Huge congratulations to you, Nick!
RPG Superstar is my favorite time of the year... See you all again next year!
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Best of luck to every single one of you, and congratulations. RPGs need writers as talented as you.
Thanks, Mikko. Here's hoping I make it--I'm really going to bring the mojo next round. (As I feel I did this round.)
PM me the item, please? :-)
Bees? BEEEEEEEES
*shrugs* A lot of PF SRD text explicitly assumes a gender, and it tends to be random. Read the class descriptions. Barbarian and Paladin use female pronouns, Ranger and Rogue use male. I actually like it this way, rather than using "they." To each their own.I'm sure thon was doing thon's best.Or even just, you know, they and its close relatives. The class pronouns are actually based off the gender of the corresponding iconic character.
Are the items paired always of roughly equal "quality," as determined by the votes so far?
A little And So I Watch You From Afar right now. Still trying to decide if I like them or not.
Ghost armor versus ghost wondrous...
If you are indeed a fourth grader, I respect the courage it took to enter RPGSS! If you're not a fourth grader, please double-check your basic English spelling and grammar rules.
Making maps is one of my favorite things to do as a GM. There are a lot of reasons I would love to make the Top 32, but the chance to be a part of the map round is high on the list.
Ah, mediocre item joke item vs. DQ-worthy backstory item, we meet again.
Yup! Voting will become much easier once the initial flurry of activity dies down.
Gotcha. Thanks PA! I have a timezone finder open on my browser now.... Ouch, that stings... I'm sorry. If nothing else, at least you got more design practice.
Voting will begin on my lunch break tomorrow. I know where that hour is going!
How did you tell that some things were minor artifacts? Just that they had no price and couldn't be crafted?They actually self-identified it as a "minor artifact"... :) Sounds like the perfect time to submit my new apparatus, "minor jpeg artifact"!
How did you tell that some things were minor artifacts? Just that they had no price and couldn't be crafted?
Or the "I've submitted my item but voting still hasn't started yet" freakout and speculation thread. How do you pass the time between the submission time and the start of voting? (Mostly, I try to forget that this contest exists for a day or two.) I guess the real superstar answer would be to work on all the other RPG projects you're doing!
Thanks so much to everyone who has put so much effort into critiquing the items in this thread. I hope you'll give me your feedback on my entry. =) Soulfire Band
As a free action, the wearer may command this ring to absorb the soul of any living creature she has killed this round with a melee weapon attack. The ring can hold up to 20 HD worth of souls in this manner. A creature's soul cannot be trapped if its HD exceed the ring's remaining capacity. As a standard action, the wearer may ignite up to three of the stored souls as soulfire: silvery flames that echo with the shrieks of the damned. Soulfire can be directed as: • A single scorching ray, or
Soulfire deals fire damage equal to the hit dice spent in the attack. For example, spending the souls of two ogres with 4d8 HD creates a scorching ray or fireball dealing 8d8 points of fire damage. This replaces the damage normally dealt by a ray or fireball. A creature whose soul is trapped in the ring cannot be restored to life until its soul is freed, and a creature whose soul is burned as soulfire cannot be resurrected by anything short of a wish or miracle spell. All trapped souls are harmlessly released when the ring is removed or the ring is destroyed. Construction
Congratulations, everyone! I didn't place this year, but I look forward to following the contest as it unfolds. =)
a very well articulated statement Perfectly said. This contest is 20% making quality material, and 80% making quality material under inconvenient circumstances... because that's just how the industry is.
Thanks so much to everyone in this thread. You've kept me sane and eagerly voting away for these past few weeks. Now I guess it's time to sketch a few more maps in the judges' week. Best of luck to everyone!
I always vote for this rod, it's such a nice twist on a classic item.
So far I've seen... not a lot of rings, weirdly. A ton of them seem to have gotten culled.
That rod looks a lot like a pair of boots...
I'm super happy about making the cull, but there are still over three hundred items being cut to 100, and then to just 32. So only 10% of the cull survivors will advance to the next round. Those are humbling odds... so I'll stay humble.
The item list says I survived the cull! And I'm thrilled to see so many new, high-quality items showing up in my voting window.
I've basically stopped reading items that aren't formatted properly...
I downvote this sword every time I see it. Why does it plague me so?
Just saw my item for the first time! That made my day a little bit brighter.
A perfectly-formatted joke item paired with a terribly formatted, super-mediocre item...
Agh, I love you, flavorful little weapon, but your formatting errors and descriptive faux pas' condemn you.
