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I considered Schneider, Outzen, Nelson, and Boomer as worthy submissions. Looking back on their previous submissions, I saw that I previously had issues with both Schneider's wondrous item and Outzen's country. Ultimately, I found Outzen's country inspiring dispite its problems while Schneider's wondrous item is just too broken. My votes went to Outzen, Nelson, and Boomer.
I love the Siphon Healing ability just for the horror factor when the PC's realize they're in over their heads, especially if they see the Blightspawned Fey benefit from their healing. The writing is a tad redundant, and you seem to have gotten a bit sloppy towards the end, but I've bought and forgiven far worse. One hole, though, is the application of a template that requires a template. Since no Moldering Shambler is ever created from a pre-existing zombie, but only from unanimated corpses, making the DM do twice the math to make his monsters is cumbersome. Make the template actually apply directly to the base creature that it uses, and save everyone the paperwork. I could see myself using these as either incidental encounters or as the centerpiece of a story arc. Great submission.
Your villain must be CR XX or less. I'm happy to see no lower limit on CR. I didn't want to see villains akin to Mr.Glass from Unbreakable being disallowed.
I'm really surpised at all the compliments I have been receiving on the writing: I'm a programmer, not a wordsmith. But I've had several people say I was the best or one of the best written submissions. I'll take it, I guess. Programmers are forced to strictly conform to grammar and syntax. It often shows when they try writing something (especially project-like somethings) in a natural language. Having to interpret and generate understandable documentation, test procedures, and requirements doesn't usually hurt, either. I hope this post answers the above one asking 'And?'. This is the kind of leap of imagination I was expecting people to make. Good show. Thanks! Happy to serve! Thank you for the inspiration. O, and the name didn't bother me in the least. Lots of things share a name either by homage, shared ancestry, or coincidence. To avoid such things in the future, however, you can try altering the spelling, substituting sounds in the word for similar ones, splitting or joining syllables, or some combination. For example: Syprus, Cytrus, Cykris, Cyperus, Speros, Cykurs, Syperos, et cetera.
On size: This was purely an artifact of the competition. My original thoughts were just the city and immediate surroundings, but I wasn't sure that would be enough to be a nation. In fact, I wasn't sure where the line would be, so I chose a large enough area that I felt safe from that sort of scrutiny. It probably could have been a lot smaller, but I really wanted to make sure I didn't get an auto-reject. That is a frustrating and largely unavoidable problem with entering writing and design competitions, particularly ones that have never been held before and therefore offer no examples of where the lines are drawn. On displacement: ... I like Eldrich Gaiman's idea of having the city exist in the Shadow Plane, with gates on the Material, but I would ammend it so that there are enough gates or large enough gates that significant congress between Moros Akalein and the surrounding lands could occur. I'm glad you liked that--I had fun thinking of it. That was my intended meaning, but I was rushing my comments to get to as many as I could manage before voting ended. You definitely want there to be just as many roads in and out of the city as there would be a normal city. I really do like the idea of suddenly imposing an additional political border on a country for an undisclosed amount of time. Besides being entertaining in its own right, it also has lots of plot potential. I love the image of umral tendrils growing from nothingness and coalescing into a shadowy set of city gates in several locations in a region. At each one, city guards immediately step out to secure the area quickly followed by a stampede of eager merchants and their adventurer escorts. I'm torn between that and the far more subtle and possibly cooler idea that there is no sudden hallmark of the city's arrival nearby in the Shadow plane. One morning, when the sun rises, old forgotten doors, ruined gates, and shallow archways in a region simply refuse to relent the shadows of the night and now lead to places in the wandering city (a la dimension door or gate spells). It would depend on what your intended impact was, but I think I'm leaning toward the latter. On rarely moving: This was something that got dropped to make the word count. In initial drafts, I had much more info on the map of Phoroneus; included in that info was the stipulation that the map could activate itself if it wasn't used enough. The idea was that the leaders would have to use it on a fairly regular basis or risk the map taking itself to an undesirable location. As the edits went forward, and words were dropped, this went away. I see know that I probably should have left it in. I love the keep the map happy element. You could even make the artifact require a diplomacy check to control instead of a UMD or what-have-you. That would also keep the place from becoming a magocracy by necessity. A city-state is definitely the size you want for this. It's a shame that that was your original vision, but I obviously still found your submission inspiring. I'm glad to have had a chance to read it.
