Jason Dandy's page

From my perspective, something like the word "filigree" as a description is lazy writing. It is like making a character in a story and saying they look like Brad Pitt or Jennifer Lawrence (as Mystique, not Katniss). Rather than paint the image of the item, it tries to cut down on the words used for description. Yes, you should not be too verbose with your descriptions, but that does not mean you can equate it to something else in order to shave off words. It is just lazy writing.

seriously??? filigree is an actual thing, and quite descriptive/evocative of specific imagery. while i may not have used it, i don't see how it is any lazier than describing the exterior of a dwelling as "clapboard" as opposed to getting all Stephen R Donaldson about the details, acting like the reader has no shared frame of reference through which single-word terms can provide instant mental images, and spending 2,500 words describing a guy walking a block to pay a phone bill.

it's not "equating a thing to another thing" to use the word 'filigree' if it actual has filigree; it's simply calling it what it is.

I did submit.

...

i would love to see the numbers in terms of how many voters there are overall in a given season and then how many times each voter voted. my theory is that there is a cadre of 10, plus or minus a small handful, who do the VAST majority of the voting and thus determine the top 32. and if the snark thread is any indication, the voting process for that cadre is detached from the stated goal of "select the items that best represent the qualities of an awesome RPG designer," and instead vote based on a number of pet peeves that primarily arise from the cadre's subculture.

filigree doesn't make an item bad in any way, nor does it detract from potential superstar status. same for runes. and while i can say with confidence that i'm not a big fan of putting either in my item descriptions, i can also say that every snarker who's trashed runes or filigree has no doubt contributed to the death of most runed or filigreed items this year regardless of the quality of those items, and that is sad and a bit shameful.

the fact that many entries in a given season are blood-related, or undead-related, or lion-related, or what-have-you says nothing about any individual designer in any of the aforementioned categories/themes. it says something about the synchronicity of individual actions when viewed as part of collective activity. and it says something about the voting cadre--they're fatigued from looking at item after item and begin to take it out on the entrants by voting not for or against a particular item on its merits, but voting for or against it based on the cadre's subculture's pet peeves.

when it becomes about being the latest person to post a clever snark trashing a certain theme or element that is being seen across a variety of submissions, i don't think that's any different from voting a certain way because someone talked publicly about an item in a favorable or unfavorable way--it's artificially skewing the voting via the natural social effect that occurs whenever people in one's self-identified group (e.g., the voting cadre) voice an opinion about a thing.

one doesn't have to say 'the derpblade of derpa is terrible' to kill submissions. all they need to say is "jeez, did EVERYONE make weapons that trigger derp effects?!" then BAM, watch as a huge chunk of anything that derps gets culled. and yet to many in the cadre, such observations are funny and 'part of the process.' same rationale used in fraternity hazings, but that's another issue and i'm not writing about it now. i can't believe the folks in the cadre honestly believe such comments have no effect on item survival--identifying specific items is not permitted for the very same reason as what i'm talking about.

it just feels that some people (and not even 'all the cadre,' just a tiny few) believe they are taking the voting very seriously yet they help destroy entire themes or categories of submissions by being specific enough to identify the category or theme but not specific enough to identify one particular item. and so each item that happens to share that theme or category, or most, get axed because they share that theme or category rather than because the item would not go well in an adventure or even a homebrew game.

as for workshopping--ideally, no one would do it outside of people they know in real, physical life, but that's simply not the case. those who workshop here gain not only the advantage of the group wisdom and feedback; they gain the familiarity of numerous participants with their submission, which, again, leads to upvotes and more positive views of the items than would otherwise happen. the psychology behind it is simple and well-established. through workshopping, all involved gain a small sense of ownership or having contributed to the growth of each item, and that sense naturally leads those folks to see the items they've worked with in a more positive light, even if they think they're being totally impartial.

my take-away message for next year, assuming i'm truly culled (seriously, whoever hits the magic "cull now" button could have immediately posted a single post stating it had occurred, no matter how messed up truly-irrelevant voter tags got, and saved a bunch of people a ton of additional anxiety), is that i WILL workshop my item, for exactly the reason i wrote about in the previous paragraph. it's an advantage, and not super fair, but it's allowed under the rules and many, many people do it. to NOT do it is to deliberately disadvantage oneself, and given the stress i've felt since clicking the "submit" button this year, fighting with one hand tied behind my back is not worth it.

i will give next year's submission much thought, as i did with this year's, but next year i will share it in private groups prior to the contest and hope that doing so gives it the boost needed to at least make the top 100, if not the top 32.