The two options are starting to blur together... I think that's the signal to stop for the night.
Once an item's formatting crosses the line from mediocre to bad, I stop giving it a chance. Just like you, little ring.
Item with bad formatting vs. item with worse formatting. x_x
I've been voting for several hundred items and I haven't seen mine yet, so I wouldn't worry yet! Unless you committed copyright infringement, made a non-Pathfinder item, or submitted a Wondrous Item, your entry should still be tumbling around in there somewhere.
Fire themed item, you are so boring. Is it because fire themed items can only do damage? I saw a pretty cool fire-themed armor a while ago. I wish I'd saved it.
I thought I was looking at a Cage-themed joke item, but it was actually pretty cool.
I'm surrounded by walls of text!
I just can't vote for alignment-based mechanics in good conscience.
Damn, that is a stylish staff. I'm blown away by how many cool staves I've seen so far.
This one sword keeps showing up, and it's formatted so terribly, but its abilities are so fun...
This item, sometimes known as "something completely different..."
Whoever made this item is clearly insane, but that's okay because it's amazing. That's the kind of mojo I wanna hear about!
disarming shields seem common this year. Attack-reflecting shields seem even more common, from my end.
My (general) ranking is
(has anyone else found passives all over to be a side effect of academic writing?). Maybe that's why textbooks and [poorly written] RPG sourcebooks are such a chore to read. There's just no action!
I'm very pleased with what I've produced. I feel that I managed to blend flavor and mechanics very nicely. It feels a little "wondrous" to me, but I think it has enough mojo to push through that concern.
A staff that uses Ki or something else might also run the risks of braking game balance. Also I could see many of these written in away that having one would make having that character type in the group obsolete, something the design gurus have warned against. That said, even Pathfinder isn't free from caster hegemony, and normal staves aren't helping on that front anyway. The beleaguered monk has become a fair sight better than he was in 3.5e and other d20 games, but it's far from perfectly balanced. I think a ki staff (etc.) could help shift that balance towards resource-based martial characters.
Do we get any feedback on our Items to help us next time? The last few years there have been "Critique my Item" threads that have popped up a few days after the Top 32 have been announced. And if you get into the Top 32, then the judges will leave their feedback on your submission.
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First of all a happy new year all and as I am heading out for a party after I post this I wont be responding till tomorrow :) A lot has been said about SAD from the bandits side and the I am good and want to help out side. Time now for a merchants perspective. I am not really wanting to talk strangely enough about the mechanics but the consequences and the reason I am posting it is to make my fellow merchants think about the SAD consequences more deeply. here is the kicker for my thinking A successful SAD, while good for an individual merchant on that one occasion is not good for merchants on the whole! Surprised? You shouldn't be it is simple economics. Merchants make money by selling items or repairing items. The scarcer the item the more profit that can be made. A successful SAD causes no damage nor does it remove any items from circulation by their being destroyed. In many cases the bandits will even disrupt the market by undercutting in order to shift their ill gotten gains more quickly. While painful for the individual merchant at the time making them kill and loot you has the following effects. It removes 25% of the goods from the economy totally therefore inflating the prices a little due to scarcity. Attacking and killing uses consumables again removing them from the economy. Item wear also needs repair bringing us more money. If prices start to rise in settlements due to banditry you can also be sure those settlements are going to notice and they will then take steps to eliminate the problem. In the long run I believe we as merchants gain more by saying no to SAD's than we do by kowtowing to bandit tyranny. This then is a call to arms for merchants everywhere. JUST SAY NO!!! Our reward will be higher prices and laughter as the settlements drive the unwashed from the trade routes
Aeternum Sponsored Charted Company recruitment With the recent information from Ryan Dancey some people are feeling a little nervous about what their future in PfO may hold.
