Steven Townshend's page

I've got to say I have a difficult time taking this criticism seriously. You mean to tell me that you _intentionally_ made your item name boring? That's just a bad decision when you're trying to make your submission stand out from the pack.

The idea that some people are surprised a clever name is a BOON to an item really befuddles me. I should think that was obvious.

Since it was the first item on Clark's list, it sounds like there were a lot of bad names. So either a lot of us are uncreative, or else the notion of deviating from the standard format was not as obvious as it seemed to the judges.

I consider my previous post FEEDBACK, not criticism. If you think it's junk, ignore it. It's only my opinion, and since I made a deliberate decision to err on the side of "standard," at least one person was misled. Perhaps I could have written in to Paizo for clarification on breaking some of the molds. Well... I did. I waited two days and received the following response.

Hi Steve,

Corey Young
Customer Service
Paizo Publishing, LLC

Anyway, Erik, it's my honest feedback so take it or leave it. I'm not whining about my item not making the cut, I'm trying to offer my experience with your contest here, and the things I had trouble with. If this isn't useful to you, forget it.

I don't recall anything in the submission criteria about "cool names." The magic items in the SRD for the most part have atrociously generic names (ie. Boots of ___ing, Hat of ____ing, Cloak of ____, etc), and the contest rules explicitly stated that the format for item creation must derive from the SRD.

So it's disturbing to read discussions about items that look as though they were nearly excluded because they didn't have cool names (the Bodyguard Vest for example). The rules indicated that flavor text should be good, but coming up with a cool name for your magic item goes against most of the stuff in the SRD. I hope that in future contests, if such factors are to be considered, that they be listed in the submission criteria.

4e, unless I have to house rule the **** out of it.

Thus far, 4e looks very close to what I've been trying to accomplish for quite some time now. I don't know enough about it yet. Nevertheless, I'm currently optimistic.