Seriously, though, remember that we're looking for superstars here, so don't forget to consider each wondrous item from round 1 while you're voting for entries in round 2.
Having thought it over, I think that my lack of desire to play here is from a lack of descriptive text. Your description is little more than a list of features from the locale. Gaming is about being transported to another place, and it takes more than saying what things are at a location to convey what it's like to be there.
I like that the primary force to fear in the wilderness isn't goblins or orcs, but elves. That's very cool. I think you should have provided at least one or two descriptive words when you introduced the Frostmagier. Anything that would have demonstrated what the people of Nelvia think of when they think of him would have been appropriate and helpful, like 'enormous', 'bat-winged', 'inhuman', 'wraith-like', 'giant-like', or even just something like 'ferocious' to invoke a sense of whether it's bestial or humanoid and quietly calculating or terrible to behold. I'm sorry, but without even the tiniest clue, my mind just pictured the Snow Miser, which is unfortunate. The nature of the Frostmagier should definitely be revealed in the GM's secrets, even if there's no stat block or clue to CR. Its racially divided nations is very Warhammer, and not necessarily in a bad way. It does, however, place pretty heavy restrictions on which races are available to players. There are a few details that are difficult for me to believe. I can believe that elves would wait 700 years to attempt revenge--that's great. I have a lot of trouble believing that no dwarven versions of Chinatown haven't developed in the 100% human cities listed, and even more trouble believing that no human versions developed in dwarven cities. I wasn't impressed with the writing. Many patches were unclear or awkward, and even the cleanest parts failed to flow smoothly when read. I couldn't really picture me running a campaign here, either. There just isn't enough in the way of diverse threats and places to tie off plot hooks. I might use it as the backdrop for a one-shot mini-game, but I wouldn't tie in much about the Frostmagier or really take advantage of the setting's features other than its racial relationships.
I like almost everything about this setting at least a little. I'm not sure about a country who relies on external iron resources coming through a single port not having a navy. Seems ripe for sacking. I don't see a lot of sources for diverse adventure here above the eventual war with the dwarves and the old adventures' standard of beatin' back the goblin hoards. I like that the dwarves aren't evil, but they are a thorn that will have to be dealt with. Wars in D&D are too often moral ones. This one is war over resources with no real bad guy side. That part rocks. I love the imagery of brass and bronze equipment everywhere. I think this will be an exciting place to campaign once the war with the dwarves dawns, the once non-threatening Terram upgrades their bronze spears not to steel, but to adamantine, and the country is forced to diplomatically reassure its nervous neighbors that its sudden military upgrade and expansion is solely in defense against the dwarves and not a precursor to building the new Great Terram Empire. I can picture epic battles fought on underground battlefields, a foreign blockade showing up at Port Galrin to secure that country's continued interests in Terram, and hastily constructed smoking citadels scattered (small castles containing little except what maintains the multiple smitheries which each contain) across the land where adamantine is forged into spearheads as quickly as it can be brought to the surface. Oooo, and as news from the south reports that the forests which provide the hafts for Terram's spears have been seized by the advancing dwarves, the elven warfleet floats into Port Galrin's harbor, delivering fresh elven troops, supplies (including more hafts), and elven warmages to fix the lack of arcane defenses in Terram. Unfortunately, I think you missed that exciting setting by only a decade or more. Even so, I am obviously inspired, and could easily see myself running a campaign here once the negotiations break down. A better choice might have been to include in the GM's secrets that the negotiations have been terminated, the envoy is retained by the dwarves, and troops are massing on both borders.
