Overall submission quality: Is it just me...?


RPG Superstar™ General Discussion

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Marathon Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

I've seen one item that just blew my mind. It was that good. And I have several items which was really, really bad and keep popping up for me. Its very tedious. I've also seen a few good items overall.

Also, I've seen some items that do not contain numbers as their price.


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Hmm...not sure...

Digital Products Assistant

Removed a post. Please remember that you may not discuss specific items per the voting rules.

Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

What's getting me is that a lot of the time I find myself voting for something that is bad simply because it is no where as bad as the paired item. I have voted for a lot of drek in this competition.

On the other hand, I try to take into account that someone out there really thinks that his/her submission is good. Then I find myself feeling a little guilty for being so dismissive of their work.

I guess I just needed to vent about this, and this seemed to be a good thread to do it in. For the most part I am enjoying the voting process; I am learning a lot about design and what it must be like for developers dealing with submissions.

But there is no way you could make me do this sort of selection/editorial thinking as a career! I would go mad. :)

RPG Superstar 2009, Contributor

Feros wrote:
I guess I just needed to vent about this....there is no way you could make me do this sort of selection/editorial thinking as a career! I would go mad. :)

Now maybe you can understand why the judges sometimes needed to blow off steam, as well. We'd usually constrain it to the judging chambers. Other times, we'd offer something up for public consumption, because we thought it might cut the insanity by heading off any more of the poor design decisions we were seeing over and over. Either way, we needed an outlet so we could return to the task at hand. It's actually somewhat heartening to see that playing out among everyone participating in the early public voting this go-around. Hang in there.

Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Neil Spicer wrote:
It's actually somewhat heartening to see that playing out among everyone participating in the early public voting this go-around. Hang in there.

Believe me Neil, I have developed a great admiration for the judges and developers at Paizo! I will definitely be voting to the (very) bitter end as I can see this making me a better DM and adventure designer.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9 aka Hodge Podge

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I've seen enough repeat items at this point that I sometimes know which one I'm going to vote for as soon as I see the names. I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, but there are a select few that I vote against immediately without more than a cursory glance at a never-before-seen item.

Star Voter Season 6

I always read through the new items, but there are more than a few that I immediately disregard as the winner and it takes something pretty awful to make me vote for such items. Fortunately, I have yet to see two of the immediate disregard items paired up together.

Sovereign Court Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

Tels wrote:
I always read through the new items, but there are more than a few that I immediately disregard as the winner and it takes something pretty awful to make me vote for such items. Fortunately, I have yet to see two of the immediate disregard items paired up together.

Consider yourself fortunate. Having to make the call between two really bad items is the worst kind of call one has to make. I just wish there was a "Trash Pile" option which would keep items marked as such from being repeatedly displayed until all the other items have been viewed.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16, 2012 Top 32 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Marathon Voter Season 9 aka Epic Meepo

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Having to decide between two really bad items is actually the easiest call to make:

When both items completely suck, just pick the left one. The placement of the Bottom 32 may as well be arbitrary.


Left-handed Path?

Sovereign Court Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

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Eric Morton wrote:

Having to decide between two really bad items is actually the easiest call to make:

When both items completely suck, just pick the left one. The placement of the Bottom 32 may as well be arbitrary.

I find it more difficult to make the call between two bad ones simply because I find myself trying to figure out which one is less bad ... and digging into them makes my brain hurt.

I may just have to run with your solution to try to reduce the pain levels.

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9

One of the things that has really been under my skin, are items that have flavour text based on preconceptions held over from various D&D campaign settings. E.g. all halflings act like kender, devil vs. demon conflict, and the Forgotten Realms spin on drow.

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9

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Eric Morton wrote:
When both items completely suck, just pick the left one. The placement of the Bottom 32 may as well be arbitrary.

In a beatpath voting method, your choices always matter. If you create the following loop (by always picking left) A>B, B>C, and C>A; you will have invalidated those votes since they are illogical. If you voted D>A—D being your item—the logic loop would not be able to determine D (your item) is better than B & C since the loop was invalidated and the results disregarded. Then, if you do not vote your item versus B & C, the algorithm will be based on other votes besides yours.

