Contributor; Publisher, Kobold Press; RPG Superstar Judge
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm very pleased to say that Kobold Press tradition of monster design continues!
This year's contest has four distinguished judges, a great set of prizes, and a deadline before the end of the month. Full details here.
*sigh* Ok, another potential deadline to meet on laptop that is so slow it almost travels back in time... Wait, maybe I manage to travel back far enough to reach times when 512 MB of RAM were sufficient memory to run operating system and web browser at the same time.
I'll try to write something anyway. No specific flavor/theme requirements of the monster beyond? Hmmm.
I guess that one entry per participant means one entry total, not one entry per Pathfinder and one entry per 13th Age?
|
Contributor; Publisher, Kobold Press; RPG Superstar Judge
|
Yep, one entry, your choice of rules set. You've got 3 weeks to design the monster in 800 words or less. FWIW, the text can be written in Notepad and saved as RTF to save on system memory.
No particular flavor requirements other than "be awesome and playable."
And Adam, you are definitely distinguished! Thanks for judging.
I would love to submit a PC race, but I suspect it's out of the contest's reach ^^;
|
Contributor; Publisher, Kobold Press; RPG Superstar Judge
|
137ben, the design spec is deliberately wide open, to give designers wide latitude.
I would think you can use any Paizo source or any Kobold Press source without fear that the judges will be confused, and a Mythic monster might fit into 800 words (or might not, or not well).
Certainly anything CR 1/4 to 20 seems viable. For me personally, I am usually much more impressed with a really well-designed monster at low level than I am with a CR 20, if only because there are fewer ways to make a monster stand out at low levels. I know at least one of the other judges does not share my opinion on this at all, so it's up to you to figure out how to make it work for the largest audience.
JiCi, this contest is really about the monster races, but I will point out that some monster races are pretty clearly also PC races. Up to you though: the focus is on use as an adversary.
Nice, I have been waiting for this to come back. I have missed two of these, & bombed on the other two (but who could compete with the splicer beast :) Maybe third time is the charm!
Of course I have been saying that about RPGSS for... what 6 years now.
FWIW, the text can be written in Notepad and saved as RTF to save on system memory.
Except notepad here only supports .txt. Not to mention it would mess with the formatting.
Thankfully, I exaggerated a bit with the slowness of the system. I know that it can handle Google Drive editor but it is occasionally tedious... Especially that on google drive I heavy ready monster statblock template. Expected stat formatting is the same as Bestiary/Wayfinder one, right?
Time to think of interesting monster.
JiCi, this contest is really about the monster races, but I will point out that some monster races are pretty clearly also PC races. Up to you though: the focus is on use as an adversary.
Hmmm... that would mean that I need to make a NPC statblock using my race and then if I win, I'll provide the rest of the race's lore.
This is going to be fun. I hit on my concept earlier today and I'm inspired. Might have to burn the midnight oil to get this finished, then set it aside for tomorrow while I game and come back to it fresh on Monday.
Yay, even more Superstar practice!
Have to see if I can manage a crown to lay the Tin beauty... You can stack crowns, right?
We'd make you a veritable negusa negast of monster design. ;)
-Ben.
*grumble-grumble* exhausting work leaving little time for anything beyond eating or sleeping.
Maybe I will do something on Sunday. Otherwise my submission might be a Dire Mindblasting Turkey.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You could add mindblasting to this. ;)
You could add mindblasting to this. ;)
Hmmm, Mindblasting template?
Submitted something dark and deadly, I dread the day when contests require you to submit something LG and shiny :-)
Nothing written today. Probably either I will write something on Saturday just before the deadline or I won't write anything at all...
Drejk,
from the contest rules:
no later than Friday, November 29th, 2013 by noon PST.
So, Saturday is too late to start writing
Argh. I thought it ends at the end of month!
Thank you Darkjoy.
Great, now I have to try to fit it during the sparse time between eating dinner after returning from work and falling on my nose and sleeping...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And monster send.
*shrug* now back to looking for work...
Still 10 hours? So 9pm PST for those of us still working on it? Woot!
Monster away! (Actually about an hour and a half ago, but who's counting)
About 10 hours left before the contest ends.
The Kobold Press website lists the deadline as Friday Noon PST, November 29th.
Is there an extension?
I thought this ended yesterday.
Reading is fundamental.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Nope, ends in about 2 hours and 30 minutes. Quite a good spread of entries so far, but there's room for more!
The extension made the difference for me, "thank you".
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Aw man, I could have wasted another half day banging my head against the screen instead of doing something productive? Curse you Wolfgang! ;)
Left mine in an untidy state of in-completion yesterday morning thinking I would never make the deadline. Discovered the extension too late to fire the monster forge back up for a timely finish.
Of course most of the fun from these monster mash contests is seeing the creative critters concocted by others.
Left mine in an untidy state of in-completion yesterday morning thinking I would never make the deadline. Discovered the extension too late to fire the monster forge back up for a timely finish.
It's amazing how the last 10% takes the majority of the time. My hats off to developers and editors everywhere that have these kind of deadlines as a regular part of the jobs!
Yay! I even got confirmation that my submission was received!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The first monster is up (here!), and the contest is off to a very strong start.
woot!
So far, so good. That bouda is creepy. I'm going to have to find an excuse to use it sometime in the near future.
|
Contributor; Publisher, Kobold Press; RPG Superstar Judge
|
It struck me as a weird bit of synchronicity, as I had recently been looking up the bouda legends (it's an Ethiopian legend, IIRC) for an unrelated project, and then... Boom, there it is as a contest entry.
I remember sometimes getting 2 or 3 similar queries in the same week for Dungeon Magazine, and just scratching my head about it. "Something is in the water" was the usual excuse.
Bouda are common in mythology both in Ethiopia and across North Africa.
-Ben.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Another strong contender today. I like the idea of an intelligent plant, especially a malicious one. Great flavor text as well.