This entry held my interest, but didn't really grab me until the secrets section. I consider the underwater placement a gimmick, and a slight drawback. It forces the GM and players to either use aquatic races or constantly deal with breathing problems and issues like swimming in armor and underwater melee rules. This adds overhead to the game and cuts into real play time. It is fairly well-written. It's clear and mostly well-organized. I didn't like the built-on-human-ruins idea at first. I loved it as soon as you used it as a mechanic to include dark underground ruins. I find the unsustainable farming practices concept to be engaging, but a fairly difficult hook to build a plot around. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. I like how each different region has its own distinct flavor and purpose. If I raised the setting from the sea, everything that's interesting about this setting is still interesting. In fact, as gimmicky as an underwater game is, I don't see a single place where you relied on that gimmick. I think that even with the overhead costs of an underwater setting, I could run a campaign here. Good setting.
I like the names, even if they are Arabic-sounding names made for a desert setting, which is cliché. Clichés work, though, that's why they're clichés. 'Bereket' is some form the word 'kneel', right? I like that you have druids using their powers for political gain. Too many druids are played as misanthropic near-hermits. I like the Oninku. They feel like a royal police service done right for the setting. I like that the Impola go out on hunts. It's a nice twist on a traditional aristocratic hobby, and it's application emphasizes that evil is in power in Bereket. This is well-written, clear, well-organized, and never awkward. The last adventure hook is a bit too grand, as it runs the risk of killing the setting if the PC's succeed. I could definitely run a campaign here. The mega-oasis fixes most of the limitations a desert setting usually comes with, but the desert in all its harshness is still there and available for use. I like this one.
The range is dependent on how you burn the oil, and is discussed in the equipment section of the SRD. I hope your players enjoy it.
I like that you've legitimized the social role of the adventurer by turning it into a politically sanctioned service role. A lot of settings fail to support why anyone would ever become an adventurer when they could live a safe and happy life of relative wealth based on their starting stats and skill ranks. I like the concept of the moving country, but it suffers from some mechanical problems and vague descriptions. A chunk of crust 200 miles wide and a mile deep cannot appear in the middle of a location and harmlessly shunt the existing region aside. Is it shunted in a particular direction? Is it displaced outwardly from the center? However you do it, the existing surface would be distorted, and that means that roads, buildings, rivers, and everything else would be compressed and elongated. It would work if the country resided somewhere permanently, like on the Plane of Shadow, and the city gates could change location in the Prime Material. You could have even made it so the whole region floated in the sky like in Gulliver's Travels. At worst, it would have to swap locations with what was at the target, but even that wouldn't be harmless as rivers and roads would complicate things. I love the unknown underdark half of the country. I love the dragon. The writing was a little awkward in places. As a GM, I could definitely see myself using my Shadow Plane reimagining of this setting, but not as it appears in its original description. The adventurer-centric society is a little hokey for my tastes, but I've played in hokier.
Too much geography, lost interest after hearing about the forests in each region. The 'nobles elect the king' bothered my also, kings inherit and are not elected. The power of a king and how he gets it has varied greatly throughout history, and is allowed to vary even more greatly in any fantasy setting. This may seem contradictory, but it is possible to have a council of nobles who select a leader to make laws and decisions to govern a land. That king would have nearly absolute power except, one would assume, the ability to by decree or otherwise overtly dissolve the council that elected him. England actually had a period very similar to this when the king's word was law unless a small council of nobles declared his actions to be beyond his bounds. The king was allowed to name his own heir, but the council could override his decision. The United States government was actually based quite heavily on this model, and ironically now in some ways more closely resembles that "monarchy" than does the modern English government. Strictly speaking, the only way anyone rules is by having his subjects obey his laws, which is ultimately always voluntary. Having a council of nobles watching over his shoulder might actually make the king more powerful, since it is now clear exactly whose pockets he needs to gild in order to sway opinion, and the responsibility of action against anything that might be considered unjust has been lifted from the shoulders of every citizen and placed on a council of a select few. This might cause a people who would otherwise revolt to wait and see what their designated noble has to say about the situation and what action he might take.
