The Top 4 have fielded an exceptional batch of adventure pitches, but what I found odd was that every single one of them seems to have gotten a minor ding on the "bonus location" requirement:
- It’s frustrating that the first truly interesting sounding adventure site, Blackdamp Hollow, is indicated to be a “bonus location.” A place like this deserves to be a main location of an adventure! I would rather have one of the cities in the adventure be the bonus location and have Blackdamp Hollow be a fully-detailed encounter area.
- I would have liked to see the bonus location, the awesome mine dungeon, worked more into the adventure. I think you missed an opportunity there.
- This adventure’s bonus location should be the girtablilu campsite the PCs visit early on, not “the Stray Archway.” The Stray Archway is a place the PCs have to pass through, after all, and serves as the main adventure site’s front door. It’s not bonus at all.
- Hope’s Hollow is cool, but I’d rather see a place like this feature as a non-optional location in the adventure. If this adventure’s set in Cassomir, its “bonus location” should be a short gazetteer about that city that summarizes the information from “Cities of Golarion” while also providing new info, such as new rumors or the like.
- The bonus location for this adventure needs to be associated with the adventure somehow. If we do end up setting it in Nex, a great bonus location would be a gazetteer of Quantium itself... but that’s a can of worms I’m not sure I’m ready to open. One obvious nomination would be some notes on what the Seventh Veil actually is. Another possibility is to present the Material Plane manor as this location.
I'm not cherry-picking here; that list is every single judge comment with the word "bonus" in it. That's zero-for-four, leading me to conclude that We Do Not Yet Grok Bonus Locations.
Can judges and/or developers expand on what a bonus location "should" be - what they were expecting, and why the R5 pitches didn't meet that? (Or do some judges think they did, and just not mention it?)
Dude's got a point.
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I would have to look up which, but in one of the Dragon editorials Erik mentioned a little throw away note written on the side of the map "this way to the dracolich lair" That aside led to dracoliches being created (demanded?) and eventually to the Age of Worms adventure path. Not the point of the map or of the adventure, but look what it spawned. Bonus.
IMHO Blackdamp Hollow was a great bonus location and goes to show what concise writing can do. (The short paragraph squeezed a lot of details from a few words making the location more compelling.) Maybe more compelling than the actual location, which had room to explain/explore/expand upon everything and lost some of its appeal.
Obviously I'm no judge, but perhaps we can start the discussion anyway?
I think it may also be a conflict of Superstar vs. best idea.
A gazetteer of Quantium would be perfect with the Seventh Veil Masquerade and could probably win votes considering the interest in the area (if it isn't relocated, which I think it would be if it wins). But just saying, "OK, we'll tell you all about this place that Paizo's already created" isn't going to show what you can do for the judges or voters.
Now, maybe you could write "Bonus location is a gazetteeer of Quantium, including Vlad's Blood Bank, the House of Zombies bar and Everybody Gets a Lich ice cream emporium" to show some of that creativity, but otherwise I think there's often going to be some slight disconnect in these pitches between creating a really cool location to show off your design skills and what might be the very best option for a location for a mod set in a new area.