and to be crystal clear--i don't think ANYONE is a jerk or deliberately skewing things, or knowingly trying to hurt any particular item or theme or category of item. i just think it's the natural outgrowth of the voting system. i almost wish they'd just allow non-paizo employees to publicly discuss items throughout round 1 without identifying the creator in any way. at least then EVERYONE's items could be discussed and receive the benefit or penalty of the momentum that comes with public discussion, rather than it being the unlucky few who happened to make an item that, for whatever reason, had a theme or element that was popular among submissions that year.

my snark about the snark thread:

1) this is not twitter. no need to live-tweet every single item you look at.

2) some of you people must be unemployed given the sheer volume of pots going on throughout each and every day. i am jealous.

that will be all. return to your regular snark.

Except Paizo can easily factcheck. If you say Steve made Jack's +1 sword of Doom, they'll see you're lying and ignore you.

word.

moral of the story--don't share your item with people who might out you during the voting. :)

dear magic voting randomizing machine of filigreed runic undead-creating dragon-powered orphan blood that grants randomized rogue abilities:

please stop pairing two good items or two bad items. at least stop doing it every single time. just give me a couple rounds of "bad item vs good." please.

Who you gonna cull?

ghost(touch) busters?

Jason Dandy wrote:

Owen K.C. Stephens has posted that the next round will be a map. Based on that, I am fully expecting that next round will be a map.

That's high quality humor right there.

Jason Dandy wrote:

Based on totally different stuff, I fully expect that next round I will be watching as an observer only, not a participant.

The addition of this makes it amazing quality humor!

lol, good, as that was the intention!

i started off deciding to enter this year's contest with zero expectation or even hope of advancing to round 2. after hours of research and contemplation, i created something i'm not only proud of, but that i believe might have a sliver of a chance. so now i am looking at disappointment in 12 days, if not culled sooner, plus the body- and soul-ravaging anxiety of watching these forums like a hawk and voting incessantly. and i couldn't be happier.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

is that the mentat mantra in dune??? (if yes, i'm impressed with myself, as i did NOT go googling that shizznit.)

houstonderek wrote:

Dude, chances in 1e of having a 17 or 18 in anything were pretty slim. What game were you playing?

And I'm not discussing the "impossibility" of anything. I'm discussing the probability that even an intelligent party could find the situation difficult, considering the realities of 1e. Seriously, I know you're old school, but you sound like a 3x munchkin when you're discussing this. Even using 4d6 drop, a 17 or 18 is rare. And you have no idea if the wizard in the party under discussion even had a wizard with an 18 int. For all we know, he could have had a 15, which is much more probable. And he may have maxed out his spells for that level before he could take the ones you cite. Different game, different paradigm and a whole lot easier for DMs to make...

In 1E, the chances of getting a good score were dependent on how many times you rolled until you got a set you liked. If the DM was a scrooge, you just killed the character off and re-rolled.

Or he let you get 4d6, drop best, and assign where you like. Odds of a 16+ go way up.

Remember, in 1E, you got NO BONUSES until at LEAST a 15 in most scores...16 for Str, 15 for dex/con/wis. If you didn't have high stats, you basically didn't have ANY bonuses.

Then go back and look at the NPC's of 1E. They almost always had a 16+ in their primary scores, and if they didn't have a 16 Con, you didn't play them because they were too squishy.

Seriously, we metagamed back then just as much as people do now. Just because you didn't see fancy TH vs AC analysis all over the place didn't mean we didn't spot the sweet spots in the game.

And then, of course, Unearthed Arcana came out, and 16+ in your stats was basically a given using the alternate methods. In other words, you finally reliably got to play heros, and not useless scuds only good if they stumbled across a set of Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

Too many people think 1E was like the example above, 3d6 in order, pick your class, and go. That was hardly ever true...

this post says it all. not everyone powergames like you describe. not everyone considers a character with no stat bonuses to be worthless--some of us are men, and prefer such obstacles as a good challenge. not everyone suicides their character because they don't like the stats and want to reroll. that's all munchkin crap. that's the game you play(ed), and more power to you and your permissive DMs, but your experience does not define the game any more than mine does or anyone else's does. but playing 1E with the rules as written, you're not likely to have a magic-user with a high int, you DEFINITELY don't get to roll multiple times for your chance to learn a given spell, spells don't fall out of trees just because you want them, and in no conceivable way was a 12th level wizard able to MELEE a bunch of kobolds.

