Hi all, I'm involved with PFS at an event to be themed around Cthulhu's presidential election campaign and wondered if the community could recommend any scenarios that fit with one (or both!) aspects of that theme. If you recommend a scenario and can also say whether or not it's new-GM-friendly, that would be even more helpful. Thanks!
Wei Ji the Learner wrote: For those tables where it 'slows down' the interaction at the table, what has been the experience with the slow-down? I have GMed for players who seem to have an aversion to doing things the 'ordinary' way, and tend to slow down the story by adding interesting stuff in. Trying to pick fights with friendly NPCs, arguing about whether to do the time critical mission or try to follow the trail of the Aspis agent, that sort of thing -- all of which take time that doesn't progress the scenario. Having the NPC refuse to get involved with (off-topic) arguments and so on tends to elicit complaints of railroading. It's surprisingly difficult (to me, anyway) to get these players to direct that creative energy toward the story that the scenario has set up. And because all the focus goes to side missions, the combat encounters can feel rather dry. OTOH when players (sometimes the same ones) direct that creative energy in the same direction as the story, I think we do see speed up and the combats and skill check type stuff can be a lot more engaging. I really enjoy the players engaging with the world, but I struggle for time and interest in the "official" content when that engagement doesn't align with the scenario story. Maybe that's the difference between "goofing off" and "productive" role-playing? I would love a tool to redirect player engagement without making them feel that I'm taking away their agency, but the best we have at the moment is an OOC compromise that sometimes PFS works that way (and occasional unusually long sessions to allow for "bonus content").
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"appears to be dripping" --> "drips" unless it isn't actually dripping slime. If it isn't actually dripping slime, I would like to know more about that. When I start reading the second sentence, I expect you to be talking about the armour since you don't immediately say otherwise. It becomes clear as one reads, but I suspect most people either misread it or have to go back and reread the sentence. Not a huge deal, but the flow of concept between sentences generally felt a bit jerky to me. Really liked the flavour of this one and looking forward to seeing what you do in the map round!
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I think you want to shift the apostrophe in "sleeping creature’s dreams." ;) Otherwise, what you have here reads fine to me. I would have liked to see a bit more for mechanical reasons, but the prose does well as short and sweet. This feels like a good sign for your use of the fifty words in the map round. :)
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*twitch* That's not how "permeate" works. I know what you mean, but something like "the air around the boots is constantly permeated with a salty aroma" is a better use of the word. I think my first choice would be to go super simple and say "These boots fill the air with a salty aroma." "malleable material" is awfully vague. If you're going to call out the material, tell us what it is! Otherwise, just say that the boots allow for comfortable movement. Given your spare word count, I would vote for a little more description. Tie this in to the corsair and the salty smell, perhaps? This feels like a really great idea that could perhaps use just a little more editing. Despite that, you were very successful in making me want those boots!
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The flavour sentence at the start of the description has a lot of adjectives that don't seem to be pulling their weight. If the description were as concise as the technical stuff, this would be even more awesome. You don't need to tell me that a sheen is smooth; likewise "very" is really just eating up your word count. I think you might get good results from consolidating paragraphs. The current form feels a bit like bullet points to me. A little more description of what's going to happen before the technicalities of how it's going to happen might help to frame that. (The name kinda does this, but I only clicked about the name after working out what the item did.) You might also improve the flow by breaking some sentences up. Every single sentence in your description is a compound sentence, which makes it just a little more effort to process. Not a big deal, but I notice things like that, so there you have it. ;P Looking forward to seeing more from you!
Congrats on making the top 32! I'm excited about:
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If you were in my creative writing group:
Anthony Adam wrote:
For people worrying about resolution: it should be easy to go to a lower dpi in a graphics program. As others have pointed out elsewhere, GIMP will do more than you need and it's a free download. In GIMP, you can open an image, click "Image -> Scale Image" and type in the dpi you want out. That's it. Other graphics programmes should be similar, but dpi shouldn't be a game changer!
Tothric wrote:
If you don't have MS Excel and want to use this idea LibreOffice is free (and reputable) software with the same basic functionality.
OhGodTheRats wrote: I'm curious if what's expected is a map design outline/schematic or something akin to the work of a legit cartographer. You need to produce something that could be sent to a cartographer, but you're not judged on artistic merit. (Except insofar as voters may be biased, I guess.) It seems like the rules are going to be very similar to previous years -- I found looking at the judges' comments from then super helpful.
Aaron Miller 335 wrote: I'm looking for opinions on how requiring a move action may change the cost over continuous. I think this is equivalent to being command word activated (not that I'm really qualified to say). Isn't use-activated more like a ring of featherfall, where it kicks in as soon as you start falling and you don't have to do anything, although it's not continuous as such?
Kalindlara wrote: I'll be honest - I'm going to be really sad if I T8 and don't win, since it means I'll be banned in future years, and thus, locked out from ever writing my module... As I understand it, they only ban the top 8 since they're generally good enough to get published through freelancing already, so that particular problem might go away. ;-)
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