to--so in that sense, the authors have some freedom to suggest changes.)
This is the nature of writing shared-world material. If you're not interested in this method of publishing, then like you said, nothing stops you from self-publishing.
I think one of the issues is that the open calls feels too much like a contest. To me at least it has felt that you guys are intentionally holding some stuff back. Two examples, one from 19 and one from 20:
You titled it Skeleton Moon, but have ruled no undead. This is a bit of a contradiction to most people reading it. I was able to come up with something, but I'll explain why this was a problem in a moment. And then you threw in an Assassin Vine just to baffle us further.
With number 20 you said the place is overrun with Nabassu, a demon most of us are probably unfamiliar with, you also set it in the center of Devil-worship territory. I had come up with an idea where the son of the Cheliax family made a boo-boo and instead of learning to summon a devil accidently turned the house into a demon magnet. I would've had fun featuring a bunch of different demons showing up at the house while the players were staying there to figure out what was going wrong, but it's 'infested with Nabassu' which seems to say that Nabassu are the major focus of the story.
Both of those situations make it seem to a prospective writer that you've already come up with an adventure concept and you're just hiding it from us (not saying this is the case, but that's what it looks like to a newbie's eyes). To my own personal nature this is contradictory, I don't mind following the rules, but I'd like more insight as to why you've come up with rule X when I'm trying to fit it into an adventure for you. I figured the no undead/no cults rule on my own, but the ones mentioned above threw me off, to the point where I'm not even doing #20.
This isn't a rant, I'm just new and trying to learn. I've been learning a lot from you, James and Wes since Gencon =p
I pretty much second what Neil said, but I'd like to add that submitting to the open calls and RPG Superstar contest is fun, no, make that FUN. Yeah, I'm thankful to have a job where I don't have to rely on this because the "RPG Superstar Top 32" by my name isn't even enough to buy a can of baked beans, but in the absence of a group to game with as often as I would like, writing for these things is like my #1 hobby.
Chad
...I'd like to add that submitting to the open calls and RPG Superstar contest is fun, no, make that FUN....in the absence of a group to game with as often as I would like, writing for these things is like my #1 hobby.
Exactly. It's a creative challenge. A title like "Skeleton Moon" or an outline where demons unexpectedly show up in the house of a devil-worshipper is a bit of a test to see what someone can do with them. I'd compare it to improv. Someone gives you a bunch of unrelated (or loosely related) things and the best idea that uses them...along with an obviously interesting writing style and command of language...and that's going to be who gets the green light. There's nothing inherently wrong with that approach. The very process is entertaining for participants and observers alike.
--Neil
The open calls are not contests--they're open calls with slight restrictions. If this were a contest, I'd comment in public on every submission and then let the community vote. Instead, I reply privately with feedback and suggestions--much like a good short story magazine editor might.
When I write an open call, I know what monster I want to see, what the title of the scenario is, and generally where it takes place. You fill in the rest. If your idea is creative, well-written, and fits the theme/monster/location then I will most likely accept it. If it doesn't, I'll give you feedback on your idea/writing style in the hopes that you'll improve and submit again. You don't get to pick the monster because I know what monsters we need to illustrate. You don't get to pick the location, because I know what products that location needs to be tied to or what products we're trying to draw attention to through the OP program. You don't get to title the scenario because, in the future, we'll have these things titled and listed for conventions and in-store games months before they're ever written and changing the titles just confuses everyone. And, frankly, I want people to write for us who can meet the small challenge of connecting location-monster-theme on command and on deadline.
I don't expect everyone to submit for every scenario. I don't expect everyone will like our submissions format. But if you want a foot in the door writing for us, then keep at it, take my feedback to heart, and someday you'll get to write a scenario. I've been rejected more times than I can count from short story magazines, game publishers (including Paizo), poetry magazines, etc and I've always said "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" and worked up a new submission.
|
Contributor
|
As much as I'd love to submit this time, I'm going to have to pass for this month's open call. I did my best to work up a submission for #19, coming up with what I think would be a good possibility for the background and story. Unfortunately, I just don't have time in the next 48 or so hours to finish it.
I'll wait patiently until next month's open call and do my best to submit then. In the meantime, I'm working on a short story based on the plot for one of my submissions from last month's call.
Good luck to everyone who is entering this month. I hope to join your ranks again soon!