So to answer some of the burning questions up front 1) Will our people have to join Pax No the members of a sponsored chartered company are not expected to go through the Pax recruiting channel, nor do they become Pax members. They are however expected to become settlement members. 2) Will Pax control our organisation. The answer to this is slightly more complex. The simple answer is no Pax will not control your organisation. You will remain your own company with your own officers and your own culture. You will however be expected to follow the general thrust of the nations policies. For example if we are allied with another settlement, we expect you to regard yourselves as allied with them as well. Common sense really we are an alliance and we pull together. 3) How are national policies made? The nation has two bodies that form the decision making process. The High and Low consuls. The high Consul is a small body that makes policy and votes upon it. This will consist of the High Thane, settlement leaders, and a couple of advisors. The other is the low consul which is an advisory body and consists of all chartered company leaders whether Paxian or sponsored company. 4)How will we be treated within the Nation The nation of Aeternum regards all of its members whether of Pax origin or Sponsored company origin of equal standing. We stand as one and we live as one. 5)How will joining the nation help us? Strong nations will be necessary to weather the stormy sea's of early enrollment. We believe we are capable of building such a nation. As such you will be under that umbrella when the storm comes. We will do all in our power to help your SCC grow and thrive. Should you become big enough to make a settlement in your own right we will assist in every way to make this happen at which point your settlement leader will take a place on the high consul. 6) What will we have to do for Pax We would answer this simply. You will not have to do anything for Pax. You will however have duties to the Nation of Aeternum. The Nation is not Pax the nation is all of us both Pax and all of the sponsored companies that it consists of. This is probably only a small percentage of the questions you have. We are currently preparing a longer faq. We already have the very much more detailed Aeternum agreement but it is felt that can be a bit too dry for those just wanting more information. Should what we have said interest you feel free to PM me on the Paizo boards and we can arrange further discussions either in a teamspeak style setting or via pm's. Also if you do not wish to get in touch quite yet we currently in the interests of openess keep our boards and wiki readable by all for the most part unlike most groups. We believe we have nothing to hide so if you wish to find out more of our nature before talking feel free to poke around as Pax Gaming Hargun Thunderborn (Aka ZenPagan , aka Pagan)
On behalf of the Nation of Aeternum I have a statement of confirmed policy The Nation of Aeternum believes that leading by example is the best way to encourage particular behaviours in newcomers who come to play the game in the spirit intended when the open enrollment starts. To this end the Nation of Aeternum wishes to make the following unequivocal statement. Except during times of war we the Nation will be using the Not Red Don't Shoot policy within our borders. We also intend to keep our Red list as small as is prudently feasible and would see the returning of wartime Reds to neutral grey status as an integral part of negotiating their surrender. Hargun Thunderborn
At the start of open enrollment we will (hopefully) have a lot of new players starting. A lot of these new players will be new to either open skill selection style games or Pathfinder or even both. Our putative new player will therefore come into game thinking hmm I like the sound of being a mighty barbarian. His first problem is "wow what a lot of skills what should I train first to achieve my life dream of striding through the forests of Golarion clad in naught but a rabbit skin loincloth". I thought I would start this thread so we could discuss how this sort of player can be helped without feeling totally dependent on the goodwill of others answering quite basic questions. Two games I have played had systems to give such guidance to new players so I will start by mentioning those. The first is Eve with its skill certificate system, the second is TSW with its deck system. Both help the new player who can find a suitable profession amongst either certificates or the predefined decks. These then allow them to get started without feeling they need to be asking basic questions. So the questions are 1) Are there other such systems worth considering from other games?
A few of us on teamspeak were talking about settlement laws and thought it was worth a post and hopefully discussion. We believe that settlement laws will be of the checkbox and enter a number sort for instance Ban players with reputation less than ------ or Ban all elves or The following spells may not be cast or A list of permissible equipped weapons Given the above what selectable laws would people like to see?
eg Only short swords are permitted for visitors
The second idea we kicked about was player guards or "enforcer" flagged characters being able to police contraband (settlement flagged items) by an adaption of the Stand and deliver mechanism whereby player guards could search other players for contraband
I have seen the fact that only 100 people or so post on the forum and therefore we can't take what they say as indicating anything about the more general PfO client base. Out of curiosity, seeing as this forum is small enough and numbers are relatively accurate for both forum population and initial early enrollment population, I dug out my trusty calculator and calculated where the forum population was in relation to statistical sampling assumptions forum population 100
For these figures the forum population can be seen to have a 95% confidence level with a confidence interval of 10%. What does this mean cry the non nerdy maths geeks? It means that on a given issue,for example to take something non controversial number of people who currently play wow if the forum population had 40% of people currently playing Wow that the 40% figure is likely with a 95% chance to be the same for the total early enrollment population give or take up to 10% STATISTICS WARNING!!!!!! This however breaks down if there is reason to belief that the forum population is skewed by self selection on a particular issue compared to the general early enrollment population. Note I am not trying to prove anything by this just thought it was generally interesting as you often see people saying forum posters don't represent the game population but usually it is impossible to know numbers of both and here we have some reasonable estimations to work with so I did the maths |