Phil Minchin's page

Hi folks,

I don't have time to see if this has already been suggested, but a (potentially? I think?) simple tweak that might help is to modify the "Personalising, click again in 10 seconds" message. Effectively, you're actively instructing people to "please repeatedly reset your personalisation for no gain to either you or us".

With the volume of traffic we're seeing, that's tens if not hundreds of thousands of personalisation processes being restarted. That's got to account for a good chunk of the server load, which of course compounds the problem and makes it more likely that other people will have the same problem - and it's all happening because people are literally just doing exactly what you've told them to do.

Especially with people who are unfamiliar with the service, people will re-click several times before they start searching forums. And yes, there's the text in red at the top of the screen - but that's pro-forma text, whereas the "click again in 10 seconds" is added "live" and therefore feels like more up-to-date instructions.

(The red text is also a little inaccurate in that you don't actually click the "10 seconds prompt". You could probably stand to reword that too - but it would be better not to be actively giving people incorrect instructions.)

Hopefully this text is just a simple html string inside the downloads page UI code that can be edited while the demand is spiking and changed back to normal when normal functionality resumes.

If so, I'd suggest something along the lines of:

Personalisation of your file has begun. Due to our Humble Bundle promotion wildly exceeding all expectations, personalisation is taking longer than the usual 10 seconds. Please read here for updates, and click again in <frequently updated time estimate based on actual observation of personalisation times>. Thanks for your patience!

Hope this helps! If I'm right, this one UI tweak will both make the system noticeably faster and the customers more patient in dealing with the (now shorter) delays.

Hey folks,

So back in February 2008 I wrote a... supplement I guess?... called Reading the Skull and Crossbones.

It's based around Green Ronin's pirate-themed Walk the Plank card game and their equally piratical Freeport campaign setting. I guess they liked it - it was linked from Walk the Plank's official page for a while.

The document contains tips for using the Walk the Plank cards for cartomancy (Tarot/Harrow-style fortune-telling); superstitions, story hooks and inspirations for GMs to use the cards to motivate plots in their campaign; and a piece of (non-canon!) Freeport fiction around a cardsharp who gets mixed up in all the above.

I just came across it again and it's sparked some ideas for a similar project. But as a low-profile freebie attached to a card game, not an RPG product, it didn't get much notice or feedback from RPG folks. And I learn best from feedback. So I'd be curious to hear what others have to say before my next random thingamajig.

(Assuming anyone reads this... and can be bothered... which honestly will surprise me. But it never hurts to put things out there.)

If anyone DOES pick up on this, I'm most interested in the writing/design, but feel free to respond to the whole thing, the various parts (GM material, cartomancy system, fiction)... even the design/layout. Whatever catches your imagination/attention. Obviously if you own the card game and can actually try doing readings, I'd love to hear how they go!

Anyway, thanks for reading. I look forward to hearing any thoughts :)

(To save folks scrolling back to the link, it's at http://grfiles.game-host.org/gr_files/wtp_cartomancy.pdf)

Phil Minchin wrote:

Manimal wrote:

1 round per mile? As in, "sprint for one minute then jump 600 miles per hour"?

-0.o-

Well they asked me for "mythic".

And I didn't go crazy. I double-checked the speed of sound to make sure it didn't trigger a sonic boom. :D

Glad people seem to like it! Hope you enjoy the others. The mythic rules are pretty great, and writing for them was both a privilege and a complete blast.

Oh man, now I'm totally going to come up with an ability that lets you move faster than the speed of sound to release a sonic boom! Thanks for the awesome ability and the inspiration to make a new one ;)

Gave a fellow gamer an ability they liked, AND inspired them to make something new and cool for themselves? My work here is done.

Thanks Daethor, you made my day - and that's the day after seeing something I wrote on the front of the Paizo blog. Not a bad week :)

1 round per mile? As in, "sprint for one minute then jump 600 miles per hour"?

-0.o-

Well they asked me for "mythic".

And I didn't go crazy. I double-checked the speed of sound to make sure it didn't trigger a sonic boom. :D

Glad people seem to like it! Hope you enjoy the others. The mythic rules are pretty great, and writing for them was both a privilege and a complete blast.

P Minchin wrote:

If you don't mind my asking, does this type of story-based creation requirement tend to be a negative, neutral, or positive thing in the judges' eyes?

It gets looked at extremely negatively. Why? The most important reason is that no other wondrous item does it. Adding story elements, or specific physical ingredients to a wondrous item's construction is doing something that isn't done.