I am unsure as to the exact method the formula is being determined, but I could easily imagine someone creating a 100 count logic loop and invalidating all those votes.

Marathon Voter Season 6

I believe PMG said that the voting system could handle those sorts of illogical loops, but he didn't go into details on how.

Liberty's Edge Marathon Voter Season 6

Thomas LeBlanc wrote:
One of the things that has really been under my skin, are items that have flavour text based on preconceptions held over from various D&D campaign settings. E.g. all halflings act like kender, devil vs. demon conflict, and the Forgotten Realms spin on drow.

Or using the word "throw" instead of "roll".

Marathon Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 8

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I am just getting the same 30-50 items repeat over and over, with no new or good items popping up. Am I the only one?


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I had that yesterday. Today I'm getting a lot of items I've voted on before, but hadn't seen in a while, along with items that are actually new to me.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8

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goldomark wrote:
I am just getting the same 30-50 items repeat over and over, with no new or good items popping up. Am I the only one?

Almost, but furtunately a new item pop up once in a while, just often enough to make it bearable.

Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8

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I just had the first new item in a couple of days pop up... and better yet it was a good item that I actually liked.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16, 2012 Top 32 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Marathon Voter Season 9 aka Epic Meepo

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Thomas LeBlanc wrote:
I am unsure as to the exact method the formula is being determined, but I could easily imagine someone creating a 100 count logic loop and invalidating all those votes.

And I could easily imagine myself creating a 100 count logic loop even after reading every single pair of bad items, because all the bad items are starting to blur together in my mind after the third or fourth time I've seen many of them. I've gotten to the point where I see a bad item and can't honestly remember if I've seen it before, let alone what votes I've already cast for it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: a Condorcet method that doesn't let you filter certain candidates into a "tied for last" position is a terrible method for sorting thousands of candidates. It's 100% mathematically sound, but so is just giving everyone a list of thousands of items and telling them to manually assign each one a rank, and I wouldn't suggest using that method, either.

While I applaud the excellent job done by the techs who implemented this unprecedented voting system, there has to be a less man-hour intensive way to do this. One that doesn't create quite so many background-noise votes that may or may not matter, depending upon the exact algorithm used.

EDIT: On second thought, had I been given a list of a thousand items and asked to manually rank every single one, I'd have been done days ago, providing a preference in every possible pairing, not the tiny fraction of pairings I've seen so far. I'm not recommending that this system be implemented, but for anyone who's spent more than a few dozen hours voting, manually ranking the entire list would be more efficient than a thousand-candidate Condorcet vote.


And now I'm pondering whether it would be possible to create a hybrid. One massive ballot for people who intend to rank every single frakking item, and then the current system for everyone else.

Founder, Legendary Games & Publisher, Necromancer Games, RPG Superstar Judge

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Actually, I think there are a batch of some really, really good items this year. The contest got off to a rough start. The first batch of items submitted really had a huge (90%) suckage rate, as in total stink bombs, as in did you even read the rules stinkiness. But since then there have really been some good submissions.

Because we aren't doing the sorting this year, I guess I'll never know how many would have made the "Keep" folder. That, to me, has always been the gauge of how good the year was. How many items did we find and put in the keep pile for later review. My sense is this year that pile would have been pretty good sized. So I would say quality is up a bit (with still a scary number of ones that really had no business even being submitted which I guess is just going to keep happening year after year and I will never understand it).


Is it only my luck with submissions or is there a general trend to make things rather overpriced than underpriced?


Drejk wrote:
Is it only my luck with submissions or is there a general trend to make things rather overpriced than underpriced?

I'm pretty sure the trend is there. Lots of items tipping the 200k price range that I'm not sure need to be that pricey.

Lantern Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 6

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I'm pretty sure its a side effect of following the pricing guidelines by the book too closely and not applying the softer rules like comparing to similar items, considering wealth by level, etc.