This seems like a solid setting that could easily provide for a plethora of different campaigns. I am left, however, completely uninspired to actually run any campaigns there. I warmed a little to a concept of running a party who was sympathetic to the cause of a dwarven rebellion, but that's the closest I got to actually wanting to play here. The writing is clear and clean. The information provided is all useful for running the setting. It fails to convey any flavor, though, and I'm left with a distinct non-impression of what it's like to actually be there. The sad irony might be that if this was in a book surrounded by colorful and intriguing (maybe even a little gimmicky) neighboring kingdoms, I might choose this one because it's so normal and lacks detail. I could use it as a starting point for the players to help insure that their characters aren't too wacky, and I could run a nice basic first adventure there while I got a feeling for how the party worked together and where they might next like to travel. I could fill in the details as I went along without worrying much whether I've accidentally contradicted the book. These kinds of places are exactly what's necessary for most campaign worlds, but I've got no desire to use it. If I figure out why, I'll try to come back and explain.
I love the concept. Like Erik Mona, I also have a similar empire on my latest setting project. I don't like the alignment. The government seems genuinely good regarding the well-being of its own citizens, even if it's willing to commit unholy crimes against nature in order to secure them. If the court-sanctioned privateering accusation is true, then their foreign policy may fall more towards evil. I might label the government as NN or possibly even CG. We may differ in how we interpret alignments or on whether the listed alignment should describe the behavior of the nation's leader, the spirit behinds its laws, or the general attitude of its citizens. I find an evil society who is reliant on undead for labor much less compelling than one that is generally good and in that same situation. I agree with most other posts regarding the name. I'm in the SCA, and one of the more recently-formed local cantons chose a Welsh name with (I think) at least five syllables for their group. Everyone calls them "Fred". The rest of the names are mostly good. The "Shield Maidens" rocks especially hard. The history is very cool, definitely adds to the description, and is miles above the usual big evil with a whimsical pension for animating the dead or the ancient battlefield/graveyard that the settlers unknowingly picked to dig a well into and start building homes. The foppish and decadent upper class is an acute and colorful element to include. You suggest but do not discuss that there is a middle class of skilled laborers to satisfy the demands of the upper class (fancy tailoring, art, poetry, education, masterful swordsmithing, et cetera). The alternative is that there is only the aristocracy (numbering 32,000!) and the undead, and all goods and luxuries are imported, which is dubious, so I assume there is a working class among the living. It seems to me that this middle class would be where most of your adventurers would come from and who they would most likely deal with most of the time they were in the region. I would have expected them to receive some attention, even if it was a throw-away line stating that they were average skilled laborers and merchants. Most of what makes up the flavor of a country is not its leaders, but it's average citizens. I love the euphemism for undeath. Besides being very droll, it provides some flavor of the setting and serves as a demonstration of the wit of the upper class. I love the threat of invasion from an army of indignant hobgoblins on crusade against the vile humans. Comically grave. As a GM, I could easily run multiple campaigns here. The setting is open to the implementation of almost any type of story while imposing very specific consequences for choosing this setting. The setting could even be used as a foreign feature of a campaign centered in some other country to add a focus for holy campaigning, a source for external political maneuvering, or just a sense of dread locations in the world.