Sure they were. And you're missing the point.

The party should have wiped the kobolds out. Made it a priority and killed them. LOOK AT WHAT THEY COST THEM.

A 12th level wizard? He was like a god back then. Summon up a fire elemental, let it go...the kobolds are going to need a nat 20 to hit it, and magical weapons, it can go into any of the tunnels, and it eats their flaming oil and brush piles.

Fill the air with fog clouds and stinking clouds and cut off their line of sight and flush them out of their corridors.

Stone Shape their little arrow slits shut. Or open up the stone into the room behind.

Ice Storm for the AoE, or COne of Cold, or, heck, chain lightning. Every magic missile (unrestricted to just 5) is a kill as well.

Toss a fireball into those tight little kobold corridors for minimum damage. It would expand in the area of least resistance...down the tunnels. In 1E, that's 1300' of 5x5 corridors that are doing 17 points of damage...autokill even if they make a save. equip the party with fire resistance ahead of time, be completely protected from non-magical flames.

I'm sorry, mundane martial tactics are not equipped to deal with the variety and power of magical assaults, especially from level 0 creatures.

It's an entertaining story, but a stupid party. I enjoyed reading it. It was not realistic to any game I've ever been in.

And just for follow-up, Dragon Mountain basically brought Tucker's Kobolds into the service of an ancient red dragon, and did the same thing. The second Flame module in Dungeon featured suiciding kobolds all armed with necklace of missile fireball beads. The Axe of the Dwarven Lords introduced area effect missile fire so the goblins (1-7 hp) there could actually do damage to a party, and played the mundane defense game.

against a smart caster, none of this stuff worked all that well.

I played a LOT of 1E. You had to have some very single minded melee-centered parties to have this sort of problem. The story said there was a 12th level wizard...

Conjure Elemental took 1 turn to cast. ten minutes. ten rounds of attacks. if just one attack hit the caster, the spell was lost and would not go off. odds are high that your hypothetical wizard would not last long enough to get a fire elemental up and active.

then there's the fact that the kobolds were behind murder holes and arrow slits on behind every wall and whatnot--you could possibly try to convince a DM that the fire elemental can somehow squeeze through an arrow slit to attack the kobolds, but a DM could just as easily rule that this is impossible, or that the elemental could, at best, hit whatever kobold might be directly behind the hole in question.

fill the air with stinking clouds? line of sight to get the spell to go off, first of all, and second of all, good luck getting through the casting of the spell without getting hit (and getting the spell cancelled) while standing with your face essentially in an arrow slit so you can have line of sight.

stone shape--one round casting time (i.e., not going to get it to go off while being struck by multiple low-damage crossbow bolts and the like), plus you have to shape a piece of clay into a rough facsimile of the target shape. good luck getting all that done while being set on fire and hit with missile attacks repeatedly.

cone of cold is about as worthless as you can get when trying to hit creatures on the other side of a stone wall with only arrow slits as openings between the two sides. and with the ice storm, magic missile, and chain lightning options, again you're faced with having to essentially stick your face up to an arrow slit, behind which is a kobold with a crossbow bolt or a vial of flaming oil. wizard catches on fire, wizard can't cast until the fire goes out. and everyone can have fun as their clothing, spell books, and other gear burns to ash when and if it fails item saving throws.

fireball could be cast through an arrow slit, sure, and most of the effect would spread down the corridors, yes. some would return through the arrow slit, though, and the caster would be the one directly in the line of fire.

equip the party with fire resistance ahead of time? what duration (and, consequently, how far ahead of time are you talking about)?

the point of the story (Tucker's Kobolds) is that the things were innumerable, with more coming to replace those who died.

perhaps it's not about the players in the story being stupid, as you suggest. perhaps it's about a failure of creativity on the part of the DMs in your games, or an issue of enforcing some rules but not others to the detriment of the monsters and to the benefit of the PCs in your games.

there's always someone who has to be the dnd hipster, acting all "too cool for school" about someone else's story about an encounter or campaign. you missed the point entirely: creative use of monsters can make them way more effective as enemies than simply having them run at the players full throttle. whatever your preferred play style, great, but with a campaign where the DM gives monsters as much credit as he gives people in terms of intelligence and strategy, recognizing that you don't need to be a genius to set up adequate defenses and engage in combat intelligently, i don't think it's a sign of stupid players that relatively weak monsters hose the party by use of good strategy. it's always harder to stage an assault on entrenched defenders than it is to defend from a fortified position.