This isn't the same as trying to do something new and cool, for instance. It's more like breaking the template. The template contains feat, class, level and spell requirements. Anything else is covered by the gp cost, which is assumed to be spent on those sorts of things - but restricting a PC to a single specific material ingredient means the PCs must explicitly have access to that specific material or story ingredient. Don't forget, a PC might be using scrolls or an increased DC instead of actually having the required spell (in your case shadow walk).

It would be like adding a PrC whose entry requirements include "all characters must be called Steve." It's adding an unnecessary level of complexity. If a PC or a DM really wants to include such a thing, that's their call - but it should be the DMs digression to the complexity, not to take that away.

Thanks RonarsCorruption. In general I agree, and I wouldn't have added something entirely extraneous. However, I don't see this addition so much as an additional requirement as an explanation of how the time taken to create (or rather craft *sheepish cough*) the item is actually spent. I.e. you have to cast shadow walk (whether from a scroll or whatever) and spend more than an hour per print anyway, this just explains how that links into the creation of the items. Whether that results in actual danger/story complications is entirely in the GM's hands.

You definitely make a good point, just explaining why I saw this as not entirely subject to that good advice :)

P Minchin wrote:

Soles of the Shadow Trail

Full Submission:

Spoiler:

Soles of the shadow trail
Aura moderate illusion (shadow); CL 11th
Slot none; Price 16500 gp (pair); Weight -
Description
These clammy, filmy black footprint shapes are placed on the ground and stepped into while concentrating on two destinations, one false, one true. When the character steps out and begins travelling towards their true destination, their shadow detaches from them, transforms into a shadowy image of them (usual DCs to spot the illusion), and travels at the same speed along a plausible path towards the false destination. The false path is approximately as direct or meandering as the character's path to the true destination. Any purely physical traces of the character's passage fall through the Plane of Shadow and are left on the false path instead. These traces are the real trail relocated to a false path, not illusions; they may not be disbelieved, but may include incongruities (eg suddenly wet footprints in a dry passage if the character has stepped into water on the true path). The effect ends after 1 hour per caster level, if dismissed as a free action, or if either the character or the shadow reaches their destination.

Additionally, when the effect ends, the character may instantaneously plunge through Shadow to their shadow's location on the false path. (This effect confers no more knowledge than they would otherwise have about exactly where that is or what is happening there.) If they travel more than 10,000 feet in this way, they are fatigued by the rapid transit through Shadow's draining miasma.

The soles are consumed upon use, and one sole is required per foot/prosthesis/walking limb.

Construction
Requirements Create Wondrous Item, shadow walk, major image, spend 1 hour per print harvesting footprints while shadow walking; Cost 8250 gp (pair)

*Usual DCs to spot the illusion? What might the "usual" DCs be? Lazy designer can't be bothered to calculate it, much less communicate it. That's a problem.

*True path, false path? Meh. Just cast mislead and be done with it...

*Presentation errors, as well. "Create" Wondrous Item should be Craft Wondrous Item...

*And who's got time to go harvest footprints while shadow walking?

*Vote to Reject.

*Agreed. Reject.

*Also, agree. Reject.

*Rejected.

Sorry for the delay in replying, Neil - and thanks very much for posting the item and the comments, all of which are entirely fair. Hopefully the story of how the item was posted explains those failings a little... and provides a cautionary tale about submitting random inspirations without due polish to anyone doing their homework for later years!

I was hoping for some "flawed, but a hint of mojo" comments, but clearly that's not there... at least not enough. With this many items I can fully understand that it quickly becomes a matter of looking for reasons to reject. Not out of malice or disrespect, just out of sheer necessity when faced with such a massive field to choose from. Sorry it turned out to be a waste of the judges' time - at the time I genuinely thought it was pretty cool.

One thing about the creation requirement that footprints be harvested while shadow walking... the idea was that you would pretty much shadow walk just to harvest the prints, as preparation for a later getaway. That this was potentially dangerous was partly the point. If you don't mind my asking, does this type of story-based creation requirement tend to be a negative, neutral, or positive thing in the judges' eyes?

Thank you all again, anyway! Very much appreciated.

Hi folks,

I submitted my entry (Soles of the Shadow Trail) from my phone at the last minute - literally after waking up from a dream at 5am (I'm in Australia and entries closed early that morning - I actually had a couple of hours but didn't know that for sure at the time). I wasn't intending to submit, but it was quite a dream.

But that means I don't have a copy of the item. I've tried checking my post history and I can't see it there either. If that rules me out, fair enough and thanks for reading this far.

But IF someone who can see my entry can be bothered pasting it into this thread along with the comments (or telling me how to retrieve it myself if I'm just being fick), I would be deeply grateful. I was too busy to get comments on my previous entry (Warp Clay) last year, something I really regret because I found the judges' comments on other items gave me so much to bounce off.

Either way, thanks again to all involved for fuelling so much creativity.