Love the petrified tree concept, though it seems just as logical to me that the portal would next switch to Fire, not back to water. Races? One hundred years is a long time to rule for most races, so I'm forced to guess elf or a custom race? As there is no mention of race, I have to assume that the setting only has one civilized (and long-lived) race. Anyway, with so much wealth at stake, I wouldn't expect any ruler to survive a term of 100 years unless he was evil. Cities grow where there is water and resources, so I agree that the pillars would be the place where people would settle and build. I'm not sold on the idea that they'd put their capital on the one that was the most difficult to get to. It cripples trade in both goods and information. I might have bought it if the capital was there because that was the only place that the Formians couldn't raze due to its natural defenses. What do these 54,980 people eat? As a GM, I could fabricate answer that question, but I would expect that to be addressed when describing a desert population. Love the horizontal city walls 100' from the crowns. Rockin'. This is a matter of taste, but I am not a fan of monotheistic settings, especially ones that use the capitalized 'G'-word to refer to the deity. I'd have a tough time GM'ing this locale, though. Difficult travel between the cities means that poor or low-level parties require plots that are contained in a single city. That's completely doable, but it's a limitation that would frustrate me as I had to generate several interesting and diverse plots that all fit within that limitation. Other GM's might be better at working with that limitation, however. It would also require a lot of embellishment and consideration pre-game to be able to effectively narrate what it's like to be in any of those cities. I get a sense of narrow irregular streets between buildings which are all built to maximum height in order to use every cubit foot available. The upper stories of buildings would be even wider than the ground floors for the same reason. There would be extensive use of ladders and footbridges by the upper-story residents, particularly in the poorer sections where each story or room with an outside-opening door (or hatch) is separately owned. It seems very uniform, though, with most streets resembling most other streets, and most cities resembling most other cities. Overall, I find it somewhat inspiring. I'd change or elaborate some of the details, but I like the core of it.
It should specify that it only works on divinations that have an area of effect to avoid oddities. I considered that, and if you read it carefully you may note that it actually uses its own mechanics separate from the spell used to charge it: ...even the shadowy illumination produced by burning the diviner's oil causes any object or creature which could have been detected by the stored spell to appear brightly illuminated... Thus, it doesn't matter how any of the detect spells function, it illuminates anything the spell could have detected. I wrote it this way specifically to bypass the problem of inheriting different mechanics (especially the concentration mechanics and AoE's) from different spells.
That is the intended effect, yes. I fathered the bastard phrase "shadowy glow" with its mother, "shadowy illumination" from the SRD, changing it only to avoid a third use of a form of 'illuminated' in a single sentence. Perhaps I should have stuck with the technical term and let the prose suffer for clarity. You got it, though. Part of the awkwardness came from cramming together sentences to save words. My software indicated that I was at 193 at my final draft, but I peaked somewhere around 230 during the writing process. Thanks for the feedback! I was hoping to hear from one of the actual judges, too (*pokes Clark Peterson with a staff*), but I understand that they're currently a little busy.
See, this is one of the reasons why we dont want to post this stuff. Do you feel better now knowing that? Wouldnt you rather just believe you were rejected for word count? That way you could persist in the false belief that your item was better and less flawed than the final 32. Which it clearly isnt. I resolutely would not rather believe that I was rejected for any reason other than the true reasons. I have no desire to persist in any false beliefs, whatsoever. I'd like to know the why for possible insights into my strengths and weaknesses as a writer and as a designer, the contest, the judges' personalities and preferences, and everything else that an accurate understanding might provide insights toward. That's what criticism is good for.
Diviner's Oil This opaque white oil can be used exactly like normal oil except as noted here (see the Equipment section). Each pint of diviner's oil can store a single casting of any of the 'Detect' spells. All casting options are made once by the caster at the time of casting and cannot be changed, though the stored spell can be replaced any number of times before the oil is ignited. Once lit, the magical flame produces no illumination against normal objects, however even the shadowy illumination produced by burning the diviner's oil causes any object or creature which could have been detected by the stored spell to appear brightly illuminated, revealing it to all who are directly within view. The remaining oil becomes nonmagical once the flame burns out or is snuffed. Invisible objects and creatures that would otherwise be illuminated by the oil are not directly illuminated, but their location is revealed by a shadowy glow cast around them as long as they remain within 5 feet of a visible surface or creature (such as the floor). Faint evocation; CL 6th; Craft Wondrous Item, light; Price 3,000 gp per pint. |
