Did you miss the archetype / organization round?


RPG Superstar™ General Discussion

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Maurice de Mare wrote:

Suggestion for next year

Round 1: Wondrous item (fluff and mechanics)
Round 2: 400 word anything (fluff)
Round 3: monster / villain (mechanics)
Round 4: encounter (fluff and mechanics)
Round 5: pitch (fluff)

Fluff isn't the best word for it, I know, but you get the idea.

In a previous year folks have had to add mechanics to a previous designer's flavor. In Maurice's example R2 could be monster/villain (flavor) & R3 monster/villain (mechanics). I liked it, though we got a dozen of one monster and only a handful of any other. It only happened once (maybe twice?) so it was probably not a good determine-a-designer test, but might make the second round easier for voters.

I think Paizo switched to four rounds mostly on the length of the contest. Voter turnout drops over three months of contest (my guess based on board activity). If the boards are any indication voter turnout has already dropped. It is also easier to find judges for four rounds than five (another guess).

My question is can it be shortened and add an easier-to-read second round?

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Nickolas Floyd wrote:
Curaigh wrote:
Benner, Bruck, Russell, all fall into this category.

Right, but they have design credits and therefore should be excluded from the competition in my opinion.

Nickolas Floyd wrote:
... I just think being published should be the disqualifier rather than a simple top 8 finish.

It is not a huge deal to me, and doing away with the Top 8 round does avoid this possibility. I'm just questioning whether this was a reason for eliminating the Top 8 round or if there would be other solutions to the problem that would retain the five rounds, instead of four. Also, would Benner, Bruck, and Russell (and possibly other 5th through 8th finishers) been discovered and utilized if there were not a Top 8 round in their year of RPGSS? Possibly since Paizo will still have a ranked finish of the Top 16 this year.

Heck, I'm just supporting a smaller word count in round 2 and for that to ripple through the other rounds. Reading 32 monsters and 16 encounters is just too much in my opinion. I can't say for sure that this requires the return of the Top 8 round, but I would welcome a lower word count overall.

I meant only that those folks have gone on to a lot of work without multiple years entering, which is the goal. I see your point though that they would be ineligible because they did get published/discovered, where some other Top 8 might not have. :)

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DeathQuaker wrote:
Haladir wrote:
kind of writing chops that a freelancer nerds to write good adventures
Most apt typo ever. :)

And doubly so for posting from my smartphone...

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Jacob W. Michaels wrote:
I like a villain concept idea -- I wouldn't think it would even need to be a single NPC, but could be a villainous organization.

As I said earlier, a villain (or NPC) would be a very different challenge than a monster.

And it's something very relevant to making many adventures, so it works well with the contest. Round 1 and 2 are all about new mechanics, this is applying existing content.

1) You need to write the background of a person, including motivation and role-playing notes, but it has to be short.
2) You need to write the Before Combat, Tactics, and Morale sections.
3) You need to apply gear.
4) You need to add class levels, calculate the CR, but still have the NOC be the appropriate challenge.
5) You need to know how to write an NPC statblock, including what details to summarize and which to copy, as well as which abilities go where.

But none of that is so long that it will take as long to read-digest-comment as an encounter.

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I had this idea while traveling over the last couple weeks: If Paizo still wants to keep the contest to one less round next year, what about going from a round of 16 to 8 to done?

I think a lot of us were struck by the carnage from Round 3 (or maybe it was just me?), where the judges basically had to reject 75 percent of the entries, even if they liked them. Even with the judges being generally positive even about the entries they weren't recommending, it left the feeling that the field wasn't very strong, I think. (And we've seen in previous years that voters are very sensitive to that sentiment.)

What if instead of cutting from 16 to 4, though, we cut from 16 to 8. From there, people could vote for their top four choices, instead of just one, with the top vote recipient being named Superstar and the other Top 3 getting the PFS modules as usual. I know that might make more work for the judges, having to edit eight pitches instead of four -- and maybe that level of increased work would make it impossible -- but I think that might be a change that could add some excitement to the contest.

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