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Almost makes this old grognard pine for the days of yore when crafting magical items was a strange, arcane affair full of DM fiat...and collecting all sorts of rare ingredients to use in the construction, like demon's blood and dragon bones, and vials of raw aether.

Marathon Voter Season 6

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Shadowborn wrote:
Almost makes this old grognard pine for the days of yore when crafting magical items was a strange, arcane affair full of DM fiat...and collecting all sorts of rare ingredients to use in the construction, like demon's blood and dragon bones, and vials of raw aether.

Depending on the item, I still make my players do stuff like this and they love it. Their adventures to find the materials to make their special items provides me with ample opportunities to toss in story elements and it helps them customize and flesh out their characters--make them more than just words and numbers on a piece of paper.


That's good to know. I'm working on a book right now that will cover the use of monster parts, gemstones, and other materials as specialty spell components and ingredients for magic items. I'm glad to hear that sort of approach still has some appeal.


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Shadowborn wrote:
Almost makes this old grognard pine for the days of yore when crafting magical items was a strange, arcane affair full of DM fiat...and collecting all sorts of rare ingredients to use in the construction, like demon's blood and dragon bones, and vials of raw aether.

I am not an old grognard and I still support making item creation strange arcane affair of DM fiat...


*sigh* Another interesting idea that was spoiled by overcomplicated execution :(

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8 aka Jiggy

Spotted a word-limit dodge; used a hyperlink instead of a phrase that would have put them over.

Dark Archive RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Star Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8 aka FaxCelestis

Orcus Of Undeath wrote:

Even after the cull I'm seeing some bad items, with very little thought put into them. For example, the item I'm looking at right now:

- Its made for 3.5 and not Pathfinder.
- Its crafting price is incorrect.
- The caster level is off.
- The price is off.
- Has no flavor text.
- It doesn't follow standard formatting.
- The idea is a rehash from one of the previous years winning entries.

I hope this doesn't infringe on the rules.

This is one item? Good lord.


Uh... is that a 2x.xxx gp one-use item? I doubt that was the creator's intent but as written it's one shot...

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7 aka Standback

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Drejk wrote:
Uh... is that a 2x.xxx gp one-use item? I doubt that was the creator's intent but as written it's one shot...

"But when its bearer utters the command phrase Ok, I want to win the WHOLE ENTIRE GAME right now, the item's true power becomes known!"

Dedicated Voter Season 6

Thank god for the "Both Items are Equally Bad" button.

Sovereign Court Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

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Chalk Microbe wrote:
Thank god for the "Both Items are Equally Bad" button.

So you're the one responsible for the match up I just got. ;)


Standback wrote:
Drejk wrote:
Uh... is that a 2x.xxx gp one-use item? I doubt that was the creator's intent but as written it's one shot...
"But when its bearer utters the command phrase Ok, I want to win the WHOLE ENTIRE GAME right now, the item's true power becomes known!"

"Bzzzt. You won. You can go home now."

Dedicated Voter Season 6

I'm pleasantly surprised to have not seen any XP in the crafting cost.

Marathon Voter Season 6

Adam Moorhouse 759 wrote:
I'm pleasantly surprised to have not seen any XP in the crafting cost.

I was a bit sad when I saw different and/or older terminology in a few items. Never in the same one, but still.

Dedicated Voter Season 6

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next year's entry:

Knife of Many Things
Aura overwhelming universal; CL 25th

Slot -; Price 19 gp, 99 cp per month for three months; Weight 1 lb.

Description
On command, while folded, this knife can convert its blade into a brush, bottle opener, hammer, crowbar, thieves tool, scalpel, chisel, scissors, file, whetstone, soap, fishing line, compass, toothbrush, back scratcher, flint, shoehorn, nail file, tweezers, pliers, spoon, fork, drinking straw, oral thermometer, the other thermometer, sewing needle, quill, dental floss, shot glass, toothpick, prophylactic, hand mirror, signet ring, candle, eyelash straightener, lipstick, lint roller, hand towel, thimble, chewing gum, earplugs, cough drop, comb, corkscrew, hole punch, handkerchief, or handsaw.

