Acanamirium

Arianwen's page

RPG Superstar 9 Season Dedicated Voter. Organized Play Member. 27 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 2 Organized Play characters.


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Grand Lodge

Many thanks for all these suggestions!

Grand Lodge

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!

Grand Lodge

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").

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Congrats on making the top 32!

I'm excited about:
An item that gives me a particular animal's properties without actually becoming that animal is cool. The slime cloud is definitely an interesting ability.

I'm cautious about:
The construction requirements were unexpected.

If you were in my creative writing group:
Disclaimer: gorgeous prose is hardly a requirement for a good item, so take what I say here with a pinch of salt.

"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!

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Congrats on making the top 32!

I'm excited about:
Super simple mechanics that open up some fun options, with a nice visual.

I'm cautious about:
I'm not sure exactly how the butterfly interacts with the world, other than allowing me to cast touch spells. How do I communicate with it? Can I use it as a scout? What happens if it gets attacked? If it's killed, is the figurine destroyed? I like the simplicity of the item, but I think a few more details could have been useful.

If you were in my creative writing group:
Disclaimer: gorgeous prose is hardly a requirement for a good item, so take what I say here with a pinch of salt.

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. :)

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Congrats on making the top 32!

I'm excited about:
I want these! Invisibility is cool and moving too fast to be seen is cool. Your mechanics don't make me work too hard to get what I think of when I hear those ideas. Nice.

I'm cautious about:
If I'm walking around out of combat, can I stay invisible indefinitely? I would have liked to see something about out-of-combat use.
Does the salty smell give away my position when I'm invisible?

If you were in my creative writing group:
Disclaimer: gorgeous prose is hardly a requirement for a good item, so take what I say here with a pinch of salt.

*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!

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Congrats on making the top 32!

I'm excited about:
This is one of my favourite items from voting. The Scottish flavour is cool, the idea is cool even without that and I can immediately imagine using this in just about any game. I understood what it does on the first scan through too!

I'm cautious about:
The sheer number of rule-facts thrown at me was a bit intimidating. Some of that's probably just the nature of the game, but I think that restructuring could make it a little easier to read.

If you were in my creative writing group:
Disclaimer: gorgeous prose is hardly a requirement for a good item, so take what I say here with a pinch of salt.

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!

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Congrats on making the top 32!

I'm excited about:
the teamwork-y feel of this item. The balance between clearly belong to one player and interacting with the party feels really well done to me. Works well with the flavour, although I'm not sure every party would be too keen on howling at their enemies. (Dunno if that's a bug or a feature.)

I'm cautious about:
I don't know how allowing five foot steps to 'stack' will affect balance. I don't think I've ever seen anything that lets you do that -- curious about what the judges will have to say about it!

If you were in my creative writing group:
Generally the item reads well, but I can always nitpick!
The metaphor in the opening line is clever, but I think it needs its own sentence to really shine. It's a bit too contrived to drop in incidentally, IMHO.
"On command three times per day," reads better as "Three times per day, on command"
Your last sentence has been infected by the dreaded comma splice. D:

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Number: Avogadro's number

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Number: 17
Spell: Create water

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Type of creature: magical beast

EDIT: or since that's taken
Number: Euler's number

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Number: 9001

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Anthony Adam wrote:
Arianwen 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!
Sounds easy enough, just hope GIMP works and installs on Win 10 ? >.<

Looks like you should be fine.

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

1 person marked this as a favorite.

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!

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Tothric wrote:

For those who have Microsoft Excel. I used that for my basic outline, and my "Grid" for planning and plotting features.

Then I copied it into Paint to do detail work. Hope that helps SOME people with the lack of grid.

If you don't have MS Excel and want to use this idea LibreOffice is free (and reputable) software with the same basic functionality.

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

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.

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

I just marked something as seen for the first time since yesterday's cull, so things are still at least a little in flux.

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Now that's just ridiculous! :D

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Adjective 1: mouldy

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

Verb 1: scintillate

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

3rd noun: mood

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

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?

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

The way this weapon ties mundane and magical functionality together is getting my vote again and again. Nice job, designer.

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I tend to like items that encourage lateral thinking and can be used in ways other than what is obviously intended. Sometimes I vote for them even after I figure out how to use them to break the game, because you could always just add that one restriction the author didn't seem to think of, right?

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I regret a silly mistake that landed my item quite clearly in the snark thread, but I don't in the least regret entering and learning not to do that!

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

1 person marked this as a favorite.
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. ;-)

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 9

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Another newcomer here, super impressed by how awesome this community is and how useful this list is. You guys rock!