While in possession of this blade you are immune to fly effects, unless it is stored in an extra-dimensional space. Removing the tool during flight causes you to descend at 60 feet per round for 1d6 rounds.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, prestidigitation, creator must be neutral; Cost 6 gp.

I might need to work on the word count.

Marathon Voter Season 6

Adam Moorhouse 759 wrote:

next year's entry:

Knife of Many Things

You forgot the kitchen sink. :)

Edit: And just because of this, I have to ask... has anyone actually ever entered a magical Swiss Army Knife?

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8

edit: Probably shouldn't answer so specifically.

Sovereign Court Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

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Absalom Navy Tool
Aura ZZfaint transmutation; CL 9th
Slot pocket; Price 273,283 gp; Weight --
Description
This oval shaped piece of ebony appears to be a simple piece of wood. When the owner attunes herself to the Absolom Navy Tool (by whittling a stick, opening a bottle of wine, loosening a screw, cutting a piece of fabric and picking her teeth in a 24 hour period) and then says "If I only had a ..." its true nature is revealed. Tools of every form imaginable are folded into the ebony and as a swift action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, the user may flip out any tool listed in the the Core Rule Book, Advanced Players Guide, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Equipment.

If the user is not wearing a uniform, the Absolom Navy Tool has a 11% chance of bringing our a random tool, determined by rolling a d% and counting forward in the listed books that number of tools. If the roll exceeds the number of tools in one book, the GM should refer to the next book in the list above and continue counting. If all the books are counted through, the Absalom Navy Tool instead produces a duck which attacks the owner.
Construction
Requirements Create Wonderous Items, Fabricate, creator must be in the Absalom Navy with a rank of at least midshipman and own a cutlass; Cost 1,879 gp

word count: 236 ;)

Marathon Voter Season 6

zylphryx wrote:
Absalom Navy Tool

That's awesome, I love it!

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16, 2012 Top 32 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Marathon Voter Season 9 aka Epic Meepo

MidknightDiamond wrote:

You forgot the kitchen sink. :)

Edit: And just because of this, I have to ask... has anyone actually ever entered a magical Swiss Army Knife?

More importantly, has anyone ever submitted a kitchen sink?


Actually I have a vague feeling that there was Swiss army knife or something like that... I don't think that kitchen sink ever was.

Sovereign Court Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

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Kitschen Sink
Aura strong illusion, enchantment and transmutation; CL 18th
Slot --; Price if you have to ask you can't afford it; Weight 20 lbs.
Description
This basin is covered in ever changing tacky renderings of popular icons and styles. Upon seeing the Kitschen Sink, creatures are struck by the garishness of the design and are fascinated for 1d6 rounds (DC 13 Will negates). After initially seeing it, creatures are permanently immune to this effect from this particular Kitschen Sink.

Soiled dishes or garments placed within the basin and removed become clean, though now covered in horrendously tacky designs and patterns.

Organic refuse shoved into the dark hole at the bottom of the basin disappears as if it were placed in the Sphere of Annihilation. If inorganic material, such as a metal fork, is placed in the hole, however, it makes a disturbing grinding noise for 1d4 rounds, causing creatures within 50' to drop all held items and rush to the Kitschen Sink (DC 20 Will negates). Those who fail their save are compelled to reach into the hole to remove the offending item (DC 25 Will negates) losing any appendage placed inside. This is a mind affecting effect.

The Kitschen Sink may be used as an improvised thrown weapon with a range of 5 feet. On a successful attack, it explodes in a flash of clashing colors, inflicting 20d6 of force damage to all creatures in a 20 foot radius and nauseating all creatures within 100 feet for 2d4 minutes (DC 25 Fortitude negates) from the sickening display of color combinations.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Items, prestidigitation, hypnotic pattern, disintegrate, suggestion, mass, prismatic spray, dominate monster, 1 rank in Profession (Artist) which results in an overall negative modifier; Cost forget it, you still can't afford it

word count: 296 ... and it was hard getting it down to there from the 375 it was originally ;)

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9 aka motteditor

*groan*

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